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First, I must state that I am not a licensed physical therapist or personal trainer.  You may be expecting some type of disclaimer of “consult a physician before starting an exercise program” fame.  Nope.  The way I look at it is, I am that physician giving out helpful, free medical advice for prepping–so take it or leave it.  Much of this article references my life and personal experience, and for that you will either be impressed by the thoughtful, personal example; or you will be disgusted and bored by my shameless self-talk.  For this I am sorry; but I try very hard to do as I tell others to do as an example rather than a hypocrite.  WTSHTF, everyone’s lives will be very different except for those few amazing and blessed humans out there like this blog’s editor.  (Their lives are already very different!)  This article is written for the rest of us.  The overweight family practice doctor from the Ozarks that thinks he’s too busy to exercise (ouch, that one hits close).  The housewife jogger that puts in her 2.5 miles every weekday on the treadmill.  The responsible mom with the most awesome pantry–but also 30 extra pounds of “softness” to carry.  The 60 year old guy that is an awesome shot, but also an awesome beer drinker that can’t walk up a hill carrying a load without nearly dying.  The list of my friends and family could go on for a long time; but we all know who we are:  American preppers.  We are just like most Americans–eating too much junk food, fast food, and having the best intentions to improve our fitness after everything else on the list has been checked off.  The list you have isn’t going away and if you count yourself among this group of American preppers—the time is now.

My time as a Cross Country runner, wrestler, 5K road racer, Air Force Officer, and physician has certainly been enough training and education in fitness.  I was buff in the past–with 8-pack abs and definition.  I could run 10 miles in less than a hour without difficulty.  I could squat and bench my weight.  But, it all came at a price.  Time mostly, pain too.  I spent hours and hours a week away from my family working out.  Something else always is sacrificed.  I was injured often by overuse and over-training.  Sore shoulders, knees, ankles and hips became fairly normal in my day to day life.  Finally, I had a psoas muscle tear in 2005 that gave us quite a scare as they thought I might have a tumor instead of just a simple overuse injury.  (Little did they know how hard I was training).  After the blood was reabsorbed and I could walk again after my brief stay in a wheelchair, my wife banned me from running.  At that time, I was quite sure that she could be persuaded or ignored in the future, so I wasn’t too worried.  Time and age have softened me to my current pudgy standing, but the knowledge and will is still there to get buff again.  I would often sneak in running trials and then my wife would catch me and lecture until I submitted to her will.  Then, over time, I began to think a lot about what the point of being fit was.  Did I really want to be cut again?  Was it worth the pain and time?  No, it was not.  There were much more pressing concerns that continued to niggle at my brain.  Suddenly, TEOTWAWKI fitness planning seemed so obvious to me.  Train for what you expect in the future, and don’t worry about anything else…genius!
 
Where to start?  Start at the beginning.  (Real original, eh?)  Seriously though, sit down and make a plan for TEOTWAWKI fitness.  THIS IS DIFFERENT THAN OTHER FITNESS PLANNING!  Everyone can lose weight and get in better shape, but this is not the point of TEOTWAWKI fitness.  The point will be survival.  Plain and simple–survival.  No one cares how fast you can run or how much you can bench when we are all hungry, dirty, smelly and worried about our futures.  So, my suggestion is to sit down with the members of your group or family and actually have a discussion about the “grid down” situation first.  Where would you likely be?  Where would you need to get to?  What if there was NO transportation?  Where is your nearest water supply?  What will you eat?  What will you do if it is the height of summer’s heat, or the depths of winter’s cold?  Do you have clothing for both extremes with you in your BOB or vehicle–and will you be able to get to it?  Perhaps you can start to appreciate where I am going with this.  Jogging and eating protein bars is not adequate preparation.  Make a plan for your fitness based on your individual responsibilities WTSHTF.  When I sat down with my wife and talked about this issue, I realized that I could facing a 220 mile hike to get back to her and the family.  My first fitness priority became:  getting in shape for hiking home.  What is your challenge when the grid goes down?
 
Look at your biggest fitness challenge in a post-grid world and make your fitness plan to fit that challenge.  For me, walking and jogging is easy.  I have no major health problems or joint issues.  I am overweight, but not to the point of health concerns.  But, putting on my BOB and hiking up and down the hills is a much bigger challenge than a simple 4 mile walk.  Having to do that hike 54 times in a row is a sobering thought.  And, more importantly, you learn a lot about the problems with your plan and your gear.  I found out that I need a little towel at the small of my back or my pants will fill with sweat.  I learned that if I continue my typical slouchy posture while wearing my BOB my neck really starts to hurt, but by focusing on a more “military stance” and tightening my waist belt and loosening my chest belt, my neck is much better on a longer hike.  I discovered that getting a good filter straw was a far superior idea compared to carrying 2 gallons of water at a time.  I now know that carrying larger volumes of dehydrated and freeze-dried foods beats MREs in my BOB.  The short socks I usually favor did not adequately cover my legs and caused chaffing from my boots, prompting me to buy some of the calf-length ones for my BOB.  I probably could have gained enlightenment about all these issues by thinking, reading, and theorizing–but nothing beats real-life application.  With some of these simple changes to my BOB, it is much lighter and I can hike much farther now on the same energy; and as I continue to “practice” hiking with my gear on and my BOB loaded I expect that the 54 4-mile hikes will seem more doable.
 
But, this is just my fitness plan for TEOTWAWKI, it is not yours.  Go back to the list and the “grid down discussion”.  Perhaps you have not really made a good water harvesting plan.  Mine involves rain water collection, but if there is a prolonged drought the back-up plan is the half-mile hike through some pretty rough woods downhill and then back uphill with a heavy load of water.  My current BOB hiking training will prepare me for that mile round-trip well.  Maybe your water harvest could be improved by building a pulley system and so you need to climb some trees and get the lines hung.  That’s a good workout, so get it done instead of going to the gym to work on your definition.  Maybe you need more reliable equipment for water hauling, but you won’t know that until you put your new “fitness thinking” into a plan.  Water being the first step to survival, someone in your group or family needs to take on this fitness challenge.  Water is heavy and usually a hill is involved, sometimes a cliff or drop.  Maybe you need to have a simple “bucket rope” suspended over the 15 foot drop at your local water source instead of the slippery adventure at the shoreline.  Building it may prevent an injury later and if nothing else would make your job much less difficult.
 
Food should be another focus of fitness planning.  Gardening without power tools and gas is hard.  Takes a lot of prep work and can cause lots of blisters and sore spots.  Someone can be in charge of this part of your groups’ planning and again–practice.  Real life raking of leaves in the fall can build hand strength and calluses.  Turning the soil in the winter (latitude dependent) or the compost pile can keep your hands, arms and shoulders in shape.  Digging holes for fruit trees in the fall is excellent training.  Spring tilling can be grueling if you haven’t been able to (due to snow and/or ice) or you just haven’t.  Prepare accordingly doing the activities during the “off” season that you will need to do in the “on” season.  Gardening in one thing, hunting is another.  As every good hunter will tell you:  the kill is the easy part.  Field dressing and hauling a large animal out of the woods is a real test of your fitness.  Practice makes perfect, or at least practice helps prepare you for the haul out with meat for the group.  If you are unable to hunt regularly enough to build fitness, perhaps drag a large and heavy pack through the property for a hour weekly.  Whatever seems to be the most realistic substitute for the real thing you should try to do now.
 
Maybe your fitness concern is the need for security.  You have “plans” for patrolling the perimeter of your property.  Time to do instead of plan.  Don’t just patrol, wear real-life gear and if at all possible carry real-life security measures.  Not always possible and not always a good idea (as you may look like the kind of nut your locals don’t approve of), but my plan if the local law enforcement decides to stop and question the nut in camo walking in the dark with a big pack on through the town is to use the “practicing for hunting season” line.  Usually there is something coming up that makes sense, currently deer season.  Closer to Spring it will be turkey season.  Camping trip coming up with the family is always a good one.  My personal approach is keeping a low profile, but perhaps you live in a more “prepper-friendly” area and you could just tell the truth.  Practicing your combat position drops with your gear on is a great way to condition too, the more real-world practice the more muscle memory you will retain.
 
Another thing to consider when doing your fitness planning is wood harvesting.  If you are going to use wood for heating or cooking, someone has to get it.  At first, most wood will be in the woodpile or close to the house.  The next wood gathered will be deadfall that is in an ever increasing radius from you.  Not much of a challenge really so far.  But, after using much more wood than you are used to, it will quickly disappear and your will be forced to gather wood from standing trees in short order.  Cutting down a dead tree with a chainsaw is one thing, cutting a live tree down with a handsaw is another completely.  Now that’s a fitness challenge if you have ever attempted to do so.  Again, practice makes perfect.  I recommend cutting some live trees down now to age on the ground to make cutting a splitting in the future easier while giving you the necessary muscle challenge that you will face more regularly in the future.  Leaving deadwood standing while thinning out live trees may seem nuts now, but if you need them later you will be very thankful.  Splitting is a completely different fitness challenge, and the more regularly you can split smaller amounts, the better trained you will be.  Don’t take a weekend and split a cord, take 1/4 cord on weekly.  When swinging an axe, you want to make sure you have not only some strength but also good control, for obvious reasons.  If you are lucky enough to have all the gas and hydraulics you need to help with you splitting, make sure you have enough to last many years, or convert to some work by hand now so you can build the strength and skill necessary to get the job done.
 
You may notice two glaring omissions from these fitness recommendations:  diet and workouts.  Dieting is unnecessary in TEOTWAWKI fitness planning.  Seriously.  If you are adequately fit to accomplish this schedule:  weekend hunting trip with recovery of mid-sized deer, Monday hauling 200 gallons of water 1/2 mile, Tuesday gather 1 cord of deadwood, Wed split 1/4 cord of that gathered wood, Thursday help with raking leaves most of the day for the garden, Friday haul another 200 gallons of water 1/2 mile; you don’t need to worry about being fat.  I doubt that you will be for one, but even if you are then you still have nothing to worry about from a “fitness for survival” standpoint.  And you certainly don’t need to worry about working out to make yourself more fit.  That schedule is tough, and will be much more of a reality than you may have really pondered prior to this article.  If so, you have work to do.  Start doing it.  Simple, shorter “workouts” of practice sessions until fatigued or until slight muscle soreness occurs are best for beginners, then advance as tolerated until you are really building up your tolerance to this type of work.  I will mention a few things about diet changes in prepping for TEOTWAWKI in terms of practice.  Start to eat more like you will after losing the grid and your favorite naughty food source (for me, it is Taco Bell).  Go an entire week without using electricity to fix your meals.  Definitely cut out fast food, junk food and eating out as much as possible now to miss those things less in the leaner future.  Eat some of your prep foods together as a group or family so that you can start to appreciate some of the tastes, textures and spicing that you may not be used to.  Some of these things may seem silly now, but will pay off exponentially WTSHTF.  As always, stay strong.

JWR Adds: Dr. Bob is is one of the few consulting physicians in the U.S. who dispenses antibiotics for disaster preparedness as part of his normal scope of practice. His web site is: SurvivingHealthy.com.