Physical Prepping

Physical fitness is not a big subject in many prepping books I have read and the videos I have seen. You will likely read/hear about food and water storage and making a fire and a lean-to, but next to nothing will be dedicated to discussing training to walk for miles (On a bugout or evacuation route) while towing your families’ bugout gear off-road. Have you ever read or heard about the importance of conditioning your body to work effectively with little or no food and water so that your family can stay fed without you being a liability to them? How about having to carry or tow a loved one for miles because they are having trouble keeping up? Just because you have the guns and gadgets does not mean that you are above having to do physical tasks when things go wrong. Batteries run out, resources get consumed, but there is almost always going to be a task that will require you to use muscular force and/or endurance to lift, hold, bend, twist, pry, push, pull, snatch, throw, sweep, swing, etc. Why not Prepare?

DOES IT EVEN MATTER?

​Do you really have to prepare physically to survive? According to the small sample of people I have asked, most said that they will just deal with the challenges when the time comes. Though I am sure that these people can make it through the rough times, being fit for those times can certainly help make life a bit easier, depending on your plan and the situations you find yourself in. One thing I tell people is to think about the hardest physical challenges they may encounter and train for that. For some, that means prepping to carry all your gear, tow a sled, and carry an injured child for miles. For others, that may mean simply walking up a single set of stairs with a big box of supplies to refill your pantry or kitchen cabinets. It all depends on your plan and the contingencies you have planned for, if any. Will stronger legs or forearms really make the difference for your plan? How about a stronger core and shoulders? What muscles do you think will help you perform your daily and emergency tasks when disaster strikes? You don’t have to do fitness training, but I think of it as something that will make things easier in the long run. Depending on your prepping plan, you may benefit heavily from physical training while another guy/gal in another city may not benefit much at all. Hopefully your decision is not based on what will be easiest for you, but rather what will be best for the family.

DEFINING FITNESS

​Fitness for disasters or WROL is not about growing the size of the body, but rather about expanding its capability. Having a killer set of abs and boulder shoulders doesn’t help us if we can’t do basic things like haul gear for long distances safely, carry buckets of water repeatedly upstairs to keep the indoor plumbing going, or go a couple days without food to make sure your family eats. Fitness means being conditioned for a certain activity or rhythm, not just looking a certain way. A professional swimmer and boxer not only look different in physique, but also have different goals and routines in order to condition themselves to perform their specific job, and the same applies to everyone prepping. Someone prepping to bugout of Manhattan will have a different conditioning routine and focus when compared to someone prepping to bug-in off-grid in the mountains in Alaska. Your routine and focus will also vary based on your skills such as security, communications, sewing, construction, medical, etc. Some may require you to be more physically prepared or conditioned while others may require more mental preparation and conditioning.

COMPOUND VS ISOLATION TRAINING

​Should you focus on one muscle group at a time, or work as many as possible? Personally, I would say to perform compound training whenever you can, and then train on specific muscle groups when you find a weakness that is hurting your performance. The compound lifts should be as close to the movements, lifts, or holds that you are preparing to conduct when things get bad. For example, if you are training to hike miles with a pack on, you may find that you have a weakness in the left leg Quadriceps. To correct this, you can perform a few sets of slow pistol/archer squats on the left leg after doing your compound exercise. Unless there is a need to strengthen a particular muscle or side, I prefer to stick to compound lifts and movements. Now let us get into a few exercises you can do that will have multiple direct and indirect/sympathetic benefits.

OFFSET FARMERS CARRY

​In almost any disaster situation, you can expect to have to carry, handle/use, move, or hold heavy objects with your hands and move them with your legs. You use your hands and legs for everything from dressing, shooting, to manipulating the environment around you in your daily life, and will likely find yourself using muscle more than electric hardware to barricade entry points, build simple machines, fix things, carry/move supplies, etc. The offset farmers walk is one of the most efficient workouts you can do for conditioning the legs, grip, core, shoulders, and biceps. You can do them with a dumbbell, kettle bell, sandbag, bucket of rocks/sand, etc. The idea is to hold a respectable amount of weight on one side at a time and carry it for as long as possible whilst keeping yourself upright and balanced. This exercise is not only stupid simple, but it has a positive effect on several important muscle groups when done with good technique. Do this exercise for as long as you can and then rotate hands. If you can do this exercise at least once a day, that would be terrific for your physical development.

​Now let’s talk “technique” for the offset farmers walk. Never let your arm lock out or your shoulder droop, but rather try to keep the base of your hand up at belt level or just below and out about 6 inches. This is so you are not just dangling the weight and putting strain on the shoulder/elbow or resting the weight on your body. You must stay erect and stand tall from the waist up, but bend the legs at the knees & hips and never let them lockout at the knees, even while taking steps forward. This is done by taking slightly shorter steps and lowering yourself slightly. If you have to wear somewhat short shorts and watch yourself in a mirror to be sure you are keeping your legs bent, do so. Yes, your knees are worth this level of attention to detail. I cannot stress enough how important it is to be nice to your knees by bending your legs and KEEPING THEM BENT whenever possible, even outside of workouts and carrying loads. Leave the heavy lifting and loading to the muscles and the bearing to the joints.

TIME UNDER RUCK

​Many who have served in the military have sore opinions of walking with a ruck on for miles and miles. You may be interested to know that walking at a brisk pace with a heavy backpack is becoming more popular as a faster way to get cardio conditioning while also building leg and back muscles. The main goal is to get used to walking a long distance with a good amount of weight (at least 50 pounds). At some point during a disaster, you may have to go on foot and take a decent amount of stuff with you. Perhaps your vehicle breaks down, you bug out, whatever the case may be. You should be able to haul a good amount of weight for AT LEAST a couple of hours without rest twice a week, or more. Do the best you can, as often as you can, and if it gets too easy, add weight. Short steps and gliding while crouching slightly is a great idea, but don’t drag your feet. Try walking fast, silent, and even over things with a pack on.

​While conducting this training, worry more about the time you have the weight on rather than the distance you cover. This way you focus on adapting to the weight and not trying to shorten the time it takes to get to point A to point B at the expense of your safety. Do not take this to mean you should just casually walk around with a ruck on. Instead, you should be walking like you have somewhere to be and not too much time to get there. There will be times when running or even jogging is needed, so feel free to practice doing that, but without breaching the technique guidelines of not straightening your legs. Also, be realistic and keep your head up and constantly watching around you, even when jogging with a ruck. What is the point of having the ability to haul weight if you are blind to your surroundings and walk into an ambush or into an aggressive animal? Keep your head and eyes up and alert as you move.

STAIRS AND STAIRS

​One of my personal favorite workouts for warming up or just getting conditioned is stairs. You don’t have to run them, but if you walk up and down for as long and as fast as you can without using the guardrail, you can extract some pretty awesome benefits. Some of the benefits you can get from unassisted stairs is ankle stability and strength, leg strength, cardiovascular endurance, core stability, and mental toughness. You can add a backpack to add to the challenge, but usually doing stairs alone will be enough of a challenge for people that do not walk a lot in their daily lives. The only technique to discuss is to not use a rail and to focus on moving faster and for longer. If it is too easy, you can always just throw on some weight to shorten the workout and to improve your leg strength and endurance.

ISOMETRICS FOR THE WIN

Isometric training is actually a broad and generalized term to cover training that involves static resistant training. Isometric training can have a lot of physical benefits for you if they are done at the right frequency, time under tension, and with the correct angle and technique depending on the goal. Generally speaking, a lot of the manual labor we do with our hands can be improved with isometric training since most of what our hands do is isometric to begin with. When you saw wood manually, carry a heavy object a long distance, or aim a rifle/pistol, you are doing an isometric. Because of how much there is to know about isometrics, I will simply link HERE to my video about isometrics and how they can benefit you. Isometrics can be trained daily and can be combined with your normal range of motion workouts to provide a warmup and/or afterburn affect. I prefer to conduct them as a warmup or on their own in order to get the maximum benefit of working the targeted muscle groups while they are fresh. Your specific preference may vary from mine once you figure out what your goals are and how to reach them.

WRAPUP

​In this article, I wanted to introduce you to the concept of physically prepping. As I said in the beginning, people will generally know to collect food and water, but will neglect to physically condition themselves for the events they are preparing for. Whether it is prepping for the next tornado, a mass economic disaster, or the zombie apocalypse, you will only be helping yourself when you take it upon yourself to get fit and stay fit based on your skills, abilities, and what you’re are prepping for.