Brace Thyself/Break Thyself Part One: Functional Fitness

In my last post I talked about keeping it real and all that sort of stuff. In that respect I hereby without much futher ado introduce the Brace Thyself/Break Thyself series during which both Josh and I will discuss various topics designed to give you a good grounding in realistic, useful and practical skills before we start messing around with some of the more technical stuff. Here is Josh with 'Functional Fitness'.

So, you're a salty prepping machine.

You've got all your kit squared away.

You're set, right?

Maybe.

Alright, cool. You've got your MREs field-stripped, a dozen different ways to start a fire, half a dozen ways to catch and purify water, enough ammo to cut down a zombie army, four different methods of shelter, more knives than a Ginsu factory, and who knows what else.

Can you actually carry all that shit?

How about in varied envrionments?

What about under stress?

How long can you carry it all for?

What effect does it have on your movement?

It doesn't matter if you have the newest and bestest toys available, if your ass passes out a block away because you're in terrible shape, there will be guys like me around, like vultures, to pick you clean.

Functional fitness does NOT mean going to the gym, oiling yourself up, and doing curls while you stare at yourself in the mirror. Unless your disaster plan involves standing around picking up heavy objects and setting them back down, stick to methods that won't leave you in the dust.

Pull ups and climbing rope are good. If you have to pull yourself over a fence or wall, will you be able to?

Hiking, jogging, running, and cycling are good too. Nothing tells you how many miles you can put on the ol' Black Cadillacs (means your feet) without needing a time to take a break and fill 'em back up.

If you can, practice in your environment. Practice climbing trees, jumping fences, climbing walls, things like that. Practice it loaded up. Practice it after running.

It doesn't matter if you can do 100 pull ups in a row if under stress, you try to climb a fence, fall and bust your head open.

I'm not saying don't ever do any other exercises, nor am I saying don't go to the gym or lift weights. All of that is good business and you'll feel and look better as you go along. However, don't rely on those exercises. Mix them in with your functional exercises.

Your body is like a car. It doesn't matter so much how it looks, it's what's under the hood, and no matter how finely tuned of a machine you have, you gotta get some work done on it now and then and keep it up.

Josh H is our over caffeinated chain smoking American Corespondent and the 'well adjusted one' on this blog. Figures...