For survival preparedness, it’s not just about the supplies you can gather ahead of time or the plans you make about where to escape to. It’s about preparing your mind and body to cope and withstand such an event.
Even a minor flood can cause worry and requires your physical strength. You need to be working to get your body prepared for strength and endurance so that you’re capable of handling number of emergency situations and natural disaster scenarios.
You want to be able to respond immediately and handle anything – whether it’s lifting a heavy fallen object off of someone or climbing to safety. Building shelters and hiking for long periods of time can be strenuous and if you’re not used to it, it could prove disastrous.
Even if you’re hunkered down at home, you may need physical strength if an intruder gets into your home or if you need to carry supplies like water from a natural water source.
Having physical strength and endurance can give you peace of mind and even the process of getting fit is going to reduce stress and make you healthier. The routine of getting your body in shape will require resilience and perseverance – the same things you’ll need in a survival event.
Take an Assessment of How You Could Endure a Survival Event Now
Before you start on a journey to get fit for survival purposes, you need to know where you stand. It’s never smart to overdo it – so getting a pass from your doctor for strenuous exercise is recommended.
It’s important that you not be the only one assessing your strength, either. Every member of your household will need to endure the survival event, so it would be wise to have the entire family onboard.
What you want to do during an assessment (besides making sure it’s safe to proceed) is to see what your strengths and limitations are. If you have any health concerns that might impact your ability to do things, you want to take that into consideration, too.
You want to know what your starting point is so that you can set milestones and watch as your physical health improves. This benchmark is something you can refer back to in order to see if what you’re doing is working.
During your assessment, you want to measure your BMI (Body Mass Index) to see where your weight stands. You might need to set a goal to lose weight and gain muscle mass.
If there’s a gym nearby or if you have the measuring equipment yourself, you can check what your body fat percentage is. A BMI doesn’t measure fat versus muscle – it just goes by height and weight.
Your assessment also needs to provide a benchmark for your endurance and strength. How far can you walk, and for how long? You might start out only being able to walk a mile or for 10 minutes.
For how long and how far can you carry a small bug-out bag – before you run out of energy? Can you carry a medium size backpack or rucksack, with about 25 pounds of provisions in it?
You want to learn proper form for weight lifting and even using machines and see how much you can safely lift. Do this for every muscle group and record the weights and reps for bodyweight exercises such as push ups or squats.
Flexibility is also very important in a survival situation. Can you sit with your legs extended and reach your toes? Can you stand and bend down and touch them? These kinds of assessments will be crucial in marking how far you’ve come later.
You may have limitations like injuries to your knee or shoulder and you’ll need to focus on learning how to modify your exercises. If you make a doctor’s appointment, you can ask for an evaluation of your cardio health, joint health, bone density and more.
Develop a Fitness Routine That Helps You Prepare for Any Event
Once you know where you stand, you want to design a fitness program to take you to your ultimate goal. This is a journey and will take time. You’re not going to wake up next week in perfect health with physical fitness, and rushing the process can cause injuries.
The key is to be dedicated to long-term changes and be consistent in engaging your body with this regimen. You want to balance your routine so that you’re working on all three areas at once – physical strength, cardiovascular endurance and flexibility.
These three things will serve you well in a survival situation, regardless of what it is. For strength training, you want to use a mixture of bodyweights, free weights and machine weights.
Bodyweights are things like push-ups, pull-ups, squats, and more. Free weights will be things like dumbbells, while machines can be found in a gym and work every muscle group individually.
For cardio health, it may depend on whether or not you have any physical health concerns or limitations. A knee injury, for example, might mean running is out of the question, but you could do cycling or swimming – or even use an elliptical machine instead of a treadmill.
It’s a good idea to get used to walking, and not just on a smooth surface like a treadmill. You want to use a myriad of landscapes, just as rocky ones or steep incline hills because you’ll encounter a variety in a real-life survival situation.
For flexibility, you can engage in stretches each day or do a specific type of exercise that contributes to better flexibility like yoga or Pilates. Switch up your weekly routine so that you’re working on all areas, giving your body rest between activities.
Make sure you’re supporting your body through this training with proper nutrition, sleep, and even the gear you use – such as proper shoes. Mix up your exercise gear so instead of just using bodyweight, you use kettlebells and do box jumps or burpees.
Practice functional fitness that you may use in real survival scenarios. For example, carry a five-gallon bottle of water for a long distance to see how far you can go. Try hiking and climbing and having to carry or pull someone or something along the way.
Work on physical strength and endurance at least six days a week, giving yourself one full day to rest and relax your body. You might do cardio and stretching on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays while you focus on strength training and enduring for different muscle groups on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Strength and Endurance Needed for Specific Survival Events
Each survival event is going to provide you with unique challenges. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to training and readiness. But you can plan and anticipate what’s likely to happen in your area.
For example, if you’re caught in a civil chaos situation or even war, you want to be able to endure long walks or quick getaway maneuvers on foot if necessary. You’ll want your cardio to be in top form and endurance to play a major factor in that if you have to go for a long distance to get to safety.
Work on sprints and imagine yourself having to navigate precarious situations while you’re doing it. In a natural disaster like a flood, fire or earthquake, you might have to carry a heavy object (person or thing), climb over something and endure long periods of time under physical duress.
For this, you might engage in some obstacle course training. You can also practice deadlifts and rock climbing for this purpose. If a survival situation will require bugging out, you might have to carry a heavy backpack and walk for long periods of time.
Training your back muscles, arms and legs for this activity is important. Pack your bug out bags and practice walking with it on a hike to see just how difficult it is.
When you follow these instructions and work on this area of your survival efforts consistently you will see that you are getting fitter and stronger – and this will make you feel more and more confident in your ability – you will feel fully prepared to handle whatever comes your way.
Now that you know why it is absolutely vital that you get in shape to be fit and survive any survival emergency it is now time to learn about the next chapter in our Survival Prepping 101 series: Part 30: Preparing for Non-Weather Survival Situations
If you missed the previous chapter in our series you can check it out here – Part 28 – How to Network With Other Survival Preppers Anonymously