What is your elk hunting workout?
 

Elk season is approaching. I like to hunt in the high mountains of SW Colorado but I live in Texas in flat country at about 600 feet elevation. I try to get in shape and lose weight, but the physical challenge is always significant, no matter how well I prepare.

I am pretty active and weight really isn't a problem. I have been stepping up my walking and bike riding to strengthen the legs. An old sports injury left me with one knee that gives me problems from time to time so the bike riding helps. I try to go up and down the stairs several times a day. I live at 118 feet ASL so the altitude does bother me. I take diamox for 2 days before I get to Colorado and for 1 or 2 days after I arrive. It helps condition the blood to run on less O2. In the past I stayed in a cabin at 9100 ft. This year we have moved our hunt and not sure what the elevation will be on our cabin.

I have started working out as a routine but for hunts like that I would focus a little more in cardio work adding in weighted hikes along with weighted stair climbs. What I found out recently from a trip is no matter the shape I am in, sleeping in a bed or cot untested can mess with my disk issues. My back is still messed up being back for a few days so if you have an injury test the waters or find something that can alleviate the issue. An elk hunt will be the last place you would want to aggregate an old injury.

I have changed some things in my conditioning routine this year.

I am taking walks 5 days a week before work in the morning with a heavy pack. I have worked up to 4 miles with a 70+ LBS pack. I can feel that workout in my legs, hamstrings mostly. I think this will make carrying heavy packs of elk meat easier.

My wife got us a family membership to a local gym. She doesn't use this but I do. I try to go 4 nights a week after work. I do deadlifts and barbell squats one of those nights. I can really feel the barbell squats in my thighs: I'm hoping that will make climbing easier. The deadlifts are probably making my back stronger, but that has not been a problem in the past. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening I spend 30 minutes on a recumbent bicycle. The last 15 minutes I am breathing hard and am dripping with sweat (level 16, but I don't know if that level is consistent across diffeent machines). I follow the bike with various other exercises with weight machines and climbing stairs with a 30 LBS dumbbell in each hand.

I'm hoping to add some other exercises into the mix. For example, I'm looking to start doing a "farmer's carry" soon.

I'm working on strengthening my grip. I find my hand gets tired sometimes when skinning an elk. I grab the skin in a wad and put tension on it with my left arm while slicing the skin free with my right hand. It is kind of a thick wad, and I grip it fairly tight so I can skin faster. I'm doing wrist curls with 45 LBS dumbbells, some wire cutting with wire cutters, and pinch grip work with landscaping blocks.

I always get out of breath climbing the hills. I accept that. I train so I can keep going day after day: endurance. I train so I can climb the hills without giving up, though I stop to catch my breath. Also, I'm hoping the heavy pack walking exercise is going to allow me to carry a heavier load of elk meat this year. I carried an elk ham last year -- probably about 55 LBS -- back from my kill site. I found that manageable. My goal is to be able to carry even more elk meat than that at one time this year. I've got an improved pack that should distribute the load well, and I've been training my legs to the packing work.

You all seem to avoid one of the absolute best training regiments in the world. Swimming! Freestyle and Breaststroke for cardio and paddle resistance for conditioning. It's absolutely the best conditioning out there because of the 0 impact on the knee joints. The Freestyle and Breaststroke will also help condition your lungs for high altitude. Only breathe every 3rd stroke. Hiking, walking, and biking are all good but the best all around training you can do is swimming.

It's difficult to train for altitude when you're a flat lander. Condition your muscles to handle anything the hunt can throw at you. I don't have elk hunting experience but I worked in Colorado as a backpacking and hiking guide for a few summers. I've seen people who appear to be in great shape really struggle between the elevation and the constant climbing. Walking or running on flat ground doesn't prepare you for the up and down beating that mountains can give you. So I'd try to find ways to train for the grades you will encounter. Back strength, shoulder strength, leg strength are all important for carrying your packs. Build up your cardio, gasping for breath is a good way to miss an elk. I always tried to keep a very consistent pace while backpacking, but for a hunt sometimes you may need to really hustle to get somewhere for a shot so be prepared for those potential high output moments.

Also, don't overlook the small training things you can do. I have had some knee and ankle surgeries in the past that I've done some therapy for. Keep up with those area specific exercises to make sure that an old injury doesn't decide to bite you at a bad time. It's easy to say "it's healed" and forget about it. But I've found that they feel allot better when I'm specifically strengthening those areas.
-Jake

very good advise.

I enjoy swimming but was not sure about other areas and access to a swimming facility so I left it out. If you do go the swimming route there is another method we use for freediving called apnea dive training. It may help, have not done much research into high altitude training or how it will correlate. Both seem to have a similar aspect that they train the individual to work with low oxygen consumption. Our physiology is extremely versatile and I think this may help.

My son -- an outstanding athlete -- taught me something interesting about physical training last night. He says that when following an intense physical training regime you need to schedule rest weeks. Recently I've trained 5 days a week and rested weekends. He says "rest weeks." He said this is something that is done by many athletes, though it may depend on their particular sport. It works for long distance runners, sprinters, gymnasts. It may not works so well for athletes in sports where they compete frequently -- as in professional basketball players who play every other day or every 3 days.

He says intense physical training breaks down the muscles. The training effect comes from those muscles repairing themselves. After 6-8 weeks of this training (no doubt with enough rest intervals in between to sustain training) taking a week off really is important to allow the body to rebuild. At the end of that week-long rest the athlete's body is much stronger than it was when he commenced the rest.

Here is the important teaching. These canny athletes time this rest week so that it coincides with their event. Thus, the sprinter may time his rest week so it ENDs on the day he will race in the Olympic 100 meter dash, for example. In my case, I'll time my last rest interval so that it ends the morning elk hunting season begins. This is called "peaking." The athlete wants to be peaking at the time the event occurs.

I just go and exercise as hard as I can. The idea of taking deliberate rest days first came to me maybe last year, probably from my son. This is a new idea to me. I'm not sure I'll really take a whole week off. I'm not training at the same level of intensity as my son would, I'm pretty sure. But it is the same principle. I had this conversation with him yesterday and canceled my workout last night and will return to workouts next Monday. Already I feel pretty good from not exercising last night and not walking 4 miles with my 70 LBS pack this morning.

Rest is very important for muscle recovery and as your son mentioned when your resting, you are repairing your muscles which will make you stronger. This is one of the reasons most weight lifters have moved instead of a full body workout to a split routine of things like, back and biceps on Monday. chest and triceps on Wednesday, and legs and core (abs) on Friday. Tuesday and Thursday would be strictly cardio, but how you isolate the body parts you are actually giving them time to rest for several days while working on other body parts. I would recommend looking into a bodybuilding website, alot of information available and obviously they know what they are doing to build muscle.

I think a week might be a bit too long for the average hunter training for elk hunting. You may be going past the point of recovery, and getting into losing for fitness.

Whatever training you do make sure you simulate packing out meat too. This means wearing a pack with progressively heavy loads just like you add a little weight in weight training. Start on level ground, and then gradually start to climb up and down hills/mountains. Straight weight training isn't as good, and hiking with a heavy pack with develop all the small supporting muscles, tendons, and ligaments you need to carry a heavy pack. Also, going up and down hills will develop the structure from different angles.

Also, getting good cardio can't be suggested strong enough. You'll need all you can develop. I hike the Rockies everyday at 11,000ft, and carrying a heavy pack still kicks my butt.

I've always trained hard, and eat nothing but natural foods. Here's me at 49 years old. Exercise and good food will keep you in shape. Don't let off in the off season, and then try to catch up when hunting season is getting close. It doesn't work. Staying in shape is a full time job.

In flat lands, you can also add stair climbing. Living here, I do my daily walks and weights. My walks are up hills and down hills. At the tender age of 72, I no longer try extreme hunting....just enough to survive it!
Dan

Nice Pete! I never do anything different when i go out west hunting, besides the obvious quit work, pack up and drive? Either your in shape or your not. Speaking of cardio, a low resting heart beat rate is important, say 49-65 beats per minute is a pretty good fit rate, thats where i'm at, and never had problems hunting anywhere.

Pete's a stud!!!

I think you are right on the week off matter. I'm planning to make it 4 days off. I'm not working out as intensly as some of these top flight athletes. By the way, I have laid-off 2 days now and I was thinking as I drove on errands today that I felt really energetic and strong, because of no workout for several days.

I agree on the packing. I hike 4 miles per day with a 70 LBS pack on my back. I worked up to it.

I've hunted elk in the area I'm returning to this year 5 times before. We camp at 11,500 feet and hunt at about that elevation or slightly higher. This is my 6th trip there. On three of those hunts there were several elk to pack out. So I'm familiar with the ardors of DIY elk hunting. I'm never in adequate shape. I always feel I could have done better. At the same time, I never run out of gas and never give up. This year may I may be in my best shape ever, but that remains to be seen. Of course, it only takes an unfortunate momentary error to slip blow out a knee, and all that training is to naught.

My first elk I packed the elk quarters down off the hillside where I cut it up about 150 feet down to a reasonably level trail where my partners helped me pack it out from. The hill was steep and I did some switchback-like traversing back and forth of the hill. But this placed me sideways to the hill which was a bit muddy from snow that had melted. I slipped and strained my knee. Just a minor tweak, but it revealed to me that a bad knee was just a slip away.

I have some spikes I can slip on my boots when it's slippery. They save a lot of falls, and injuries.

I use these.

http://www.rei.com/product/890608/ka...raction-system

You mean they had color film when you were 49 Pete?

They added the color like they do with old movies. :p

They took the Kodachrome away.

Kodachrome was a very popular slide (chrome) color film back in the day. The process was a special one referred to as K-14, where the color was added during processing. Now Kodachrome is gone. Don't tell Simon and Garfunkel.
Momma, they took his Kodachrome away!

I would also say that now I would do as much as possible to slide that elk meat down the hill. For example, I could have put those chunks of meat on a plastic tarp and slid them down the hill. I might have even done two loads of meat on every trip, saving myself half my trips.

I remember being proud that I had thought to slide my dead elk off the hillside about 40 yards to a level area shaded by a few trees with snow where I could bury the cut-up elk meat. The steepness of the hill and the slipperiness of the surface made skidding the elk not too difficult. And that was a good plan. It was my first elk kill. But now in retrospect it occurs to me it would have been an even BETTER plan to skid the whole elk carcass all the way down to the level trail area. That would have made the bringing down of the elk meat easier.

On the other hand, that might have been a kind of advertising sign to rival hunters "Looky here, y'all!!! An elk was killed near here!!!"

It is good to think about all these things. It takes a while for such layers of thinking to come to a hunter.

Yes, but that doesn't help you from slipping, and falling. I'm too old to be doing that anymore. Micro spikes prevent it.

I pretty much wear them everywhere in the winter.

I have a feeling after this fall and screwing up my knee that my packing and tracking days over long rough terrain is done. Gonna have to reaquaint myself with my equine skills. Aint no horse gonna be happy packing my fat rear!

Don't fall off the horse. It's farther to the ground.

Not sure if you guys ever tried it or seen it tried. Have you ever thought about taking out a smaller sled with wheels. Deer sled would be similar but load the meat into it use ropes to lower the sled down hills to your trail and then just pull it along behind you like one of those rickshaws.

my workout starts in the kitchen
 

I read lots of great things in this group. I am not seeing much on this topic. For me, summer, fall , and winter is on the go chasing something somewhere. This year it is in the east side of the WA for elk and muledeer. I have put more than 30k miles on my legs running and more pushups than most people ever will dream of. We should all look at our nutrition. Fitness is great and is an important part of everything in ones life, without your nutrition right we may be chasing our tail. Any body builder will tell you that abs are made in the kitchen and polished with weights. I have found as many diets as stars in the sky. Its crazy out there. I have found that reverse engineering you food intake is one way to get started. What is not good for you? What habits do you have that are sucking the benifit of good nutrition away from positive benifit you need? And so on. I am a disabled Veteran with many obstical in my life. I have busted my hump staying in shape and it has not been an eazy road. I will say this. Once i got my nutrition in check, i lost thoses last few pounds, and my core is stronger now than when i was in the Army 25 years ago. Those cross country treks in your boots with a pack are much easier and i find my self taking lots of breaks waiting for those 20 year old guys to catch up. With all seriousness, it starts in the kitchen before you even put your boots on. My workouts? Winter is PIYO. Spring is T25 with Body Beast. Summer is Beast and 21day fix extreme. Fall is boots and smokepole boogie.
I hope you find nutrition as important as your workouts. It is important all year. Be powerful, shoot straight, and be a champion.
Good luck to all this year.

Make sure the truck has enough fuel to get me to the hills and back......................