Trying to make a workout out of farm chores. Any suggestions???
Farm Chore Workout
This week I spoke with a friend who had a great idea for a combined cardiovascular and muscular workout using simple materials found on a farm. My friend is a wrestler at a community college, but he also works on a relative’s farm part time during the week. He asked his coach if he could use parts of his work for his weekly workout if he developed a plan and stuck to it. The trick to this kind of workout is coming up with a number of repeatable exercises that could be accomplished during the course of a day’s work without actually changing the work itself.
The main types of workouts involved in this kind of program are constant movement with weights. These can be done as reps with short breaks or as hard work followed by lighter cool down work. Tasks include things like: bucking hay bales, digging postholes, carrying posts, loading wood, and pushing a loaded wheel barrow. All of these activities are strenuous in their own right, but they can be made into a real workout by judging the length of the work and pacing yourself accordingly to get the most benefit out of the workout. These tasks can also be accomplished while targeting individual muscle groups.
A few examples of work activities that can be turned into exercises are:
Loading a feed truck: 2 tons of small bales: 40 bales
Focus on lift from stack and lift to trailer. Use legs for the initial lift and both legs and shoulders for the secondary lift. Instead of resting every few bales, try 10 bale reps for 4 sets. This will make for a more thorough muscle workout and more cardio without compromising the job.
Digging post holes: 5 post holes: 10 minutes each
Control your digging speed to keep a steady, strenuous rhythm. Keep shovel strokes steady and avoid speeding up on softer soil. Focus on arm muscles and breathing during each hole. Avoid slowing down or resting until each hole is completed. This will build incredible stamina and arm strength.
Splitting Firewood: 15 minute splitting, 5 minutes stacking
Try to keep a steady aerobic pace while splitting, but not fast enough to be unsafe. After 15 minutes of continuous splitting, stack all of the split wood as quickly as possible to get a burnout workout. Repeat as many times as needed.
These are just a couple of ideas that I thought would work well. I also know that there are a number of actual workouts using farm objects such as hitting a tire with a sledgehammer or flipping a tractor tire, but I really want to focus on making a workout out of the work itself.
Does anyone else have any thoughts or suggestions?? I would really like to think of a longer list of workouts that can be done on a ranch or farm while performing work. Thanks.
Jesse Svejcar
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Comments
I like your idea of trying to organize the normal tasks into patterns that make it more of an actual work out. Farm work is very strenuous on its own, but I can see how this could make it even better for you. I had a friend when I was working in the construction industry who did similar things with his job. He usually focused on packing things much heavier than most people would. For example; if he had to move 2x4's he would stack them as high as he could on his shoulder and was usually moving at least twice as much at a time as most people would. This is something you could possibly do with your wheel barrow or other activities that require moving things.
I think Andy idea of filling your wheel barrow twice as full usual is a great idea not to mention you would be getting a done with chores a lot faster. A cardio idea that is really simple is hooking up a pedometer up to your foot and trying to take more then 10,000 step a day. I found at least for me that I stand around way less when I am wearing a pedometer and seem to walk in place a lot more and rest less often plus you can convert the amount of steps you take into miles and check your progress like that.
I can see how the pedometer might be a good idea, but i think most farm work will exceed 10,000 steps if your're working five hours a day. It might be a good idea if you know that your activities will be limited in movement (mechanic work, building corrals, etc). In these situations you could make an extra effort to run around a little, pick up the pace when you go grab another part or post; things like that. Thanks for the input.
I have more to add to this, because I have some experience attempting to do some of the same things in my workouts to effectively double up on country-living chores and strength workouts. In reality, the workout machines we have contrived are simply a result of going away from these day-to-day activities that most people performed several decades ago. From a health standpoint, there really is no need to workout if you are doing manual labor chores throughout the day. The problem is that most of our work today is inactive (even for most farmers), so we have to force ourselves into blocks of times were we contrive our activity using machines we have constructed for the task (i.e. weight equipment).
The value of your suggestions is that you are trying to add some structure to the chores themselves. Many of these would be considered strength training though, because they are heavy lifts that are short in duration. Increasing the time between sets or reducing the load could lead to a cardiovascular type of activity, but this is where heart rate monitoring comes into play. If you see that you are keeping your heart rate in your zone for an extended period of time, then you know right away that the activity you are doing has value as a cardiovascular workout. Otherwise, you may be doing mostly anaerobic work with your chores and not getting enough aerobic too.
I have these suggestions based on my experience:
i think anyone who doesnt think farm work could be considered a complete body workout has never actually worked on a farm for a full day. it is some of the hardest physically demanding work that a person can do. And if you work all day as opposed to a hour long workout in the weight room the workouts dont even compare in intensity and level of difficulty. i feel farm workouts are alot healthy for a person and also more productive in total body strength and health.
Though most Americans are inactive today, where I'm from that is not the case! Most farmers and ranchers in my area still do a lot of manual labor every day. As a result, going to the gym (which isn't an option for most) after a 16 hour day of labor is the last thing on their mind. That's the main reason I wanted to come up with ideas for "working out" while working. It may not be as good as a weight room workout, but the reality is that most people who do hard labor for a living are not going to go lift weights after work. Even riding horses is a very strenuous activity. There are still places where cattle are run right and ranch hands are in the saddle from dawn to dusk.
The idea is geared more toward individuals who do manual labor for a living vs. those who only do a few chores a day. My goal is to get a more complete workout out of a work day.
I like the shoveling workout idea. Shoveling is a great workout, whether it's dirt, manure or snow, and many farm activities include shoveling something.
Thanks for the input!
There are so many diffrent activies that are done on a farm from day to day that are really good work outs. there is alot of work out that can be strench building exercise anarobic exercise and cardio. working on a farm have a wide variety of work out and it is very hard to know how benifitial it is till you have actually done it for many years. ther is more things then just splitting wood and lifting hay bales even though those can be good work out. Most rancher are cheching fence which where i am from you dont get to use the 4-wheeler or horses much it is a steep climb and then packing 30 lbsof equipment sometimes more when building fenc. when building or fixing corrals hammering nails is a great work out for you forearm shoulder and many other muscle groups. Even just walking through the mud and manure is a good work out for your leg and it helps your balance. most farmer and ranchers might not work every muscle group every day but if it is a working place i am sure they will work that muscle group at least twice a week.
I have worked on a farm for most of my life but never thought of it as being a workout. I like this idea and the other ideas above. Farm work can be very strenous and not leave a lot of time to get to a gym. I will have to show a few of my friends this who work on farms and complain how they have no time to workout.
I think that is one of the best things about things like farming, cleaning, sporting games and even shopping you can get a killer workout with out even at times realizing you are even getting one! (I think it is safe to say that some of the things I listed above would be better workouts then others:)