Training tips (not intended to be argumentative)

[Ch3w1e]

Mike, could I ask about the nutrition part of training? Your original post mentioned that you majored in nutrition and fitness. I was wondering if you had advice on food groups, eating patterns and food combinations that help make training more effective and keep the body in good shape and the mind sharp? What I've found as I've gotten older is most eat-out cuisine just wrecks my body. While it's good eating sometimes, the composition of fats, carbs, etc. just wreck havoc on my metabolic system. I do a lot of active sports throughout the year and I can definitely feel it when I'm not eating right.

I'm not actually thinking about diets per say. Those seem mostly like fads to me. And the basic stuff on trails like staying hydrated and keeping electrolytes in, everyone talks about. I'm wondering more about the nutrition that's going to build and maintain the body/mind in the long run.

 

[bozeman]

As I have aged (early 40's), fasting has shown benefit to not just how I feel, but digestion/heartburn.....any thoughts on 'fasting' throughout the week/month?

 

[MeatMissile]

As I have aged (early 40's), fasting has shown benefit to not just how I feel, but digestion/heartburn.....any thoughts on 'fasting' throughout the week/month?

Fasting has helped me settle issues with my digestive tract that I was never able to resolve through my doctor, with medication, or probiotics.

I have dealt with an irritable gut for 20 years. As I got older, I also started to have issues with blood sugar. I didn’t understand why, as I felt I was eating “better”. I was eating breakfast, and small meals throughout the day. When I was younger, I ate at 11 AM and 4 PM and that was it.

I was arguing with a vegan about how biologically and physiologically incorrect her diet was, and I realized that I eat a mostly carnivorous diet but I don’t eat like a carnivore. I had overburdened my digestive tract.

Once I went back to eating one or two meals per day, and giving my guts a 16 to 20 hour break, I quit having unpredictable and inconvenient urges to use the bathroom and the overall feeling of gut-rot. My reflux also seemed to be resolved.

I then got a glucose test kit and checked my blood sugar every 2 hours for a week. I noticed a trend of when my sugars were the highest. Even when I fast, I have a spike between 5 and 7 AM. I figured that eating traditional breakfast was adding energy/sugar to an already sugar-high part of my day. I quit eating during this time period completely and my A1C went back to normal and I started losing weight.

 

[MattTx]

i used to do the farmers walk for 6-8hrs a day at work. carrying a 28lb bucket of tomatoes on each side up to 100ft then emptying them into a large 'bin' at waist height. around 850-900 buckets would have been the biggest day.

i've often thought that hard labor is the old school 'gym'. think about it, who used to go to the gym in the old days? you didn't need to, you got payed for that.
it is great for mental conditioning too IMO. it's tough at the time but adversity fosters resilience. mentally, if you can do physical labor all day for 'the man', then doing physical labor for something your passionate about comes easy. you can pound that trail to your honey hole no problem.

Right on!

 

[mtwarden]

^ When I was sawing in the woods (30+ years ago ), the last thing I thought about was working out. Humping a big chainsaw (along with oil&gas/a small axe/wedges/tools/etc) up and down steep mountains made elk hunting on the weekends pretty easy. Also we knew exactly where elk were hanging out

 

[bozeman]

Matt TX- was it uphill both ways? Just pickin at ya.........

 

[Ch3w1e]

As I have aged (early 40's), fasting has shown benefit to not just how I feel, but digestion/heartburn.....any thoughts on 'fasting' throughout the week/month?

I know some folks who do fast every now and then. I think it's more a once a few months sort of thing. From what I've asked about it, it's about purging the body and returning it to a clear metabolic baseline. It does seem to work well for them.

Personally, I don't get any benefits. It just makes me feel weak and it's harder to think. On the other hand, the folks I know who do fast, do that over a longer period. Something I've never done that.

There is one thing I do that I think does help with digestion / heartburn. It's something I observed from my grandpa. He tended to sleep head and upper body elevated. I have a bed wedge that gives me a slight incline. I don't notice it when I sleep, but I think it helps keep everything in the stomach in the stomach.

 

[mtnbiker208]

did the flatlander ever come back and tell us how he did?

 

[*zap*]

The best physical training is done in a manner that it will force your body to change at the cellular and anatomical/muscular level. It really does not matter whether your a bodybuilder or a ultra runner that type of change is what the winners are working for and their programs are designed for that.

The 8 week fitness plan or similar plans falls way short of those goals...as does the 2 day a week plan.
Volume/frequency/intensity and duration needs to be at a high level to force those changes and you need to know when to lay off and recover.

jmo.

I think intermittent fasting or eating in an 8 hour window each 24 hours is a good fat loss plan up to a point.....that point being a lower body fat % and a lot also depends on volume/frequency/intensity of your program. It is also supposed to be very good for hormone and general health. I can do it about 40% of the time with no problem but not all the time.....I just go by how I feel at that time...

I never did multi day fasting.

 

[PA-R]

Thanks Mike, lots of good info. Very good.

 

[derekvieira]

Here is my take: I spent the first year of covid not working out after being able to play basketball 2x a week as hard as I possible could, 190+ heart rate throughout.
I spent two months trying to get into hiking shape hiking with some weight 2x a week. That year I got the job done, harvested an elk and packed out. Did I feel strong? Did I doubt myself? Did I suffer: absolutely. I’m 35 years old btw.

The next year focused on strength exclusively. All the compound lifts: deadlift, power cleans, overhead press, weighted pull-ups and dips, squats…
When I went hiking I thought to myself how much more stable and strong I felt. Like every step, I could feel it and it is a great feeling. As others previously mentioned, I too was able to get into hiking shape much faster. I harvested two elk this year and packed them out. Did it suck: absolutely, but a different suck. Strength was not an issue. Each elk was two loads with one being 700 ft vertical in about .5 mile. Cardio was now my weakness.

If I had better cardio, I would have been killing those hikes. Basically to repeat all of these good principles. I absolutely believe a mountain hunter has to be well rounded. You need strength, cardio, and miles on your feet. Although, a purely strength athletic is not going to be the most prepared for the hike, I do agree that strength is the absolute foundation for a mountain hunter and longevity in life. Cardio is also very very important for life, but someone could take their sweat time or a mountain and have poor cardio capacity. If your packing all your gear even being 20 lbs and do not have strength at elevation your going to be hurting.

My workout plan this year is strength train 2x, indoor cycle 2x, hike 1x, and maybe play basketball 1x a week. If I can make this happen, I know I will be in the best hunting shape of my life for next season.

 

[Marbles]

Hey all, new member here...started lurking a couple months ago as I began researching my first DIY elk hunt in CO this coming fall. "Adult onset" hunter as I heard it referred to in a Randy Newberg video--no one in my family hunts but I had a good buddy that invited me to deer camp three years ago and I was immediately hooked.

Anyway, I don't have a lot to offer to the hunting community in terms of actual hunting skill or technique, but I do have some insights on the fitness front for anyone interested. My major was Nutrition & Fitness and I worked on a college strength staff and then a speed/performance training center before eventually pivoting away from that and getting into finance (I know, I know...boring AF).

I read through the last several pages of threads on the 'Training Tips' forum and see a lot of well-intentioned, but poorly applied advice on here. Let me first say that I intend this purely to be helpful for anyone that is interested. If any part of this comes across as arrogant, dismissive, or argumentative then please know it was just a failure to communicate well on my part, or something was 'lost in translation' over the interwebs...

Couple caveats:
1. If you are already Fit AF and crushing your backcountry adventures, this is not an attack on whatever your current regimen is. If you've got something you swear by and are seeing results, GREAT, don't change a thing if you don't want to.
2. A lot of what I will talk about applies to people who already have a base-level amount of fitness. If you are currently living a sedentary lifestyle, you need to build up a base level of fitness, of which there are literally infinite examples/programs to choose from.
3. While not exclusive to flatlanders, this is targeted towards those of us that live in areas/regions without access to mountains to train on. If you live in the mountains, you are likely already pretty adept at hunting in the mountains. You can certainly increase your fitness following this advice, but know that the biggest beneficiaries of what I discuss are those of us that live in relatively flat areas and travel west for a hunt.
4. I will do my best to highlight risks or cautions to any of the material or specific exercises I discuss, but just in general please know at all times I emphasize proper form is required well before you ever increase the weight or resistance of any exercise I discuss.

I'm going to break this up into several posts to keep it manageable...stay tuned!

Mike from MO

I'll make this very simple, some of what you say contradicts the guys at Uphill Athlete. I will take their expertise over yours. It also differs significantly from what I learned working with SOF. It also differs from what friends who have masters degrees in exercise physiology say

As your profession was fitness, at least read up on mountain training and expand your knowledge base.

Training at high intensity constantly is flat bad advice and not supported by science. Even Olympic sprinters spend very little time sprinting. It is certainly not because their coaches know less than you.

If you have never hit an aerobic HR for sustained periods rucking, then you either live in a flat area and have no buildings with stairs, or.... Well never mind.

 

[*zap*]

Low intensity steady state for 90% of aerobic training...some higher intensity with a good amount of recovery period in between those sessions. That will (coupled with a good nutrition plan) keep body fat down and give you e tremendous low gear which is what we use mot often. Hiking with/without a load is a low gear activity if you keep the pace sustainable....you raise your heart rate zone #'s from the bottom up.

 

[Marbles]

On strength training, I will agree that no strength training is a mistake. I strongly disagree that strength training needs weights or a gym. Body weight is strength.

It is always fun watching a gym strong person with impressive squat numbers try to do a one legged squat butt to heal. It is also fun to watch them try to do 200 bodyweight squats without stopping, because most of them have overly developed anaerobic fast twitch muscle fibers (type IIb). Traditional strength training with a bar bell in the gym does not produce the most functional strength other than lifting a barbell in the gym.

Edit: While I don't strength train in a gym, it is not bad. It is good, just not best.

 

[mtwarden]

looks like the OP hasn't been on the site for two years, guess he didn't like what we had to say

 

[*zap*]

Lifting heavy weights will build bone density and help produce good hormones like hgh & test.

I think one legged lower body exercises are a vgt as well as doing thigs with an internal pelvic tilt...well. one side is internal and the other will be external....but tilt the pelvis not just the femur head. Weight training can be very, very useful if you go about it a certain way. That can take lots of research and trial/error. Remember there are three planes of motion...

 

[Marbles]

looks like the OP hasn't been on the site for two years, guess he didn't like what we had to say

Lol, I need to remember to look at OP dates before posting.

 

[J Batt]

i used to do the farmers walk for 6-8hrs a day at work. carrying a 28lb bucket of tomatoes on each side up to 100ft then emptying them into a large 'bin' at waist height. around 850-900 buckets would have been the biggest day.

i've often thought that hard labor is the old school 'gym'. think about it, who used to go to the gym in the old days? you didn't need to, you got payed for that.
it is great for mental conditioning too IMO. it's tough at the time but adversity fosters resilience. mentally, if you can do physical labor all day for 'the man', then doing physical labor for something your passionate about comes easy. you can pound that trail to your honey hole no problem.

Gym rats who are adverse to actual hard manual labor make me laugh. Its a shock to their system when you tell them "We're not doing 'sets' buddy, we're doing this all day long..."

 

[mtwarden]

Gym rats who are adverse to actual hard manual labor make me laugh. Its a shock to their system when you tell them "We're not doing 'sets' buddy, we're doing this all day long..."

Decades a go, I was a sawyer in NW Montana (4 years)- the guy I was working for (turned out it was my future father-in-law ) always gave us the first full week of elk season off (and every weekend after).

Between sawing all day and two hours of travel, no way I was getting into a gym. I remember chasing elk in those (steep and dense) mountains wasn't overly taxing, even hauling out (on shitty WW II frames!) elk wasn't overly bad.

Going up and down mountains with 40 lbs of chainsaw, gas & oil, water, small axe and wedges all day, kind of gets you in shape for going up and and down mountains all day

 

[MichigAndy]

I’m a flat lander that tends to be a bit on the arrogant side of the spectrum when it comes to physical ability. However, I do enjoy being prepared…I’ll be hunting elk this fall for the first time. This has been an interesting read… I’m interested to see just how difficult operating at some altitude in steep country really is for me. I’d be happy to report back in October how much I’ve overestimated my abilities.