How to Train When You Get Home from a Hunt

You just got home from a 7- to 14-day hunt and it’s time to get back to real life. That means getting back to training. The question is, how should you train the week after you get home? Some folks will tell you just to take the week off, but that’s the wrong answer for several reasons. Others will tell you to get back to exactly what you were doing before you left. That also might be wrong for you. As it goes, the answer lies somewhere in the middle, and we’ll have ourselves a nice chat about why.

Let’s begin by understanding what happens to our bodies while we’re hunting.

Hunting Stress and Allostasis

Even if a hunt feels relatively easy, you still deal with stressors beyond everyday life. You’re likely outside far more than usual. That means your body works more to regulate your temperature. It’s likely that your activity level is higher than usual. You’re sleeping, sitting, and moving in awkward positions. You’re in a calorie deficit. This all has a cost, and one that’s likely higher than the cost you usually pay to exist in your everyday life – even if you train hard. That cost must be accounted for by your body. That accounting process is called allostasis.

Here’s the short definition of allostasis: the process by which the body responds and adapts to stressors.

Here’s a longer definition: “...the efficient regulation required to prepare the body to satisfy its needs before they arise by budgeting needed resources such as oxygen, hormones, etc.”

Your brain subconsciously learns how to predict what your body needs in a given situation to survive, and potentially thrive, based on stressors encountered. That’s why training works. You give your body a training load, and as long as it doesn’t exceed your current resources, the brain notes it and helps your body adapt beyond that load so it costs you less next time.

The body, however, doesn’t differentiate stressors. The fight with your significant other, the stress at work, the training you did today, it’s all the same to the brain and the body. The only goal is to account and adapt. So, we must keep in mind that all stress matters. And there is no adaptation if there is no refractory period to regather resources. Your body doesn’t get stronger without rest. 

So, look at your hunt as a big stress load. Your body requires rest and light stimulation to recover from that load. Once recovered, those stressors won’t affect your body as much the next time you encounter them – if that encounter is within a reasonable time frame. 

In addition, if you want to keep making progress with your training after you get back from a hunt, you must factor in the stress of a hunt. If you don’t there’s a good chance that you’ll put yourself behind the recovery curve and set yourself back for weeks.

Let’s talk about what to do the week after a hunt to make sure you account for the stress while still training.

How to Train the Week After a Hunt

Here are a few simple tips and things to keep in mind for a successful post-hunt training week.

Be Honest About How Stressful it Was

This honesty must account for both ends of the spectrum. If it was brutal, don’t lie to yourself and say you’re ready to jump back into normal training. You won’t give your body enough time to gather the resources to respond to the stress of the hunt. You’ll put yourself behind the recovery curve and potentially set your progress back by months. 

Get Back Into a Routine

Remember, your brain and your body like predictability. Routine offers that predictability. If you’re tracking your HRV and your recovery, you’ll notice the faster you get back into a routine, the faster it comes back to your baseline. Now, the rhythm of the routine is what matters most. You likely won’t be training as intensely as you were before you left for your trip. But the rhythm of doing particular things on particular days is important. The training doesn’t have to look exactly the same as it did before you left, and it likely shouldn’t. But if you were strength training on Monday and Wednesday, conditioning on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and resting on Sunday, get back to that schedule. The routine will help you recover.

Do Basic Strength Movements and Carries

You might have hammered heavy squats and deadlifts before you left, but the week after a hunt is not the time for that business. Regress movements back to their most basic form. For example, instead of doing heavy front squats or safety bar squats, do goblet squats in a moderate rep range (6-10 reps). Instead of heavy deadlifts, do dumbbell RDLs. Regressing the movements and using lighter weights allows you to get a training stimulus without giving your body too much stress. The stimulation helps with recovery and gets your body used to strength training tension again.

Carries help in the same way. They keep your body under tension for a little while without overloading it. Walking also helps move some blood around and get nutrients to your recovering tissues.

Do Lots of Mobility Work

Your joints take a lot of stress in the backcountry, so it’s best to give them lots of care during the week after a hunt. I’ll level with you, it’s best if you’re already doing some kind of joint mobility work every day. But bump the volume up during the return week. Do it first thing in the morning. Build more of it into your strength training sessions. Build it into your aerobic capacity sessions. Do this and you’ll help promote recovery while prepping your body to return to hard training.

Do Lots of Aerobic Capacity Work

Yes, you just did a ton of hiking and, hopefully, most of it was in the aerobic capacity zone. But you need more the week after a hunt. Aerobic capacity training promotes recovery and healing. If you were doing intense conditioning one or two days per week before you went on your hunt, trade those out for 30 - 90 minute aerobic capacity sessions, keeping your heart rate in Zones 1 and 2.

Example Workout Circuit

When our Backcountry Ready members return from a hunt, we have them do a week’s worth of CCS workouts (CCS stands for Capacity, Carry, Strength). They are designed to use mobility training, carries, and light strength training to promote recovery and get folks back into a training rhythm. Below I’ve shared an example circuit from that workout. There are three more circuits in the workout, but this one will get you started with coming up with more of your own. (If you’d rather have our help than think this up on your own, shoot us an email at humanpredatorpackmule@gmail.com and make the subject line: POST HUNT TRAINING.)

Example CCS Circuit

Circuit the exercises at a relaxed pace for 8:00.

1. Quadruped Rocking x 10

2. 1/2 Kneeling Active Hip Flexor Stretch x 3 per side

3. Goblet Squat x 8

Train Smart When You Get Home

Remember, your body sees all stressors the same. The first week after a big hunt is crucial for helping it recover from the stress of the backcountry. Get back into a routine with training, but limit the intensity and focus on basic movements, mobility training, and aerobic capacity training.