As a collegiate hockey player my ability to climb long and steep was astonishing.
However after that stage of my life, I took up long distance running to stay fit for my hunting seasons in Alaska Idaho and Washington. Can't be so soft my clients out hike me!
Big learning curve here. The ice skating is very heavy quad strength, as was the compulsory hours on the bike or you don't play. We had hours of stationary bike fitness.
My running was 30-50 miles a week, my hiking was miserable burning thighs and just unpleasant. How could this be when I was running so much? Thinking back, when hiking was easy, I was biking and skating. Bought myself a great mountain bike, no lightweight deal, but a real mountain bike. Something comfortable to enjoy and very well made so not to be frustrating.
In 3-4 months I was back! My takeaway was running is not quad strengthening but biking is. Biking is also, no impact ( unless you crash) the best part has been biking on trails in the mountains scouting.
A simple thought on this about biking trails, don't worry if your in places where you have to walk the bike. If you can ride the whole way your not mountain biking! The improvement to my hiking and climbing fitness is 100% better then running.
I am with JJHack. Mountain biking is the way to fly. I helped scout for my buddy on his moose hunt two years ago. I could cover tons of ground on a mountain bike. You can sneak up on critters and get a great workout at the same time!
FYI, QBP is now making some cool gun mounts for bikes. Also Check out the surly pugsly http://surlybikes.com/bikes/pug_ops and big dummy for hunting and hauling game!
Riding level and paved is not the ticket, not even close.
Mountain biking without car exhaust up hills low gear standing and grinding away is the answer. Not good in winter, but then much like the brutal hockey training an exercise bike or seasonal gym membership with bikes can get you through those months.
When my son was very young (3-4) I bought a kid trailer. I rode 15 miles with him in that trailer through a mountain trail used by horses and joggers every day with him. We rode rain, flurries and the rare sunshine days in the cascades. Had to get an HID headlight with the short days of winter. It became our routine together.. I have over 13,000 miles on that Santa Cruise bike now. The odometer was a challenge to see how many miles a month I could put on. When he got too big I bought a 1/2 bike that has no front wheel. It clamps to the seat post of the mountain bike. Now at 12, he powers along with me on his own bike. My days are numbered, I can see now he will be waiting on me before too much longer!
www.huntingadventures.net Are you living your life, or just paying bills until you die? When you hit the pearly gates I want to be there just to see the massive pile of dead 5hit at your feet. ( John Peyton)
He dumped the barbell it landed and bounced against a stack of weights behind the lifting platform and nailed him in the back. Really pisspoor planning/safety.
Anyone who's ever framed a house or worked in a factory knows to pick [bleep] up and keep your work area tidy, especially where people are picking up heavy [bleep].
Edit: A "Powerlift" is a deadlift, squat, or benchpress. The snatch is an Olympic lift.
It is not dangerous in my opinion, but it is what I would consider an advanced method of increasing your level of fitness.
I would not jump into Crossfit if I was not already in pretty damn good shape and if I didn't have a very good understanding of proper form for the variety of exercises it utilizes.
This.
And for the OP, if you have some miles on you, and various old injuries and/or arthritic joints, it's probably not for you. Because the principal (as far as I can tell) is muscle confusion, not doing the same workout twice in a row, and doing a lot of different things to work on different muscle groups.
Using myself as an example, I have to be very careful how I do squat-type exercises (arthritic knee), anything over head (injured shoulder), and pull-ups or curls (tennis elbow). After working with good trainers, I know exactly what I can do long-term with no pain, and what I can't do. I can't do squats with a barbell or after a few sessions, my knee will flare up. But there are one or two machines I can use that don't aggravate the knee. I can't do parallel grip pull-ups or conventional bicep curls or my elbow will flare up, but I can do wide-grip pull-ups and hammer curls with no problem. And so on.
If you do cross-fit, you'll be working in a group and asked to do stuff that may aggravate old injuries or arthritic joints. If you have to sit out certain parts of the program to avoid that, it seems to be defeating the purpose, and you may as well just work out on your own, doing stuff that you know you can handle.
Crossfit the methodology will get you into pretty good all around shape.
Crossfit GYMS and COACHES vary dramatically, and as a result so does the culture/environment they create to work in. The good ones will probably provide some of the best possible situations for training, the bad ones can be pretty bad about putting folks in positions to get themselves hurt.
Doing a mix of strength training with power & olympic lifting, HIIT, and some longer stuff intelligently will pretty much always work well. Intelligently being the key word there. Lots of folks are doing this and calling it Crossfit, and lots of folks are doing this and railing against Crossfit. The gym I currently go to did first one, then the other! I do their normal everyday programming most of the year, but have been doing a cycle right before hunting season where I do more long stuff and less strength training. One of the nice things that they offer is that they will customize programming to suit your goals/needs/injuries etc.
If you Google "Crossfit fail videos", you get over 15,000 hits.
Read it this time?
The injury rate for Crossfitters is unacceptably high.
I don't need to Google that fact, I did it, plain and simple.
The culture of Crossfit accepts and even encourages injury and training with injuries.
There are better ways to get fit and keep fit other than spending half your time injured.
1. Do no harm.
Read it again.
Answer this for me elk. Crossfit gyms are sole proprietorships, not franchises. The owners profit comes from paying customers, I'm not aware of ANY Crossfit gyms that require contracts. So, said gym owner's reason for existence is to cripple, maim, and kill all of his paying customers?
A Crossfit workout IS NOT SFAS, TAKE MY WORD FOR IT.
Use your body weight against itself. I am broken and find I cannot lift what I did without paying for it. If I use my own weight I can easily define my limits without breaking parts.
YOGA. It flat works. If your over 35 it works. IF your over 45 it really works... Bikram is killer but you will BENEFIT in all aspects of your life.
Spinning classes. You will love it. Die where you sit but love it.
Spartan classes. Again, using your own weight to manipulate yourself into shape on all fronts.
Use your head. If it hurts stop. Find something else that doesn't. I don't snap back wash after wash anymore. If I fork something up I am out for days or weeks. Ain't worth it!!!
Food. Waaaaayyyyy important.. Tons of water and just eat often and smaller portions. More in morning and tapering off early evening. Your body will like it.
Been mentioned but routine is the key to all of it. If you cant afford yourself this then it will not be nearly as effective. Do it. Dont look back..
Cheers
W
"I would build one again, if it were not for my 350RM (grin)."
I don't think a guy needs to enroll in a full on Crossfit course to get in shape to kick ass hunting elk, but some of the exercises involved are pretty awesome.
The ones I've found the most challenging/most rewarding in regards to strength and endurance gains are burpees, muscle ups, power cleans, kettlebell swings, and box jump circuits/variations. I do a lot of front-squats now, too.
But like Travis and Phil already stated, I really don't think it's necessary to jump headfirst into a full Crossfit program. A large majority of their movements and exercises definitely take time to build up to. It took me 2 years to even be able to do a muscle up, and I only weigh 170lbs....
I'm becoming a firm believer in the theory that nothing gets you in shape for the mountains like hiking them and pushing yourself while doing it. Hiking as often as possible and faster/further each time, coupled with strength training has really helped me out in overcoming asthma and becoming a little bit better hunter.
6 Days a week at gym seems a bit much. 3-4 tops. Your body does need some recoupe time...
W
Top tier world class Crossfitters work out three times daily. Rich Froning, the fittest man on earth, says he NEVER takes a day off. I ain't Rich. Crossfit's 3days on 1 off schedule took me a couple of years to get to where I could do it, even at the scaled/reduced level that I do the workouts. A lot of old guys do every other day, or maybe do non-crossfit stuff on your "off" day, like go for a non-killer walk with your pack. 20 or 30 minutes with a splitting maul is a "Crossfit" workout. As others have stated, inadequate rest and diet will short circuit any workout program.
A lot of people's "joint pain" isn't from actual soft-tissue injury. Diffuse aches are either osteoarthritis or merely inflammation inside the joint capsule or in a bursa. If you eat a lot of non-paleo, non-Zone meals your insulin levels will stay jacked up. This is often caused purely by the [bleep] for food that you eat. I still have joint pain in places from actual injuries, I no longer have the "aches" that I used to have that many complain of because I un-[bleep] my diet.
What Smoke said about working around injuries applies to Crossfit or any other program. I do pullups on pipes bolted to the top of my squat rack 90 to the rack, much easier on the elbows. I don't kip, and I don't drop to full extension like most Crossfitters do. Any rock climber knows this.
I like some of the home based DVD like T25 and walmart sells some cheap. P90X and insanity are a little much but you do not need to go all out when you do them. It is nice to just get out of bed and workout and be done.
The ones I've found the most challenging/most rewarding in regards to strength and endurance gains are burpees, muscle ups, power cleans, kettlebell swings, and box jump circuits/variations. I do a lot of front-squats now, too.
"The ability to move large loads, long distances, quickly". Sound familiar? He didn't say ANYTHING about gay-azzed curls or the like.
I'm becoming a firm believer in the theory that nothing gets you in shape for the mountains like hiking them and pushing yourself while doing it. Hiking as often as possible and faster/further each time, coupled with strength training....
Amen to that. That's why high country fishing season is in summer, before hunting, lets you ease into it. Any time you want to do some tune-up weekenders, let me know.
Originally Posted by Take_a_knee
A lot of people's "joint pain" isn't from actual soft-tissue injury. Diffuse aches are either osteoarthritis or merely inflammation inside the joint capsule or in a bursa. If you eat a lot of non-paleo, non-Zone meals your insulin levels will stay jacked up. This is often caused purely by the [bleep] for food that you eat. I still have joint pain in places from actual injuries, I no longer have the "aches" that I used to have that many complain of because I un-[bleep] my diet.
I have pretty bad osteoarthritis in one ankle from repeated injuries in HS and college, but that pain is there no matter what so it's not really worth mentioning, nothing you can do about that except learn to live with it and load up on Ibuprofen when you're doing something that counts. The shoulder and elbow are soft tissue injuries with MRIs to boot. I may end up getting surgery here soon on the supraspinatus and biceps tendons.
Cutting the crap out of your diet helps with a lot more than just inflammation though. Less body fat and more muscle means you're more efficient and that counts for a lot in the mountains, not to mention improvements in your overall health totally unrelated to humping loads up hills.
1. Do no harm, I don't care how good it is or how many rave about it, if it hurts you, it's worse than useless, Crossfit fits this in a big way.
Could you elaborate on this a bit?
A person needs to go into extreme activities like Crossfit with their eyes open, understanding the risks. Over the holidays I heard about a guy, a good friend of a close relative, who fell while doing a Crossfit exercise (he was doing an exercise involving an overhead bar) and has what looks like serious permanent brain damage (was in the hospital for weeks and still isn't able to function even close to normally several months later, including not being able to work). The injury has forever changed his life and his family's life. My post isn't meant to indict Crossfit, but to give a real-life example of how doing extreme moves in a fitness routine can have serious long-term unintended consequences. The guy was a little accident prone before his serious workout accident, he pushed himself too far, and he and his family are paying the price. He could have fallen going free climbing on a rock face or snowboarding or doing some other activity, but he didn't - he fell in a gym (a "controlled environment") doing an activity that someone who is supposed to be an expert prescribed as being a safe and useful exercise. He went beyond what he was capable of doing - probably a combination of fatigue, clumsiness, and doing a move that was beyond his capability. No doubt many others have completed the move many times without any injury, much less serious and permanent brain damage, but one slip doing an extreme exercise changed his life forever.
Crossfit goes to extremes, and for getting in shape for hunting, Crossfit goes beyond what is required. For most people Crossfit poses risks more numerous and more serious than most people need to take to get into the shape they need to be in for their desired activities. If someone wants to do Crossfit to get into shape, then Crossfit could certainly help them do that, but the risks with Crossfit far exceed the risks of a lot of the suggestions others have made in this thread. Risk assessment and tolerance is a very personal decision-making process. In the past I had thought Crossfit was a pretty cool way to get in shape, but hearing about the personal tragedy of someone who is close to someone I'm close to changed my perspective.
Unless I have a goal or driving force my weight/health fluctuates greatly. About five years a go I went from ~228 to 150 pounds at my lightest. Uncle Sam (for the second time) was my motivation. Without being bashful, I will tell you I was a machine.
I changed my diet drastically, ran 3-8 miles almost daily and did lots of body weight exercises mixed with olympic lifts. Also, I spent A LOT of time/miles under a loaded pack and I can tell you that is a different kind of suck.
Flash forward. My weight has ballooned again with comfort and laziness. I was approaching the 225 mark again. A trip to Glacier and seeing my dad not being able to do the things he has always dreamed of stirred my motivation again.
I can tell you my body has responded quickly. Started running again and doing the body weight stuff. The biggest thing is changing my diet, particularly my liquid calories. In a month I am down to ~205 with a goal of ~165.
Listen to your body, don't push through pain. Don't fall for the fancy stuff, you have been equipped with all you need to reach your potential. Your mind and attitude are the most important part.
“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” ― Ernest Hemingway
