Like many of you warm-blooded Americans, I played high school and college sports. Well, one college sport – football. All summer in high school and college, I trained to survive training camp’s brutal two weeks of near non-stop running, hitting, and drilling. That was all while working full-time hours at a job, either landscaping or swimming pool installation. It’s crazy, but sometimes I miss those days. Work hard during the day. Train hard. Sleep like a baby. Repeat.

The focus changed once the season started. We learned the ins and outs of the opposing offenses. We practiced our defensive scheme. We watched a lot of film and had a lot of meetings. The season was far less physical, although it was far more physical for us defensive guys than it was for the offensive guys. We had to run hills and push the sled every day before practice. I also kind of miss that. (You’re learning more and more about my psyche.)

While our focus shifted from predominantly physical to mostly mental, we didn’t totally cut physicality out of our schedule. We still lifted a couple of times per week, and we still got in our conditioning sessions. And thank God we did. It kept our bodies intact during a long season. It also made the transition into offseason workouts far less painful. In-season training was worth every rep.

It still is, even now that my main focus is hunting and not football. My goal is to help other hunters see that.

A Big Training Mistake That Hunters Make

A lot of hunters, even those who know the value of training, do something silly. They stop training consistently once the season starts. It’s a big mistake.

First, just like with sports seasons, training during the season helps keep your body intact instead of totally breaking down. Those days in the backcountry won’t beat you up as badly if you’re maintaining your strength and conditioning. Those days in the treestand won’t feel as shitty if you maintain your joints.

Second, if you stop training during hunting season, you miss out on the compounding interest of fitness. Each workout is an investment that maintains your habits, keeps you healthy, and builds on the fitness base you’ve built. You not only keep yourself going for this season, you make small investments for future seasons. And, in truth, for the rest of your life. 

Remember, we’re human first, then we’re predators. The truth is we have a whole lot more human shit to do in modern life than predator shit to do. Training must remain a priority if we plan to do the human shit, like raise kids, have fun, and be good partners, for the rest of our lives.

I get it. Life is often busy, and we want to put as much time into hunting as possible. But we have to maintain a consistent training schedule.

Let’s talk about how.

How to Transition from Pre-season to In-season Training

This list isn’t complicated, and it contains no secrets. But if you do these three things, you’ll train consistently during the season. You’ll keep your body healthy and maintain the habits that will keep you moving for the rest of your life.

Make a Plan to Train

As a fella from Amish country, I can tell you there’s no point in putting the cart before the horse. That sucker has to go first. 

Before anything else, you must make a plan to train. That means looking at your hunting schedule, examining the rest of your life, and then making a realistic plan to get your training in. Forget perfection and forget rigidity; write out a training schedule that hits the bare minimum. It’s best to shoot too low and then realize you have more time to train than you thought instead of overshooting and then frustrating the hell out of yourself.

For example, I hunt a lot of doves and geese in September, and I scout for whitetails. I know I’ll give up weekend time that I’d use for long workouts. So, I’ll adjust some of that time throughout the week and cut back the time on the weekend workouts.

I head to Montana for a week in October to upland hunt and fish. I won’t worry much about training during that week (I’ll do some mobility work and bodyweight training). When I return, I’ll archery hunt for whitetails. I’ll do that during one weekday and one weekend day. That means I’ll likely need to cut one workout from my schedule and shorten another. That’s alright.

November has me heading to Idaho to hunt elk for five days, and then I go straight into the whitetail rut. I’ll be comfortable cutting my training back by a couple of days per week during the rut for long tree stand sits. Once the rut is over and rifle season starts, I’ll go back to the schedule I kept in October while making time to also hunt waterfowl.

It’s not a perfect, precision plan, but it exists and it gives me something to work from. A rough plan that you can adapt is better than no plan at all. Look at the time you have and add training in. Next, we’ll talk about what types of training you ought to do in-season.

Focus on What Your Body Needs and Isn’t Getting

Let’s say you're a big-time upland hunter, and between your big game hunts, you spend lots of time walking the hills for birds. In that case, you don’t need to spend much of your workout time on cardiac output and aerobic capacity training. You’re getting it from your hunting. You can spend your gym time on strength, power, and movement capacity training.

Conversely, let’s say you’re a big whitetail hunter that does long sits. That shit will stiffen you up. Focus on lots more movement capacity training, strength training, and maintaining your aerobic base with your workout time. 

The biggest thing is to keep training. But secondary to that is making sure you’re giving your body what it isn’t getting from your hunts, and to do training that repairs the damage caused by your hunts. You’ll never go wrong with lots of movement capacity training. But if you’re already hoofing it through the hills several days per week, it’s best to focus your in-season training on strength and power. If you’re sitting still a lot, you need doses of everything.

But what if your hunting season isn’t too demanding this year? Well, then it’s the perfect time to focus on improving your fitness to get a jump on the seasons to come.

Be Smart About Intensity

If your hunts are demanding, count them as your most intense training days. 

For example, let’s say you have a month-long rifle season for deer or elk. Let’s also say that you plan on hunting two days per week during that season, and those hunts take you to gnarly places. You’re up and down elevation while navigating into and out of precarious terrain. Count those hunting days as your most intense training days. (This is something that Jordan and I talked about during episode 63 of the podcast.) 

Back off your strength training intensity during that season and leave more reps in reserve at the end of each set. Use your gym conditioning to improve your recovery by doing short sessions of low-intensity aerobic capacity training.  

On the flip side, if your hunts aren’t at all demanding, put some intensity into your training during the week. Include a relatively intense strength training day or two and an intense conditioning day. This will help you build on/maintain the fitness you’ve built throughout the rest of the year while priming you to get back into the yearly training cycle at the end of hunting season.

Keep Training

The most important thing is to keep training during hunting season. Set a realistic plan that allows you to maintain consistency. Give your body what it isn’t getting from your hunts so that you maintain fitness while also maintaining balance. Use your training intensity wisely. If your hunts are intense, back off in the gym. If your hunts are easy, put some intensity into the gym. Just keep training during hunting season.