Greetings
I was listening to NPR and the discussion was survival of the fittest. Their discussion didn’t involve physical fitness but it started a conversation between my brother and me about being fit to survive.

We were wondering:
How do you define physical fitness?
Do you have measure you use?
Do you have a daily/weekly program? If so, what is it?

My brother does 3 miles with pack 3 times a week, I can’t remember how long he said it takes him (he’s younger and ex-airborne so he’s faster than me). Then everyday does pushups, crunches, pull-ups, deep knees bends, stretches and kata.
My current program consists of stretching, then running, mostly jogging, for 30min 3 times per week and 3 two minute rounds with the heavy bag twice a week. I’m 47 and this isn’t keeping up with gravity anymore but I still can hike most of the day without problems and run 2 flights of stairs without collapsing. So how fit is fit?

If this has already been discussed in detail, I apologize.
Ian

IanPorter,

I retired nine years ago to care for my imobile father-in-law. When he pasted away three years ago, my wife was diagnosed with stage 4 oral cancer. She is now finally cancer free and healthy. Those years took a serious toll on my physical fitness. Two months ago I started walking with my two German Sheperd Dogs. Today I walk between fifteen and twenty miles five to six time a week. I walk early in the morning and early in the evening to avoid the heat here. I have lost thirty three pounds and reduced my pant size from 44 to 36. I am also off my high blood pressure medication.

This has increased my survival chances whether I encounter a diaster situation or not.

My two problem areas have been wearing out foot wear and breaking in new ones. I will post a report on the forum when I finish breaking in the current boots.

I still have forty pounds to loose to get back to my BMI number of 24. I turned sixty this spring. When winter gets here, I will hit the gym and resume weight trainning and skipping rope. My grandfather was a fight manager and trainer. Two hours of skipping rope at 80 revolutions per minute will make you or break you. I hope I survive that.

Good luck.

The guru of jogging James Fix dropped dead of a heart attack. He was fit. He was not healthy. Survival is oftentimes more about conserving energy than winning some ironman competition. Years ago in my wasted youth I worked in a warehouse. The most productive employe was a retired navyman who looked like the actor William Bendix. He knew his stock, planned every trip down the massive aisles like a master tactition, never strained or varied from a steady pace. All of us kids were burning ourselves out and never had nearly as many orders filled. I finally asked him for help. He told me to work smart not hard, fill multiple orders on each aisle instead of running all over completing one and to go SLOW as fast as I could. That last one took soome thinking. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

You nailed it. Smart, ot hard. Conservation of energy, not body mass. I'm back at 146 at 6'1" after going down to 108 and nearly dying. I am acclimating myself to heat again CAREFULLY. The HI was 108 today, and I am not shy about scurrying from patch of shade to shade.

The toughest man I ever knew was named George Hopkins. He was from Callahan County, Texas, and he grew up wild. He got inyo trouble, and got sent to the Navy instead of jail. During basic, they couldn't do anything with him, but he would not discharge, so they sent him to Panama Jungle school. He ran the instructors into the ground. They put him on the Lex. He liked to fight, so they said, OK, you'll box. He was all-navy heavy champ, and was going to fight for all-armed-forces, when he got drunk and hit an officer.

They sent him to Vietnam humping a radio rig for a SEAL team. He did two tours. While on leave in Tokyo, he got his ankle crushed in a motorcycle accident, and medicaled-out. I've got his DD-213, and it is amazing.

He came home, and could not get a job. He had to wear a frame brace on his leg. He finally went to work as the attendant of the ward for the dangerous criminally insane unit of the Abilene State School. He got 6 of his patients/inmates DC's to lesser units. They fired him for insubordination.

He learned to weld, he cowboyed [he worked with me a lot] and broke horses for a living. He was my friend. Lots of folks said he was nuts.

George looked at pain as just another bodily symptom, like sweating. When I knew him, he was not, probably, cardiolvascularly fit as a hard-core runner would be, but his capacity to do work was amazing. He did not know how to quit, and his physiolgy allowed him to get away with it. He did take care of himself: he was always hydrated, and he took snacks when he didn't want them. He also had inate quickness, which cannot be taught. George died at 48, of pancreatic cancer. My pancreas nearly killed me. I'm 48.

Go figure. You do what you can. I would put George up there as the most 'most likely to survive' person I have ever known, not just because of his body & physiology, but his temperment. And, if you were his friend, you'd live, too. But he died w/in 6 weeks of first symptoms.

Fit to survive, hmm, how can I elaborate.

I work with a short, skinny mexican. He also hits the gym with me every day. He is in pretty good shape, lean, quick, slightly muscular. He's maybe 5' 6" tall. I am 6' 6", weigh 250, and have a nice pooch hanging around my bellybutton. Two things about this contrast to note.

1. All things being equal, he will outlive me in the natural course of events. It is for the same reason that Chihuahuas last longer than Great Danes. You will not see many basketball players in their 80s.

2. When I work out, I can easily expend 600 calories in half an hour. He struggles to get to 500. I can go for maybe 2 hours without a break on the elliptical, he is gassed out after 45 minutes. My BMI is probably twice what his is, but that is intentional.

I don't think being real thin and having a low BMI is the key. I think staying reasonably active, knowing your limitations, and pacing yourself are the real solution. It used to be that when I was younger, my friends said I moved through the forest like an elk. I could go all day and cover 20 miles, or I could run through the brush just about as fast as I could run down the track in a 100 yard dash. I was never the fastest kid in track, and I couldn't run for miles and miles, but I could set the autopilot and cruise and get from point a to point b pretty darned well.

I have slowed down with time. All of us will. Who wants to live forever? The point is now I don't have to try and run 10 miles to survive, I have to think where is the nearest best place to get to to survive, what do I need to take with me, and how long do I need to be there for? If I had to try and run to the next nearest Army base, I wouldn't make it. Guess what, neither would anyone else. If I had to fight hand to hand a bunch of insurgents, I would lose. So would anyone else, it won't matter if you were Steven Seagal or Bruce Lee, you will eventually reach your limits.

Consider this, when Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific, the men needed to consume 8 to 10 lbs of meat a day just to maintain their weight. These were not fat men! I have eaten up to 40 ounces of prime beef at one sitting, not having to consume anything else but water. It can be done, but it is a chore. Can you imagine how much work they must've been doing to maintain that burn rate? There's a reason people carried big balls of fat around with them back then (they called it pemmican). They needed that much energy just to survive.

If I were in a real survival situation, I can imagine burning 10,000 Kcal a day. I reckon the first few days would be killer. I am not in the kind of shape to burn that many calories a day comfortably. But I think I can still attain that level if I had to.

My conclusion is that a little sense can save you a lot of effort (sounds like what Chris said). Fitness is probably secondary to knowing how to use the limited resource your body can provide to greatest benefit. Still it is kinda like letting your gear sit around and collect dust. You gotta take care of your assets if you expect them to be any good when they are most needed.