Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Nutrition and diet

If your gym is like most other gyms, a lot of guys at your gym don't do any exercises that are beneficial to strength or hunting.

Creatine is useful if you're already quite strong and have plateaued. There's no real need for it outside of college athletics, in my mind.

Appropriate strength/performance resistance training is far removed from bodybuilding or beach muscling.

Power cleans, deadlifts, SQUATS, and push presses.

Why?

Why? So that you don't die a weak little man in a nursing home one day. If you aren't working fairly hard to prevent it you are losing a pound or so of muscle every year.

Yes, but he said "AVOID getting strong" . . . not sure what he meant by that.

If you wait around long enough and the thread drifts to useful strength training (and accompanying weight gain), you'll get anecdotal stories from the campfire rocky mountain contingent regarding the futility of strength training as it relates to hunting.

Nothing wrong with being strong as long as you have the endurance to go with it.

The Federal Food Guidelines have been refined a bit, but they are still a long way from our usual eating habits.
To give you an example, most of us get 43% of our calories from fat, and 30-40% from proteins. And we eat no where near the 5-7 fruits and vegetables that the FFG's recommend.
The Federal Food Guidelines recommend 50% or more of our calories from complex carbs, which is down a bit from the 60% originally suggested and 35% or less from fats, which is up from the 20% of the original guidelines. Why ? Because, unless you want to loose weight, it isn't necessary to go that low. Another reason is that it's very difficult to eat that much in complex carbs. But that is along way from saying it is bad advice or nonsense.
The real problem is that nobody will even try them. I have. And still do. Not perfectly, but pretty close.
I rarely get even a head cold anymore. My blood pressure and all my test are excellent. My resting pulse is about 52-55. My docor tells me I'm the heathiest person he knows in my age bracket. I'll be 68 in a few days.
So do carrying on guys. I'm in better physical condition, that means I can work the mountains longer and harder than I've ever been able to. Not so much because of my workout routines, but because of how I eat. We are, after all, what we eat. E

To some, the two are mutually exclusive.

I propose that there is zero need to do any (ANY) focused cardiovascular training in preparation for even the meanest mountain hunt.

Reasoning: Assuming you have a job and therefore limited training time, by the time one's feet and lower legs are trained tough enough to survive the big hunt on steep ground, the cardio part of the equation has addressed itself.

And strength is the cake underneath the icing.

I wholeheartedly endorse strength training, but I can't buy into zero cardio training. I'll bet you are a big strong guy with a barrel chest (IE HUGE lung capacity). I served with a guy like that in his forties who was 6ft, strong as an ox, and could run two miles in a little over eleven minutes. He didn't run any more than I did and I've never been able to run two miles in under 12min in my life. An MD told the guy that he had at least 20% more lung volume than most his size. That is a genetic gift. Think Lance Armstrong.

I know where you are coming from about the 3 sets of 10 bodybuilder crowd compared to someone doing heavy deads, squats, cleans, and push presses. The latter IS cardio to a great extent and the body building crap isn't. It may be enough cardio for Vek but I doubt if it is for the average guy.

My workout today will be a ladder of kettlebell snatches, seven reps each arm, starting with 10kg going up to 28kg. Five minute water break and 28min on a stepmill. That'll get 'er done.

Ahhh, gotcha . . . missed the sarcasm in your original post!

I've got a pard that does no focused cardio work. He can cover ground like no one else I've been in the hills with. He is religious with his squatting routine however. FWIW...

I've really enjoyed this thread as I'm trying to transform the way I eat. My problem is I'm on the road everyday for lunch. I can control breakfast and dinner easily but I'm at the mercy of eating out for lunch. I was eating subway 3-4 times per week but lots of carbs in that bread. What do you guys on the road do?

Also, what about beans like pinto and Lima?

pack a lunch.

I bought some Tupperware bowls and make enough salads for every day of the week and take one to work each day, eat lunch while working and run in the afternoon for my lunch hour.

Just back from a work "retreat" where the junk they were delivering for lunch didn't meet my requirements, so I passed and bought salad fixings at the local store and brown bagged it.

I'm not one to suffer in silence.

I've done the pack a lunch before and it worked ok. It's the times I want to eat something hot, like chicken breast or left overs, with no way to heat it that makes it difficult.

pocket rocket works well. I eat hot lunches all the time out on the boat with mine.

Why "28" minutes? That strikes me as an unusual number. Why not an even half hour?