Episode 2 with Garry Pomerleau (Tactical Paramedic in North Carolina -USA)

For our second podcast of Ops Fitness, meet Garry Pomerleau who is
a Tactical Paramedic who has 20 plus years experience out of North
Carolina in the United States.Find out how important fitness is
towards his profession and how he overcame his accident. Plus why
he will never use a BB gun again and what he really thinks of The
Rock!       1. Tell me a little about yourself and
how fitness has made an impact on your life, especially as a
paramedic. Well, we have to go back a couple of years. I have been
a paramedic for 25 years, and 28 years in the profession. I
distinctly remember being about 19 or 20 years old and I was up at
1:00 in the morning. I remember being in high school and I never
went to bed late; I was always an early to bed/early to rise kind
of guy. On occasion I would be up late, but I was always doing
something that wasn’t that late, so when I got into the EMS
profession I was initially a volunteer and then, of course, became
part of the paid staff where I was working in, and I distinctly
remember being up at 1:00 in the morning and I was thinking that
this was kinda neat and this was kinda cool and how did this
happen? It was kind of like a little fold in my memory, if you
will, on how things work out. A couple of years down the road I was
probably 23 or 24 years old, and I was playing basketball, and I
quickly caught on that I was out of shape. My mom commented that a
lot of the guys who I worked with were kind of fat or were out of
shape and she alluded to that, and I almost didn’t identify, and
then it hit me. I was like wow, this is a huge issue. When I was a
little older, and I moved a little bit more and had more aches and
pains but didn’t sustain an injury until 2011. I hurt my back in
‘05, but that was such a minor incident that I only took one day
off from work. But when it comes down to fitness once I started
trying to get back into shape, ironically enough before I got
married, I discovered the work that you had to put into it and
profoundly how fitness and movement and everything plays together
whether you are a paramedic or whether you are a paralegal or
whatever you are it makes you do things better, it makes you move
better, it makes you move more efficiently. It makes you just feel
better in general. So over the years, it has been an interesting
evolution that it was exercise, it was when you were working and
moving, and then it became more a discussion of lifting better and
doing better and then it became a conversation of just as you get
older you don’t want to be limited. You hear so many people in this
profession say it is a young man’s profession and I don't agree
with that. It can be anyone's profession. I remember being a very
young educator and having someone walk up to me who was in his mid
40’s and this guy is still a medic today, I mean 20 years later he
is in his 60’s and working in the County here in North Carolina,
and he is still out there doing it and he loves it. He has found a
way to rejuvenate himself. I think that fitness and the impact as a
medic is movement. You are meant to move; you are meant to lift
things. If you believe it is too big of a quest for you, then you
are defeated. It is a very interesting mix of how fitness plays
hand in hand with being anything, especially in a very physical
profession and especially in para medicine where you mentally and
physically have to be in shape to be able to conquer a lot of the
things that we see.     2. What was the hardest time of
your life? What tools did you use to get through it?  
Everyone thinks about interesting times in their life, but I had a
double whammy. In ‘09 I was working for a big agency here in North
Carolina, fairly successful, I was doing very well. I was a
lieutenant, and I was a tactical medic. Everything was coming
together and then I had, I guess you could call it a falling out if
you will, and it was almost like a mental breakdown or a mental
meltdown. It shook my belief in any system to believe in anyo