Ah, but Chronos, your strength is all in your mind. 
And you’ve got about a year to workout and prepare?
You’ve totally got this.
One thing about the dumbbell-carrying tasks is that you should be able to lift a LOT more from the floor to the level of your waist, particularly in the form of dumbbells, than you would be able to lift to your shoulders or overhead. On the other hand, you are being asked to carry the weights some distance, so you will be holding onto them awhile. The muscles that power your grip are mostly in your lower arms, so you’ll want to make sure you include some lower-arm exercises in your training routine. Moreover, dumbbells come with different thicknesses in their central shaft. Non-adjustable dumbbells that consist of a single piece of metal generally have thicker shafts than adjustable ones, and those are likely to be more tiring to your grip. If you practice with those, and they turn up at the test, great. If it turns out the test uses the narrower-shaft, adjustable weights, even better–you’ll have an extra advantage.
With regard to the weightlifting tasks generally, I imagine that the testing center isn’t going to be overly concerned with proper form. For instance, when you do bicep curls at the gym, you should be using your arms but holding the rest of your body as motionless as possible. If you allow the rest of your body to become involved in the movement, you will be able to heave a significantly greater amount of weight through the movement, but then you are “cheating” as they call it in weight training circles. Within reason, that should be OK for you, since your goal is to get that dummy lifted.
For a minute there, I thought you meant you couldn’t carry the dog if ordered to do so against your will, but if you wanted to do it you were fine. 
Frankly, I find it nearly impossible to carry my 25-pound cat against her will. She bites.
Naomi Kutin, the 10-year-old girl in Sicks Ate’s link is a case in point. Her bench press was only 67 pounds at a recent event–a mere fraction of the weight she squatted. She’ll probably improve her bench as she grows up, but it will almost without question always be far less than what she can squat.
You could probably do it with enough training… however… and it’s big however… I’m not sure about the overall wisdom of this vocation if you are really expected to lift people on a regular basis, and FWIW 180 lbs is not a particularly large person these days.
The reason I say this is that I knew a very sturdy and robust athletic young woman who was about 5’ 3", she was easily muscle-wise strong enough to lift heavy stuff in her summer job as a kayak instructor, but her back was not up to it, and she eventually tore something and wound up with a seriously (and permanently) damaged back trying to hump the kayaks around like the men did.
No matter how strong and muscular you become there are real limits to what your joints and your ligaments etc can handle on a small person with a gracile frame. If you do not have a robust frame you may be at serious risk of doing permanent injury to yourself no matter how powerful you become.
That’s definitely a good point that I would’ve overlooked, and thanks a bunch for bringing it up.
I’m not likely to be expected to carry anyone over my shoulder (or carry anyone solo at all) on the job except in the kind of emergency that I’m not called to every day- the fitness test being to ensure that candidates can, in fact, do it when it’s sometimes needed.
I’m imagining there are ways to move an injured person that are far less likely to aggravate their wounds than being hauled like a sack of potatoes, but take more time. Likely also easier on the joints. If you’re in a position where an informed professional would opt to straight out carry them, you haven’t got time. Whereas the majority of calls coming in, from what I’ve learned so far, are more a matter of the time between leaving for the hospital and arriving at it than the time from floor/bed/etc to stretcher. As well, the scheduling workers here tend to pair a small paramedic with a bigger partner whenever possible just for that reason.
A couple months ago I started reading/googling like mad to make sure it wasn’t an entirely terrible idea for reasons other than just size. I remember coming across some sample interview questions they use when hiring, one of which is about getting a 400-lb guy out of a 4th-floor apartment with just you and your tiny female partner. Quite likely they don’t carry him in that hypothetical, even together.
As a sidenote, I don’t know the answer to that hypothetical yet (something they’ll teach in school), but my best friend has made me swear that I’ll tell her in the most irrevent array of details possible if standard procedure is to drag 'em.
As a 5’4", 164lb, completely un-athletic woman I lifted 250lb with one leg (either leg) and no effort; the 250lb was the max weigth the machine could hold. What I’d be worried about is whether you’ll be able to manage someone who’s 6’-something and either unconscious or wriggling.
In Spain I’ve seen female emergency personnel your height in all kinds of frames, from “porcelain doll” to “beardless fantasy dwarf”; they have to be able to pass the carry tests, but I don’t know how is it structured for each of their organizations.
Picking up an 180-lb person is not the same as squat-lifting 180lb. You get them up to sitting position first - much easier. They have handles - sorry, arms and legs - rather than unbending hard steel bars. You would probably sit them up, then put your arms under their arms around the torso and lift to limp standing position, then try to maneuver them over your shoulders. Not trivial, not easy, but not 180lb squat lift from all the way down either. Depends how much jerking you are allowed to do, I suppose.
I would think squatting a 180 lbs person would be MUCH harder than squatting a 180 lbs barbell. With a barbell you have rigid grips, its balanced, predictable, and you can put your body in a safe form before attempting to lift. A limp body would be awkward to lift.
I personally think, from years of experience in the gym, that it would take some serious training for a couple of years along with favorable genetics for a 5’0" 100 lbs woman to squat 180 lbs.
I’m a 5’0 Army medic. I agree…to an extent. Is it more likely that I’ll hurt myself lifting a patient someday? Sure, because it’s more likely he’ll weigh a lot more than I do. Can I take steps to avoid it, by working constantly on my core strength and being sure to use proper technique? Yup.
Also, as the OP said: a fireman’s carry is not part of the normal, day-to-day routine. If a medic is scooping someone up like that, then it means several things are seriously bad (like ‘inside a burning building’ levels of bad). Normally a medic wouldn’t be moving a patient alone. Also, normally you’d be using a spine board or lifting them right onto a wheeled stretcher or using some other sort of carrying device. Is it important for a medic to be able to if needed? Absolutely. Is it assumed that a medic is going to be routinely picking patients up like that? Nope. It’s an emergency thing.
But the thing is, you’re not squatting an 180 lbs person, you’re just lifting/carrying it for what it seems (per the test) a relatively short distance, before getting a respite and finish it.
Squatting is different from carrying. I don’t think I can squat 180 lbs, or heck, 120 lbs, but I know I can carry a 120 lbs person for a short distance. And I’m not even training for that!
You can position someone over the shoulder, or piggy back, and find the balance that fits you and where you can carry the extra weight for a little while.
Directed at nate.
I’m picturing someone squatting to flop the limp dummy over their shoulders and then having to stand up to carry it. I agree that the carrying part would be much easier. It’s the lifting the dummy to the carrying position that somewhat resembles a squat.
Women often tend to have quite strong legs and there are lots of women who can leg press large amounts of weight well beyond 400 bs who still be very hard put to hoist up a limp 180 lb person on their backs for a suspended carry because of the (relative) lack of upper body and abdominal core strength.
Another factor here related to Dogzilla’s post is the extreme importance of experience and leverage issues. People in physically demanding jobs can often lift and handle much more weight than you might expect because they have simply learned over time how position their bodies and develop their technique to efficiently handle the object they are expected to move around. Yes, you have to have a certain minimum strength capacity, but practicing lifting something very similar to the object you are expected to hoist and move is a very big deal especially if you are a smaller person who is going to be physically challenged by the attempt.
I think you can do it. Judging by the test requirements, it looks like a 3-way approach would work best. Keep up with the yoga for the reasons you mentioned, and because you’ll be less likely to hurt your back that way. Weight training of course. And you will want to work on your cardio so you don’t poop out halfway through, so running or biking or something like that. Endurance is a big factor in strength.
What you eat can have a big effect on how your training goes. Protein from stuff like salmon or tuna after training is better than beef or the junk that a lot of people eat. And those nutrition stores don’t entirely peddle bs. Certain supplements and so on might give you a big advantage in your quest to build up your body. It would be worth looking into.
Good luck!
Oh yeah, maybe switch what kind of yoga you’re doing. Try vinyasa (power) yoga. It will probably be useful for you, to the point that it could be your entire training routine if you do it enough.
I’d definitely thought of that. The reason I started out with stairs was that I was pretty sure after such a long period of convalescence I wouldn’t have the endurance for anything else right away.
I am hopeless at ever riding a bike- right now I’ve just been increasing the duration, intensity etc of abusing the staircase, but once summer hits a lot of elderly folks are likely to move into my apartment and I’ll have to put a stop to that in the interest of being a good neighbour. We’ll see how running pans out if I can find a gym that’s got a track or something around here- how different, exactly, is running on a track from running on a treadmill?
Last time I ran outside was during winter. I had heavy boots on and gave myself the most godawful backache. We’ve yet to have conditions safe to run outside in sneakers in, so I’m going to see if that turns out well as soon as we do. If it doesn’t I’ll have to look into what I’m doing wrong there.
Nutrition for intense fitness on a student’s budget (and a student’s schedule!) is a whole other package of worries, but with determination, creativity and the SDMB on my side I’ve got high hopes. I do happen to know quite a bit about how much people of varying bodies and lifestyles need of various nutrients, but putting that into practice for meeting the lifting requirements is going to be new to me. Thanks a tonne for the advice there!
This sounds like a very good idea. Where on earth would I find something similar to a dummy/person/etc though?
What is the test using? If you’ve got a friend around 180 willing to be sack of potatoes a few times that would be best. Not to be sexist but it might be safer to use men as some women (not all) bruise more easily when being hoisted and manhandled, and are more likely to be injured if inadvertently dropped.
Here’s a rescue dummy you can fill with sand for $ 224.
As an aside I think you may need to do more research on your assumptions about the test requirements. In looking for 180 lb test dummy sale sites I had a lot of google hits re fireman and paramedic requirements re dragging a 180 lb (or less) dummy around, but nothing about hoisting one aloft for a fireman’s carry.
Are you 100% sure this 180 lb lift and carry is a requirement of your paramedic test?
To be honest the booklet is quite old, and the test could have changed between someone making it and me reading it. That said, I imagine requirements would be getting more stringent not less, though as of Wednesday I am waiting on a call back from several different people (some with the place doing the test, one from the school, some with various gyms) on what exactly the test requires here and now. The wording in the booklet seems pretty clear but the education system here for all professions is in such a state that nothing is ever as clear as it seems.
I also have a tendency to over-prepare for things, 'cause I can’t stand the idea of being under-prepared for any kind of test I knew I was taking in advance, so there’s a slight chance I dreamed the no dragging bit. As of right now though all things point to having to really lift the thing.
As for human volunteers- the only male friends I have who haven’t moved away (mass exodus of young people to other areas) is health enthusiast well over 230 lbs, and one tiny buddhist well under 140. The only other male I keep in contact with is my father, who I’d say is maybe 210. And I’d be a little reluctant to manhandle him at 50, really- dude’s been a heavy smoker since his preteens and it’s his side I inherited the small bone structure from.
For ladies willing to risk it there is my best friend, who’se 5’7" and always a tad underweight. I’ve no idea how much she weighs but I’d estimate it’s a tad less than me before I was ill and a tad more than me since then, so no good. Her father’s quite a heavy man and her mother leaves the room if I enter it, so they’re both out of the question. An ex-neighbour who is maybe 160, is that close enough?
I DO have a couple of ex-girlfriends around 180lbs I’d like to toss around 
I don’t think it’s appropriate to call them up though…
This may be of interest. MedicWest Physical Agility Test
In further looking around the web at various EMS test requirements I can’t see *any *EMS physical test requirements in the US that specify being able to lift and carry a 180 lb dummy or person on your back. I see lots of dragging but no lifting.