How To Train For An Elk Hunt
By: Zach Petrone Rocky Mountain Strength Founder/Trainer
Preparing for a backcountry elk hunt can be an exciting and challenging adventure. Physical and mental training is crucial to maximize your potential for a successful elk hunt in the West. Physical training should focus on building endurance, strength, and stability. Mixing hiking, rucking, running, weight lifting, and practicing with your bow or rifle will build the foundation for a successful hunt.
Mental training can involve developing patience, focus, and a positive mindset. Researching and planning for the hunt is essential, including scouting the area, understanding elk behavior, and packing the necessary gear and supplies. With proper preparation and training, a backcountry elk hunt can be a thrilling and rewarding experience.
Key Areas of Focus
Training in the gym for a backcountry elk hunt can help you build strength and endurance to tackle challenging terrain and rugged conditions. As you begin to plan your training, there are five main categories to focus on:
Dynamic Warm Ups
Strength Training
Metabolic Conditioning
Mobility and Flexibility
Elevation Training
Dynamic Warmup
Dynamic warmups are an essential part to any training program whether it's training for a hunt or general strength & conditioning sessions. Typically spending 10- 15 minutes during this time before your workout starts. It's a series of stretching through movement that aims to increase blood flow, increase range of motion and mobility, and work into deep stretches. Working through these dynamic workouts daily, gives your body its best chance to stay injury free in the field or on the mountain. By creating a strong foundation of flexibility, mobility and endurance- you know your body won't be the one that fails you on a hunt.
Aim to stretch most muscles in your body including quads, hamstrings, piriformis, lats, delts and shoulders. Some of my favorite stretches include: quad pull-reach, hamstring sweep, lateral lunge and worlds greatest. It is also beneficial to add in hip mobility and groundwork series with exercises like hip circles, bird dogs, and leg swings. Strong hips and core is the start to a good foundation.
Strength Training
Lifting weights is a great way to increase your work capacity, stabilize and protect your joints, and test your mental and physical capabilities. Your whole body will be taxed on a backcountry elk hunt, so it’s important to train your whole body. We prefer to break our strength training into a lower-body and upper-body split.
Strengthening your lower body strength is essential for hiking uphill, traversing rocky terrain, and carrying heavy loads. We aim to train both flexion and extension to maintain balance in the body. Below is an example of a lower body session with exercises directly translating to improved performance on a rigorous elk hunt:
DB Box Step-ups (anterior) (4x8/side)
Physio Ball Hamstring Curls (posterior) (4x12)
Lateral Band Walks (lateral movement) (4x20yds)
Upper body exercises can help build the strength needed to shoulder a heavy pack and handle a firearm or bow under stress and fatigue. Training your upper body will also help you maintain balance with your lower body work. As with the lower body movements above, we aim to train flexion, extension, and pushing and pulling movements. A sample upper body session is as follows:
BB Overhead Press (Anterior) (4x8)
DB Renegade Rows (Posterior) (4x8/side)
Single Arm Farmers Carry (Core) (4x20yds left/right)
Metabolic Conditioning
Cardiovascular exercises can help improve your endurance and prepare you for the long hikes and strenuous activity required during the hunt. MC increases your efficiency of your body and gives you the ability to do more in less time, critical to any hunt. Increasing your aerobic capacity (oxygen use) will give you the upper hand in high cardiovascular situations on the mountains and increase your overall endurance. It's important to mix in short activity bouts like hill sprints or weighted rucks and endurance activities like long hikes or trail running. A mix of both gives you both higher aerobic and anaerobic capacities.
Mobility and Flexibility
Mobility and flexibility are a main factor to keeping you injury free in the backcountry. Mobility focuses on range of motion around the joints, while flexibility is geared towards muscles and overall soft tissue and its unrestricted movement. What comes to mind right away is walking through an area of deadfall and the constant motion of using your hips to swing your leg over each downed tree. Aches and pains in certain areas? Too sore to move like that on the next day's hunt? A sure sign you are missing this part of your training. The above dynamic warmup section is a great place to start.
Elevation Training
Most western hunts are at some sort of elevation, and here in Colorado I typically hunt at 9,000ft -13,000ft. Working out, running, or hiking in elevations at where you will be hunting will help acclimate, and know what it takes when out for long periods of time. Living this close makes it easy, what if you are at sea level? Obviously you cannot imitate that type of elevation, but what you can do is strength train, and work on your overall muscular endurance and cardiovascular endurance. Working on elevation scenarios like hill sprints, stair climbers, sled pushes/pulls, incline treadmill runs & rucks, and trail running are a great way to get in shape for an elk hunt.
Don’t Go It Alone!
Working with a qualified trainer is a great way to develop a personalized training plan that considers your current fitness level and the specific demands of a backcountry elk hunt. Rocky Mountain Strength, located in Centennial, CO, focuses on mountain fitness and preparing you for your backcountry hunts. We believe you should be training year-round for your hunts–it’s a lifestyle and not a 3-month window. However, our team has all the tools to meet you where you are, help you reach your goals, and make the most of your days on the mountain. We offer seasonal training plans as you near your hunts and programs to keep you ready year-round.
Joining a like-minded community is so important to sticking with your goals, and Rocky Mountain Strength has created that atmosphere. A group of outdoorsmen and women looking to accomplish similar goals, hold each other accountable and build lasting friendships beyond your hunting season.
