Del juicio clínico al diseño de cohorte

Loaded carries are movements that have you walk with weight. Simple … but very effective. The most basic is the farmer’s carry, which has you holding a load in each hand at your side. First, let’s make sure you pull the weight off the ground safely, in this case two heavy kettlebells. Perform a deadlift:

Next, bring the weights to your side and … walk. Be sure to keep good posture: shoulders back and down, hips under the head and squeeze the handles tight. Walk “on your glutes”, meaning you should really feel the hip extend through by glute contraction. Take short quick steps. Don’t drop your head.

Loaded carries also include heavy pushes or drags, as in the use of prowlers, sleds and wheelbarrows. Buddy carries fit in here too. Pushing your vehicle to the gas station is great exercise as well. Use your imagination, but move for a varied distance under a heavy load. You ‘ll be surprised what two weeks of heavy farmer’s car- ries can do for your strength, conditioning, and physique—especially if you have never performed them before.

Just make sure your load up: your body can manage quite a bit of load in this movement, and it improves pos- ture as a nice side-effect. Don’t be fearful of loading your structure up. Once you’ve adapted to resistance training for a few months, push the challenge, just don’t let your ego do the directing.

Foot marching, ruck marching, hiking, or, as I say, “walking” is a special kind of loaded carry. It’s special as compared to the carries performed for short distances with heavy loads. Foot marching is a brisk walk per- formed while wearing a loaded pack on your back. One can walk in this fashion for hours at a time, and for days on end. If your load and pace is right, your heart rate, and subsequent conditioning benefit will rival that of LSD running, but be a lot more fun and enjoyable and easier on the joints.

Foot marching can be done several times per week, but once per week will work too, provided that the dis- tance / duration is long enough. When first beginning foot march training, start out short and with lighter loads to give the joints and bones a chance to adapt. Read that last sentence again. No matter how great your strength is coming in to foot marching, the adaptation of the tendons, ligaments, and joints, cannot be rushed. As little as 30min with 15-20lb can be enough for some beginners. Slowly increase the load and distance pro- gressively as the weeks go by: a 50% increase in duration each week, OR a ~25% increase in load is enough of a jump. Work up to a 50lb load for a male, and 35lb load for a female at distances up to 10mi (2.5-3hrs).

Heed this warning: increase the load and distance slowly over time. The best conditioned athlete can suffer

joint, ligament, bone, and muscle damage when jumping into too much too soon with foot marching. This may be an important point if I am repeating it.

Don’t fold over underneath the straps of your pack—you should still be practicing good posture while walking. Try to stand as upright as possible, and keep the chest proud. The weight of pack will lean you forward slight- ly, but this should happen at the knee and ankle joints, and less so in the hip (unless going up in elevation), and never the waist. Keep your hips under your head and your head high. Use the walk to help improve your pos- ture. You will be pleasantly surprised at what rucking under proper posture will do for your core and stabilizer strength … you will be unfortunately surprised at what rucking under improper posture will do to your dys- function and pain levels.

Walk with short and frequent strides, contacting the ground with your heel first and then following through to the toe. Use longer strides uphill, and much shorter ones downhill. Walk with a powerful arm swing, pivoting the arms about the shoulders. As in all locomotion movement, powerful arm swing drives the movement— forward AND backward—deliberately swing your arms. You’ll notice that in foot marching, the backswing of the arm seems to do more to propel you forward.

A few tips and tricks:

If you’re walking for exercise as part of your training program, wear any comfortable shoes, though I like minimal shoes for this. Make sure they fit well, and lace them snug but not tight—your feet are going to swell.

If you need to walk as part of your job, you’ll have to wear your combat boots. Again, make sure that you have a pair which fit comfortably, but there is a way to lace them which leads to more comfort. Lace the boot as normal from the toe up to below the beginning of the instep. Cut off excess lace and tie as nor- mal. Skip a set of eyelets and lace the rest of the boot up, but tie very loose. Lacing in this fashion will al- low your calf and ankle to swell, yet keep the boot snug on the foot.

Too much too soon, will cause the bottom of your feet to hurt, and possibly lead to blistering. To some extent, you have to wait until your feet harden, but you can also take care of your feet before and after your walks. Make sure toenails are properly trimmed, and your socks and boots fit well. Stockings, worn under the socks can help with the friction. Spraying antiperspirant on the bottom of the feet can help with moisture, both of which can lead to blisters. When getting blisters, I used to wash and dry the foot, pierce the blister with a sharp and sanitized needle from the side, then push out the fluid, wash again, and apply bandage. Don’t remove the skin from the blister.

Make sure you take care of things like walking the route first, staying hydrated the night before and during the walk, and carrying salt and extra water in hotter climates. You don’t need anything unexpected to hap- pen. A cell phone too, will help in case of emergency.

Remember to keep your stride short and frequent—don’t try to step it out. Drive your arms to increase the pace.

Changing up the route often helps with the longer walks, and trying to route through natural woodlands on trails is probably a very healthy thing for us.

Programming

Programming is the “how” in putting these movements together in a training session, or schedule of sessions. One thing is clearly understood about weight training and conditioning: everything works for a little while— even longer, if you’re a beginner—so don’t assume efficacy at first glance. Remember this: it’s training that we’re after, not exercise.

Training is an intelligent, well thought out program consisting of weeks and months of PT sessions which lead to a net improvement in performance. Show up and put work in during each session; these sessions build on each other to stimulate the body to adapt in a manner that improves athleticism—i.e., get stronger, faster, etc. You can not judge a training program by only one session … you can only judge a training program by the ef- fects of the whole. You may not sweat hard or feel sore the next day after a training session, but you can be certain that a training effect has taken place in the body.

Exercise, conversely, is a session that has no goal in mind—other than working up a sweat, getting fatigued, and feeling sore in the aftermath. Exercise sessions make you feel like you worked out hard, but may not lead to performance improvement over time. Most Military members and recreational athletes alike whom I come into contact with are trying to improve performance by exercising—and failing at this goal. If your PT program is a series of exercise sessions, containing lots of exercise variety, “cardio”, high-intensity training”, “chest & back day”, and/or “leg day” with the goal of hitting a target heart rate, breathing heavy, and being sore the next day, you are providing a grave disservice to you and your members. Let’s get you on a proper training pro- gram.

Training takes patience and time … lots of time, and you have to put the work in. Most days, you will feel like you don’t want to be there, or that you’re not firing on all cylinders—that’s fine, just do the work, as the goal is weeks, months, and, in some cases, even years away. Training can be akin to building a railroad, or the type of work that a lumberjack has to do to clear a forest—heavy but submaximal work performed day after day, and your body magically adapts. So, to stimulate adaptation, just do the work. Enjoy those sessions when you feel like you can successfully wrestle bears, because they don’t come around too often.

Strength v. Conditioning