Your body will not only have to be fast and agile to survive the zombie apocalypse, but it will have to be physically strong as well. There will be times your strength, stamina and endurance will be tested to its limit and even then you’ll have to dig a little deeper than you thought possible.
A) Benefits of Strength Training:
Besides making your body leaner, stronger and fitter, strength training has many benefits for our daily lives:
- Improves core strength and posture
- Makes everyday activities easier
- Reduces the incidence of joint and muscle overuse injury
- Compliments the maintenance of a healthy body weight
- Helps prevent osteoporosis
- Improves strength for cardiovascular activities
- Improves sport and athletic performance
- Reduces loss of muscle mass due to inactivity and aging
- Improves metabolism
- Improves self confidence and overall well being
These are all great reasons to start and continue doing a basic strength training program.
There are several tools and methods of strength and resistance training that you can use to achieve these benefits. I don’t think any method is better than another, just use the ones that fit into your lifestyle best.
- Weighted pulley machines - due to their larger size and mechanics are typically found in most gyms. These machines use pulleys and guided bars to help a person lift heavy weights
- Free weights and dumb bells - a hand gripped weight that can be lifted and moved in various ways and angles.
- Resistance bands - Very lightweight, flexible and portable tools. Strength is built by stretching the elastic resistance of the band.
- Gravity based - Using your own body weight for exercise; pushing/pulling your body against gravity to build strength (e.g. chin-ups, push-ups, sit-ups.)
It is recommended that people do 2-4 resistance training workouts each week. It is important to rest muscle groups between training days to avoid muscle injury. Generally 48 hours between workouts is recommended to avoid overtraining, injury and poor results.
The resting period is important for your body. Here’s why: when you are straining your muscles lifting heavy weights you are actually tearing the existing muscle fibers and in the process reforming stronger bonds, reshaping your muscles so they’re bigger and stronger. That’s why you feel sore 24-36 hours after an intense workout, hence the saying ‘no pain, no gain’. During this rebuilding period its important to rest your muscles and let them reform and rebuild without too much stress. They also need plenty of water and lean protein during this re-building phase. This will be the foundation for your strong healthy body.
Never work the same muscle group more than every other day. If you are keen to strength train daily, then alternate the major muscle groups. Use caution not to overtrain or you will be setting yourself up for injury which could seriously impact your ability to exercise entirely. Not to mention make yourself easy prey for zombies!
B) Workout Programs:
Below, I’ve devised some strength training workouts for the gym, home and neighborhood parks that will help you build strong healthy muscles today and get you ready for the possible zombie apocalypse.
1. Strength training workout for the gym using machines & free weights:
Try to do 3 sets of 12 reps of each exercise giving yourself 30-60 seconds of rest between sets.
I. Upper Body Circuit (Day 1/3 - Monday)
- bicep curl
- tricep curl
- shoulder press
- chest bench press
- lateral pull down
- mid-back row
- lateral side fly
II. Lower Body Circuit (Day 2/3 - Wednesday)
- lunge
- squat
- glute kickback
- ab/adductor press
- quad extension
- hamstring curl
- calf raise
III. Core Circuit (Day 3/3 - Friday)
- ab crunches (machine or ball)
- knee ups
- oblique twist (twisting curl ups on ball)
- pendelum swing (place ball between feet, lie on back, swing legs 180 degrees)
- plank (floor work - on elbows and toes)
- back extensions
- box jumps (or step-ups).
2. Strength training workout for home using resistance bands and suspension bands:
Both of these types of exercise bands are lightweight and easy to use at home. Resistance bands stretch like elastic bands and exercise your muscles when you stretch the band out. Suspension bands do not stretch, you use them to hold your body in place and use gravity to exercise your muscles. They are most often hooked around a door frame or other sturdy non-slip furniture.
Resistance band exercises:
- Bicep curl (band looped under your feet)
- Tricep curl (band looped around object in front and above you)
- Mid-back row (band looped around object directly in front of you)
- Shoulder rise (band looped under feet)
- Lateral fly (band looped under feet)
- Glute kick back (looped around ankles - kick back behind you)
- Abduction/adduction (looped around ankles - kick out sideways)
Suspension band exercises:
1. Back row horizontal pull up - stand leaning back in front of wall holding straps at 45 degree angle, then pull body towards wall in back row motion
2. Suspended push up - facing away from wall move arms in push up motion with straps extended fully.
3. Hamstring curl in bridge - laying on back on the floor with feet suspended in straps, move knees up and back to bridge position
4. Double leg squat, into single leg squat - stand tall, facing wall, leaning back and gripping straps, then squat down using both legs, then lower to one knee - repeat with other leg.
5. Plank pike - face down on floor, arms extended out in push up position, feet suspended in straps, then pull knees down towards all 4 position, then raise buttocks up into pike position in air.
3. Strength training workout at your neighborhood park using gravity, medicine balls and kettle weights:
- Medicine balls (throwing to partner, both vertical & horizontal throws)
- Kettle weights (woodchopper, dead-lift, bicep curl into shoulder press, etc.)
- Heavy knapsack lug between pylons
- Park bench drills - weighted step-ups, oblique cross-overs, tricep dips
- Push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups
- Burpees and mountain climbers
- Baseball bat oblique twists (bat is good defense against zombies too!)
- Tree climbing, pull-ups/chin-ups on branches
4. Strength training workout for those with no time - using staggered super-sets to save time:
Staggered Super Sets combine multiple moves in one set to maximize time and effort.
These staggered super sets will give you a whole body workout in just a half hour.
- Bicep curl into shoulder raise
- Leg squat into lateral raise
- Push-up into jump-up (aka. burpees)
- Push-up into elbow twist (aka. hell-bows)
- Sit-up into weighted punch
- Lunge into weighted punch
- Dead-lift into tricep kick-back
List of websites where you can find free illustrations for these resistance exercises:
*Or just ask your personal trainer to demonstrate.
Don’t Forget:
Before you hit the weights its always important to warm up. A light warm up, for example 5 minutes on the bike or jogging will increase your heart rate, oxygenate your muscles and get the blood pumping, which will prime your muscles for training. If you jerk weights with cold muscles you are essentially asking for a muscle tear, which can be both painful and debilitating. To avoid this, a light warm-up is necessary, and so easy to do.
Its always important to stretch out the muscles after each training session also. Stretching will help prevent muscle stiffness, injury and promote healthy growth. It will help improve your muscles flexibility as well, which I’ll discuss in further detail in the next section Chapter 4 - Flexibility. I’ve complied a complete list of muscle stretches in Chapter 4.
**********************
Morgan’s Story - “The Strength to Carry On”
Chapter 3. Strength Training
After carefully dodging a few of the lurkers along the roadside, ducking between trees and random cars, Morgan finally arrived at the block where her parents lived. Still lived? She hoped. It was difficult to find the right terminology at the moment, considering all that had happened recently. She wasn’t sure of what was real anymore, or what was a nightmare. But sadly, she knew this wasn’t a dream because when the zombies barreled down on her the pain and fear she felt was definitely very real.
Like she did when leaving her condo, she stepped behind another tree to carefully scope out the area. But she wasn’t careful enough. It wasn’t until the beast was less than a foot away from her that she realized how much danger she was in. It snarled in her face and reached out for her, hungrily gaping its maw. So startled was she that she fell over backwards, crashing to the ground, with the zombie falling nearly on top of her. She knew she had to get the beast off of her before it could sink its claws and teeth into her flesh. She knew her strongest muscles in her body were her legs and glutes, so she pulled her legs back into her chest, between herself and the zombie, and then kicked out with all her strength. It worked! The zombie fell back nearly four feet away from her, giving her enough time and space to grab a brick that she noticed was lying on the ground next to her. Gathering her strength again, she smacked the brick down repeatedly onto its head, caving in its skull. With each swing of the brick she took, she knew she was going to be safer, better able to prevent it from hurting her. Her arms ached from the many times she swung the brick up over its head and back down again. But it was necessary, so she did it over and over again until the gruesome job was done.
Looking at the crushed cranium of the zombie she knew it couldn’t hurt her anymore, so she dropped the heavy brick down to the ground and let out a sob. Her body ached, and so did her heart and soul. How many times was she going to have to do this today? Was everyday going to be like this from now on? She didn’t know if she could quite bear to keep up with this new deadly reality. Slowly, she picked herself up off the ground, up and over the old brick walkway and continued tepidly down the road before anymore of those things could get her.
It felt eerily quiet now. Too quiet. On this same block she grew up on, she had memories that were very loud, very vivid. Playing games of soccer or street hockey with her sister and the other children that lived down the street. There were no cries of “Game off!” and “Game on!” as the cars would occasionally interrupt their games. The only reminder of those days was the set of hockey gear still remaining in the middle of the road. One net tipped over and the opposite net still standing, its netting stirring listlessly in the wind. A few hockey sticks scattered around the street, but no laughing children chasing the ball or each other. It was as if the game had came to an end in sudden death. Not due to a sudden death overtime goal, but more to the sudden cries of their mothers. That yell from home that you knew you couldn’t ignore or there was going to be trouble. Trouble, now that was an understatement.
Passing the hockey gear she finally came to the house she was looking for: 78 Longrun Ave. She pulled on the door handle and found it was locked. Out of habit she reached for her pocket and realized she had not taken her keys with her when she left. Her old habit of packing her keys, cellphone and wallet seemed unimportant when she fled her apartment earlier that same day. But her folks were creatures of habit and she knew to check the big old rock just behind the rosebush for the spare key. Jackpot! She was in. At least that one thing remained the same.
Yet, as soon as she opened the door she knew something was not right. Her mother always kept the house impeccably clean. And the disarray that lay in front of her was all wrong. Doors were left ajar at strange angles and drawers pulled open and left hanging as if searching for something in a panic. Pictures were hanging at odd angles on the wall. But then something caught her eye. The wedding pictures were missing from the wall, as well as the family portraits from her youth. It was then Morgan knew that her parents were still alive, at least when they left their family home. Only her mother would bother to take the family pictures when there was a catastrophe at hand, as most women would.
Encouraged by that sign, she climbed up the staircase. Although her legs were starting to feel like dead weights she felt compelled to reach her parents bedroom where she knew they kept their desk and their important documents. If she was going to find out where they went it would be up there.
If she was caught off guard by the disarray of the living room downstairs, she was even more so by the state of the bedroom. First off, she could barely open the bedroom door. From the outside it seemed like the dresser was knocked over in an attempt to block off the door from the outside. Digging her heels deep into the carpet and flexing her shoulder and back muscles she pushed the door open the few inches needed for her to crawl through. It finally gave way with all her effort. Damn that dresser was heavy. She had been bugging her folks to get rid of it for years but the very excuse they kept giving was that no one wanted to lug it down the stairs. Oh the irony of it all now.
Crawling through the gape between the door and dresser, Morgan saw that the bedroom window was left open, curtains swaying ever so slightly in the breeze. It almost seemed like someone leapt out the window in a mad rush. Did her parents flee their home through their bedroom window? It was only one flight up, with a soft garden landing just below. A survivable drop. Yet, it just didn’t seem right, but that’s what the signs were telling her.
She made her way over to their dresser table where she knew they kept their stationary and important documents. That’s where she found a letter addressed to her and her sister:
***
To our dear children, Karen & Morgan,
We’ve been trying to reach you both for days but the cell phones, land lines and internet have all gone down. We didn’t know what else to do but like in the old days we thought it best to write you a letter each in hopes you may find this here waiting at home for you at the very least.
Its been all over the news that some strange viral outbreak has been spreading across the country and here in town. It sounds so much worse than Ebola or SARS was a few years back. We heard that there was going to be a town meeting at the community centre where they would be quarantining people and then putting them on something called ‘safe harbor’ ships at the ferry terminal downtown. So that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to the community centre and then the boats down at the harbor. We hope to God that you will too. Karen, please get your family there in time. Evan and Joshua are in our thoughts more than ever now. And Morgan? Maybe you’re already there. We have no way to tell.
Honestly, we’re a little scared, but also hopeful this will pass in due course. We just have to wait it out somewhere safe and secure while the doctors work out a cure or vaccine for this disease.
We hope to meet you on the safe boats at the ferry terminal. God speed to you all! We’ll see you soon, we just know it.
All our love, Mom & Dad.
***
After reading the letter Morgan knew she had to try to make it to the Community Centre, as it was closest, and if that didn’t work out then try for the town harbor port and ferry terminal where most people who left town would go through. But instead of the usual ferry she now had to look for these so-called ‘Safe Harbor’ ships. If they were even still there at this point.
Prepping for the trip, she went to her parents storage closet, found a backpack they had left behind and began filling it with supplies that might be useful along the treacherous road trip. An extra sweater, rain jacket, pocketknife, matches, candles, some food and water, and considering that she had to kill quite a few zombies already she went down to the basement and found her fathers camping hatchet and slipped that into her belt. It felt like she was preparing for the camping trip to hell and back. Maybe she was...
No comments:
Post a Comment