Match the Training to the Stress: A 24/72 Performance Cycle for Firefighters

The growing interest in the 24-hour-on, 72-hour-off schedule creates an opportunity for the fire service to think differently about more than scheduling. It creates an opportunity to reconsider how firefighters train across the entire duty cycle.

A 2026 study of fire departments that had implemented or were considering the 24/72 model found strong interest in the schedule for reasons including retention, fatigue reduction, recruitment, health, and safety. The researchers were also careful to note that long-term empirical evidence regarding the schedule's effects on firefighter health, safety, and performance remains limited (ODare et al., 2026).

That limitation is important. I am not suggesting that 24/72 is inherently superior from a performance standpoint or that simply adding another day away from the station automatically creates a healthier or better-prepared firefighter. What interests me as a performance professional is what the schedule potentially gives us: a clearly defined four-day cycle that can be used more deliberately.

The conversation should move beyond determining which days firefighters lift heavy, perform conditioning, or recover. Firefighting requires strength and aerobic capacity, but it also requires sustained and selective attention, rapid shifts in attention, decision-making, communication, working memory, situational awareness, emotional regulation, and the ability to execute while physiologically activated.

A recent scoping review of 32 studies examining acute occupational stress and firefighter cognition found that cognitive effects varied considerably, but negative effects were most common. More complex cognitive tasks were particularly vulnerable when physical exertion and heat occurred together. The authors specifically identified stress-integrated training and defined recovery protocols as important areas for firefighter performance (Schaerz & Duffy, 2026).

That provides an important starting point: we should not wait until the incident to find out whether a firefighter can use cognitive and mental-performance skills under stress.

The 24/72 cycle gives us a useful way to do it.

Note: The 72-hour period of training that includes mental/cognitive training is dependent on the 24-hour shift and the load the system handled during that period. Below is one example of many training plans that could be developed.

Shift Day: Perform and Manage

The primary performance objective during the 24-hour shift should be to remain ready to perform.

That may sound obvious, but it changes how we think about both physical and mental training during the shift. A firefighter's job is inherently unpredictable. Several relatively quiet hours can be followed immediately by a call requiring rapid orientation, physical effort, communication, decision-making, and execution. The firefighter has little control over when that demand arrives.

This makes attention and energy management particularly important on shift.

Present-moment awareness is useful here because attention naturally drifts. That is not a character flaw; it is a normal feature of human attention. The performance skill is recognizing that attention has moved away from something relevant and being able to deliberately bring it back. Firefighters can practice this throughout ordinary station activities rather than waiting for a formal mental-performance session. Where is my attention right now? What information matters? Am I anticipating something that has not happened, replaying something that already happened, or engaging with the task in front of me?

Those repetitions matter because the fireground eventually asks for the same ability under substantially greater pressure.

There is firefighter-specific evidence suggesting that aspects of attention can be deliberately trained. In a randomized study involving 121 firefighters, a four-week mindfulness training program was associated with greater improvement in psychological resilience compared with relaxation training and no-training conditions. Within the mindfulness group, greater practice was also associated with improvement in objective attentional-task performance. This does not establish improved fireground decision-making, but it does provide evidence that attention and self-regulatory capacities in firefighters can be deliberately developed rather than simply assumed (Denkova et al., 2020).

This is also where energy management becomes more sophisticated than simply “saving energy.”

A 24-hour shift requires firefighters to manage activation across a long period. There are times to be highly engaged and times when remaining unnecessarily activated serves no performance purpose. Knowing how to transition between those states is itself a performance skill.

Tactical Mindfulness can fit naturally here through brief C-ORE application. C-ORE: Composure, Orient, Regulate, Execute — can serve as a quick check of current state and task demands as well as used when the environment changes and the firefighter needs to rapidly reconnect attention to what matters.

They are short, repeatable skills designed to support task execution. Physical training on shift can still occur, but the guiding question should be whether the training supports readiness or competes with it. Depending on call volume, training history, and operational responsibilities, lighter strength work, aerobic training, mobility, or movement preparation may make sense. The objective is not to generate unnecessary residual fatigue before the shift has revealed what it is going to demand.

Sleep also belongs in this conversation. If operational conditions permit sleep, sleep should be treated as a performance opportunity rather than something to avoid in the name of toughness. One study of 45 firefighters reported an average of approximately 5 hours and 21 minutes of sleep while working and found associations between even relatively modest sleep disruption and changes in processing speed, visual-motor coordination, and reaction time (Stout et al., 2021).

Shift day, therefore, is not a recovery day or a major training day.

It is a performance-management day: manage attention, manage activation, manage energy, maintain physical readiness, and sleep when the job allows it.

Day 1: Recover the System, Not Just the Muscles

After the 24-hour shift, the emphasis changes.

Day 1 should primarily restore the resources that were taxed during the shift. That certainly includes physical recovery, but recovery should not be reduced to soreness and muscle fatigue. Sleep disruption, prolonged vigilance, repeated transitions from rest to emergency response, emotional demand, and sustained information processing can all influence the firefighter who leaves the station.

This makes Day 1 an appropriate time for both physical and cognitive downshifting.

Sleep should be prioritized when needed. Physical work can be light: walking, mobility, easy aerobic activity, or other low-demand movement appropriate to the individual. The objective is to facilitate restoration rather than immediately replace occupational stress with a major training stress.

This is where breathing practices, meditation, attentional recovery, and body awareness can be useful. The purpose is not to turn firefighters into permanently relaxed individuals. It is to develop the ability to intentionally change state when the environment no longer requires high activation. That is an important distinction in tactical populations. The ability to activate is rarely the problem. The ability to recognize when activation is no longer useful and deliberately transition out of it can be much more difficult. A brief meditation may focus on noticing thoughts without needing to follow them. Breathing practice can create greater awareness of the relationship between respiration, tension, and activation. Body-focused attention can help the firefighter recognize the difference between being physically tired and remaining psychologically “switched on.”

Tactical Mindfulness's AIM process: Acknowledge, Integrate, Move can also fit here, particularly following a demanding shift. The objective is not forced emotional processing after every call. It is providing a deliberate mechanism for recognizing what occurred, identifying what deserves further attention, extracting useful information where appropriate, and transitioning toward what comes next.

Day 1 is therefore more than “take it easy.”

It is a deliberate reduction in demand so that the firefighter is better positioned to tolerate and benefit from what comes next.

Day 2: Stress the System With Purpose

Day 2 becomes the centerpiece of the cycle.

Assuming adequate readiness, this is the day to create significant physical, cognitive, and mental-performance demand. This is where firefighters can move beyond learning skills in controlled environments and begin demonstrating whether those skills remain available when the environment becomes more difficult.

Stress training should not mean making firefighters exhausted and then congratulating them for finishing. Physical fatigue has value when it serves a training objective, but fatigue is a training variable, not the objective itself.

If the performance target is decision-making, then the session should challenge decision-making. If it is attentional control, the environment needs competing information. If it is cognitive flexibility, something meaningful should change. If it is communication, firefighters should have to exchange and prioritize information while demand increases.

This is where physical and cognitive performance can finally be integrated.

A firefighter might complete a task-specific movement under load and then receive information requiring a change in action. A scenario might require the firefighter to remember a piece of information introduced earlier while continuing to work. An instructor might introduce a visual or auditory cue that changes the original problem. Teams might be required to communicate critical information while physiologically taxed instead of waiting until everyone has recovered.

Now the mental tools have a reason to exist.

Present-moment awareness becomes maintaining contact with current information rather than operating entirely from expectation. Attentional control becomes determining which cues deserve priority when several inputs compete simultaneously. Cognitive flexibility becomes recognizing that the original plan no longer fits the problem. Regulation becomes keeping activation within a range that permits continued perception and decision-making.

C-ORE becomes more than a concept practiced while sitting in a classroom. The firefighter has to Orient to what has changed, Regulate sufficiently to maintain performance, and Execute the next appropriate action.

The 2026 review on firefighter cognition is particularly relevant here. The authors found that cognitive impairment was more likely when tasks were complex and physical exertion and heat occurred together, and they highlighted stress-integrated training as an important implication of the existing evidence (Schaerz & Duffy, 2026).

That does not mean we should simply pile heat, fatigue, noise, time pressure, and cognitive tasks into every session. Good performance programming manipulates variables. Sometimes the cognitive challenge should increase while physical load remains manageable. Sometimes the physical demand increases while the decision problem remains simple. Eventually, both can be increased when there is a clear reason to evaluate or develop their interaction.

This is the same basic logic we use elsewhere in performance training: develop the component, increase the demand, then integrate it into the performance environment.

For mental and cognitive skills, I would think of that progression as Learn → Challenge → Integrate → Execute.

Day 2 is where Challenge, Integrate, and Execute become particularly important.

Day 3: Sharpen Rather Than Empty the Tank

The final off-duty day serves a different purpose.

The firefighter is now preparing to return to another unpredictable 24-hour period. This is probably not the best time to prove how much fatigue can be accumulated before walking back into the station. That does not make Day 3 a mandatory rest day. Physical training can still occur depending on the firefighter's program, recovery status, and training goals. The difference is that the emphasis should shift toward readiness and sharpening rather than maximal loading.

Mental and cognitive work can become more preparatory as well. Imagery is one option. Firefighters can rehearse common operational sequences, but the rehearsal should not always involve everything going perfectly. Effective imagery can include uncertainty, changes in information, mistakes, and the need to reorient after something unexpected occurs. Attentional rehearsal can also be useful. What cues are likely to matter when arriving on scene? What tends to capture my attention unnecessarily? What does broad awareness feel like compared with narrow task focus? How will I recognize when I need to move between the two? Pre-performance routines can be reinforced here as well. A short C-ORE practice before returning to duty can help establish the cognitive starting point for the next cycle: current composure, operational objective, reality of the present situation, and where engagement needs to be directed.

It is preparation for re-entry into the performance environment.

The question becomes less about how much training is left to complete and more about what physical and cognitive state the firefighter wants to carry into the next shift.

Putting it All Together

This should not be interpreted as a rigid prescription. Call volume, sleep, age, training status, injury history, department requirements, and individual responses to stress all matter. The science surrounding the 24/72 schedule itself is also still developing.

Every day does not need the same physical load. Every day does not need the same cognitive demand. Every day does not need to be a stress day, and every day does not need to be a recovery day. Different parts of the cycle can serve different performance purposes.

Build the Cycle With Purpose

The move toward 24/72 gives the fire service an opportunity to think beyond whether firefighters simply have more time off.

What if that additional time allows us to train with greater precision?

Shift day becomes an opportunity to practice attention, manage energy, and maintain readiness. Day 1 deliberately restores physical and cognitive resources. Day 2 creates purposeful exposure to physical and cognitive stress while requiring firefighters to use the mental tools they have developed. Day 3 sharpens those capabilities and prepares the firefighter to return to duty without unnecessarily emptying the tank. That creates something closer to a true human-performance cycle rather than a workout schedule. Physical fitness remains essential. Recovery remains essential, but neither should overshadow the cognitive and mental demands of an occupation where firefighters may need to move from sleep or conversation to consequential perception, decision-making, communication, and physical execution within minutes.

If those capabilities matter on the fireground, they deserve a place in the training plan. The goal is not to make every day easier, nor is it to make every day harder. The goal is to make each day purposeful. That is what it means to match the training to the stress.

Closing thoughts

Moving to 24/72? Don’t just change the schedule. Change how you prepare for it.

Mindful Performance Consulting helps fire departments build firefighter-specific human performance programs around the 24/72 cycle by integrating attention, decision-making, stress regulation, task-specific cognitive training into physical preparation, and recovery as one deliberate system.

The goal is not to add more training. It is to make the training firefighters are already doing more purposeful, more transferable, and more aligned with the demands of the job.

MIND • BODY • MISSION

References

Denkova, E., Zanesco, A. P., Rogers, S. L., and Jha, A. P. (2020). Is resilience trainable? An initial study comparing mindfulness and relaxation training in firefighters. Psychiatry Res. 285:112794. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112794.

ODare, K., Atwell, L., Carlson-Moore, B., Porter, L., Bellamy, M., Davis, J., Wells, R., Thomas, K. and Tullius, R. (2026). Evaluating the 24/72 shift schedule in the fire service: agency experiences and perceived impacts. Front. Environ. Health, 5:1743492. doi: 10.3389/fenvh.2026.1743492.

Schaerz, S., and Duffy, T. (2026). Mapping the impact of acute occupational stress on cognitive performance in firefighting contexts: a scoping review. Ergonomics. 15:1-14. doi: 10.1080/00140139.2026.2668501. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 42138729.

Stout, J. W., Beidel, D. C., Brush, D., and Bowers, C. (2021). Sleep disturbance and cognitive functioning among firefighters. J Health Psychology, 26(12), 2248-2259. doi: 10.1177/1359105320909861.