A map is useless for plotting a course to your desired location if you don’t know where you’re currently standing. You can’t make it to Point B without knowing your current Point A. You’ll meander, lost in the woods, wasting energy, without having any idea if you’re headed in the right direction. The same is true when hunters don’t assess their fitness before training.

Despite all of this, I think everyone can agree that training involves effort.  Zoom out and look at what humans are physically capable of and it's really amazing what sustained effort in any direction leads to.  Ballet dancers, endurance athletes, baseball players, F1 drivers - just a few of the many testaments to sustained effort over time.  While most of us aren’t trying to be the next Ohtani or Verstappen, we can take one lesson with us - consistent effort drives outcomes.  

Mountain hunting is a lot of things. It’s an adventure and for many hunters it’s a rite of passage. It’s a challenge of skill, a test of will, and, oftentimes, an experience that at least borders the spiritual. It is also an endeavor that requires a huge amount of muscular endurance. It’s tough to build your uphill muscular endurance to the right levels without knowing where you currently stand and what kind of training will move the needle for you. So, let’s learn you up on how to test your uphill muscle endurance for mountain hunting.

“It’s truly an expedition. I’d even say it’s the purest hunt on earth.” This wasn’t the first time Trey Sperring and I had talked about hunting blue sheep in Nepal. It wasn’t even the second. The first was during our mutual friend and client, John Mark Prewitt’s, California Big Horn hunt in November 2024. Since then, we’ve texted about it, mentioned it on phone calls, and even discussed it during episode 74 of the Packmule Podcast. It is a conversational thread running through our friendship. 

Most folks aren’t good at reflecting. Holding the mirror up to yourself and to what’s happened in the recent past is hard work — and it can be damn uncomfortable. But it’s necessary for growth and progress. If you read those first few sentences and thought, “Hell, that’s me.” And you also had the thought that you would like to get better at moving yourself forward, just know that it makes sense that you aren’t great at reflecting. You likely weren’t ever taught how to do it, or if you were, you weren’t given a good system for taking what you’ve learned and molding it into a productive plan for moving yourself forward.

As we wind down one year to begin another, we frequently ask clients, friends and ourselves what we want out of the coming year.  An answer I frequently hear is “I just want to maintain”.  My standard answer is, “Maintain what?”. Common answers include things like strength and body weight. Despite my desire to take a big bounce and fly right off that diving board, I usually reign in my own tendencies and encourage people to get a clearer picture of a few things, including what they consider the acceptable floor as well as their loftiest goals.