Picture this: You’ve just finished skinning and quartering a bull elk you’ve worked just about every part of your ass off to kill. Now, you have some roller coaster miles ahead of you. The first stretch of that roller coaster is a steep uphill stretch. Then you have yourself a spicy descent before you hit another long uphill, march. You grab your pack and have a look at the meat as it hangs in game bags; you want to get it all back to the truck as quickly and in as few trips as possible. But there’s a problem — you don’t know how much you should load into your pack at one time.

The following is an excerpt from the upcoming The Hunter's Guide to Uphill and Downhill Training. I'll be releasing more excerpts in the coming weeks and opening up registration for a pre-sale list with sweet bonuses. Mobility, a.k.a. movement capacity, is misunderstood and under trained in the hunting fitness world. Good movement begins with understanding your current mobility needs. You have to test to get a handle on your current needs. Otherwise, you're firing blanks into the dark. Here's a rundown to how we approach movement testing straight from the book.

There’s a lot of biohacking nonsense floating around about training for longevity. The truth is simpler. Intelligently designed fitness training is longevity training. You don’t need to sun your butthole or face east while screaming into the wind, or whatever silly shit influencers would have you do. What you truly need to do is consistently train and eat in a way that’s sustainable while moving your fitness forward. It is simple, but it’s not always easy. And it begins with getting your head on straight.

There’s a lot of talk about always being physically ready — especially to hunt. But is that a genuine concept, or is it just a marketing ploy? Could you sincerely hop in the truck tomorrow to go on a big hunt and not get your ass handed to you in a tightly wrapped package of pain? I have a detailed answer for you — and one I think you’ll like. On the way to delivering it to you, you’ll discover some important truths about how the body works and how it adapts to training. We’ll also cover some training definitions and facts that will prevent you from being baffled by bullshit, while also giving you a deeper understanding of physical training for hunting. We’ll start the party by giving you the low-down on two often misunderstood training terms.

Here’s the funny thing about the short-term mindset — it makes a hunter think they have more time than they do. Then they procrastinate. Then they start too late to be fully prepared, even for the current hunting season. Then they start making bad decisions. Then they get their ass whooped. It looks a little something like this.

There’s a different and better way to think about and execute hunting fitness training — The Packmule Philosophy. It’s a way of thinking and training that prepares hunters to go wherever they want to go and allows them to stay for as long as it takes. And it builds the longevity that allows them to do that for the rest of their lives.