Being strong is being free. The fitter we are, the more freedom we have. The more freedom we have, the happier we are and the closer to self-actualization we get. The most important question is not always, “Should we?” In order to push our limits and see who we are, we must sometimes ask, “Can we?”

Why should anyone exercise outside the gym? Why should anyone put him- or herself into an uncomfortable situation to work out? The gym has everything you need: weights, machines, treadmills, Bosu balls, and plenty of dumbbells, right? The problem I see with all of this is that these things are only inside the gym. How do we apply our fitness outside to make our lives better?

Everyone has the story of his or her own epic day. Maybe they got caught on a high alpine ridge during a thunderstorm, got lost hiking, or were swept out to sea in a rip tide during a tropical surf trip. Maybe it was getting lost in a foreign city, an out of control campfire, or a close call on the freeway. In all of these situations, there is a real possibility of death.

The great Italian alpinist and climber Reinhold Messner said, “Without the possibility of death adventure is not possible.” This quotation often gets confused as directing people to act recklessly in order to prove themselves. However, I believe that in challenging and testing ourselves, we achieve a mindset that puts into perspective the most important elements in life.

My Epic Day

I’d like to share a short story. It took place in Glacier National Park during the fall of 2009. I was a firefighter at the time and had not yet had the chance to summit one of the park’s beautiful peaks. I checked the weather – a “slight chance of snow” – and headed out on a twenty-mile quest.

After several hours, I was high on the mountainside and the hovering storm had moved over me. I could only see a few feet above me and had no idea where the summit was. Then the whiteout started. At this point survival instinct took over and I turned back.

But easy rock scrambles had transformed into icy death falls and visibility was no longer measurable in feet. I remember one point where all depth perception had vanished and I experienced intense vertigo.

t felt like I was going to fall off of the mountain. I finally reached relatively easier ground on the ridgeline, but was still miles from the trailhead. After a short celebration, I looked down and saw footprints in the snow and was completely elated – for about two seconds.

The prints that I thought were mine were actually that of a large grizzly bear, and based on the heavy snowfall and freshness of the tracks, the bear was extremely close.

There is a very distinct feeling when you become aware that you are no longer on top of the food chain. Where my mind journeyed from that moment has always been interesting and insightful to me.

I thought of the people I loved, my parents and good friends. That was it. All I wanted was to be home and to talk to these people again. Then my adrenal glands kicked in. Adrenaline is a beautiful thing. I was able to run several miles, find the trail, avoid hypothermia, and get back to my truck before dark. Fitness saved my life that day.

The Lesson Learned

I see this as an applied fitness story versus a mountaineering tale. I wanted to get out and do something physically challenging. I wanted to be in a beautiful place and I chose to go, knowing there was inclement weather.

You know that you can go to the gym and complete your routine. You know it is safe. You know if it gets hard or uncomfortable, you can stop and go home. You also know this can get really boring.

I have done workouts in the middle of desert snowstorms, sunny mountaintops, secret rivers, and alpine meadows. No one is there blowing the whistle, holding the stopwatch, or making sure you complete all your reps.

You are 100% accountable for yourself. You know you do not have to do anything and that you can stop at anytime. You choose to journey onward and you finish that day a better person.

On October 22, 2013, I did a workout using my invention, monkii bars, while suspended underneath a hot air balloon.

I was up there for a little over an hour and did as many pull ups, muscle ups, dips, and front levers as I could. I was excited, I was focused, and I was definitely gripped. I did the hot air balloon workout to help prove the idea that you can work out anywhere. It is easy to tell people this and the idea often goes unnoticed. However, no one ignored us on that day.

Summer is approaching. What can you do? Hike a mountaintop, run a Tough Mudder or Spartan Race, enter your first CrossFit competition? Actually do it. And somewhere along the way, be sure to stop and get a few pushups or squats just so you know you can.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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During my first wilderness tour, I spent all of my free time constructing an all-natural CrossFit gym at my summer base camp. I made a combination squat rack and dip station out of logs and stumps, gathered every shape and size of rock for weights, discovered cliffs I could use to do handstand pushups, and organized fallen trees as box jumps. Surprisingly, it was difficult to find tree branches low enough to do pull ups on, so I tied a rope to a branch and looped it around a nook in a tree. This setup looked and functioned like a trapeze-pull up bar and added some excitement to workouts. But this outdoor gym did more than just get me into the best shape of my life – it changed the course of my life.

If you threw any WOD at this “wild gym,” you were good to go. I remember doing “Fran” with a heavy rock for thrusters and pull ups on a very dynamic pull up bar (all at 9,000 feet in elevation). Another favorite was “Nancy.” I would do overhead squats with a log (that I hoped was not more than 95 pounds) and then 400m sprints on a muddy, rocky, uneven trail. This made for great agility training. I had light, medium, and heavy logs that I used for back squats, front squats, and overhead squats. I placed rocks on my back or in my backpack to add weight to pull ups, pushups, and dips. Working out had truly become an adventure.

The most epic day of wild-fitness began with ten miles of hiking to get to several trees that had fallen across the trail and needed to be sawed. After several hours of sawing and swinging axes, we headed back to camp. I had a quick snack and decided to do some pull ups and dips for a little extra work. I felt pretty accomplished with my day and was looking forward to the several bratwursts waiting for me in my backpack.

Just as I sat down and started to gather firewood, a sixteen-year-old boy ran into camp yelling, “My mom is having a heart attack!” With my calves twitching and adrenal hormones pumping, I sprinted down the trail with a first-aid kit and radio. The boy’s mother was sitting by the trail and was relieved to see a potential rescuer. After an initial assessment, we determined she had a severe case of altitude sickness. The rescue helicopter arrived and landed in a dangerously small meadow. We loaded her up and held our breath until they cleared the canopy and headed towards civilization. Her son was still with me and I ended that day with another six miles of hiking. Preparing for the unknown and unknowable. I slept well that night.

Sleep was the best part of being in the wilderness. It became much more of a natural rhythm that flowed perfectly each day. When it got dark, you went to bed. When the sun came up, you got up. I received a healthy dose of daily sunlight and avoided any of the artificial light pollution that invades so much of our lives. You know that sickly orange glow from street light that trickles through the blinds at night? None of that in the wilderness. The only interruption was the occasional deer running through camp at 2:00am, in which case I generally awoke thinking I was under certain bear-attack. The fight-or-flight response is paleo, right?

You squat a lot in the wilderness. Getting water, squat. Stoking the campfire, squat. Making dinner, squat. Bathroom, squat. It’s interesting how the modern world has practically eliminated the need to go through such an innate human movement. If you’re having trouble going below parallel, try going backpacking for a week.

Hiking is another activity that is crucial for human vitality. Consistent times of low-intensity movement throughout the day will help you recover faster, improve mobility and make you healthier. An interesting phenomenon that I’ve seen develop is the sedentary athlete. This individual trains exceptionally hard and is at a relatively high level of fitness. However, even though he or she goes all-out for a one-hour workout, the rest of the day involves nothing but sitting. We need to move constantly. The circulation of our venous blood and lymphatic fluid is not under pressure like our arteries. These systems require muscular contractions to push fluid along. If we are inactive for extended periods of time, this fluid begins to pool and slows down the clearance of metabolic waste.

Perpetual movement does not mean you have to work out all day long. Take a quick walk or bust out a few squats, lunges, or push ups at your desk, several times a day, and suddenly you are moving things along. As a CrossFit coach, I’ve noticed how low-intensity movement affects me. On days that I train hard and coach multiple classes, I am physically tired, but do not feel as sore or stiff as I do on days I train and then sit at a computer for extended periods. We’ve become so focused on the one-hour of high-intensity exercise that we forget to move the remaining 23.

Living in the wilderness and using nature as my gym truly changed me and my philosophy on training. I think that CrossFit has done an outstanding job of disrupting the outdated social agreement that exercise needs to be done using machines under fluorescent lights and ended with thirty minutes of cardio. I believe we should take this a step further, though and turn fitness into an adventure.

You do not always need rubber flooring, bumper plates, air conditioning, 24” boxes or a pre-workout supplement to work out. Mother Nature has provided everything we need and more. Let’s embrace this. Go get hot, dirty, and uncomfortable while loving every second of it. Go alone to somewhere no one will see you, or even believe you were there if you told them, and do a workout.

I believe that we were all born wild and that this wildness is still a part of who we are, both as individuals and as a culture. I also believe that outdoor exercise can be a means to reconnect to the innate wildness in all of us. Challenge yourself, workout anywhere, and live with wildness, passion, and purpose.

Photos courtesy of Dan Vinson and The Wild Gym.

The post How Living, Working, and Training in the Wild Made Me Evolve appeared first on Breaking Muscle.