Summer Strength Training for Backcountry and Mountain Hunting

“Go ahead and pass me, man.”

Chris, my business partner, heard it time and time again during his 75-mile death march through the Appalachians of Georgia. It was his first ultramarathon, and he finished 36th overall out of hundreds of competitors. Not too bad – especially considering that the summer before his run training was run/walk intervals. He’d jog for a minute or two, then walk for three to four minutes to keep his heart rate down. With such little experience, a lot of folks would say he had no business attempting the Georgia Death Race, and the son of a bitch came in toward the front of the pack. It’s kind of silly that he passed seasoned runners.

Where he passed them is the crucial detail.

He passed them on the uphill climbs where better runners could no longer rely on their running economy and their aerobic fitness. 

Chris had something to tap into that those runners did not – strength. More than just strength, he had strength endurance. He was stronger than all of the runners, and he had the fitness to use that strength over and over again.

What was crucial for Chris as an ultra runner leveling the field against experienced runners is crucial for us as backcountry and mountain hunters. But unlike Chris, we’re climbing uphill with weight on our back, sometimes a whole heck of a lot of it. So, strength endurance is even more meaningful for our performance, health, and hunting longevity.

We must build strength endurance. The logical next question is how?

Traditional strength training to build relative strength is a great start. It raises the ceiling of what our strength does for us, but it’s not enough.

We need specialized strength endurance methods that train us to use our strength over time. It’s especially important to use these methods during summer and pre-season training because that’s when we must convert relative strength into strength endurance.

At HPPM, we use powerful methods to build strength endurance, and they come from the mecca of groundbreaking human performance research.

Mother Russia.

Strength Endurance from the Cradle of Communism

Before you start pounding out a strongly-worded email soaked in red, white, and blue to tell me you ain’t no commie bastard, know that I also love the free world. But I’ll tell you, when it comes to training, the Russians figured out a lot of things before we did – even when you control for all the steroid use.

One of those things is high-intensity continuous training (HICT). I learned the method from the legendary conditioning coaches Joel Jamieson and Mark Mclaughlin. They learned it from Val Nsedkin. 

The Russian coaches that developed HICT noticed that they needed a stimulus to aerobically train fast twitch muscle fibers. At the time, there was no method. Conditioning was either low and slow or done at such high intensities that the anaerobic system quickly took over. So, they experimented with doing low reps with heavy weight over an extended period, giving the muscles just enough rest time that they could maintain high-intensity output. And it worked. The training increased the aerobic capacity of fast-twitch muscle fibers by increasing mitochondrial density. Oxygen utilization in the fast twitch fibers improves, and strength endurance along with it.

I’m sure you’re wondering how to do HICT. During the summer, we typically do step-ups to a 12-inch to 16-inch box with weight in our packs. Each rep is performed as quickly and violently as possible. Perform a rep on one leg, step down and pause for four to five seconds, then perform a rep on the other leg. Go on this way for sets of 8 to 20 minutes. Your heart rate shouldn’t go above 160 during any set. This ensures that you’re using mostly aerobic metabolism and getting the full strength endurance training benefit. You’ll sweat. You’ll feel the monotony. But you just have to keep driving your damn foot through that box as hard as you can. If you’re experienced and efficient under load, start with about 30% of your body weight in your pack. If you’re not, start with 20% to 25%.

The Russians invented another strength endurance method for improving oxygen utilization. This one’s more torturous, and it trains the slow twitch muscles instead of the fast twitch muscles. It’s called tempo training and it is spicy.

Legend has it that It was invented by a fella named Professor Victor Selouyanov. I, again, learned about it from Joel Jamieson and Mark Mclaughlin. But it’s been extensively utilized and written about by coaches all over the globe. The tempo method works because it keeps constant tension on the muscle for 30 to 60 seconds and then is followed by an incomplete rest period. The time under tension combined with oxygen deprivation causes your slow-twitch muscle fibers to grow while also improving oxygen utilization. Also, lactate gets recycled in your slow-twitch muscles. The better you recycle lactate, the more endurance you have. So, the bigger the slow twitch muscles, the better the potential for recycling lactate and staving off fatigue.

We’ll walk through an example of tempo training using the dumbbell bench press.

You’ll set up with a weight that’s 50% or less of your max. You’ll lower that weight for two seconds, never fully getting to the bottom. Then you’ll press it back up for two seconds, never fully locking out. That’s how you keep constant tension on the muscle. You’ll do that for 8 to 10 reps, then rest for 30 to 60 seconds. Then you’ll do two to four more sets. And by the end, you will shake. Once you’re done with dumbbell bench press, you’ll move on to a lower-body exercise. Then do an upper-body pull. Then you’ll do another lower-body exercise. And then you’ll be ready to go home.

We use another strength endurance method. Truth be told, it’s my favorite one – and not just because it doesn’t come from Russia. It’s called eustress training, and it’s been used by different strength coaches. Most recently, it’s been popularized by Craig Weller and Jonathan Pope of Building the Elite.

Eustress training is kind of like a lower-volume, higher-intensity version of HICT. You perform a heavy lift, let your heart rate recover to designated beats per minute, then you lift again, all the while keeping your heart rate under 150 beats per minute and keeping your mind calm. 

For example, you do a heavy set of 3 deadlifts with a weight that maxes your heart rate out at about 145 beats per minute between sets. You rest until your heart rate is 160 minus your age and you lift as soon as your heart rate hits that number. You continue on this way for a prescribed about of time or a prescribed amount of reps, say 15 minutes or 30 total reps.

Its purpose is twofold – to build strength endurance and to improve your mental skills. We use it during different training blocks throughout the year, and we always include it in every summer training block.

Now that we’ve added strength endurance methods to your toolbox, let’s chat about using them throughout the training week.

How to Build Strength Endurance with Specialized Strength Training: Eustress Training, HICT, and Tempo Training

We’ll start with a quick lesson on weekly strength and conditioning planning.

Metabolic stress interferes with our access to neurological output. So, if you fatigue the shit out of your muscles, you won’t have access to all of your strength. That makes sense, right? Of course, however, many hunting fitness programs don’t account for it. In most regards, ours do. (There is a time to break the rules.) With that in mind, we plan our strength training based on the neurological-metabolic continuum. We place the most neurologically demanding training early in the week and the most metabolically demanding training later in the week.

The intensity of the heavier strength work creates the hormonal conditions that help to drive adaptation to the rest of the week’s training. And placing the metabolic stress later in the week ensures that we get the most out of our intense training. So, let’s look at how we’d plan strength endurance training with the neurological-metabolic continuum. We’ll do that by laying out training week examples. 

Example 1: Eustress Training and Tempo Training

Eustress training is far more neurologically demanding and tempo training is more metabolically demanding. So, they are respectively placed on Monday and Wednesday with an aerobic capacity training day between to promote recovery. It’s important to note that we only do tempo training for three weeks at a time, then we take a break. That’s all we need to get the adaptation and there’s no sense in over spanking that horse, or something like that.

Example 2: Eustress Training and HICT

We followed the same rule. Eustress for the big neurological stimulus, HICT is the more metabolic stimulus. 

Example 3: Eustress Training, Tempo Training, and HICT

This example is for folks that need more strength stimuli and not as much intense conditioning. You could flip flop tempo training and HICT. The important thing is that eustress training is on the first training day of the week.

Strength Endurance is the Endurance You Need

Picture yourself powering uphill like Chris during the Georgia Death Race, but instead, you have an elk quarter on your back and your buddies are wondering when in the hell you turned into a superhero. Consistent strength endurance work, along with aerobic conditioning, gives you that kind of uphill power. Use the wisdom of the Ruskis and prep yourself for the mountains. 

(P.S. Avoid the biggest training mistakes that backcountry hunters make by clicking HERE and downloading our free book, 5 Biggest Backcountry Training Mistakes: And How to Avoid Them)