My workout routine is gardening followed by fire wood...and occasionally swinging a hammer for the cross training. No pain, no gain. Im all buff by harvest time

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I'm doing a walking routine, walked 50 miles last week, getting in my minimum 10,000 steps a day (5 miles). Looking forward to spring, started indoor seed planting for garden, always more active once spring gets here.

So When I get out I like to keep it in the forest settings to have my feet walk over roots, ruts, rocks etc. You can't get this on a treadmill or stair master kind of workout and therefore I bring it up as to why I like this approach. I don't get to do it as much as I like but every time out I think of posting this therefore I am, so forgive me if some feel its not too important because it sure is for me anyway.

I think the fitness aspect is important, and the useful fitness just like you're talking about here. I noticed even when I was younger and running on the same sloped roads in the Marines that when backpacking season started, I'd get the ankle and knee pains because my body wasn't used to it.

I tend to walk in the woods as much as possible (because the view is better and it doesn't feel like exercise) and take the dirt trails and cut through the deer trails at parks, making sure to hit some hills. I also make a concerted effort to use the hills beside our sidewalks at home, both because concrete is killing my knees (too much abuse) and because come winter, I really appreciate having ankles strong enough to catch me at odd angles as I go slip-sliding across some slushy icy patch.

I also do a lot of senior center type stretches, not just the pre and post workout stretches. I have some that are daily requirements to keep an old injury limber, but others were added on because as we stop playing softball and hanging from monkey bars, we slowly get less and less mobile. Apparently, doing a whole bunch of stretches - the long kind that actually work the tendons and ligaments, not just the muscles - can help limit forming and future arthritis and old-age stiffness. We'll see.

I swim mostly for exercise-exercise. No impact, helps with some of the limbering up, good full body workout and I can tailor parts here and there to work specific body groups or protect the parts that were abused early.

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Hello all

If you plan on bugging out practice long distance walking with your bug out bag and your SHTF boots. Get your body used to walking with a lot of weight or fatigue will be a problem. I mentioned boots because your boots need to be worn in and you also have to keep your feet in shape or else the blisters will stop you in your tracks. Maintaining a good level of fitness will give you the edge you need to survive.

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Fitness is incredibly important in a SHTF situation, more so than in regular life. I enjoy running, but haven't been doing so lately. Will hopefully get back to it this spring. However, my kids and I have started taking karate and I am starting kickboxing. This means gaining fitness and physical strength, as well as self-defense skills. My girls and I also hike a lot in the spring, summer, and fall and this summer I plan on getting us to increase our hiking stamina immensely.

You are all very right on what it can be like in SHTF when you are not used to the amount of physical exertion the body needs to do. I have learned that and hopefully overcome the worst of it with karate and kickboxing. I took my first karate class on a Friday at lunch time and the next day, was hiking through the deep snow with a bunch of Girl Guides. I did the same thing later that afternoon. This hiking took place when I would have been getting sore muscles from the karate. By the Saturday evening I could barely walked and learned how much a body can hurt. After my first kickboxing class it wasn't so bad, but the tops of my feet took a beating because they weren't used to kicking the bag. However, I found that I pulled something in my abdomen; not badly, but it's taken a few days to feel better. So much abdominal exercise, which is very important when carrying heavy packs, and wasn't used to it. One day, I'll have abs of steel LOL.

Suffice it to say that you do NOT want to feel the way I felt after that first karate day after you have had a day of physical exertion when the SHTF. That would not be good because you'd be a sitting duck. Better to get to it now, so that later you'll be prepared for anything.

I kinda ignored this one since physical fitness was the first form of prepping I got into, bout ten years ago. Haha I spent years on a forum teaching people. I've done everything weight lifting, power lifting, olympic lifting, gymnastics, calisthenics, combat conditioning, cardio, boxing, whatever...

Running I think is the most important to prepping(think about the video of that Vietnamese girl running from napalm attacks with skin hanging off of her back, because I don't think there is a more immediate need to bug out than a napalm attack) though people get confused about running for the most part. I will ONLY run for time, not distance. Building the tendon and bone strength and integrity is the most important.

I also studied how to keep in top condition(speed, strength, and endurance) with no equipment whatsoever, good for harsh times, minimal maintenance, time and effort.

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Does shivering count as exercise?

I've got to get a handle on this as well. I'm 40. I tend to work, as a workout. So, over winter I don't exercise much at all (aside from shoveling and toting water in the barn) and then come warmer weather it's all GO-GO-GO-GO.

After the initial sunburned crispiness, the immense soreness for the first week or so from pulling, lifting, bending, reaching, and pushing and the grumbling about getting a handle on it next year...wait, where was I going with this.

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Very true man, my friends keep asking me how to get in shape. This is my expertise in prepperdom, I should be stepping up, in truth, because I'm pretty sure most people don't do anything.

There are exercises for every situation. There is staying in shape before and after the plight that would change your way of life. In most cases weights would be avoided. Don't get me wrong, I love free weights, heavy bags of sand, lifting logs and all that stuff. But the fatigue on your CNS is too great.

When you put on a lot of muscle mass, you're weaker than everyone else. You need more food to stay alright, and in the end you are taking that food from those you love. These are the rules. So the strength you should develop should not depend upon calorie absorption, it should be tendon and ligament based.

Calisthenics
1)Pushups
2)pullups and chinups
3)squats

Exercise is like anything else, the basic, simplest form, without all the gimmicks and tricks is the most foolproof, most reliable most adaptive, and most trainable to others. Now these can be altered to make them much more difficult, to develop strength as opposed to strength-endurance. Say...

Diamond Pushups
close grip Divebomber pushups
wide grip pullups
Hanging leg raises(off a chinup bar)

Conditioning
1)Burpees
2)Running
3)Shadowboxing

Burpees are physically the most exhausting thing you can do. They are violent, and if you try to do them for the first time, upon jumping up, you are gonna gag and vomit your morning coffee from lack of oxygen. This exercise MIMICS RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE. Do them for time, I used to do 100 for time. They are designed to make you weak, make your muscles work together, create explosiveness under fatigue. Your body toughens up immensely. These will teach you to breathe under the threat of shock, how to regulate your breathing under tremendous stress.

Running is the best and basic. It is the foundation of any combat regimen, boxing or military, and has been for, I think over a century, with reason. If you can run for ten minutes you can run for hours. It's a good skill to have, to be able to run, but don't get confused and think if you don't run for however long it's no good. RUN FOR TIME! When you get your runners on, set your timer for five minutes and run as far away from your house as you can. When the time is up, reset it the same time try to BEAT YOUR OWN TIME, and run back to your house. Always make it an uphill battle. Variation is the major strength of running. Whether it's an all or nothing sprint or a slow jog. Do both, from time to time.

Shadowboxing is self explanatory. If you don't know any better, two left jabs, right straight, left hook, right uppercut, left hook, right hay-maker. These will prepare the muscles and tendons in your neck and back to handle the shock of explosive combat, so that when the time comes you will not throw anything out. A lot of this is built on muscle memory, so 5-10 sessions, the familiarity will be there. Do shadowboxing after your calisthenics. Always after. This is because, you want to work speed AFTER you do heavier exercises. A lot of combatants do the opposite, but they're wrong. If you lift heavy loads, then train speed, imagine how fast you would be if you didn't lift the heavy load first.

Core Strength
Abdominals
1)L-sit
2)Extended plank
Back
3)superman
4)back bridge

These will prevent you from throwing your back out in the worst possible scenario. They will keep the tendons in your back and hips loose and limber, ready to adapt most jobs. They will also keep your posture upright so you can handle the weight of your bugout bag over many km. Look up these exercises, no point in prepping without a foundation to prep on.

Hi, I'm new to the forums. I believe very strongly that the best preps you can do are the ones that don't require purchasing anything, because those are the most sustainable ones, and anyone can get healthy without a budget.

Fitness should be #1 for prepping, even before going out to buy the first bag of food or bottle of water.

Singlecell, have you served by any chance? I ask because you almost listed off my exact training regimen. Lots of running, push-ups, pull-ups, squats, burpees and boxing. I come from a military family, and I followed in their footsteps. My dad's philosophy was that you can get a full workout in a 8 ft x 8 ft space, no equipment. He had to do that in the navy. High knees, jumping jacks, burpees, push-ups (diamond, clipped, wide, claps, knuckles, knuckle claps, waist, hindu, shoulder, negative, etc), abdominals, handstand presses, squats, lunges, twist lunges, etc.