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Part 1

Preparing for a Rigorous Life.

Please don’t confuse off-grid with a lazy and “done-for-you” experience.

Many plan for an off-grid life, but fail to consider the physical requirements.  Often, they only consider planning requirements such as land, homestead size, and power generation (such as solar).  Are these important and critical? Yes, of course, but they are also not enough. Many will never stop to consider that the most vital off-grid planning they can ever do is planning for their health.

This blog series will introduce what it means to plan for and live a rigorous off-grid and outdoor-focused life.  Remember, before starting any physical fitness program, consult a medical professional to ensure you are cleared for activity.

To live a rigorous, off-grid, and outdoor-focused life, you must prepare your mind, body, and spirit.  Let’s talk first about the body.  There are three key areas of human performance that you need to think about when preparing your body for a rigorous off-grid and outdoor lifestyle.  The first is preparing for general endurance.  Cardiovascular and respiratory endurance are critical aspects of general fitness.  Endurance has a real place in the off-grid and outdoor lifestyle.  The second area of performance is power and strength.  Though technically separate subjects for the PhDs in the crowd,  for the purpose of this article, we will group them together.  You can have strength without power; you cannot have power without strength.  The third is agility and coordination.  This will encapsulate requirements such as balance, accuracy, coordination, and others.

The First, and someone would argue the most critical physical skill for a rigorous lifestyle is endurance, or the ability to move for long periods of time without debilitating fatigue.  It is not what you start, but what you finish that matters.  Endurance is critical to the off-grid and outdoor lifestyle.  To build endurance, you must move and train your body effectively.  The best place to start is by increasing your movement ability via either time or distance, and eventually both.  However, you do not want to be a hero on the first day.   The one thing you can’t do quickly is create endurance.  Creating endurance takes literal time.  It is the one thing you do not want to wait on.  Objects at rest tend to stay at rest, and objects in motion tend to stay in motion.  The off-grid and outdoor lifestyles require the ability to move for long periods of time and to complete tasks that you start.  

Endurance is the key to completing what you start.  Start small and take baby steps if you aren’t already exercising on a regular basis.  To be sure, before you begin, you want to consult a medical professional, go over your medical history, and even take a physical if they request.  No matter what, get your medical provider's permission before you start any athletic development or physical fitness program (last warning).  First… “Do no harm”.  If something is broken and needs to be fixed before you start, ensure that you do so.  

Start with a reasonable effort.  It may be a simple as walking around the house, and learning how to stay on your feet for 30 minutes at a time.  If you are already a marathon runner, you may want to work on other types of demanding endurance, such as rucking.  Do not worry about where you start.  Make sure you have a minimum time horizon of 6 to 12 months to accomplish your goals.  Sure, it can be done sooner, but why rush things that need to be done right?  If you need a list of activities that qualify, just send us a DM.

If you’re like, wait a minute, I’m retiring in three months and will be moving to my off-grid location in the next four months.  I’m not suggesting you have to wait six months to move locations, but give yourself six months to get fully ready if you can.  It takes a lot of time for the heart, ligaments, and tendons to catch up to the faster development of your muscular system.

Even if you regularly work out in a gym, you need to get your feet, and your lower extremities ready for endurance-type work.  You can start by walking a quarter, half, full mile, or 2-mile route to get a sense of your starting pace and endurance level.

Ideally, within 6 months, you will be walking 3 to 4 miles a day at a brisk pace 3-5 times a week, and potentially rucking 6 to 8 miles with 25 to 45 pounds of weight once a week.  Remember to adjust up or down based on your fitness levels and abilities.  There is no correct answer here; just be sure to make progress and develop endurance over time. 

Next, you want to develop power and strength.  Endurance is essential, but the ability to move your body effectively, lift heavy objects, and carry them various distances is a key and even critical off-grid skill.  Don’t plan to always have a tractor, four-wheeler, or anything else available.  Murphy’s Law is alive as well, and things break, and you have to be prepared to use your body to move things.

You develop power and strength by lifting weights.  If you do not have a background in weightlifting, CrossFit or other types of strength-building activities, consult a fitness professional. If you need help developing a fitness plan, reach out to us for additional resources.

You can start developing power and strength by lifting weights, using kettlebells, or other types of strength and powerlifting implements.  If you want to go old school, you can even use bales of hay, and bags of concrete, along with buckets of sand.  You would be shocked at how much power and strength you can develop with just the different collection of atoms you have lying around your off-grid location.  

In fact, you can develop a whole system around creating “farm strength“.  There are plenty of YouTube videos available on the subject.  You want to start really slow,  and only add weight when ready.

This is a “place that people can get really into trouble”.  We’re going to say it one more time: consult a professional before you begin lifting for strength and power.  Fix things that need to be fixed, if they need to be fixed, before starting this type of program. And start with the philosophy of slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

That said, once you are ready to go, you can have a lot of fun, developing strength and power.  You can start with power and endurance exercises, such as air squats, air jumps, and even Burpees.  You can add push-ups and sit-ups, and begin the journey of developing an intense pull up regimen.  If you started today with small amounts of each of these exercises, and develop your ability to do them over days, weeks and months, you would be amazed at the change in your body and power and strength in 6 to 12 months.  It is shocking actually, what is possible.

Finally, you’ve got to work on agility and coordination.  There are so many ways to do this, but the key is to get started, and do not stop. In the next post we will cover this subject.