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[greenghost]

Hi all,

It's been a while since I posted. I have been getting pretty serious about exercise lately and have found a site on the internet that might be appealing to many people here. The site is CrossFit (http://www.crossfit.com./). What I really like about their philosophy is that they are pushing a general fitness regimen: strength, power, flexibility, endurance ... ; not just your typical "run for 10 miles and you will healthy" kind of endurance-based attitude.

They offer a daily work-out and they are usually brutal, but fun. I've been following along for a couple of months and am now in pretty darn good shape--maybe the best shape I have ever been in.

Most people won't be able to do the workouts as described (I can't quite), but you can scale them to meet your needs. If you want to get in really good all round condition for hunting, it is worth a try.

Best to all, Marc

[greenghost]

Update. Now that hunting season has started I have been able to compare my usual endurance/weight lifting routine with the crossfit routines. I have to say that climbing around the mountains has never felt easier. In more objective terms, I have dropped from 188# (5'10") to 174# and put on quite a bit of muscle mass (so I figure I have probably dropped around 20# of fat).

Here are some sample workouts:

For time:
Run 1 mile
100 pull-ups (kipping ok)
100 push-ups
100 sit-ups
100 squats (no weight)
Run 1 mile


For time:
back squats, body weight, 21 reps
Run 200 meters
front squats, 2/3 body weight, 21 reps
Run 400 meters
overhead squats, 1/3 body weight, 21 reps
Run 800 meters.

As you can see, these routines have plenty of strength work. But because they are for time, they involve lots of high intensity cardio work as well (the first 200 meters above, for instance, is pretty much a sprint).