Validity and Reliability of a Tower Climb Test for the Assessment of Anaerobic Performance in Urban Firefighters

The purpose of this study was to determine the validity and reliability of an 8-flight tower climb test (TCT) to assess anaerobic performance in urban firefighters. Twenty-five professional urban firefighters participated in the validity testing of the TCT versus the Wingate Anaerobic Test (WAT) over 2 randomly sequenced testing sessions. Test-retest reliability was assessed separately in 21 active male and female participants over 2 TCT trials. During both validity and reliability testing for the TCT, participants ascended a firefighting training tower as fast as possible from a 1.7m running start while wearing firefighter protective equipment. Time was measured and power was calculated from the foot of the training tower to the top of the first (height = 1.75m) and eighth (height = 13.89m) flights of stairs. During the other session assessing TCT validity, participants completed a 30-second WAT using a resistance of 85g.kg-1 body weight (BW). Several significant correlations were found including those between TCT power and: 1) mean WAT power generated for the duration equivalent to TCT time (r = 0.869), 2) peak power for the first 2 seconds of the WAT (r = 0.868), and 3) WAT peak power (r = 0.864). TCT test-retest performance in 21 active males and females showed that the test is highly reproducible. The mean time of completion of the 8-flight TCT was 21.81 +/- 5.03 seconds and 21.38 +/- 4.86 seconds for Trials 1 and 2, respectively. Intraclass correlations for time and power data from the first and eighth flights ranged from 0.94 to 0.99, and coefficients of variance ranged from 2.0% to 7.5%. These findings provide strong evidence that the TCT is a valid and reliable field-based assessment of occupation-specific anaerobic performance in urban firefighters.