Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Cardio and strength training??

After the 2013 hunt it became painfully apparent that if I wanted to keep doing this for a few more years [which I do]. Getting in shape would have to be a year round thing. I worked in construction for 45 yrs. that kept me in fairly decent shape for hunting. Now I need an exercise or training program.

I have been going to the gym 6 days a week. Three days strength training 3 days cardio. I have been kind of stumbling my way through it. I was wondering what some of the older guys did to stay in shape? Any good books or good advice? What do you do?

I don't think there are any deep secrets, or quick ways.
It seems the older I get, the harder, and longer progress comes.

I may not be in the "older guys" group, but I am also not a real big fan of the gym. (It just bores me to tears). So as part of my early New Year's resolution I got a trainer late last year. Its been a good motivator and more importantly it has kept me going on a regular basis. Even it its only a few sessions they are good at helping you achieve your goals. Was a runner and baseball player when I was younger so the gym was never part of my routine. Its slooowly growing on me..

This article is a good read as well.
http://www.rokslide.com/fitness/265-fitness-to-get-you-over-the-hill-at-any-age

Set a routine and go - the biggest obstacle to get over.

I was a gym rat for a while, it helps, but I think the biggest help this past year was hiking with a hunting pack 3-5 days a week for at least an hour, more time and distance if I could squeeze it in.

Unfortunately, I'm at sea level and jump to 2500-3500+ in Idaho, and up with no prep. I haven't figured out the wind piece, but building the legs with the pack made the transition easier than expected.

I use a 25 pound bag of concrete mix, wrap it up in plastic, and tape the snot out of it. One is a starter load, two for break-down and build up routines. Also allows me test out a pack and if I'm going to like the way it carries under load. We have some decent ravines and short hills for up/down work-outs, so used those as much as I could.

I'm a audio fan, a bit of music or the like helps to avoid the focus on the clock. Yeah, I can feel a bit nerd-ish with the headphones, but it helps make the hard stuff pass.

Agree with the above, every year, it's a little bit harder...

47 here and more than a little banged up. Also did construction and other manual jobs when I was younger that kept me in shape.

I have learned some hard lessons about getting into and staying in shape.

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.

2. Enjoy what you do, if you don't like it, you will quit

3. Stay in shape all year round, as we get older our ability to recover declines, we cannot do the "get in shape in August for a September hunt anymore, this causes too many injuries, see rule 1.

4. Work your weaknesses first, if you are great deadlifter, but a lousy at climbing hills, it doesn't do much good to keep dead lifting and ignore your lack of climbing ability.

5. Balance in all things, sway too far to one end of the spectrum and other things suffer.

6. Strength first, often times lack of flexibility is just simply imbalanced and weak muscles. The body is really quirky about this, in that it has a safety mechanism to stop you from doing something it feels is dangerous or might hurt you. Stronger legs climb better and a stronger torso can haul a heavy pack better. Put your raw strength before your cardio.

7. Sprints rule for conditioning, flat land, up hill, stairs, sled pull, it doesn't matter, get out and sprint once a week ...... hard. Uphill is best and the easiest on your body. Be careful with this though, it's tough to recover, so limit it to once a week.

8. Pay attention to what your body is telling you, if something hurts either figure out what you are doing wrong or stop doing it. If one day you are really tired and dragging butt, rest.

9. Recovery is when the work pays off, this means sleep good, eat right and keep your stress levels as low as possible.

10. Food and water are your main weapons, without proper nutrition you can't build muscle, lose fat or have fuel for work. If it has a label, chances are it's not good for you.

My favorite exercises for staying in shape for hunting.

Kettlebell swings
One legged squats
Turkish Get Ups
Pull Ups
Handstand Push Ups
Push Ups
Sprints
Hiking hills
Walking

A really good basic program that I really like is Kettlebell, simple and sinister by Pavel. It uses the Kettlebell swing and Turkish get up, that's it, but it works great and is easy on the body.

Two more thoughts to leave you with, persistence and consistency matters more than anything else.

You cannot out train a bad diet.

The old adage is: "it's better to stay in shape, than to get in shape".

I've been trying my best to stay in shape, but still have to pick it up before huntin' and skiing season. Drawing a Dall Sheep tag means a whole new level of training and weight loss.

The older I get the more I feel the benefits of daily workouts. Elkhunter 241 is on the money you can tailor his guidelines to fit your capabilities and goals. For me I find an elliptical trainer of good quality combined w/ kettlebells and free weights works for a home gym. I frequently combine all 3 and do intervals. I wear a pack while doing most exercises and find this to help when I carry the real thing. I try to do at least 2 hours of steep climbing in the hills at least once/week. I put 30-40 lbs. of water for the uphill and dump it for the downhill to save my tired knees. Hiking offtrail also helps to develop accessory muscles and balance. I am 66 y/o and try to protect my joints w/good nutrition and at least 1 rest day/week. Good luck and never quit.

mike r

No mention of it here, but I recently started doing yoga. Has really helped with flexibility and grip strength, things that have in turn helped in the gym. Thought I would throw it out for anyone considering it.

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.

Could you elaborate on this a bit?

Years and years of various fitness regimes failed because I did not make them part of my lifestyle. Now that I am in my twilight years I have come to realize I am not full of piss and vinegar and bullet proof as years past.

To hunt when and where I want to hunt it takes a commitment and this is what I am committed to.

Walk, walk and walk and stair climbs.

Chiropractic spinal exercises to increase and maintain flexibility.

Strength weight lifing with high repetitions to maintain muscle tone and endurance.

Recently I have incorporated the high intensity 7-minute workout recommended to me by a local college sports trainer. You can not use the excuse that there is no time to excercise with this regime. I have been doing it for about 4 months and there are positive results.

If interested in the 7-minute workout here is a link to the American College of Sports Medicine - Journal article.

http://journals.lww.com/acsm-health...EIGHT_.5.aspx?WT.mc_id=HPxADx20100319xMP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWsVnE2854I

Watch until the end if you dare.

The biggest obstacle to me is simply just making myself get out of the house and do it. That means motivation can only be had if it becomes something I can look forward to. For me, this eliminates exercise machines, gyms, and "workouts". These are boring beyond words so therefore, not going to motivate me.
What works for me is slow, easy jogging, just keeping the cardio up there for 45 minutes or so, or hiking the hill behind my house with a pack loaded with a 40 pound bag of rocksalt. When I go on dayhikes I often carry a full size backpack loaded, this kind of thing.
I enjoy getting out, relieving stress, feeling like I accomplished something without trying to kill myself. I'm no exercise guru but it seems reasonable that carrying a pack and hiking is doing more good than the latest blowyergutsoutsupercardioworkout, or even a piece of exercise equipment as you are using and conditioning, muscles, ankles, tendons that will be used while hunting in the same manner as hunting.

I'm in the same boat, 56 and wanting to keep going for as long as I can, hunting in the mountains out of a backpack. I can tell you what works for me.

For your cardio, if you use machines like a stair climber, don't cheat by holding onto the rails or worse yet, draping your body weight on them like I see so many people doing. You're working out your legs, why so many people defeat the purpose by resting their weight on their upper body is beyond me. Also, if you don't hold the rails you're forced to balance, which is a good thing.

For cardio workouts, every trainer I've talked to has said that interval training is much better than a constant aerobic pace. Interval training is just going at a high intensity pace you can't sustain (anaerobic) for a short period (30-60 seconds) and then backing off to a pace that you can sustain and forcing your body to recover while you're going at an aerobic pace. So an example would be a slow jog for 90-120 seconds, followed by a sprint for 30 seconds, then a recovery period using a slow jog for 90-120, etc. On the recovery period, you don't want to stretch it out long enough that you're fully recovered, just long enough so that you can go again, and sustain the intervals for at least 30 minutes.

The good thing about intervals is you can do them running, or on any machine, try to mix it up and do different machines, a good one I like is jogging backward on an inclined treadmill and slowing to a walk for the recovery, it works different muscles and many of the same ones you use for descending a slope, which we all kind of neglect I think.

Also as you get older, balance and lower leg strength should be more of a focus, although most people don't work on these. Anything you can do to work on balance doing one-legged exercises on an unstable platform like a BOSU ball will help, as will one-legged box jumps, focusing on a smooth, controlled landing. You can really prevent a lot of falls this way, especially important if you're carrying loads on your back.

Other than that, I work on lower body and core strength, squats, dead lifts, and lower back, obliques, and abs using the Roman chair, hanging leg lifts etc.

Upper body too, but it's not the main focus.

I also walk a lot, off trail, so that my ankles are used to uneven ground. Three miles a few times a week. And in summer, I start out with a 20-lb. pack and add weight gradually, building toward the season. I use water jugs, they're a little harder to pack and keep balanced, but the good thing is, whenever you want, you can always shed some weight.

JJHACK,

I was hoping you would respond because I saw you post almost exactly the same response on another thread about the same subject.

While I do agree with you, there are some reasons I didn't list riding bikes. I spent several years riding them and do speak from experience.

First you gotta get some push going, either climb mountains or get on the pedals and do sprints. Just sitting back and cruising along won't do it. Most people just putt along like a grandma when they hit the road.

Second you have to mingle with traffic and I had so many close calls, crashes and getting run off the road that I surely had a guardian angel watching over me and this was long before cell phones. I can't imagine what riding now is like.

Third, sooner or later you will take a spill and this means getting banged up, road rash, sprains or even broken bones. The problem here is rule #1, do no harm, avoid injuries whenever possible.

Fourth, in my area you cannot ride all year round, it's just too dangerous with the constant freeze and thaw here in the winter and I hate the couple months of suck of getting my wind back once the weather gets nice. Which this also defeats the purpose of staying in shape all year round.

Now if I lived in an area that stayed nice most of the year like SoCal or Florida AND had dedicated bike paths with no crazy distracted soccer moms zooming down the road while putting on make up, I would definitely add a bike to my arsenal.

Also if you want to add a bike in to a training program to mix things up and can only ride a few months out of the year, then that's a great idea too.

I also agree jogging just doesn't cut it, it doesn't work the quads, hams and glutes hard enough to get you into climbing shape. Same deal with swimming, just doesn't get the job done.

I listed exercises that could be done in your home, garage or back yard during all seasons. The key here is to get into shape and stay there once and for all.

Crossfit is something that interests me. There's even a box that does a workout at noon that I could make before work.


BUT, where I work out now, two of the regulars there are chiropractors. They tell horror stories about crossfitters. I've never liked the idea of using inertia to lift weight, and neither do they....

So run it down to me TAK...

Later Dan, I gots to ponder this one.

I know lots of people that Crossfit and I've done a bit of it myself. 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.


Travis

Thanks boys.
I want to get up to speed on this too....

If you Google "Crossfit fail videos", you get over 15,000 hits.

The best thing and the worst thing about Crossfit is the culture.

It's great about getting people off of the couch and doing SOMETHING.

It makes people fairly fit, no question.

But, the huge problem about this culture is the attitude of going all out, every time, injury or not, failure or not and even if the person can actually do the movement correctly or not.

After a certain age you just don't come back from injury that well or even completely. You don't recover so well anymore either.

Injuries happen, but why encourage them or recklessly walk right into them on purpose.

The last woman in the video, her ankle will never be the same, ever again. The worst of it is, she did it on purpose.

That is the culture of Crossfit.