Tune Yourself up for the Season-To-Come
During hunting seasons and travel associated with the occasional hunting trip, I would bet most of us either find ourselves nowhere near a gym or with a severe lack of motivation to spend time inside away from the water and woods.
Whether it be camping with the family on the 4th of July or spending a week at hunting camp with the gang, don’t limit yourself from being able to squeeze in a quality workout! Workouts don’t need to last multiple hours and involve loads of equipment – think minimalistic! In this case, I’m going to demonstrate how something as basic as a cooler can double as your on-the-road fitness center! First I will go over some basic exercises and then follow those up with some simple ways to throw them together for a quick yet effective workout.
1. Step-Ups Step-ups are a great way to improve balance, increase cardiovascular function as well as increase your lower body strength.
How to perform:
• Begin by standing directly behind the cooler with your hands on your hips or at your sides (whichever feels more comfortable).
• Step up with your right foot, placing it firmly on the cooler and extend through your heel drawing your left legup next to the right one.
• Reverse the movement to return to the ground by stepping down with the foot you lead with.
• Continue this movement by alternating each foot for the desired amount of repetitions.
• To increase difficulty, grab some weight and hold it in each hand while performing your step ups.
2. Bulgarian split squats This is a great exercise to increase leg, glute, and hip strength as well helping to increase stability.
• Stand with your back to the cooler, your feet should be shoulder-width apart with your hands on your hips.
• Reach one leg behind you, placing your foot on top of the cooler.
• Keeping your torso upright, begin bending your forward knee to lower your torso toward the ground.
• Once your front leg forms a 90 degree angle, reverse the movement driving up through the heel to extend your leg to its starting position.
• Continue this exercise for several reps before switching to the other leg.
3. Decline push ups Push ups are a staple upper body exercise that help develop strength in our chest, shoulders, and triceps. In this case, I am performing the decline push-up to add a degree of difficulty and to show another variation of this movement!
• Get in the standard pushup position with your hands positioned a little wider than shoulder width apart.
• Place each foot onto the edge of the cooler.
• Lower your body by bending your elbows to a 90 degree angle then straighten your arms to return back to your starting position. While lowering, keep shoulder blades retracted and squeeze your elbows in towards the side of the rib cage. This will provide stability and keep you in a more “shoulder-friendly” position!
4. Tricep bench dips Another common upper body movement that places more focus on strengthening the triceps while also working the shoulders and chest.
• Sit on the cooler and position your hands shoulder width apart on the cooler.
• Slide your butt off of the front of the cooler and extend your legs out in front of you.
• Slowly bend your elbows, while keeping your back close to the cooler, lower your body toward the ground until your elbows are at 90 degrees. Again, keep your shoulder blades retracted in the “shoulder-friendly” position!
• Once elbows reach 90 degrees, press down into the cooler to straighten elbows and return to the starting position.
