Physical Fitness

There are a few places in the world more exciting and challenging to hunt than the Western United States. And most diehard hunters who hunt out west prepare for next years hunt when this years hunt ends.

Maybe you are going on a spot-and-stalk hunt in Montana over relatively flat ground looking for Whitetails or hunting for Bighorn Sheep in Oregon where you will have to climb steep basalt cliffs. Either way your physical fitness will play a big role in how you experience your hunt. Keeping that in mind, the backcountry is a tough place to hunt with its thin air, steep mountains and miles of untouched wilderness. You don’t want find out halfway up a mountain that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.

So how do you start preparing your body? You start with a plan. Just like you would make an agenda of your daily activities, preparing for a hunt requires planning. Sometimes that’s easier said than done. We tend to think we are in better shape than we actually are, so consulting a professional, like a personal trainer, is a great way to really find out what your starting point is. Once you know that you can move on to setting goals. It’s important that you keep your goals realistic and challenging.

There are 4 main categories you need to cover when you want to enhance your overall physical fitness : strength, endurance, flexibility, and diet.

Endurance and Strength

Let’s start with endurance. Cardio fitness will help you raise your endurance level, which will in turn make overcoming difficult terrain when hunting a lot easier. Cycling, running and swimming are great ways to build up endurance. Bear in mind that, when hunting in the wild, you will go through intermittent bursts of moderate to high intensity exercises with intervening periods of rest and recovery. Keep your workout multi-faced to better imitate those conditions. This means a steady rotation among multiple different forms of exercise is important.

Now, strength training is the foundation. A strong core supports the whole body. Regular sessions of weight training and other strength-building exercises are essential for optimizing health and fitness. And why not get some strong abs while you’re at it? No one said you can’t look good while hunting. But seriously, hunter-gatherers were lean and almost never obese which reduced trauma to their joints.

Flexibility

When we think about flexibility the term“ stretching” comes to mind which in turn evokes an image of a guy in stretch pants reaching for his toes. Turns out that isn’t the only way to improve flexibility, doing some full-depth squats, for example, can help you build up hip flexibility. Still, stretching is important and should not be overlooked. Most people assume stretching will help you warm up for a weight training session, unfortunately, this is not the case. The purpose of a warm up is to increase blood flow to the muscles. Movement increases blood flow to the muscles being used while static stretching does not, which leads me to the conclusion that stretching already warmed up muscles is the right way to go about it.

Diet

Finally, let’s discuss diet. Training and nutrition go hand in hand. Make sure you’re not skipping meals and cut out the extra calories. Step away from the pizza. Try to practice some self-control and eat servings proportionate to your level of exercise.

While trying to achieve all the goals you set for yourself you need to be patient, as well as determined. No one reaches their desired level of physical fitness overnight. Just know that when you’re carrying that heavy backpack while battling with everything that nature has to offer, you will be grateful that you stuck to your plan.