Strength with little equipment

What the body is for

Look at what a long day outside actually asks of you. Climbing for an hour. Holding form when you are tired. Lifting yourself over a wall, a fallen tree or the side of a boat. Carrying a pack. Getting up off the ground, repeatedly, in mud. None of that needs a big bench press. All of it needs a strong back, strong hips, a grip that does not let go and a middle that holds you together.

The Nordic habit is to build that with very little: a pull-up bar, something heavy with an awkward shape, a hill and the ground. Gyms, machines and barbells are fine and many people here use them in winter. This is just another way, and it has the advantage that you can do it in the garden, the forest or a hotel room, so it gets done.

The World Health Organization’s physical activity guidance says in plain terms that muscle strengthening benefits everyone, at every age. This chapter is about doing it with what you have.

The kit

Three things. Buy the first, find the second, you already have the third.

A pull-up bar. The cheap kind that hooks over a door frame or screws into it. It is the single best piece of training equipment you can own for the money, and the only one in this chapter that costs anything. Failing that, a low tree branch, a climbing frame in a playground or the bar at the lit track. Most Swedish and Norwegian lit loops have a few bars and benches somewhere on them, there for exactly this.

Something heavy. A log is the classic. A sandbag is easier: a strong bag, a bin liner inside it, sand from a builder’s merchant, 15 to 30 kg to start. A rucksack with books. A big stone. Two full water containers. The awkwardness is the point: a log that rolls and a sandbag that shifts ask more of the grip and the trunk than a neat dumbbell ever will. The carrying chapter is about moving with it; this one is about lifting it.

The ground. For push-ups, squats, lunges, getting up and down, and, on a hill, for the hardest leg session there is.

The movements

Six families. Each has an easy version and a hard version, and you move between them as you get stronger.

Pull

The one most people cannot do, and the one that matters most for obstacle courses, scrambling and anything with a rope. If you cannot do a pull-up, hang from the bar for time, then do slow lowers: step up so your chin is over the bar and lower over five seconds. Rows under a sturdy table or a low branch work the same muscles. When you can do five pull-ups, add weight in a rucksack. When you can do ten, work on climbing over the bar.

Push

Push-ups from the knees, then from the toes, then with the feet raised on a bench, then with a rucksack on. Dips between two benches or on parallel bars at the lit track. Aim for sets of ten to fifteen.

Squat

Body-weight squats, then with the sandbag held at the chest, then with it on the shoulders. Depth matters more than load: all the way down, heels on the ground, back straight. Twenty clean body-weight squats before you add anything. For legs that climb, add step-ups on to a bench or a rock with the bag on your back.

Lunge and single leg

Walking lunges across a lawn or a forest clearing, ten each leg, then with the bag. Single-leg squats on to a bench, lowering under control. Running and skiing are one leg at a time, so this is where the strength transfers.

Lift from the ground

Pick the sandbag up off the ground to the chest, put it on a shoulder, put it back down, repeat. Then the log. This is the deadlift and the clean with a lump of weight instead of a barbell, and it teaches the back and hips to work together. Start light, keep the back flat, and let the legs do the lifting. Sets of five to eight.

Hold and carry

Hang from the bar for time. Hold a plank. Carry the sandbag at the chest for fifty metres, then on one shoulder, then the other. Carry two water containers like suitcases. The trunk and the grip get strong by refusing to let go, and both are what fail first at the end of a long race.

The hill

If there is one strength session that Nordic skiers and runners agree on, it is the hill. Find a slope that takes 30 to 60 seconds to run hard. Run up, walk down, repeat eight to twelve times. Skiers do it with poles, bounding, and it is the hardest thing in this guide. Runners do it in shoes. It builds the legs, the lungs and the will all at once, and it is where the 4×4 interval session can be done when there is no track.

Do the hill once a week in the second half of your training year, in place of one of the two strength days, not in addition.

A week

Two strength sessions a week, about forty minutes each, on days that are not your long outing or your intervals. A sample session, done in the garden or at the lit track:

• Ten minutes easy: a jog, a walk, arm circles, a few squats with no weight.
• Pull: four sets of as many as you can do, or four sets of hangs and lowers.
• Push: four sets of ten to fifteen.
• Lift from the ground: four sets of six with the sandbag.
• Squat or lunge: four sets of fifteen, with the bag when it is easy without.
• Carry: four lengths of fifty metres, changing how you hold it each time.
• Hang: as long as you can, twice.

Rest a minute or two between sets. Go hard on the pull and the lift, and treat the rest as work rather than torture. Done properly, the whole thing is thirty-five to forty-five minutes and you are outside for all of it.

The four-week programme uses only the body-weight versions, with no bar and no bag, so you can start this week. The twelve-week base adds the bar and the weight.

Getting stronger for a year

Progress is slow and that is fine. Each session, try to do one more rep in one set, or add a kilo of sand, or move from the easier version to the harder one. Write it down on a scrap of paper in the shed. Over a year that is a lot of sand.

A few rules that save injuries:

Form before load. Twenty clean body-weight squats before the bag; five clean lowers before you chase a pull-up; a flat back on every lift from the ground, every time.

Leave one in the tank. Stop a set when the next rep would be ugly, not when you have nothing left. You train again in three days.

Grip and trunk every session. Hangs and carries are the boring bit people skip, and they are the bit that gets you up a rope or through hour five.

How it fits

Strength is one of the four parts of the Nordic way, alongside the long easy sessions, the intervals and recovery. It takes two short sessions a week and most of a winter to feel it. By the time you stand on a start line, whether that is an obstacle race with twenty walls or a mountain trail with two thousand metres of climb, the legs that got you there were built on a lawn with a bag of sand.