TRACK DOWN NEW MUSCLE
Explorer, TV presenter and author Steve Backshall epitomises our Fit at Any Age ethos. Take the road less travelled for time-defying fitness
Explore all-new gains in your forties with the help of adventurer Steve Backshall
Over the past two decades, Steve Backshall has pushed himself to his limits in every high-octane environment that you can imagine, from scaling sheer mountains in Venezuela and wading through Argentinian swamps to descending into desert canyons in Oman. When we speak, the Deadly 60 host is fresh from a fortnight spent thundering down violent white-water rapids on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.
The trip was as gruelling as it gets. “Occasionally, you had to put your boat on your back and hike with it,” he says. “One day, we spent eight hours thrashing through dense bush. Then, you had to get back in and tackle the rapids. It was brutal.”
Bodyweight exercises form the foundations of Backshall’s training, which is tailored to every expedition. To prepare for Kamchatka, he alternated steady-state kayaking with intense HIIT. “I had a good deal of power work – lots of plyometrics, callisthenics, tossing big tyres,” he says. “It’s all geared towards having that explosiveness available when you need it. At my age, it’s one of the first things that tends to go, if you don’t work on it.”
Chin-ups are always a staple, whatever the destination. “I work on chins every other day,” Backshall says. They are particularly effective for climbing expeditions, he adds, for which the ratio of upper-body strength to bodyweight is hugely important.
Recently, Backshall has been incorporating breath work into his training to boost his lung capacity ahead of his next trip – free-diving untouched seamounts in the Pacific. “I’m driven by the sense that there are still parts of the planet that no one knows anything about,” he says. “Even now, you could be the first person to summit a mountain or take light into a cave system. I find that thrilling.” Wherever he’s going, he’s certainly not slowing down.