Don’t underestimate the productive training opportunities Mother Nature’s playground offers up.
Try some unconventional training outside the gym to layer in some quality work making you even more powerfully capable in everyday life.
I will often combine practicing some full body strength, power and mobility training with my hikes I do throughout the week maximizing my training time and results while minimizing my time investment.
You need to be able to identify training opportunities, safely and productively program a training session and listen to your body in order to self regulate how much intensity you can handle on any given day especially when training in this manner.
Remember – You don’t want to go crazy intense every workout and pound your body’s systems into oblivion. You just need to challenge the body enough to make adaptive changes in the fitness metrics you are trying to improve and not utterly destroy your existing fitness foundation, central nervous system or hammer and over work your joints to dust.
I get the best training results when I finish a workout a few reps shy of muscle failure feeling strong and robust and not so devastated that I have to crawl out of the woods or gym.
These are the methods of a guy who has been training uninterrupted since 1979 and has put his body through practically every program, fad, gimmick, training tool and made every mistake under the sun to form my current world view of fitness and health.
I’m probably older than most people reading this and the methods I share work for me and my pursuit of the ideal quality of life.
But at the end of the day, please listen to your body and do what works for you to advance your quality of life regardless if you dig my methods!
Here’s a brief demo of one of my strength and conditioning hikes using some challenging training tools courtesy of Mother Nature and a chain saw:
Technique And Performance Tips
I assemble my “wooden line” using various shaped logs of different weights that really challenges the body to adapt and compensate as no two lifts are the same
A round of exercise is doing one clean and press repetition at each of the logs.
The workout is designed as a “Rounds over Reps” training session meaning It is performed doing low, strict repetitions per round of training as you keep the rounds high.
This method will deceptively bank a lot of quality fitness as you are thoughtfully focusing all your energy and technique into one quality rep at a time – feeling fresh, strong and in complete control after each round.
Try doing 4 rounds to start. Decrease or increase the rounds based on your fitness level and how your body is feeling on your training day.
Rest 2 minutes after each round, but you want to make sure you feel strong, recovered and confident each round – so increase or decrease rest time according to your fitness level.
Try wearing flat footwear instead of bulky shoes with a lot of filler and cushion to maintain a powerful and rooted connection to the ground. I wear Converse Chuck Taylor’s or go barefoot depending on the terrain.
When picking stuff up off the ground try to maintain a flat back, root yourself and keep the core tight as you drive up through your heels using your hips to bring the weight up.
I Mentally and physically treat the lighter logs as if they are heavy and apply thoughtful, focused technique and respect to them.
Most folks seem to get injured when mentally disengaging from and thoughtlessly hoisting light weights around as opposed to lifting a heavy weight with focus and controlled engaged technique. So don’t get over confident and invite injury!
Be aware of your surroundings and police the area as you don’t want to trip over anything or have your kids/pets/wife/girlfriend or bystanders in your space as you are lifting and dumping heavy and unforgiving objects that tend to have a mind of their own.
The Big Takeaway
Picking objects off the ground and driving them overhead has long been considered a powerfully timeless marker and expression for strength, power and total body fitness.
You also get the profound benefits of training in the fresh air, life powering sunshine and challenging terrain your body will respond to in a highly positive way.
My methods are not for everybody as we all have different fitness goals.
My goals are to age in a powerfully capable manner, maintain a pleasing body composition , move in full ranges of pain free bliss, maintain a high level of financial independence and never let my health lapse.
Everybody should have goals and purpose – Think about and act upon yours today!
Related: The Rounds Over Reps Training Advantage
Related: Ditch Your Shoes For Powerful Workouts
Related: Who I Dig And Those I Don’t
I’m Mark Mellohusky (Mellow-Husky)
I enjoy sharing my fitness training and health philosophies I practice that I have either adopted or tweaked from some of the fitness greats in history or designed myself. Most of my adult life has been spent testing out and experimenting countless fitness methodologies filtering out and keeping the most productive methods that pay the most fitness dividends for my precious time invested and dumping those methods with the least value.
I pride myself on being a product of my own advice and the methods I practice enable me to be a powerfully active (often barefoot) man who will not go quietly into the sunset since I have learned how to age gracefully by adopting sane eating strategies, staying strong and lean, moving well and pain-free and conquering nasty fat. All without spending hours haunting gyms doing hours of sappy media endorsed low value exercises and gulping down expensive and questionable supplements.
While I share A Lot of tips, techniques, and fitness philosophy on my site, it is unrealistic to try to adopt it all into your fitness plan as we all have different health and fitness gaps in our programs we need to address. So take what you need to succeed even if it’s just one concept and fill your fitness gaps, dare to get out of your comfort zone and experience the thrill of doing what works and realizing your goals!
I eat T-Bone steaks and heft logs for weights!
Seven Stars Fitness