Last summer I did a recap, but this year it’s a preview! The 2nd Annual Lifetime Hunter Online Summit will be taking place on Friday, July 7 from 6:00-8:00pm. It’s one of the features of the Fit for the Field hunter conditioning course and it’s always great fun for me to connect with members of our team.
Similar to last year’s format, I’ll be providing a series of brief presentations on a number of topics but we’ll mainly be emphasizing engagement and Q & A. Fit for the Field participants who are unable to attend also have the availability of personal email coaching to augment their pre-season preparation. Here are a few of the subjects we’ll be covering.
The Hunter as Human History’s Original Athlete: No debate here, just a brief discussion of how hunters were the first expression of the human as an athletic beast. It was the pursuit and acquisition of game which allowed Homo habilis-erectus-sapiens to acquire the high-quality nutrition only provided by animal products. The meat, fat, and organs hunters procured led to the development of our large brains and essentially the evolution of our species as we know it today. We’ll recognize and celebrate that.
The Athletic Capacity Rating System (ACRS) Analysis of the Hunting Athlete: I’ll explain how the ACRS can be applied to the hunter, and identify the levels of strength, speed, power, agility, and endurance which are required for maximum performance. I use this system with every sport and athlete in my coaching stable, and hunters are no exception. It’s through this objective, scientific analysis that we can most effectively assess the athlete’s status and design the training to produce superior results.
Advanced Training for Lifetime Hunters: Taking athletes through beginner and intermediate stages is extremely rewarding. But the icing on the cake shows up when someone says “Wow, I feel fantastic and I’m getting amazing results…how can I tweak things to get a little more out of my programming?” You know I love this. High-level, motivated athletes both enjoy and benefit from guidance that helps them crush goals. Manipulating workload, training cycles, and exercises is the sauce. You gotta put in the work and earn the right to get here, but when you do…you become the leader.
Nutrition at Home and in the Field: This is such a great topic because the daily diet, around “everyday life” and training…may look a bit different than what a hunting athlete consumes in the field. Using an Earth-Based Diet (EBD) model, we make sure that nutrition fits the needs for fueling, recovery, body composition, and health. Understanding calories, macros, and feeding frequency is key. Calculating nutrient needs and selecting appropriate foods can make a huge difference in both performance and health.
Body Composition: Can you build muscle and lose fat at the same time? Well, yes…or maybe. Just like when we think of organizational productivity and brain function, it generally works best for humans to concentrate on only one thing at a time. Multitasking is known to be relatively inefficient and less effective in the workplace. It’s also true with metabolism. Sending mixed messages to the metabolism such as “train maximally but simultaneously get shredded” is what I call “metabolic multitasking.” It can work, but there is a real art form to balancing anabolic and catabolic processes to support high performance and concurrent fat loss. Bodybuilders have known forever that “bulking” and “cutting” work best as two separate phases, but we’ll explore the possibilities.
Injury Prevention: Consistently callusing the tissues is critical. Understanding workload as a product of intensity, volume, duration, frequency, and density is necessary. Adjusting the acute/chronic workload ratio and monitoring both key performance indicators (KPI’s) and recovery metrics/status do a lot to prevent breakdown. Addressing movement dysfunction and restoring MOVEMENTSMITH status to own every position and have mastery of motion in every direction gets it done. We always create intelligent, personalized programming which has killer training progressions along with the corrective interventions each unique human requires.
Injury Management: No matter how great your programming, stuff still happens. You can make some errors in training and get an overuse issue. You can have an accident that creates a temporary or permanent problem. There can be congenital issues, surgical history, etc. Two keys exist here. Good, full, and patient rehabilitation and the orthopedic workaround. We’ve got to be able to work around issues to maintain vitality and viability. There are always conditioning applications one can use when you are on the sidelines. If you are on the team…you still dress out for practice. No excuses and no exceptions.
Backpacks: We’ll dive into the ergonomics of this piece of kit. Fitting, loading, accessories, ruck training, and more. Along with boots, this is not an area to compromise. Investing in your pack pays back huge dividends. I can’t tell you how many people have expressed their surprise and joy when they upgraded to a premium pack. Trying to ruck with some P.O.S. bookbag that your daughter wore to 3rd grade just doesn’t cut it. No wonder they think rucking sucks and didn’t want to do it. Negative experiences reinforce themselves.
Clothing Systems: Base and insulation layers, shells, fabrics, features…there is a lot here. We’ll discuss some of the options that relate to temperature, terrain, hunting style, and fashion.
Footwear Considerations: Boots, training shoes, orthotics, socks, foot care. Along with packs, this is the place never to economize. Sacrifice your feet and you’ll be shut down. And foot strengthening should be a part of every hunter’s training.
Knives: I like a two-knife system in the field. One on my person and one in my pack. Sometimes more but always those. We’ll discuss fixed versus folders, types of knife steel, blade configurations, ergonomics, and more.
Hydration and Electrolytes: Using references such as the American College of Sports Medicine, we’ll talk about fluid intake and how that relates to activity level, temperature, and diet. Sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium also play a role and we’ll go over some effective practices. Filtration, purification, and storage also get some airtime.
Recovery: Well, conditioning is not just training. It’s the combined result of training plus recovery. It’s important to understand the difference between overtraining and under-recovering. There are a lot of “R” words here. Rest, recuperate, replenish, refresh, regenerate, rejuvenate…you get my point. Recovery is more than just the passage of time (although workout spacing is critically important), it’s practices like sleep, feeding, and modalities. All this is fair game (pun for hunters).
So those are the highlights of what we’ll be covering in the Summit. It will be a dynamic meeting so we don’t necessarily have to press hard (and painfully) to hit all these items because every FftF member can also get their questions and concerns answered with personalized email coaching. I’ve also gotten away from boring texticle-filled powerless/pointless presentations. Just a few pictures, a couple stories, and a little humor. You deserve to be entertained as much as educated. I’ll do my best.
Thanks for checking this out. If you’re an athletic hunter and you’re interested in Fit for the Field…give it a look. If you’re not a hunter (we welcome non-hunters but anti-hunters should get the hell out), I hope you’ve gotten a look into how we do our work with backcountry athletes but also how this approach is used with mountain bikers, skiers, triathletes, and others. Keep enjoying your summer!