Carrying Under Load
Moving weight while wearing weight. Loaded carries, racks, and dumbbell work build the grip, trunk and shoulder endurance that equipment carries and ladder work actually demand.
A six-week conditioning course for anyone with a fire application in front of them. Twelve coached sessions built around the work itself, dragging, climbing, carrying under load. Get fit for the job and the CPAT takes care of itself.
You don't have to be a Guardian student. This course is open to anyone, including students from other EMT programs. We prepare you for the CPAT; the test itself is administered by the hiring agency. Coached in The Forge, Guardian's on-site training gym, by staff who hold firefighter certifications.
Six pairs. One room. A coach who has run the events you're training for.
That price is for the people who get in first, and it holds for your whole six weeks no matter when the rate changes. From January 2027 this course is $499. The blocks between now and then are the only ones at the founding rate, and there are five of them.
They fail it on the third event, out of breath, with a hose still to drag. The test isn't a skills exam, it's a work-capacity exam in a weighted vest. So that's what six weeks here builds: the capacity to keep working after the point where most candidates stop being able to.
Moving weight while wearing weight. Loaded carries, racks, and dumbbell work build the grip, trunk and shoulder endurance that equipment carries and ladder work actually demand.
The stair machine in a weighted vest, which is where most candidates find out how little their cardio transfers. Legs and lungs together, at a pace you have to hold rather than sprint.
Sled pushes and rescue-dummy drags on turf. Hips, posterior chain and grip under a load that fights back, the movement pattern behind hose advances and getting a person out.
The one that decides it. Sessions stack the above back to back with short recovery, so the last effort happens tired, because on the test and on the fireground, it always does.
Two hours, twice a week, coached start to finish, not a gym membership with a program emailed to you. Twelve people maximum, so form gets corrected while you're doing it rather than after you've built a habit.
Sessions are run by Guardian staff who hold firefighter certifications, people who have done the work this course is preparing you for. Everything happens in The Forge, Guardian's training gym at the Provo campus.
Come in whatever shape you're in. The programming scales to the person; the standard it's scaling toward doesn't.
Pick the pattern that fits your schedule, the course is identical either way.
Blocks run every month and cap at twelve, so the one you want is the one to book now rather than the one after it. No enrollment in any other program required, pick your two days and show up.
Pick Wednesday/Saturday or Tuesday/Thursday and reserve your seat. Open to anyone preparing for a fire application, including students from other EMT programs.
See Upcoming Blocks ↓If the department you're applying to also wants an EMT certification, Guardian runs that as a 12-week program in the same building, and gym access comes with the middle and top packages.
EMT Basic Program →A lot of Utah departments look for Advanced EMT when they screen candidates, it separates you from applicants carrying EMT-Basic alone. IV, pharmacology and advanced airway, another 12 weeks, same building.
Advanced EMT Program →