THE ULTIMATE ATLAS HIKE
Cheers guys and gals!
This is the 1st Wild Skills video of 2018 that we will be bringing to you. Our goal this year for Wild Skills is to flood your brains with fresh educational material that will help benefit you on your fitness journey and help you consistently crush new goals and sustain a healthy body. In order to learn even more about fitness, we will be talking with guests from across the Wilderness Athlete community to get new perspectives and ideas. We will explore their fitness knowledge and see what they do in their daily training regimens. This way we can start to incorporate their methods and use the information from each of them and put it into your programming to make it work for you. Whether it is kettlebell training, Olympic lifting, swimming, HIIT training, mobility, or preparing for long hikes in the backcountry, we will discuss the pros and cons and how to “bulletproof” your body to be the best Wilderness Athlete you can be.
To start off this year we are going as functional as possible. Avid outdoorsmen and women know that you can be as fit as a fiddle but when you throw on a 50-60lb pack it becomes a different story. I personally have been using the Atlas Trainer from Outdoorsmans because I use their packs for my hunts and hikes. It is a great tool because it is simple to use for a Neanderthal like me and the weighted plate fits snuggly up against my back. It also enables you to use it for workouts such as the one we are putting together today.
First things first though…
Create A Baseline Hike– Pretty simple. Carve out a decent out and back hike that you can use as a baseline for all of your outdoor workouts. It doesn’t have to be too hard, we are building upon this. Constantly improving your time throughout a broad range of workouts that I will give you this year will show you just how much you are improving. RESULTS ARE THE BIGGEST MOTIVATOR.
Pick Your Halfway Point- Pick a point where you can perform different bodyweight and free-weight exercises. Try to make it flat and clear of rocks or too much debris that will make your workout less enjoyable (Performing a lunge and getting a cactus or rock in your knee is not fun).
THE WORKOUT
Now that you have the first two steps down here is the 1st workout of the year.
- Start your time.
- Hike to the halfway point.
- Perform this shoulder circuit below in a relatively timely manner. Don’t cheat on form or range of motion to make up for time. You can use any weight such as a Kettlebell, sandbag, weighted plates etc.)
10 UPRIGHT ROWS
10 FRONT RAISES
10 OVERHEAD PRESSES
Beginners (perform this circuit 2X) | Advanced (3x) | Experts (4x)
*****Increase weight only after increasing sets to 4X
Your shoulders and traps should be screaming!
Finish the hike and record your time. Add this to your programming as a day to get out of the gym and enjoy the outdoors. The benefits of hiking with a loaded pack workout are numerous and really “bulletproof” your body for many activities. You will wake up the next day with sore muscles that you didn’t even think you had.
Enjoy!
If you would like more information on the Atlas Trainer or would like to purchase the system, click the link below.
