Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Getting in shape for BP hunting

Perhaps a viable alternative to any gym workout regimen would be to start with body weight exercises like pushups, situps, pullups (assisted or otherwise), planks, unloaded squats, squat thrusts etc. start with sets of 15 and work up to where you can do 5 sets without a problem. Supplelment this with walking/hiking without a pack at first then with a pack and add weight as time goes on. You can always ride a bike or swim as alternatives. A good rule of thum in exercise is the 10% rule. When you increase your work load do it in increments of 10%. That way there is a less chance of injuring or reinjuring ones self. Once you have basic strength down (5 sets) you might want to head to the gym or the crossfit place and have at it. Crossfit , PX90 and other regimens have their place and I've seen the results, it works. Sometimes it's better to start with a base before jumping in to one of the aforementioned exercise programs, especially if you haven't done much recently! FYI, I base my conclusions and insights on 28 years as a P.E. teacher and high school coach.

Okay bombthrower, why don't you share your experience with us.

Elkhunter,
Because you tried and failed doesn't make you qualified.

I asked my multiple doctors and chiropractors about crossfit. I was thinking about doing it. The responses I got were: "NO", "Please do not", "you want to see me more often?", "crossfit keeps me in business".

I will take their advise as I don't want anymore problems than I already have. This could of been just because of my certain medical problems but I got the feeling it was a general thing. I would of did it on my own anyway. The crossfit club in my town seems to be more about "look how badass I am" and "damn I am sexy" than performance based for activitys.

Slow, steady and continued improvement should be the OPs mindset. Set goals and build on them. Almost a guaranteed formula for success.

Right, got it. Tell me, how fit are your docs? So,let's see if I have this straight, varied, functional movement, done at high intensity (for that individual) and eating meals like 8oz of salmon with steamed broccoli and half of a sweet potato keeps docs in business?

"The greatest danger with these movements (Crossfit) is in not doing them."

Gregg Glassman

An injured out of shape person with absolutely no experience doing technical lifts on top of doing them to exhaustion?

You cant see the problem with that?

The whole point of health and fitness is;

Do no harm.

Elk, what you describe is a figment of your own very vivid imagination, not Crossfit. I have a neck injury that precludes my being able to to handstand pushups and overhead squats, with the help of the Crossfit website, I found suitable substitutes that don't cause neck pain. At 52, doing "Grace", which constitutes doing 30 "highly technical" clean and split jerks with #135 barbell, for time, is a workout I really look forward to. Usually takes me around 4min, and I'm smart enough to drop the weight from shoulder height every rep, to avoid injury from an eccentric contraction (it is truly amazing the schit you can learn from the Crossfit site if you take time to go there instead of posting bullschit on the fire about why you can't get into shape)

I got a PM asking about the stretch I mentioned, the one that works magic on the very lower back area... so I just tapped the sumbitch out on my iPhone. Hope it helps someone!

...................

<<Disclaimer: this is a stretch I do very aggressively. Works for me! �Proceed with caution though. �Also for all I know this is a standard stretch, though I'd never run into it before, not like this anyway.....>>

1. Lie on your back
2. �Use your right hand to grab your left heel, foot up above your crotch. �Pull it towards your chin. �How high your foot is (IE, how straight your leg is) will affect which muscles in your butt & hip get stretched; experiment here.�
3. At the same time, �use your left hand to apply outward pressure to your left knee. �Palm on kneecap, fingers on the inside of the knee. �You are twisting your hip here.�

Start slow: get those hip flexors, butt muscles, and hip joint loosened up first. �We will be going deeper than that... � �As things loosen up, get more and more aggressive as you �PULL your heel and PUSH your knee HARD. �Try to let the hip/butt/back muscles all relax as you do this. What you want to reach here is basic skeletal connective tissue in your back pelvis.... �You are trying to get to an area between the back side of your hip and your tailbone.... �You'll know when you start getting to it; it's blissful, �insofar as aggressive stretching can be blissful. �

(To really "release" it, I will be REALLY working hard pulling the heel and pushing the knee. � So once you've got things loose, don't be shy, really go for it. )

It is a nearly miraculous cure for lower back pain, for me. � �In the last 5 years or so I've finally got my right hip, the one I tore up in '87, loosened up enough to where I can get to this spot on the right side of my back, too, which is nice.�

I sincerely hope this helps someone else as much as it helps me. The guy who flopped down on the floor in a STORE of all places, and showed it to me, has saved me a whole lot of pain

We're gonna need pics.

Yes, please. And I will beg...

To stay with the current theme of this thread. I'm fat and do crossfit (for free 3X/wk at the Y with a group). I'm far from "badass" or "sexy", but I can tell that I'm getting in better shape. Can't say I'm in better shape than if I did P90X or the fitness game on my Playstation, but it does appear to be working. I did however workout for 3mos on my own before joinging the group; it was more for ego than anything. Now I'm going to start adding more running, hiking, step-mill etc to get ready to help a buddy with a sheep tag. Is it the only way, nope, but it seems to be working for me. My buddy can move better in the mountains than anyone else I've hunted with. He does no running and only lifts weights (non-crossfit). However, he never psyches himself out that it's too hard or too far, which IMO is probably as important as any physical preperation.

Yes. Don't be like the guys who keep buying new boots thinking they have a boot problem, when actually they just haven't toughened their feet. When you get your feet tough enough to pack a heavy load down a mountain without the "burn", you have good cardio from getting your feet to that toughness in the first place.

No comment on that, but it's nice to see you posting, Calvin.

I don't know why you gain fat when eating carbs, so I can't say.
But I do know the link you posted is dead wrong. That's because the body's ability to store glycogen runs about 1200-1400 calores for most of us. Trained athletes can store more because it can be stored in their extra muscle tissues.
To get to the point where the body can no longer store glycogen, one has to eat something on the order of 1200 calores of carbohydrates. That means something like 12 potatoes or the eqivalent in rice or oatmeal in one sitting. Try eating that much of any of those sometimes. I can't even come close to that. Even if one could exceed the body's storage capacity, when glucose is converted to fat, the process eats up 25% of the caloric value of the glucose.
Second, for some odd reason, your expert seems to think that the body doesn't store fat in the body's fat cells. Excuse me, but that's what they exist for. Upon digestion, any fat eaten goes directly to one's fat cells, period. Any extra protein eaten is converted to fat and store in one's fat cells as well. Based on what you've posted, it's the extra protein that is making you fatter, not the carbs. E

Wrong. It has been 100% proven that carbs and sugar cause you to get fat. As well, it has been 100% proven that eating fat doesn't make you fat. If you look to my older post in this thread about my natural body disposition, and then know I eat all manner of fat. I cook bacon and use the grease to cook my eggs. I eat fatty nuts (sounds funny I know) by the pound. I avoid carbs and most sugar. I have done crossfit while eating like crap and while eating good. I have lost most my fat and feel better and perform better than ever while eating Paleo-ish. To me that is proof positive. You have and continue to vomit up old ways of thinking that have been proven to be BS. Have fun living life with blinders on though. I bet you think eggs are bad for you too.

For those that think big bad Crossfit will hurt you, consider this. It is designed for mature adults. Mature in the sense that you can put your type A competitive nature to the side when need be to correctly perform the prescribed workouts. Yeah a lot of PT and chiropractors make a lot of money off of people who have done crossfit a couple times, hurt themselves through their own ignorance, then blamed it on CF. Its that CF fault or the idiot who had no patience to learn and perform correctly or pushed it too hard too fast on complex lifts. You think I like scaling the RXd WOD? No, I hate it, but I do it because I hate injury even more.
Everyone want to be middle of the road and say there is no definitive, hands down champ when it comes to fitness. Well there is. Crossfit combined with your sport specific routine, in this case backpack hunting, rules the day.

Anaerobic conditioning, which is a huge money maker in the mountains, can be obtained without weights as well. Just yesterday myself and another member of this forum did a classic Crossfit workout. Muscles were decimated, wills were tested, and mental fortitude grew. It's all in how hard you want to push yourself. Yeah the below workout could be super easy if you don't put out at all, but you try and push your reps as high as humanly possible, you will find some humility.
Here it is

"Tabata Something Else"

Complete 32 intervals of 20 seconds of work followed by ten seconds of rest where the first 8 intervals are pull-ups, the second 8 are push-ups, the third 8 intervals are sit-ups, and finally, the last 8 intervals are squats. There is no rest between exercises

been busy.

I am neither mature or intelligent so I think I will stay away from the crossfit per my doctors advise . As for saying its the cure for rehabbing and preventing injuries is very broad statement as guys posting on the internet have no knowledge of others condtions. I mean I could get a handicap parking permit and be on disability if I really wanted to. I will stick with what I can do and thats, hiking, biking, skiing, etc and avoid the super intense workouts. Crossfit may be the best answer but not for all of us. Just like McHale makes the best packs but its not going to fit everyones budget .