Assault bike workouts

[thinhorn_AK]

Norwegian 4x4

Yes!!!!

 

[plebe]

"crossover" in training terms means directly effects the performance of a specific activity or sport.
In this case I'm assuming you are talking about mountain hunting?
Hunting in the mountains is essentially rucking.
The only training modality with direct "crossover" to mountain hunting is rucking. Next in line would be hiking. After that would be walking on the earth.
This is an example of the SAID Principle - Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand.
These activities fall under SPP - Specific Physical Preparation.
"Fitness" is specific to task. If you want to improve performance in any given task you must become efficient at that specific task. That's what "crossover" means.

Every other form of training or workout is GPP - General Physical Preparation. Including the Assault Bike.

Other forms of cardiovascular training can be used to improve aerobic capacity, but they don't directly "crossover".
As far as the Assault Bike, you can use it to improve your aerobic capacity.
Improving your aerobic capacity will help you recover from other more strenuous (and specific) forms of training more efficiently.
The mechanisms by which this takes place are entirely too lengthy for me go into here and now.

I think this article explains how aerobic training improves broader training performance

Avoiding Cardio Could Be Holding You Back

Strength athletes fear cardio like the plague, but aerobic training actually has a host of benefits if you're trying to get stronger and recover faster.

www.strongerbyscience.com

Do not misunderstand me.
I'm not biased against general forms of exercise.
I love biking!
I mountain bike for most of the spring and summer. I fat bike and fat bikejor with my Husky all winter long.

You should by all means do whatever activities you enjoy to improve your general health and physical wellbeing.
That's not what the question in your OP is addressing. Your OP is asking about a very specific activity.

Good Journey

OP said “carry over” in his initial post.

Your article says this:



Seems like you’re the one who introduced “crossover” and hung up on some technicality. Idk. Dude just wants some good Assault bike workouts.

 

[chizelhead]

I think it would be a good complement to zone 2. Treat it like your VO2 Max optimizer by doing intervals. I think building up to a Norwegian 4x4 would be the workout to aspire to. Personally, I hate the device and calling it a bike is cruel imo. That being said, I do add it to my lift workouts but only sparingly.

 

[Coach Chris]

OP said “carry over” in his initial post.

Your article says this:

View attachment 911303

Seems like you’re the one who introduced “crossover” and hung up on some technicality. Idk. Dude just wants some good Assault bike workouts.

Semantics
Good Journey

 

[thinhorn_AK]

I have never rowed across a mountain, but I don't regret any of the time I have spent on a rower while in the mountains.

Any physical endurance work is beneficial.

When you have to quickly close the distance, uphill and the pressure is on, being physically able to do it is a high intensity interval.

Exactly. Does rowing directly prepare you to climb up the side of a mountain? Not as well as practicing climbing up mountains would but the cardio benefits and any strength you gain form the workhouse sure as hell is t going to hurt you. It will only help.

 

[alaska80]

Bought myself an assault bike. I'm mainly into strength training 3x a week and do cardio on the side (usually hiking the mountains with a pack).

Looking for some good assault bike workouts that would carry over to hunting but aren't mixed in with crossfit workouts (I like to keep my strength training separate from cardio training and seem like most assault bike workouts I find are crossfit based)

Don't get discouraged from the comments. The Assault Bike is one of my favorite training modalities and it works well for hunting prep.

Don't get bogged down in all this sport specific training banter.

I have been hunting the Alaska back country for decades and I spend A LOT of time carrying heavy things for miles up and down mountains.

I have literally tried every new fad program or institute (MT. Athlete, Uphill Athlete, etc.) when it comes to preparing for mountain hunting.

From my experience the best overall training method I have found is Tactical Barbell Green Protocol. Nothing has prepared my lungs and legs for mountain hunting as well as heavy doses of zone 2 jogging.
Here are total force calculations for myself comparing jogging with rucking. Height 6ft bw 225 @ 11% measured bf, 165 spm jogging and 120 spm rucking.

Jogging (225 lbs)<br>Cadence: 165 SPM<br>GRF: 2.0–2.5× BW	Walking + 65 lb Pack (290 lbs)<br>Cadence: 120 SPM<br>GRF: 1.2–1.5× BW

30 min

1,113,750 – 1,386,000

626,400 – 783,000

45 min

1,670,850 – 2,079,280

939,600 – 1,174,500

60 min

2,227,500 – 2,772,000

1,252,800 – 1,566,000

As you can see total force absorbed by my body is roughly 2.2-2.7 million lbs when doing a 60 min slow jog. That is an insane volume. Rucking is about half that. Slow jogging hardens my connective tissues like nothing else and also produces iron lungs and heart.

Compare that to my barbell workouts where I average 20-25k lbs of weight moved.

The only real advantage that I have found with rucking is that it hardens my shoulders and hips, it conditions them to carry the weight more comfortably.

As for the Assault Bike, I have used it very successfully. Your heart only has the capacity to pump so much blood and your body preferentially builds more capillaries in the muscle tissues that have the greatest demand for oxygen. Capillary production is limited though by the total volume of blood the heart is capable of pumping. Thus if one focuses on training legs, then the legs are going to have much higher capillarization than other tissues. Higher densities of capillaries correlates to greater oxygen transfer, e.g. the muscles can go harder longer. The Assault Bike is a great tool for increasing the density of capillaries in the legs.

A program that I run for 8 weeks a year is called Building the Engine by Mike Perry. It involves three assault bike workouts a week and is very effective. He actually designed the program for fighters, but it has directly translated to increasing my leg work capacity when going vertical. Works great for mountain hunters.

I run it 3 days a week and TB Operator or Wendler 531 3 days a week.

 

[thinhorn_AK]

OP said “carry over” in his initial post.

Your article says this:

View attachment 911303

Seems like you’re the one who introduced “crossover” and hung up on some technicality. Idk. Dude just wants some good Assault bike workouts.

The dude absolutely did not invent “crossover” lol. Like I said, strength and conditioning is a very flooded market, coaches/trainers need to seem like they have a unique idea because all the best ideas have already been branded by other coaches.

 

[Poser]

As you can see total force absorbed by my body is roughly 2.2-2.7 million lbs when doing a 60 min slow jog. That is an insane volume. Rucking is about half that. Slow jogging hardens my connective tissues like nothing else and also produces iron lungs and heart.

Compare that to my barbell workouts where I average 20-25k lbs of weight moved.

Surely, this is not how you actually think about and compare training stress/volume?

1. Peak Ground‐Reaction Force (GRF) is Instantaneous.
• When you run, the force under your foot briefly spikes to 2–3× your body weight (sometimes more). However, this spike lasts only a fraction of a second and then drops back toward zero.
• Adding up these spikes over hundreds or thousands of steps to reach “millions of pounds” paints a wildly (I'd dare say "insanely") exaggerated picture if you interpret it as a lump sum of force all at once: You didn't go for a run and put 2.7 million pounds of stress on your body. It just doesn't work that way. If your joints could actually handle 2.7 million pounds worth of stress, then you would be unlikely to injure them doing anything within the realm of human performance.

2. Impulse vs. Force vs. Work.
• “Force” is an instantaneous quantity (measured at a given moment). “Impulse” is the integral of force over time (Force × time), and “Work” involves force × distance (e.g., foot travel).
• Simply passing a total load number (like person‐mass × gravity × steps) through to “pounds of force absorbed” heavily conflates these 2 concepts. What you are really doing is adding up many brief spikes of force (i.e., impulses), not a single continuous force your body is under at once.

3. Your Body Doesn’t “Store Up” Force Like a Reservoir.
• The misconception presented here is that all these small impacts literally sum up in your tissues the way weight on a barbell adds up as you keep stacking plates.
• Each foot strike is a short event; tissues deform and recover quickly. That’s remarkably different from bearing a single static load measured as “total pounds” overhead or on your back at one moment. These two things simply cannot be logically compared in the manner you have presented them. It just doesn't work that way.

4. GRF Varies Through the Gait Cycle.
• The peak force you used in your calculation (2.0–2.5× body weight) is just that—a peak. For the rest of the stride, GRF can be significantly lower.

To your credit, this does demonstrates that running imparts greater repetitive impact than rucking over the same duration.

Zone 2 running is certainly one way to build a necessary aerobic base (and an aerobic base is necessary), possibly one of the more efficient ways, and a lot of people use it that way, but its not the only way to achieve the same ends.