Appreciate the response and I agree with the first paragraph.
Respectfully disagree about never hitting the point of diminishing returns for strength. I am personally feeling better with less strength and less body weight than when I focused on just strength. All things being equal, I would rather have more strength but we know that things are never equal and at some point there is a tradeoff of time and weight for strength.
Lastly, we both agree that strength is a secondary element and it does have many benefits outside of hunting. I guess from reading some of the posts I didn't get the secondary message.
When you say you can get into effective conditioning shape for hunting in 3 weeks, what are you doing to get that and are you starting from zero conditioning or do you do some basic conditioning along the way?
So, in the winter, my focus is snowboarding. Both lift served and backcountry so I do lot of skinning and bootpacking. I’m usually riding 2 days week in Nov and early December and then Go to 3-4 days a week through April, then back to 1 or 2 days a week into May, sometimes June. I do a maintenance strength program in season but I end up pretty weak by the end. 60+ days a season.
Sometime around that transition in April, I’ll do 4-6 weeks of just strength training and pretty much nothing else except work. I’ll do a linear progression and get my strength back up to peak levels. I can usually get 50# or so back on the bar for my squat and deadlift.
Then I start mountain bike season and I get real weak. That ends abruptly at the end of August and I will start doing weekend scouting trips which also get me in shape for hunting, but I’m running another cycle linear progression (albeit slower progress due to scouting on the weekends). Then I’ll do a ~10 day hunting trip and sometimes a second one a couple of weeks later. Between them, I’ll only strength train.
After that wraps up, I do another pure cycle, usually 4-6 weeks, linear progression to get back strong as possible before snowboard season.
Basically, I do 3 strength cycles Year between seasons and try and maintain as much strength as I can during each season using Heavy-Liffey-Medium programming, but the loses can be considerable. End of hunting season, my Backsquat has been 100# below what it is at peak strength 1 month prior.
I’ll say this: I hang out in social circles full of people who pursue similar sports, pursuits etc. I have snowboard partners, I have Mtn bike partners, I have hunting partners. I have snowboard partners that I also hunt with. I have Mtn bike partners that I also snowboard with. The people who do this stuff well after their early to mid 30s and remain injury free, all put their time in the gym. The ones rhat don’t have unreliable bodies and go down with regular injuries. After 40, those injuries are usually season Enders. In fact, at this point In Life, I don’t put much of any physical reliance in people who don’t strength train in some capacity. I’ve seen it too many times. I don’t care how mentally tough you claim to be, I don’t care how far you run. If you don’t have a strong body, you’re not going to last. So, I don’t invest trust in them as a reliable partner in the backcountry (hunting, skiing, biking etc). It is a trend I have observed, I have no direct data to back that up. We could look at bone density studies etc to support it, but that’s not going to change anyone’s mind.
If your body is strong, it’s not going to take you long to get Conditioned for hunting. If you don’t want to strength train, don’t strength train. I personally don’t care. BUT, if we are going to talk about the best way to prepare the body for the rigors of elk hunting and we’re going to dismiss strength training as an effective piece of that, I’m going to call bullshit everytime. The average person only stands to benefit from being stronger: You should be stronger. You would like to be stronger. You wish you were stronger. You know you should be stronger. And the most effective way to get stronger is to strength train. If you don’t have time or desire, that’s too bad, but it doesn’t excuse the fact that you wouldn’t benefit from being stronger. The vast majority of us would at any given time. It allows you to carry heavier loads. It increases the amount of time until muscle failure. It protects your back, knees, and other weak points from potential injury. It makes your bones stronger. It makes your body more efficient at recovery. It even boosts your immune system. It teaches how to know the limitations of you’re body. It makes you harder to kill. Its practical, functional and mentally toughening. You should really be strength training and you know it.
*you = general population (not anyone in particular on this thread).
