Article by: Todd Bumgardner, Packmule Training Co.

Most folks who hunt whitetails don’t come by it later in life. The ridges, the swamps, and the field edges become home for many of us before we can legally carry a hunting license. We’re led there by a loving relative who wants us to find the joy in hunting that they do. Time passes, and you earn the right to take to the woods on your own. The thread started in your childhood weaves its way into your life until each of your Novembers is marked by the rut instead of Thanksgiving. If whitetail hunting were a treasure, someone would have to pry it from your cold, dead hands before you’d give it up.

It is at the core of who you are.

The goal, then, is to extend the thread started in your childhood and weave it into your golden years. Lengthening the thread doesn’t happen by accident.

It Starts with Lifestyle

Training is a big part of the whitetail longevity equation, and advice is on the way, but the strongest thread of your hunting durability is lifestyle. You only train for one up to a few hours per day. That leaves up to 23 more hours to account for. You can’t abuse your body and expect it to last. And you sure as shit can’t outtrain a poor lifestyle.

Now, if some alarms just went off for you, like, you think I’m about to tell you to eat nothing but backstrap and lightly massaged kale, or you think I’m about to tell you to pour your alcohol down the drain and proclaim that you’re straight edge. Calm your tits. I’m not some dietary extremist, and I’m not a teetotaling asshole. I will, however, ask you to be mindful. I’ll also ask you to focus on some other key lifestyle factors.

Here’s what I mean by be mindful:

Have your beers, but drink them in moderation or slightly less than moderation.

Eat your desserts, but don’t pile them on at every supper.

Enjoy food that tastes good, but eat in a balanced way and mind your portion sizes.

Pay attention to what’s stressing you out and figure out a way to manage it or reframe it.

The best thing to do is to create an environment that makes it easy to be mindful of all the things above. Willpower is a finite resource, and we burn through it quickly every day. Don’t count on it. Set yourself up for success. Here’s an example. Save desserts for occasions when you’re out to eat, and don’t keep dessert foods in your house. That’s just one example of one issue. You have to consider your habits and what might work for you. Then experiment.

I’ll also ask you to focus on three key lifestyle factors: activity level, water intake, and sleep.

We know that people who move more typically have longer life and health spans. The best measurement we have is step count. Health and longevity benefits start at about 7,000 steps per day, and there doesn’t seem to be an upper limit. Move. A rolling stone gathers no moss, and the moss, in this case, is poor health. I’m not saying you have to track your steps for the rest of your life, but it’s a good idea to do so until you form the habit of moving more.

You also need to drink water. Poor hydration causes all kinds of issues, and it starts quickly. For example, your ability to think declines when you’re only two percent dehydrated. It also affects your heart health, your musculoskeletal health, etc. If you’re not currently good about drinking water, aim for half of your body weight in ounces per day and adjust from there based on need and activity level. For example, if you’re 200 pounds, aim for 100 ounces of water per day. You’ll know you’re hydrated when your urine is light straw colored and you’re going every two to three hours.

And, gaht dang it, you need to sleep. The phrase “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” is idiotic. And you’ll get the opportunity to be dead a lot sooner if you listen to it. Lack of sleep messes with every part of your body. It affects your mental health, and it impairs your recovery from exercise. It contributes to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity, and increases your chance of injury while training. If you want your quality of life to improve now and you want to have a good quality of life later, make sleep a priority. Most folks need 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. There are some folks who do well on 6 hours, but they’re the minority. 

This little section isn’t the end-all be-all on lifestyle, but it’s a good primer for you. If you want a body that allows you to hunt whitetails when you’re 80, you have to focus on your lifestyle now.

Manage Your Mindset

That’s right, kids. We aren’t talking about training yet. We have to get your mind right before we start talking about your body. Otherwise, you run the risk of making poor training decisions. Perspective starts the party. 

The game is long, so you have to play it that way. To play it that way, you have to think about it that way. Think about it like compounding interest. Small investments over time turn into big yields. Sometimes you get the benefit in weeks or months, sometimes it’s in a year. But the behavior that got you those shorter-term results is also necessary to get you the long-term results that keep you in the woods for the rest of your life.

We make this shift by valuing consistency more than intensity. Every other voice in hunting fitness is selling you the “sex” of intensity. The status quo is that every workout must be a burner for you to make progress. It’s not true, and it holds you back. Doing hyper-intense workouts all the time limits your ability to be consistent because you can’t recover from all the intensity. It beats the absolute hell out of you. Then, you can’t make as many deposits into your compounding interest account. Your long game gets a whole lot shorter.

The game is long. Value consistency over intensity. Let the compound interest build.

Move Well First

If you’ve spent any time around folkstyle or freestyle wrestling, I bet you recognize the name Dan Gable. He has a quote I love — “If it’s important, do it every day. If it’s not important, don’t do it all.” Now, you can get hyper-specific with this and miss the forest for the trees. However, I think it applies specifically to mobility training. You should do something to take care of your joints and keep them moving well every day.

Mobile joints are healthy joints. Healthy joints are more injury-resistant joints. And here’s the thing: if you don’t consistently tell your body to keep a joint’s range of motion, it will cut it in the name of saving energy. In this instance, you have to tell your brain to suck a butt. You have to persistently show that the range of motion at all your joints is important. And you do that by moving them through the full range of motion every day.

Here’s the other thing: compounding interest works in the opposite direction, too. If you consistently avoid moving your joints while taking care of them, your poor movement compounds. Now, think about that over the course of your life. By the time you’re 80, you’ll be shuffling in your velcro shoes and handing out Werther’s Originals. You lose access to the life you love. Mobility must be a top priority.

Below you’ll find the link to my morning mobility routine. It literally takes 1 minute and 24 seconds. You have time to do it.

Morning CARs Routine

Develop Your Aerobic System — And Maintain It

You know, I mentioned earlier that sex gets sold way too hard in hunting fitness and that it’s the unsexy work that gets us to where we want to be. But you already know that — you’re a whitetail hunter. You do the unsexy shit that leads to success. You scout year-round; you learn about the critters you hunt; you’re in the November woods from dark to dark. The unsexy is not new to you, and you know it’s part of the deal. I’m asking you to add one more unsexy thing to the deal so you can be in those November woods instead of the old folks’ home. I need you to do a lot of low-intensity training to develop your aerobic system.

When I say low-intensity, I mean you should be able to breathe easily in through your nose and out through your mouth the entire time you’re training. If you’re familiar with heart rate training zones, I’m talking about Zones 1 and 2. And I’m talking about a lot of it.

You brush your teeth every day, right? (Well, at least I hope you do.) It’s just something you do. Low-intensity aerobic training is just something you do now. You do it year-round. 

Now, the amount will fluctuate throughout the year depending on the training season (something we’ll talk about in part 2 of this series), but you do it nonetheless. Each session lasts at least 30 minutes because you need at least that much time to reap the benefits. But sometimes you go for hours to really develop your body’s ability to efficiently use fuel. 

I’m asking you to add some more unsexy work to your life, so you’re owed some justification. Let’s start with health.

 

Zone 1 and 2 training…

Health:

…improves cardiovascular health

…improves mitochondrial density and health

…aids in blood pressure control

…improves insulin sensitivity

…improves cholesterol 

…has anti-aging effects

Performance:

…improves recovery

…decreases injury risk

…improves fatigue resistance

…trains your body to efficiently use fat for fuel

…trains you to move faster with lower cost to your body

…builds the foundation for more intense conditioning

It’s worth it.

You know you’re doing it year-round, and you know that each session needs to last at least 30 minutes. Now, let’s talk about how much you need to do each week.

You need at least two hours per week total to really get the benefits. You want to be around three hours, or on the north side of it, to really develop your aerobic system. Once you’ve spent a few months spending a few hours per week in Zones 1 and 2 you’ll have a solid aerobic base. Then, if you need to, you can go into maintenance, doing an hour and a half to two hours per week.

If you really want to push your endurance, you’ll need to get up to four to six hours per week. The health benefits, however, start happening at around an hour and a half to two hours per week.

All this said, use the time you have and get in what you can. If you only have an hour one week, use that hour and get it in. It all counts; it all compounds. It all helps keep you in the whitetail woods as an old timer.

Coming Up…

That’s all for Part 1. Check in on your lifestyle and make a mindset shift if necessary. And do your gaht dang low-intensity aerobic work.

In Part 2, we’ll cover strength training (and why you should lift for performance and not aesthetics), planning a year-round training schedule that promotes longevity, and stress management.

 

About the author: Todd Bumgardner is the head coach and founder of Packmule Training Co. He grew up hunting and playing sports in Central Pennsylvania. He went on to play college football and earn a master's degree in Exercise Science. He's been a strength and conditioning coach for the past 17 years, working with everyone from youth athletes and everyday folks to NFL veterans. Along with running the ship at HPPM, Todd also co-owns and operates Beyond Strength, a training gym in Northern Virginia, and is a human performance coach for a tier 1 unit. He travels all across North America to hunt.