How long is your “Hunting Health Span?”
In the world of health, fitness and longevity we talk a lot about enhancing our life span and most importantly, our health span. Do you know the difference?
Life Span refers to the total duration of an individual's life, from birth to death. It is often measured in years and can vary significantly among individuals due to factors such as, but not limited to, genetics, lifestyle, nutrition, excessive stress, trauma or injury and environmental influence.
Life span = how long we live
While life span is how long you will live health span focuses on the period of life during which an individual is generally in good health, free from serious chronic diseases or disabilities and able to move about the earth however they so choose. Health span emphasizes the quality of life rather than just the quantity. It is the length of time that a person lives without significant health issues and can do all the activities you love most, such as backcountry hunting for elk or deer or simply going for a daily walk.
Health span = how well we live
Some of you might live to see 100 someday, a number that the biohacking community is spending many millions of dollars in the latest health “hacks” to help them reach. Despite the odds being against me, I too aspire to claim the title of centenarian some day. A bit of a spoiler alert for the fellas out there - 80% of all centenarians are female.
I mean living to 100 is great and all, but what if I slip into poor health in my 80s and I spend the last 20 years of my life in and out of medical treatments, hospitalizations and bed rest and disability that keep me from doing all the things I love most? Well folks, that means your health span made it to your 80s while the rest of you hung on to see 100. Hard tellin' not knowing but my feeling is that wouldn't be all that great.
So what's your Hunting Health Span?
I first heard of Hunting Health Span when reading Linden Loren’s book on the subject. Linden brought to light the fact that hunting requires some physical attributes to get us into and out of the woods each day. Some hunts will require more than others while some might not require much at all. And just like our health span not aligning with our life span we need to understand that as we age what it is we want our body to do and what it is actually capable of are not always the same.
As a trainer and coach I work with folks on implementing "health span extensions" every day. Many of these athletes (we’re all athletes on some level) are training for backcountry hunting or other self supported backcountry adventure that requires a certain amount of strength, endurance, movement capacity and mental fortitude to get us into and out of the woods safely each day. We know that if they don’t prepare adequately for the demands of their hunting season that they will suffer more when the season gets here, and that means missed opportunities, increased risk of injuries, more soreness, longer recovery times, decreased drive & confidence and less time in the woods. Less time this season and fewer years down the road. Not good!
I see too many outdoorsmen and women whose hunting careers get cut short because they didn’t invest in their health and fitness soon enough. Folks in their 40s and 50s who are slowing down the point where backcountry hunting is no longer even a reality for them. Or even worse, I hear of people who suffer from heart attacks or other cardiac events while they are hunting. Some who sadly don’t make it home to their loved ones. It doesn’t have to be that way! Knowledge is power, and it’s important that you understand how you can start extending your hunting health span so that you can hunt longer, be stronger and always come home to your family.
We’re going to use backcountry elk hunting as an example for this little science project, while covering how to extend one variable of your hunting health span. Granted it’s a very important variable that will likely help you live longer and live better as a result. Your cardiovascular health reigns supreme when it comes to hunting, as it’s hard to cover ground, hiking up and down mountains, through swamps and thickets or endure heavy pack-outs and drags without an adequate amount of oxygen being fed to the muscles, organs and brain to make it all happen.
Here are some cardiovascular health stats you should know.
What’s your VO2?
Your VO2 is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use during exercise.
-The VO2 requirements of hiking at sea level is somewhere around 21–32 ml/kg/min.
-Carrying a pack or steep ascents can push it closer to 35–45 ml/kg/min.
-The average middle aged male has a VO2 around 45ml/kg/dl and women around 35. Sorry ladies, you’ll have to work a bit harder for your high country elk than your husband does. But on the flip side women live longer so you’ll likely have the last laugh haha.
At higher elevations, your VO₂max decreases because oxygen availability is reduced:
- ~5,000 ft (1,500 m): VO₂max drops ~10%.
- ~8,000 ft (2,500 m): VO₂max drops ~20–25%.
- ~14,000 ft (4,300 m): VO₂max can drop ~40–50%.
So what all that means is that if a leisurely flat hike requires 25 ml/kg/min at sea level, at 10,000 ft your max may only be 35 ml/kg/min instead of 45. The hike feels much harder relative to your actual capacity. And for the “average male” that high elevation hike will be at or well above their VO2 max! This is where those cardiac events can occur, when you think you’re ready and prepared but then you realize that how you trained in perfect conditions was very different from the level of difficulty you faced on your hunt. Other factors such as pack weight play a big role here also. The data shows us that there’s an added 10–20% VO₂ demand per 10–15% body weight carried. Then add factors such as slope, snow or rain, scree or loose and uneven soils. And then doing it day after day for a week or more while living out of a tent in extreme weather conditions without the comforts of home. What was doable on paper is now not even close to being in your wheelhouse. If you’re hunting with others you just went from being an asset to being a liability.
Not sure where you stack up?
So now that you have all this great intel you probably want to know how you stack up right? Well here’s a simple and relatively reliable test for estimating your VO2 max. Remember, there are no guarantees with these "tests" especially when you add in the uncontrollable factors that mother nature will surely add to the equation when mobilizing in the backcountry and beyond.
The 3 min Step Test aka the Harvard Step Test
- Use a 12-inch box or sturdy step and complete 3 minutes of step ups at the tempo below. A metronome can be helpful for this.
- Step up and down at a rate of 24 steps/min (right-left counts as one step) for 3 minutes.
- Immediately after finishing, sit down and measure your pulse for 1 minute. Or measure for 10 sec and multiply by 6. Let’s say you come up with 120 bpm.
Use this formula to figure your VO2 max with the 3 min Step Up Test.
VO₂_{max} = 65.81 - (0.1847 \times HR)
- HR = heartbeats in 1 minute after the test
- VO₂ max is expressed in mL/kg/min
Example:
- Recovery HR = 120 bpm
- VO₂ max ≈ 65.81 − (0.1847 × 120)
- VO₂ max ≈ 65.81 − 22.16 ≈ 43.65 mL/kg/min
Many of the athletes who train with Ridgeline Athlete complete our 100 @ 25% BW step up test shown here. Try it out and see how you stack up. Many of the athletes who train with Ridgeline Athlete complete our 100 @ 25% BW step up test shown here. Try it out and see how you stack up.
Are you making your HHSA contributions?
Well now you need to decide what type of hunting it is you want to do for as long as possible. If it’s backcountry elk hunting you have all the data you need from the example above. If you like to track whitetails in the big woods like I do the VO2 max requirements aren’t quite as high because max elevations are typically lower, but it can be an all day long excursion with no stopping. Repeat this day after day in snowy terrain and your body will break down quickly.
Sidenote: Having done both I will say that a full day of tracking bucks in the snowy northeastern landscape is harder on your body than a full day of elk hunting on dry ground out west. If you add snow out west that certainly evens the playing field.
If you want to be stronger longer for and extend your hunting career you need to be sure you’re investing in your HHSA, aka your Hunting Health Span Account. No different than investing in your retirement account and wanting to have a certain amount to withdraw from after you retire. Start early and invest wisely and you'll be in good shape, literally, and able to withdraw enough to live comfortably and hunt hard through your golden years. Wait too long and you won't retire as well as you might like. If you do not invest enough you won't retire or hunt as well as you had hoped…
Training for the long game in hunting is no different than investing in the market for your retirement. The sooner you start and the harder you work the longer you'll be able to enjoy what you love most, such as chasing animals through the mountains and valleys in wild places. But you need to stay consistent and have a plan in place.
So many people I know will not have the ability to hunt the way they love much past 50yrs old, simply because they won't have the physical capacity to do it. They didn't invest enough, or at all, and now they are fighting against many years of not investing enough. It's sad really, because mentally they will have all the tools, lots of experience from years of figuring it all out, but their body is failing them and as a result they can't go anymore...
Personally, I will not give myself the option for backing out. I know that I want to be able to track whitetails day after day for several weeks at a time, and then drag them out of the woods when I’m successful, sometimes several miles, back to the truck. I also want to have the ability to continue to go out west on a backcountry elk in high country settings and have the strength to carry out the meat on my back. Most importantly, I want to have the opportunity to do it with my children and my grandchildren in 20-30yrs from now.
This is my needs assessment that I can then use to create a training plan that will help me reach my goals. I want to do this through my 70s and into my 80s, currently I'm 43. I believe based on my current level of fitness, and my experience in training the human body that this goal is very realistic. But I have to stay consistent, if I let up I will regress, which is the case with so many folks I see. Starting this process after you retire is too late. You must find a way to invest earlier so you can hunt and live better in the 7th, 8th and 9th decades of your life.
Once you have your needs assessment established all you have to do is structure a training plan with the needed strength, endurance, power, agility, etc. to help you maintain an adequate level of fitness and not decline faster than you can afford to for keeping you in the game into your 70s and beyond. Yes, we will all decline, that's unavoidable. But we can absolutely slow that decline and do all the things we love for longer. Stronger longer as we like to say.
Next month we’ll talk about some training strategies to help you stay in the game longer and increase your hunting health span.
Adrian Guyer CSCS, RSCC, NSCA CPT, USAW2, CSAC is a full time strength and conditioning coach and owner/founder of XIP Training Systems and Ridgeline Athlete. He and his staff have worked with thousands of athletes from almost every conventional sport and also outside the lines in backcountry athletics. Adrian’s passion and success in backcountry hunting allow for an in the trenches approach to designing more effective backcountry training programs that transfer to the demands of backcountry hunting.