The Importance of Training

One thing preppers tend to focus on is acquisition – acquiring new gear and acquiring new skills. But, for some though, that’s where it stops. Kit gets packed away, unopened and unused. It simply gets ticked off a checklist you downloaded from the internet.

It’s the same with skills, people learn some self-defence or acquire a new skill and then think they know it and file it away in their heads. It is almost guaranteed you will have forgotten it in 6 months.

And sadly, the same with fitness and resilience training; you have some training and then feel that you have that sorted.

Unfortunately, this is not helping you and could lead to a false sense of security.

Let’s take a look…

Gear

Not testing gear and checking it is fit for purpose is a significant problem. You need to be confident your equipment is going to deliver.

For example, I once had a waterproof jacket that worked well at keeping the water out but kept too much heat in during exercise. So when I took my jacket off after a long walk, my coat was dry, but my clothes were drenched in sweat. It was like walking around in a sauna.

Any equipment that requires power or skills must be tested. Do you find it easy to use? Do you need an instructional manual? Have you kept the manual just in case? The last thing you need is to need something, then forget where you put it. Or even worse, when you find it, you don’t remember how to use it.

Skills

Most skills training are perishable, and this includes fitness training. Simply learning something is not enough.

If you learnt a language at school and haven’t spoken it for a long time, you will have forgotten almost everything. You need to practice and train. It is the same with fitness. Just because you did 20 push-ups in your 20s doesn’t mean you can still do them in your 40s. Skills and fitness levels degrade.

Once you realise this, you must build in time to refresh and maintain your skill levels. We have plenty of articles on fitness. For example, check out our guide to Rucking – https://prepperweekly.co.uk/what-is-rucking/  Rucking can be a great way to maintain fitness and test gear simultaneously. If you want to maximise your time while rucking, you can also refresh specific skills – audiobooks or language learning can help you learn, keep your brain active and help you focus.

Summary

If you fall into the category at the top of this article, here are a few things you can do:

• First, always be training and practising relevant skills.

• Stress test your gear and equipment – Take it out of its wrapper and use it; you need to know how your gear works.

• Work on different scenarios – carry a heavier weight or walk farther during rucking. Train in the dark. 

• Develop your go to with self-defence training – Looking at military self-defence training, soldiers are taught a small number of effective techniques or principles that they can then build on and develop muscle memory for. You don’t need hundreds of techniques. Don’t fall into the trap of complication.