In Part One of this article (posted on May 16th) I tried to emphasize the importance of strength and what roles it played in survival. I want to reiterate that strength is the cornerstone of all human physical ability. The stronger you are the faster you can run, the further you can jump, and the harder you can hit. However strength is not everything and being satisfied with only developing strength is like only focusing on purchasing guns for your SHTF scenario, it’s very one dimensional. After a period of time, up to a year, it would be wise to take some time off of hard strength training by stepping into a program that will maximize your ability to maintain the strength you’ve worked so hard to obtain while at the same time developing other necessary physical attributes like speed, agility, coordination, balance, and endurance. This is much easier said than done since the ability to run long distances (i.e. more than 5 km at a go) and be very strong (Dead lifting double your bodyweight) are generally mutually exclusive in their training methods. Long runs are usually performed at a pace that isn’t challenging enough to induce an adaptation, but is challenging enough to compromise our ability to recover from your heavy lifting workouts. Despite the inherent difficulty in programming for strength maintenance and proper conditioning it is a fairly simple process.
During your time gaining strength you will have probably noticed that you were very hungry and ate everything that stood still long enough for you to catch and shove in your mouth (at least if you were doing it correctly). It is understandable and desirable that you will probably put on a healthy amount of body fat while developing strength and building muscle. I would hate to think that anyone would be put off of a strength building program because of a little body fat accumulation, especially since a healthy amount of body fat is necessary for survival. Some of the first people to fall out of a long walk/patrol, and some of the first to starve to death, are the people who have those well defined “six pack” abdominal muscles. It is nearly impossible to maintain physical effort for long periods of time without a store of body fat for our internal systems to derive energy from. That is why in my first installment I recommended that people of certain heights weigh certain amounts. In my opinion, any man above 5’10” tall and weighing less than 200 lbs is underweight.
It is a shame that all of the so called health magazines and publications today are urging people to become skinnier and skinnier when, in most Third World countries and most of western history, burly men and curvy women are the most desirable and the healthiest. It is a shame that we have been led to believe that if we cannot see our abdominal muscles that we are overly fat. We have been led to believe that if a woman weighs more than 110 lbs that she is fat, and that a man who weighs more than 180 lbs is either a muscle head or a fat body. The fact of the matter is that it is very difficult for a man to maintain a low enough body fat percentage to see his abs year round. It was easy for Gerard Butler and the rest of those “Spartans” [in the movie 300
I want to take the time now to say that this is not meant to give anyone cart blanche permission to pig out and get as fat as possible. There should be a relation between how much you weigh and how strong you are. If the numbers on the scale keep going up and the numbers on the bar don’t, then you are probably eating too much junk food and not lifting hard enough. I urge you to take this seriously because it won’t do you any good to be as strong as an ox only to die of a heart attack from all the Ho-Hos and Cheese Wiz. We always have to pay attention to the law of diminishing returns. At some point we all have to admit that the amount of ammo we have stored is hurting our ability to store food, and there’s also a time when we must realize we have gotten as big and strong as we need to be and now it’s time for a jog. If it’s hard to get in and out of your car, the waitresses at the buffet put on riot helmets when you walk in, small children simply point and stare when you say hello, and you become short of breath while combing your hair you have, my friend, violated the law of diminishing returns.
Now that we have gotten that out of the way how do we address our need for development of all the physical attributes that will help increase our chances of survival? As I said before it is a simple process, but it is not easy. There is simply no substitute for hard work and hard work is what we will have to resign ourselves to if we want to have the highest possible chance of survival. Again I want to say that it is the simple and the basic that will help get us to our goals, not the complex and the complicated.
Pareto’s Principle– more commonly known as the 80/20 rule–states that we will get 80% of our results from 20% of our effort. If we can master the basic 20%, we will already be above the curve. What I mean when I refer to simple is this: basic compound movements that involve as much of the body at one time at possible. There are many different modes that we may use to achieve the results we need and want, however we all need to remember that our bodies develop specific adaptations to specific demand (you can’t get stronger without picking up heavy objects, and you cannot become a better runner without running), and so we need to identify not only what we most enjoy doing but what we see as a real possibility in a SHTF / TEOTWAWKI scenario.
There are five basic spheres of athletic development: strength, speed, balance, agility, and endurance. Yes there are other sphere’s I could name like coordination or power, but they are simply combinations or abstractions of the core qualities in my basic list (power is the combination of speed and strength and coordination is the combination of balance and agility). Balance and flexibility are more than taken care of while performing your daily exercises if you perform them with a full range of motion. We have already discussed strength at length, so that leaves us with speed and endurance.
Speed and endurance are mutually exclusive concepts. I say this because you cannot run fast for very long, and you cannot run long very fast. However they can be trained at the same time if some care is given to the division of labor during the week. I want to caution here that endurance does not simply mean the ability to run for long distances. Endurance is the ability to sustain prolonged stressful effort or activity. We must train for more than just endurance running. Speed carries the same stigma in that when I say speed, most people think of running. Did you know that jumping is a product of speed? The ability to jump relies on how fast we activate a muscle. Olympic lifting is also a product of speed (married with copious amounts of strength). So when we think of endurance we must think in a three dimensional manner.
Speed is developed simply by doing things fast and explosively, while endurance is developed by doing things for longer than you would normally enjoy. If you enjoy running then you can simply split your runs into fast run (i.e. 100, 200, 400, 800 meter sprints), and long runs (I would recommend no more than 5-to-10 km). Hiking and heavy Ruck marches are very applicable and functional ways to develop survival endurance. Pushing a car is another good way to develop functional endurance. Laying down on the ground, either on your stomach or back, and seeing how fast you can achieve a standing position (or a shooting position) is a very functional way to develop some practical speed (I call these Pop Ups). Long hill runs, or fast hill runs, are amazingly effective ways to develop serious endurance and speed, respectively. Exercises like star jumps, burpees, mountain climbers, plyometric pushups, deck squats, box squat, and box jumps all can be used to develop both muscular endurance and speed. Basically any exercise, even weight lifting exercises, can be used to develop speed or endurance, its simple the volume that determines what adaptation is encouraged.
On a day that we choose to work on speed development we will be placing a lot of stress on our central nervous system, since this is the part of our physiology most responsible for speed development. When we place a lot of stress on our central nervous system it is harder on the body and thus harder to recover from. This is solved by simply doing less. While it’s okay for us to run 5 miles at an 8mph pace, doing that at a 15 mph pace would kill us. If we are going to run as fast as possible we must only run as much as we need to, and no further. Never do a speed exercise to your limit because it will hinder your training for up to a week, so stressful is this training on the body. For instance, most Olympic sprinters and Olympic weight lifters training sessions are frequent but they are very, very short. A good way to measure your speed workouts is by your actual speed; when you can no longer perform your chosen exercise as quickly as when you started it is time to call it a day. You must also take large rest periods because you want each effort to be a maximum effort. For instance, let’s say you decide to perform five 100 meter dashes’ for your workout. It would be a good idea to take a five minute break between efforts, so that you may maximize each one. After your fifth sprint, go home and rest. If you chose something like Star Jumps or Burpee’s, it is a simple matter to perform X number of the movement every 30 seconds and then rest for 1 minute. The first time that you fail to complete X number of reps in the given 30 seconds the workout is over.
Endurance is probably the simplest and most difficult to train because it takes a lot of time if done improperly. I don’t know many people who have the time to run or hike 10+ miles per day, and I can’t imagine dedicating 1-2 hours of my life every day to endurance training. However it is very simple to develop endurance without taking unholy amounts of time. Running is a fairly simple exercise, which is why a well trained person is able to do it for an hour or more at a go. However if you add in a few steep hills what was an hour long run only takes 20-30 minutes. From personal experience a 30 minute hill run makes the occasional one-hour flat runs a breeze. You could also add weight to your runs, turning them into hikes or ruck marches. These will typically be long workouts, and can last up to 20 miles for people who can really focus themselves. It is good to perform a long workout once every couple of weeks so you know what it feels like, but it isn’t necessary every day, or even every week. You can easily sustain your endurance with 5 km runs or less, 10 km hikes, and appropriate weightlifting and callisthenic exercises. For instance, have you ever tried to do 20-30 full depth squats with your bodyweight on the bar? I can tell you from personal experience that I have never seen someone do this without meeting Jesus (the praying starts around rep 12). These are a good way to develop endurance. Remember Dan John, whom I mentioned in my last article? He once, on a bet, squatted 300 lbs 61 times without putting the bar down. Doesn’t that sound like functional endurance?
When it comes to programming, your imagination is your only limit. I would however caution that working out more than four times per week is usually counterproductive. Here are a couple of sample weeks in what I would call a typical training plan:
Week One:
Monday: Heavy Day, Dead lifts and Military Presses. 1×5, 1×3, 1×2 (sets x reps)
Tuesday: 5km run, 8 minute mile pace
Wednesday: rest
Thursday: Sprints, 5x200m
Friday: rest
Saturday: Bodyweight training (various callisthenic exercises, like Pop Ups, Star Jumps, Sit-ups, Pushups, etc)
Week Two:
Monday: 10km run, 8 minute mile pace
Tuesday: rest
Wednesday: Heavy Day, Squats and Weighted Pull-ups. 1×5, 1×3, 1×2 (sets x reps)
Thursday: Calisthenics for 20 minutes
Friday: rest
Saturday: Hill Sprints, 5×40 seconds
This is just a sample program format that can be used. I would recommend at least 48 hours of rest between a heavy lifting day and a sprinting day. Long runs and calisthenics days can be treated as “easy” days where the work can be done at a moderately challenging pace. Your calisthenics days may also replace your sprinting days if you want to or need to. Just remember that speed is fast, hard, and short while endurance is slow, moderate, and long.
I sincerely hope that this has helped with your survival preparedness. It’s folly to spend so much time and money making sure we have enough if we aren’t willing to invest some time and money into our own health and well being to insure that we are able to use and enjoy what we have set aside. Physical health should definitely take top priority in our list of prep needs, simply because none of our food, water, and ammo will matter one whit if we die of a heart attack or stroke, or are crippled by mistreated and unused joints, muscles, and ligaments. No matter who you are or where you physical health is right now, you can do something to improve your situation. For some it will start with a walk around the block, for others who have been doing this for while it may mean a new challenge on the horizon. At one time in all our lives we all had to face the reality of needing to prepare and not knowing where to start. Those who have been preparing for years know that the most important thing is to just start and worry about the details along the way. It’s the same with our physical health; the most important thing is to start. Whether prepping or training or exercising, I think we can all agree that if you haven’t already, now is the time to start.
JWR Adds: All the usual disclaimer about rapid changes to your exercise schedule and consulting a physician apply.