In addition to endurance training, strength training was a big focus of my conditioning program. After all, I will not only be carrying a heavy pack all day long, but also going up pretty steep inclines. That needs some muscles! I'm fairly lucky in the aspect that I do alot of lifting at work, so I'm pretty strong to begin with. But there's strength and then there's strength over long periods of time. More like muscular endurance, really, but we already covered endurance. This is about strength, dammit!
For strength, I had two major types of workouts:
1) A WOD type workout with lots of bodyweight style exercises
2) Functional lifting exercises with weights.
The WOD workouts I gathered from a number of sources. Despite my rant about the Crossfit non-endurance training endurance plan, I do like their workouts for strength. So I gathered a few from a Crossfit website, wrote them on index cards and shuffled them up to bring to the gym. Fitness websites were plentiful and full of WOD-type workouts. I also gathered a few routines from BodyRock.tv. I like the workouts from this site quite a bit, but I'm not overly enthusiastic about the presentation. Oftentimes the exercise videos looked more like soft-core porn than workouts. (I'll just take a moment here to pause and let all my male friends check out the website since I mentioned porn. Ok, back guys? Good) I like it for me, but I'd never send my nieces there to look up workouts! I also grabbed a few from Blondeponytail.com and from Blogilates.com I tried for two or three of these workouts a week. Most of the time, it was more like two. These were the "strong bodies don't injure as easily" workouts.
The "I need to lift a heavy pack up a hill" workouts were more traditional weighted exercises. Two times per week, I did
1) Step ups with a 50# barbell
2) Walking lunges with 20# dumbells or a 40# barbell
3) Pushups on a BOSU
4) Kettle-bell swings
5) Cable pull diagonal chops
6) Cable pull diagonal lifts
7) Hanging Leg Lift
Don't know if this is gonna help me with the hike, but what the heck, I guess it can't hurt!
For strength, I had two major types of workouts:
1) A WOD type workout with lots of bodyweight style exercises
2) Functional lifting exercises with weights.
The WOD workouts I gathered from a number of sources. Despite my rant about the Crossfit non-endurance training endurance plan, I do like their workouts for strength. So I gathered a few from a Crossfit website, wrote them on index cards and shuffled them up to bring to the gym. Fitness websites were plentiful and full of WOD-type workouts. I also gathered a few routines from BodyRock.tv. I like the workouts from this site quite a bit, but I'm not overly enthusiastic about the presentation. Oftentimes the exercise videos looked more like soft-core porn than workouts. (I'll just take a moment here to pause and let all my male friends check out the website since I mentioned porn. Ok, back guys? Good) I like it for me, but I'd never send my nieces there to look up workouts! I also grabbed a few from Blondeponytail.com and from Blogilates.com I tried for two or three of these workouts a week. Most of the time, it was more like two. These were the "strong bodies don't injure as easily" workouts.
The "I need to lift a heavy pack up a hill" workouts were more traditional weighted exercises. Two times per week, I did
1) Step ups with a 50# barbell
2) Walking lunges with 20# dumbells or a 40# barbell
3) Pushups on a BOSU
4) Kettle-bell swings
5) Cable pull diagonal chops
6) Cable pull diagonal lifts
7) Hanging Leg Lift
Don't know if this is gonna help me with the hike, but what the heck, I guess it can't hurt!
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