With the recent outbreak of coronavirus, many gyms and fitness centers are closing their doors for a while. The good news is that we don’t need gyms to train. This is a great opportunity to learn to train more effectively outside.
For aerobic endurance, training outside is a no brainer. All outdoor athletes, even the most dedicated endurance athletes, can also benefit from muscle strength training. Decades of experience from thousands of athletes have taught us that some muscle strength work is an essential part of any training mix. However, for muscle strength training, we have become so accustomed to heavy gym equipment and gym environments that it’s less clear how to do this well outside. For decades I held onto the belief that for high quality muscle strength training I needed to go to the gym and that muscle strength work outside of the gym is too compromised for someone who’s serious about being a strong athlete. I never really started questioning this too much until I became an endurance athlete and felt increasingly pulled by the joys of outdoor training.
Last year, I decided to challenge for myself the belief that I needed to train muscle strength in the gym. For almost a full year now, I haven’t had a gym membership and I’ve been experimenting with what we can do to train real athletic strength outside in our backyards and in our neighborhoods. What I’ve realized is that truly high quality functional athletic strength workouts performed outside with very basic equipment are totally doable. There are indeed some weight training compromises that we make with outdoor work but I believe they apply more to powerlifters and bodybuilders and that they are not very applicable to the needs of outdoor athletes. I’ve been very satisfied overall with strength training outside and I don’t feel like I am lacking anything in my athletic training.
My primary concern when I started training outdoors was that I would be too limited in my equipment to be able to train effectively. The primary potential limiter in a normal outdoor training environment is that we can’t work with barbells, which gives us our opportunities to work with our highest potential training loads. This is clearly a substantial drawback for competitive power athletes or athletes in high impact/contact sports. However, the limited dimensional power we gain from basic barbell lifts starts to become less applicable the further we explore nature and the less our goals revolve around maximizing certain weight lifting numbers. As a species we are meant to simultaneously have strong muscles and have good endurance and if we train well we will realize this. However, when we become fairly advanced with modern athletic training we start running into distinct tradeoffs between training for absolute peak power and for endurance capability. From the perspective of training well as outdoor athletes and explorers, it does not appear that the extra loads we can practice with through heavy barbell work are actually very important.
To optimize, it appears that outdoor athletes and endurance athletes are actually better off prioritizing overall multi-dimensional muscle strength and durability than the kind of peak linear power that we can demonstrate in a squat rack. Some of the full body momentum-based movements that we do with kettlebells and sandbags are actually in many ways more applicable to what we’re trying to accomplish as we explore the outdoors. This type of work can easily be done outside and at home.
After ten months of experimentation, listed below are my current favorite ten exercises that I primarily rely on to create my outdoor workouts. In large part this is actually a very standard list of exercises; I don’t really believe in any miracle exercises. I experiment with some different exercises but generally speaking sticking to pretty basic exercises works well for me. The only equipment I use are a number of kettlebells (I have kettlebells ranging from 35lbs to 70lbs), a weight vest (adjustable up to 40 lbs), and a sandbag with between 50-125 lbs of sand in it (it includes internal sacks of sand so that I can adjust the weight). I use one of the sandbags with heavy duty handles that has been specifically made for weightlifting.
Kettlebell squat. There is a progression of ways to do this from beginner lifts to more advanced variations. For beginners, single kettlebell goblet squats have many advantages over barbell squats because squatting with kettlebells is generally safer and more instructive. This exercise naturally teaches and forces us to use good squat form from the way we need to hold the kettlebells to our chest. We can’t put our spine in dangerous angles because then we’ll drop the weight. For more advanced athletes, deep double kettlebell front squats are tremendous for developing full body strength from a stable core. The real irony for me is that the exercise I was most resistant to let go of in my own training was heavy barbell squats, but after ten months of doing these if I were to go back into the gym to train most people right now I would use these.
Sandbag power clean & front squat. This combination full-body move starting with a power clean followed immediately by a front squat is very suitable for developing functional athletic power. With sandbags we can often only do about half the weight we would be able to do with barbells but they force us to deal with unwieldy loads, which seems to be a more appropriate simulation of backcountry demands.
Pull-up. After a few decades of gym training, the classic pull-up is still my favorite back exercise. We are not limited by our bodyweight; we can make these as hard or easy as we want. If we want to make them harder, we can wear weight vests. If we can’t perform pull-ups we can progress towards them with “negative” repetitions (using a step or assist to get up to the upward position and then resisting while slowly lowering ourselves).
Push-up. I’ve spent many years doing various types of bench presses and incline presses but the classic push-up performed with strict form can actually give an outdoor athlete all the anterior upper body strength he or she needs. We can make these harder for ourselves with weight vests and/or with our feet elevated. If we really want to challenge ourselves, we can pursue the elusive one armed push-up. I like dips as well for anterior upper body work. However, if dips are performed with less than perfect form we can really harm our shoulder. Some people really struggle with shoulder pain from dips so I tend to recommend push-ups instead.
Kettlebell swing. This exercise works the entire posterior chain and helps us develop a more balanced posture. To some extent we can consider this to be a form of corrective medicine for modern sedentary life.
Plank. There are plenty of good plank variations to experiment with but the basic plank is a great abdominal exercise.
Kettlebell (or dumbell) military press. I dropped this exercise out of my workouts for a while to test whether kettlebell snatches, kettlebell swings, and pushups would adequately strengthen my shoulders to deal well with overhead loads. I found that I dramatically lose overall upper body capability when I don’t include this basic overhead move.
Kettlebell snatch. This is a bit more advanced than the other kettlebell moves listed above. Snatches require a bit more practice and coordination to learn. The full body and explosive nature of this move makes it a great training tool for athletes.
Bulgarian Split Squats. This one legged variation of squatting with our rear leg elevated and resting on something is a very functional strength move for athletes, as our push-offs from the ground are often from one leg. The exercise can also help develop better hip mechanics and hip stability, so it simultaneously assists us with developing solid athletic mobility.
Sandbag carries. I carry a heavy sandbag on my shoulders and walk it or jog it around my neighborhood. This is more of a full body work capacity training tool I use in preparation for bowhunting and general backcountry capability as opposed to more pure muscle strength training. It’s also a good way to meet my neighbors (although pull-ups in the local playground take the prize for that, especially when I wear a weight vest that looks like a bit of a bomb jacket).
Hopefully this provides some helpful guidance on how we can continue to work out effectively away from gyms. I’ll be providing more information as time goes on about how strength progressions work and about how to create workouts that fit in our lives.
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