Some people go to the gym to sculp their bodies. Some of those people even practice looking muscley in the gym’s mirrors. But that’s not me.
Some people go to the gym to live a long life free from heart disease and other ailments caused by carrying too much extra weight. Again, that’s not why I go to the gym.
I go to the gym with only one goal: to be in good shape for hunting. Granted, there are quite a few different types of hunting, and I need to be in shape for all of them, so I’ve crafted a workout program that gets me ready for anything I might encounter while I’m hunting.
There’s the stair-climber workout, which can be done with a backpack when the season starts to get closer, to emulate climbing mountain after mountain in search of elk. That’s one of the staple routines of the workout program. You can never get too much hill-climbing practice in. Then I move over to the weights, where I have several exercises specifically for hunting. There are upper-body and core lifts that help me draw my bow or steady my rifle; hoist a pack or a carcass quarter onto my back; or sit up and lie back down when I’m hunting geese in a corn field. The lower-body work focuses on getting my legs strong enough to carry me and a heavy pack deep into the backcountry and back.
And then there’s the treadmill work. That’s to simulate walking mile after mile on the prairie looking for antelope or kicking up pheasants. And I can kick the speed up to a sprint to work on escaping from bears I might blunder into.
I should start my own gym, catering to hunters. I probably wouldn’t get rich, but at least I’d stay in good hunting shape.
