Hand and Foot Conditioning For Shoe-and-Glove Weakened Hands

Description

If your hands and feet have been weakened by wearing shoes and gloves all winter, here is how to get them started getting strong again. Begin slowly! But over time, they'll become adventure-worthy!

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,hand conditioning,foot conditioning,barefoot

Video Transcription

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springtime in Wisconsin and in some places in the woods there's still snow well in other places it really feels like spring is arrived if you live in a place where there's snow then your hands your feet we've gotten a little bit soft over the winter no matter how much we try to go barefoot out in the woods in the winter the fact is at least for me that you know I have to wear shoes or boots for the majority of the winter time same with the hands they have gloves mittens on a lot and so as soon as we get out here in the spring we get excited about jumping around in the woods well our feet can get cut out my hands and get shredded when we're trying to climb trees and we you know take a sharp branch into our palm so what I'm going to do today is share some techniques that I use to get my hands in my feet back in shape for really good woods adventures and this also applies if you've just been living inside for a long time and you want to start conditioning your feet or your hands you're getting into wood parkour or just starting to hike more and think maybe once in a while I want to take my boots off all right here's a good way to get started obviously the first thing I need to do is get those shoes off and get my feet on the ground as we're walking on the ground there's a lot of terrain out here and I'm going to try to find a place this doesn't give me too many terrain challenges your first so I can just let the bottoms of my feet kind of feel the ground again I'm trying to find things go like rock and here's a mossy stone here that allows my foot to curl over it you get two ligaments in attendance stretched out again so take time to stock on rock or if you don't have rock then fallen branches work just as well for the roots of trees you want our feet to really start to feel what it's like to be in different planes of motion you get our toes activated again if you have sharper rock then you can start to really get your feet down on those edges and that allows them just you know it's like to bend hard over something because your terrains anything like mine you're moving through the wood you're going to step on one of these rocks and if you're not ready for that it's pretty sharp on like this on then that can really hurt your feet again even if you don't have rock these guys are going to do the same thing so let your feet curl over it they walk through the wood and not looking for the smoothest path I'm looking for a path that's going to challenge my feet and give them a little bit of workout one of your best friends for you getting your hands and feet back and shape our trees and this is a red oak and it's a perfect one to start with what you're looking for I'll bring you up close is the tree that's going to have hard non crumbly bark I'm doing this just to be nice to the tree there's no way my hands or feet are going to hurt this red oak plus it has smoother bark not really sharp when I run my hands down on down it I'm not going to cut or braid myself this is a perfect place to start doing some hand and foot conditioning so all I'm going to do let me start with my feet let's do some front kicks onto the tree and back down and go ahead and do it it's hard if you want don't bruise the bottom of your feet that's going to set you way back let this give them a little bit of a head start doesn't have to be a beautiful martial arts kick you're just trying to get that foot up there get a little bit of abrasion next thing to do is your hand with Mirabelle's doing so my hands are just going to be open I'm just going to open hand strikes against the tree fingers kind of spread wide and that allows the park to hit on the edges of my fingers yeah then you can move to another tree so this is a white pine eastern white pine and this bark is really jagged so it's very abrasive if you think of the red oak is a really fine sandpaper it's not going to do a lot of damage to your hands this white pine is like a coarse sandpaper music can give you a lot better conditioning but work up to it because it can hurt if you just go straight to their hands and see you're interested in conditioning your hands and your feet give those two things to try remember first of all for your feet go out on terrain nothing that's going to be too intense that look for things that have edges and ridges that your feet can move over them we need to get those ligaments tendons and muscles back in shape if they've been in the cast that is a shoe they're going to be really weak after the winter so ease them back into shape and then make friends with the trees go out foot strikes and hand strikes on those trees and those are going to condition the skin so

it not so a baby sock when you're climbing around jumping around and step on something and you grab something that's a little bit too sharp you don't rip yourself open in the same way all right happy conditioning and let me know if you're giving barefoot to try how it goes what you love about it and talk with you soon [Music]