Backpacking, Wilderness Survival, Combat Conditioning, Hunting Fitness & More With Aron Snyder.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

It's just when you live in the woods a couple hundred days a year, you're gonna fall in a river from time to time. You're going to be forced to put your body through things that they're not used to. Survival is a perishable skill other than the will to live that's ingrained in people or it's not. A lot of these skills, obviously, I practice whether I need to or not now, which is why it's pretty hard for me to get too worried about any survival situation. It is an art form to be able to take someone's body from a perspective of where you're at. You can take someone, inform them with dedication and hard work into who they want to be.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy, all the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And my guest today is a guy named Aaron Snyder. You may have heard of Aaron before. He's actually a frequent guest on one of the top ranked outdoors podcasts in itunes called the Gritty Bowman. And Aaron is actually a man of quite a few hats. He's a former military man, a search and rescue team member, former MMA fighter. He's the current knowledge guru at an outdoors gear company, which is actually how I met him, an outdoors gear company called Kifaru. And they make things like packs and tents and things that allow you to survive in the backcountry. And Aaron has a pretty cool approach because he's not only super fit and takes his physical training pretty seriously. And you'll get a chance to dig into what he does for his own physical regimen during today's podcast episode, but he also helps men and women all over the globe get ready for everything from wilderness survival to epic backpacking trips to some of the most difficult hunts on the face of the planet. So he really knows his way around the outdoors. He's also a photographer. He's a freelance writer. He's a pretty hardcore tough guy who knows a lot about how to make a backpack fit. Right. Which I've had to Talk with him quite a bit about in my own trained to hunt, competing. He knows a lot about surviving in harsh conditions. He knows how to take some pretty epic photographs of nature, how to hunt big animals and a lot more. He's one of the most entertaining and knowledgeable guys you're ever going to meet when it comes to everything outdoors. So, Aaron, welcome to the show.

Thanks. I appreciate it. I'm happy to be on here. You may have made me sound a little bit better or a lot better than I actually am.

No worries, man. I know you had the video turned on before we actually started recording today's episode and it did appear that you were actually drinking pink kool aid. So I do know you have a feminine side as well.

My daughter, she's a kool aid drinker. I join in with her.

Got it. Although you admitted what was some kind of a protein concoction or something like that recovery drink.

You know how that goes. Yep.

So why were you drinking a recovery drink at this time in the morning?

We did like a six mile loop with an insane amount of weight last night in preparation for a race we have coming up. And where I'm at here with red Rocks being here, we're very, very blessed. Being able to beat our bodies up with some extreme training areas. Red Rocks being probably number one for just a killer. And we did three miles and then we did loops around Red rocks Amphitheater, the bleachers.

And that's in Colorado, right?

Yep, in Colorado. We're. We're in Wheat Ridge, called Cafaro Internationals in Wheat Ridge. But the red rocks is just down the road. It's right by my house and it's a good place if you want to feel like go in the pain cave for a couple hours, throw £50, £60 on your back, climb up the bleachers, you'll. You'll hit the pain cave quick.

Is that what you guys are doing? 50, 60 pound pack racing?

Basically we had 65 pounds. We wanted to stay. We try to stay at a 4 mile per hour pace, give or take until we get to the bleachers or the stairs. Then those obviously we just try to, you know, literally make it to the top without stopping. No set pace other than obviously we're. We're men and we're competitive. The guys that do this, it's mostly men and so no one wants to be the last dude up. So the only pace being said is the guy in front. There's not actually technically timed pace. But get a bunch of guys together, you're probably going to end up, you know, passing out, trying to stay in the front.

And what's this race you're training for?

That's it's mountain Ops Kifaru. Well, basically it's, it's going to be more of a road march. You in for five miles with 40 pounds, back out for five miles with 80. And then there's a archery and a rifle competition the next day it's a buddy team event and it was more catered towards what I did in the military on the road march side with, you know, a little bit of a twist obviously. But for me, when you backpack hunt, you're going in with relatively lightweight. Obviously the end goal is to put something on the ground and you're coming out with heavyweight. So that's why the whole five in, five out, lightweight going in and heavyweight.

Coming out is somebody just like at the other end, like putting, putting an extra £40 down that you guys put into your packs and return with.

Exactly. There's way stations as well, just to check obviously, you know, keep, keep the honest people honest. There's weigh stations in the middle as well as the end. And then you know, the sandbags is basically it's going to be 40 and then you just drop another 40 and then your water weight does not count. The water weight is a be of and beyond the 40 and the 80 pounds.

Gotcha. That sounds a little bit like the Train to Hunt Nationals competition that they had in Colorado last year. I remember sucking wind during that thing because it was at elevation. But what they did was you had an obstacle course and you were wearing about, I believe it was 40 or 50 pounds in your pack during the obstacle course course where you, you know, you do everything from, from burpees to balancing on logs to sandbag get ups with that weight on your back. And every time you'd get to a specific obstacle, you would have to shoot, right? You'd have to demonstrate that you could shoot while you were gassed. But then at the very end of that you had your backpack waiting with a hundred more pounds loaded on it. And there was like this mile and a half long crucible at the very end of the obstacle course where you just had to put on that pack and go as fast as possible to the line. So these kind of races are, are a ton of fun. I think they're exploding in popularity. I don't know what you're seeing on your end, but it seems like folks are getting more and more into this, this whole like real world esque competition that actually has some practical implications for things like backpacking and wilderness survival.

No, I, I agree. And we're definitely seeing it on our end. And, and like anything you get, you can get haters, right? People that you don't need to be fit to, to, to hunt or you don't wait. But in the grand scheme of things, it's, it's always better. You're always a better person if you're more fit or, or you are fit in general. It also gives a much better look at hunters. I mean, I've noticed anti hunters or even people mid road when they actually say, oh, these guys train and these guys. I mean, I guess the, for a hunter, you know, a lot of people look at us as blasting animals out the side of, out of a window, right out of the side of the road, where in my case we'll go for 8, 10, 12, 14 days at a time living off our back. And it takes a lot of physical and mental prep to be able to do that. And I think the fitness aspect of hunting puts a whole new look on hunting in general and a much better look to me. And I think the changes in these races and everything are very good for, for the sport.

Oh yeah. And obviously it goes above and beyond hunting. Like I was recently in Kauai, Hawaii and we weren't doing any hunting over there, but we were just trekking. You know, we, we had some, some days where we do eight miles, we had some days where we do 22 miles. And all of the skills that I've had to develop just learning how to say, you know, pack a backpack. Right. Which I actually want to talk to you a little bit about in, in today's podcast and how, you know, how to fit a pack, how to pack a pack, and then how to go for long periods of time with everything from your boots to your pack set up properly. I mean that stuff comes in handy for everything from not just hunting to just seeing more of the world while you're out there and being able to go for longer periods of time without having to stop at a hotel or a grocery store just because you're self sustainable.

Right? You're right. And I mean it goes like you say, it does go into much more than, than hunting or even backpacking in general. And I think the. Not to see a squirrel and go off on a tangent. The idea of a lot of people, including myself, it's hard to break away from the, oh, we're on the way back from doing whatever, let's stop at the gas station and grab A protein bar or let's go out to dinner where my lifestyle, and I'm sure as well as yours, pre prepping food. I carry an isobutane, a stove in my car. One, it saves money. But two, is it that big of a deal for me to just heat up my food that I've pre made and it's free, then stop and eat a relatively unhealthy meal at a restaurant that I don't know really what's in it. I don't know the sodium content and I don't know what else has gone into that where I've made my own food out of something I've harvested or killed. Is a healthier lifestyle in general that, like I said, not to go on a tangent to the United States is definitely getting away from.

Yeah, yeah, totally. So. So I'm curious about you. Like I, I actually have heard a few stories about you, Aaron, that you used to lift big weights and be kind of like a, a gym rat. Is that true? Were you and, and also like I mentioned, an MMA fighter? Like what's your history? How, how'd you, how did you progress from wherever you were back in the day? It sounds like you were, you were quite the fitness nerd. You into what you're doing now? What's your story?

Well, it's kind of weird. I'm actually a fat kid at, as far as, you know, the ecto endo. What's that?

Deep down inside, you're a fat kid.

My body type out of the three is definitely the, the kind that gains weight when you look at a cheeseburger. So I have to.

Yeah, the, the apple shape that. The, the endomorph.

Apple shape, exactly. I'm an endomorph.

The Jonah Hill.

You're more of the Tarzan. So I'm definitely not the guy that can eat whatever I want. Right. Super fast metabolism. So kind of a fat kid. And then I joined the military. I was in the military for a few years and didn't learn really anything about nutrition in the military. Most people don't, but I did. It did make me tougher. This is the very short version of obviously my life when I got out of the military. I pretty much could eat anything I wanted when I was in the military. When I got out, I kept eating anything I wanted, but I wasn't running six, eight miles a day. Indeed, I got like fat fat. I gained probably 260, 40, 42 inch waist and somewhere in that time of the six months is all it took to gain that much Weight. I kind of had one of those clarity moments of what am I doing to myself? And just got super fit, Stopped drinking soda, you know, basically just drink water and started doing endurance races, whether it be mountain bike races or the standard, you know, race across whatever the Olympic peninsula where I was using a lot of my training with land navigation, mountaineering, climbing, mountain biking, kayaking, all those things combined and started really getting into learning the, the healthy lifestyle that you live. And somewhere in the middle of that, I started dating a woman that, you know, more or less got me into this bodybuilding, powerlifting, strongman kick. Because Normally I'm like 61 and 2, 10. I got up to about 270, I could bench press over 500 pounds. Geez, I got super strong. I couldn't walk up the side of a hill.

But what kind of training were you doing? Was it, was it like bodybuilding or powerlifting or A little bit of both.

I mean, the only real difference between at the root of it, a power lifter and a bodybuilder is a diet, is their diet. They obviously both have a very large amount of muscle.

Not saying, well, yeah, the diet and then also just the style of training, right? Like more compound multi joint lifts for the power lifter. Whereas the bodybuilder, you know, you bomb your chest on one day and then you bomb your biceps on another day and it's generally a little bit more like body part focused.

From what I've seen, I agree with that 100%. From what I've seen is you can make, sometimes you can turn one into the other and vice versa relatively quickly because of the lifestyle, the hard work, the dedication, obviously the nutritional level. Now not all powerlifters can be bodybuilders, and certainly not all bodybuilders can be powerlifters. But a lot of them cross over in some different ways. And I did both. I did a couple different bodybuilding competitions. I got more into powerlifting than anything because I just had this thing to be freakishly strong. I had a goal to bench breath over £500 and, and I did. And then, you know, I had an also another goal where I wanted to, you know, the big three, I wanted to be, go over 1800 pounds with squat deadlift and bench press. And I was able to do that. And that was with, that was, that was suited up though, that was with a bench shirt and everything, right? Cheating. But I did, I did do, I did bench £500, clean, no shirt, which was a big thing for me, but you know, honest and up front That I had some help from different supplementation that I probably shouldn't have been taking. My body is not meant to be.

You mean, like, like hormones?

I was. I mean, I was basically taking testosterone and anabolics at the same time. Yeah, I. Growth hormones don't really do much for you. For what I was wanting to do, I was straight up without giving into a whole seminar on. On steroids or anabolics, but I was. I was taking steroids basically just for strength. I didn't do it very long. It was definitely something I wish I could take back because I lost anything I gained. If I would have just eaten healthier and stayed in the gym, I probably would have. What I gained, I would have maintained. Where with steroids, when you get off, you lose all your naturally produced testosterone. So you end up losing.

Did you. Did you find that you. Because I've talked to a lot of people have taken, you know, andro and some other forms of testosterone or steroidal precursors, and they found that it takes like four to six months to even start to get your libido back and be able to produce your own endogenous testosterone. Did you have a dip like that after you got off it?

Oh, dude, it's. It can be much worse than that. You can figure I'm not a doctor, right, But I played one on TV last night. But I can tell you 100. If you are on test eight months, it will probably take you eight months to get back to your natural. Not just your libido, but also your mind is in a different place. And I'm not saying you go crazy. It's not as bad as what people make it out to be, as far as, you know, super aggression. Depending about what you're taking, you can get aggressive, but it does take a while for your hormones to level back out. In my case, if you're okay with talking about this, I was taking 1200 milligrams of ananthate per week. You usually. If, again, I'm not an expert. If you take 1200 milligrams of ananthate or a testosterone you want to take somewhere in the neighborhood of 5, 6, 700 milligrams of an anabolic. If you take too much test, you become very lethargic. If you take too much anabolics, you become very emotional. You can get.

Yeah, you get a lot of converted into. Into estrogens, right?

You get gynomastasia, which is. Obviously, you'll develop women's breasts with man boobs. Happened to me Yep. You get man boobs and you have to have surgery to have them taken away. So anyway, taking what I was taking, my body, an endomorphic body with a lot of hard work, responds extremely well to that. So I put on 40 pounds and four or five months. A lot of that was water weight, but I was able to lift, you know, 200 pound incline, dumbbell bench, you know, three sets of 10 to 12 with no spotter. Freakish strength that most people just would never have. I mean, there's one in a million people that are that strong naturally. Something I wish I hadn't done, but that is how I got to the size you've probably heard about where I was just a freak of nature.

Yeah. You know, one of the crazy things about the testosterone andantate is, is even though it's banned by the World Anti Doping Agency for sports and stuff like that, they've done studies and they found about half the people who take it don't actually get up to the urinary levels. What WADA tests for is your T to E ratio, like your testosterone to epitestosterone ratio. And a ton of folks, seems like about half the population who takes testosterone and antate, they get all this muscular strength and power that you just talked about, but they actually don't test positive under the, at least the current WADA T to E ratio criteria. So there's a ton of people who can, who dope with this stuff and get away with it for competition. And obviously if you're not competing, then there's no real ethical concerns whatsoever, but it's interesting stuff. And then like you say, there's always that bounce back where once you get off it, life kind of sucks for a while, right?

It does. I mean, in my case, I, I, I don't know, I've never been on your podcast how open you are about these things.

So if I cross, we're pretty open. We talk, we talk about shoving stuff up your butt and doing enemas so we can talk about testosterone.

Perfect. Okay. So when I was taking tests, I was also taking, like I said, an anabolic, which you want to be at a, you know, a ratio about half of an anabolic to whenever you're taking a test. But I, I am a dummy and I wasn't paying attention and I ended up taking more anabolics than I probably should have. And when you do that, your libido goes to nothing. I mean, basically I didn't get like an erection for three months, which is very common for guys taking steroids and.

Do you mean, do you mean like, like not. Not to get too explicit, but I mean, do you, do you mean like at all? You just didn't get an erection period.

Or not at all? Couldn't even punch my clown. Like, nothing. No libido. It didn't work. Like, and here I am, you know what I mean? Like super. Just, you know.

So you're not talking about just like lack of, of morning wood. You're talking about like complete impotence.

Oh, yeah, nothing. And I, you know, in my case, like, for me, I, you know, here I am, shredded chicks all over in the gym. You know that scene. You can go to like meat wagon gyms and didn't really matter. Right. Nothing worked correctly. So I. That was from deca. Was what did that. And there's something, I don't know. If you allow foul language on your podcast, you can edit it out, I guess, but they call it decade, which is basically when you're. It just gives you no all total loss of not only libido but also the function. Correct. So nothing. And that happens frequently. Well, I was also taking another supplement that I took for about a month. It's very, very hard on your, your liver and your kidneys, and it gives you superhuman strength, superhuman sex drive, aggression. Everything you are internally makes it ten times more right. It's just insane.

Which one is that?

That is. Oh, good lord. Now you asked me. I forgot. It's. Oh man. You can make it at your house. Can we come back to that when I can remember? Yeah, you don't you definitely. One of my buddies literally died. We had to revive him from it because his, his liver failed from taking or his kidneys failed from taking it. But it just. My body did not handle it well. I had aggression problems when I took it. So the moral of the story is don't take steroids illegally because you're probably one, going to do it wrong and two, it may have long term effects on your body. At this point with me, everything's fine. I haven't had any issues in 10 years. My joints on my elbows are a little bit sore from just. You're not built to curl 80 to 100 pound dumbbell curls but allow you to do that.

Yeah, that's why a lot of like former steroid users, they're not turning to things like. Well, there's this, this, this one newer form of supplement called peptides that they've shown in rats can help to heal connective tissue, literally as good as surgery. But then a lot of Folks are doing like stem cell implants or stem cell injections, platelet rich plasma injections. Pro. There's this process called regenechine that some people are doing. But yeah, you find that the folks who have been on testosterone or some form of hormones because it, like you say, it allows your body to be able to lift more weights than your joints would technically be able to handle under normal circumstances. And, and yeah, you get some wear and tear long term.

Oh, yeah, for sure. And I, I've been pretty lucky, especially with. I don't even hardly lift legs now. I just, you know, for my training, I don't need to. But, you know, my, my legs blew up to, you know, size wise, like I had 18 inch calves and that, you know, calf muscle wise. Yeah, it's really cool having calf muscles like I have, but it takes a lot of oxygen. On the mountains, the more muscle you have, the more oxygen you need. So once I started getting back into backpack hunting, which I had always done, and this was just like one of those spots in my life where, I don't know, early life crisis, well, it really affected backpack hunting. So then I started focusing on maintaining, you know, dense muscle mass but losing everything I didn't need, which you really need a guy at your level to, to coach you along through that because learning it on your own through trial and error is a pain in the butt for one. And two, you're probably going to get it wrong, you know, if you, if you do try it. So Trinabolin was the name of that, that I was talking about. Yeah, Very, very hard on your system. But either way, I started focusing on. I trained my. I changed my workout routine completely. You know, I changed everything in my life, really. And in the middle of that, I did do a little bit of fighting. It's amazing. I don't ever talk about that. So obviously how that pops up has to be YouTube videos or something. It's not like I'm ashamed of it.

I think it was a bio of you somewhere on the Internet.

Oh, gotcha.

Yeah, it may have been you.

You.

I know you've got a lot of articles on this pretty cool outdoors forum called Rock Slide, and I'm. It may have been over on your Rock Slide bio that I saw that, but go ahead. So you were fighting?

Yeah, I fought a lot of, you know, illegal fights, to be honest with you. I was going through divorce and I needed the money. I'm certainly no, you know, whatever, Royce Gracie. But I was always, as a kid, I liked to fight and I still do today. I just. I don't get into it as much for injury reasons. Not to be a weenie, but when you make your living in the outdoor industry and you're constantly. Something's pulled or torn and you can't go scouting, you can't backpack in to take photos for, you know, for Kafaru. So I stopped completely about four or five years ago, I guess, to where? Seven, eight years ago, I was going at it full time, you know, frequently. Yeah, I don't. By no means am I.

What were you. Were you a jiu jitsu or were you doing striking or.

Jiu jitsu is my thing.

If.

If the fight lasted more than 60 seconds on my feet, something had gone terribly wrong with the game plan. I. I do not have overly fast hands. I have powerful hands, but not very fast. I wrestled some in high school. I've taken jiu jitsu and other variations and forms of that off and on my entire life. So it was, you know, something I like to do just like anything, you know, some guys fly fish, some guys golf, some guys fight it. I keep it as simple as that. Some people put way more into in it than they. They should. But the way I was raised in a very small town in Oregon, fighting was normal. I mean, that's how you, you know, a guy walks into a bar, the first thing you think and is, can I take that guy? I can take that guy. And I'd always. I just was raised that way. Not saying it's the right way to be raised, but even now, especially with the military background and everything else I had done, you kind of assess the situation when you walk into a building, kind of look around and size everyone up. I've always just been that way, and I still am today.

Yeah, I hear what you're. I hear what you're saying, though, in terms of it being risky as far as taking time off your life. Like, I actually have a broken eye right now because I'm training for a fight in July and got my entire orbital bone fractured. Right. Like, if I blow my nose right now, my entire right eye will swell completely shut because there's a complete fracture between my nasal sinuses and the orbit of my eye. And for me, just getting hit that way and that was just sparring, all of a sudden, it limits just about everything that you can do. Right. I've had to cancel some of my little diving trips I was gonna go on, and I've got to do only certain forms of working out. And, yeah, like, full respect to these Guys who can fight full time or be able to step into the ring at any point or, you know, even go do some of these amateur fights. But it's, I mean, that's, it's hard to actually stay in shape for a fight and be able to, like you say, you know, live, live life and do some of these other pursuits that you want to do. So you, you, you wound up losing weight just by doing a lot of hiking and rucking?

Yeah, I mean, basically I did the CrossFit thing a little bit. I, I, you know, I kind of, you know, you walk your own path, right? You write your own book. I kind of learned my book on the way. Learning. You know, I didn't really have anyone to, to help me in the kid, not to pimp you out, but in the case of someone like you, if I would have had the option to call someone that I knew and trusted, it would have simplified things. But I broke it down to a basic, kind of an animalistic. I am on my feet, I am hunting. I need to train with a pack on my back. That's what I do. I also obviously, you know, chicks dig big arms and a big chest. I want to maintain a decent look as much as I can. So I dropped, you know, no more heavy weights, a lot higher reps, a lot more super setting. And I, I kind of did the, I'm backpacking for, I don't like to run, so I backpack for my cardio. I always have a pack on is what I'm getting at. Between 25 and 80 pounds, depending upon what we're doing. And anywhere from one mile, you know, 37 to 45 degrees straight up the side of a mountain or 6, 8, 10, 12 mile loops, whatever the case may be. I vary it just like it would be buried on the side of a mountain. And then in the gym, I do a lot of, I do abs, I do pull ups, I do push ups, light reps with weight, things like that. A lot of rope climbs stuff that's basically, you know, I don't, I don't do any more really Olympic lifts anymore. There's nothing wrong with those. I just don't do those. I, I pretty much do a workout that I could do in my living room. I do go to, I belong to a couple gyms, but I've tried to simplify it to where no matter what I do, I can always stay fit no matter what. And gyms are great. There's not, I'm not, I love going to the gym. I just want to make sure that I've got a pack on. I go up the stairs at Red Rocks, I'll knock out 40, 50 push ups with my pack on. I'll knock out some abs, I'll stand back up and then I hit the stairs again. And I've simplified it a lot compared to in case of you, you know how geeked up you can be to be at a certain level you have to, it's an art. In my opinion. Fitness can become not just looking good, but the knowledge base, the nutritional aspect of it. It is an art form to be able to take someone's body from a, you know, a perspective of where you're at. You can take someone, inform them with dedication and hard work into who they want to be. And I didn't have someone to help me, so it took a lot longer and it was a lot more difficult. But you can do it and I'm proof. I went from normal guy in the military to, you know, super fat guy to super skinny guy to really giant huge dude to back to a normal, you know, above average fitness level obviously, but with hard work you can do whatever you want.

Yeah, I hear you. You know, I, I don't know if you knew this but, but I wound up doing a huge amount of exercise based fasting where I'd go out and do long endurance workouts without eating anything. Like highly catabolic because I used to be 210 pounds and right now I weigh 175. But I was a bodybuilder back in college before I got into triathlon and that was the way that I did it. That's not the healthy way to do it. If I go back and do it over again, I would have done it more slowly. I would have taken like a lot of like. Have you heard of amino acids before? Like essential amino acids or branched chain amino acids?

Yeah, I take them every day.

Yeah, so they allow you to stay anabolic without dumping a bunch of calories into your body. But you don't get all the immune system issues and the joint issues from just doing like long fasted workouts because there's thyroid implications and testosterone implications. But yeah, I wound up stripping a lot of weight off my own body and definitely did it the wrong way. I think that in an era now where there's amino acids like I mentioned and exogenous ketones that you can take and all these cool things that allow you to maintain energy levels without getting all the hormonal bounce back of complete exercise based fasting, you can get light for the Mountains, light for backpacking, light for hunting, stuff like that, without necessarily doing a lot of damage to your body. We could probably do a whole podcast on that. But I actually, I know that there's so many things we could talk about, Aaron, but I know that you've lived a pretty cool life out in the mountains and outdoors. So if you don't mind, I'd love to ask you a few questions about some of the stuff that you've done outdoors.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

So outdoor photography and hunting and backpacking. What's the craziest situation you've ever found yourself in? Because I know you've been all over the place.

That's a tough one. And I've thought about this in case you asked me it and I think one of the reasons it's so tough is when you're out there so long, the glass is very difficult to fill. Where one man's life threatening, you know, circumstance could be another one's fun time. So I don't really have an exact, you know, super dangerous. We had a bear charges, a grizzly once that, you know, that you could have, you know, have trouble fitting a greased flaxseed through my ass with a hammer. It was definitely one of those hair raising experiences. But we've, I've been stuck in so many situations where, you know, freezing cold, shivering away from camp, you know, what do you do, type circumstances where a lot of people, it was this huge thing where now for me it happens so often that those things just happen. You know, it's not like you didn't prep enough or it's not like you did something stupid. It's just when you live in the woods a couple hundred days a year, you're going to get, you're going to fall in a river from time to time. You're going to be forced to, to put your body through things that they're not used to. And I fell in a river a couple years ago solo and drifted down the river, I don't know, a long ways and luckily enough I dropped, I unclipped my pack on the way, just obviously so I didn't die. Freezing, freezing cold. You know, there was ice in the river. Had to go find my pack and literally at that point everything was pretty much wet. And I was forced to build a fire, strip down naked, built the heat wall that you'll see in movies sometimes and people don't know what they're doing. Pulled out kind of a tarp to get around me to bounce the heat off as well as the rock wall. And it was at a point where I was like, you know, in the first 10 minutes I thought, man, am I going to freeze to death in the next 10 minutes? I'm like, who? I'm nice and toasty by this fire type of a thing.

So you're building a fire by a rock wall to use the rock wall as like a radiator.

Basically. Rock walls, radiator on one side, my tarp is the radiator on the other. And it comes just a nice little happy home where you're. The heat is radiating off everything towards your body. Something you learn in survival school and something you don't generally need to apply very often. That was one instance I, I pissed out a kidney stuff.

How'd you fall into a river in the first place?

Crossing a log.

Okay.

You know, river swells up in the springtime and Right. There's not going to be any ways to cross that. I picked the one log I thought I could make it and I didn't.

Yeah.

You know, and obviously anytime, you know, there's an accident, there's generally it's not an accident. There were several red flags that popped up before you're about to do something stupid. In this case, I probably should have just not crossed it, but I did. And one of the other times I pissed a kidney stone out like six miles in on a solo trip. Jeez, that one was, was pretty rough. You know, like I said, the glass is a lot harder for me to fill anymore. You don't. Nothing really raises the eyebrow for me.

Yeah. Have you ever heard of this guy named Wim Hof who does special breathing techniques to warm his body from the inside out.

So Brian talked to me. So every morning now I'm taking a five minute ice cold shower because of Wim Hof.

Nice.

Yeah.

I teach my kids the Wim Hof breathing technique. We have a cold pool outside, like a cold pool, for cold water immersion. And I take them out there and we do the, you know, like the rapid, where we'll do the deep, deep breathing in and out until the fingers get tingly, you know, for anywhere from two to five minutes. Then I'll have them get in the pool and stay in the pool for five to 10 minutes. And last week we were actually up river and Taryn, my boys, we were beaver trapping in B.C. and Taran fell through the ice and just instinctively, as soon as he fell through the ice and I pulled him out, he started doing this Wim Hof style breathing. Just standing on the shore trying to warm his body up, just that deep diaphragmatic breathing. So it was kind of cool to see it actually fleshed out in a semi survival situation. But I was just curious if you'd ever heard of Wim Hof and it sounds like you actually have done some of his stuff.

Yep. Wake right up in the morning because of him right now.

Nice. Cool. Oh, go ahead.

No, no, I was just going to say I think that. And we talk about this, Brian and I do all the time, a lot of the things that we're talking about and I try to, you know, stay up on kind of like math. Survival is a perishable skill other than the will to live that's ingrained in people or it's not. A lot of these skills, obviously I practice whether I need to or not now, which is why it's pretty hard for me to get too worried about any survival situation.

Yeah. So another kind of survival based topic I want to talk to you about because I know you're a real expert on this. You work at, at Kifaru and Kifaru makes a ton of stuff. I know you guys make everything from lightweight backpacking gear to tents to the same packs that I use. I've been using your, your packs for a year and a half now, especially for these train to hunt competitions that I do. And, and now just everywhere I go, you know, when I'm, when I'm traveling to speak at a conference or to backpack, I'm wearing these big, you know, 7,000 plus cubic inch packs that you have. And one of the things is you can put a lot of weight in them. Obviously you can put, you know, 100, 150 pounds in one of these packs. But I'm curious for folks listening in who want to know how to get, how to get as much weight as possible into a pack and be able to have it comfortably sit on their back, or at least as comfortably as you can have something like that sit on your back for as long a period of time. What are some of your top tips to get a pack to fit really well?

So there's two things there. One's going to be loading the pack and then obviously one is going to be, you know, the pack fitting correctly. So cover loading the pack first. That's the simplest. When you load the pack, you want your lightest weight material at the bottom of the pack and roughly the first third of that is going to be lightweight. For material from bottom going up after that, the heaviest is going to go in the, in the middle third Right up against your back, as close to your back as you possibly can. In the case of my hunting partner, Colton and I, last year he shot a bull. We Both had about 180 pounds in our package and believe it or not, for eight miles now it was, it was bad. But physically we went hunting. Two days later we took, you know, we were able to do that because other than the normal soreness you're going to get, we didn't have the packs were fitted correctly, they were loaded correctly. So we didn't have the muscle knots you would get from an incorrect load. Pulling on one shoulder, for simplification terms pulling on one shoulder more than another or giving you more pressure on one portion of your body or another with loading the lightest in the middle or in the bottom and the heaviest in the middle and then dispersing everything else throughout wherever you can fit it and then equaling that load. So the center of gravity keeps you basically able to stand vertically or as vertical as possible and also not tilted to the left or the right. You don't get trigger points or muscle knots. That allows you, your body to not pull against one portion, pulling against another, which is hugely vital. And people don't understand that your, your body is a tool and all tools need to be cared for for longevity or a car engine. If you misload a vehicle to where all the weight is on the right side and you drive that around for 800 miles, your tires are going to wear unevenly. Bald human body is no different. If you don't keep that even distributed correctly left and right, top to bottom, front to back, you are going to cause not long term dam. Well, I guess it could be long term damage on your body, but very short term damage to where you may not recover for a couple weeks. Probably not see a chiropractor, you're going to go need to see a massage therapist. And in some ways it can cause long term issues, especially if you're thrown off balance. So the load being distributed correctly is huge.

Now what about the. So a lot of, a lot of these nicer backpacks, right? They have a waist pad but then they also have shoulder straps. How should you have the weight distributed as far as the difference between the waist strap and the shoulder pads when you're in the shoulder straps when you're carrying a heavyweight.

Textbook answer is 65 to 70% on your waist and obviously the rest on your shoulders. In my case, I run almost 90% on my hips. My very strong hips doesn't bother me. Like I said 10% 15% is going to be on my shoulders. But you want the majority of that weight to be on your hip bones. Just because of how the human body works. Certain body parts fatigue faster than others. In the case of a human body, the shoulders fatigue much faster than your hips are going to or your legs. And that's the key to talking about pack fitting. There's all kinds of terms guys talk about. Load lifters, different types of waist belts, things like that. I'll kind of break them down, try to oversimplify it as much as I can. A load lifter is a strap attached to your shoulder straps that hooks from your shoulder strap to your top of your frame or somewhere on the frame. It doesn't technically lift anything other than your shoulder straps up off of your shoulders, which then transfers the weight down to your hip bones. Once that happens, you, you, you, are you. It allows you to basically choose the amount of weight you want to carry on what part of your body. If the frame or the suspension that you have on your backpack. If it's a day pack, it doesn't matter. But on a load hauling pack, or if you're 5 to 7, day trip type of a pack, if the top of your frame isn't above your shoulders when you pull on that load lifter, it's not really a load lifter, it's a load stabilizer. And so you need the top of your frame to be, you know, two or three inches above your shoulders. So that way, no matter what weight you get in there and the pack sags a little when you pull on those load lifters, it's at an upward angle of roughly 15 to 35, 40 degrees.

Gotcha.

That transfers the shoulder straps upwards and then now the weight is transferred down to your hip bones. Most people don't understand that in a backpack where you buy, I won't mention any brands or companies or whatever when you buy a backpack, it may be extremely durable, but it won't be extremely comfortable. Because if you're in your case, what are you, six four?

I'm six three.

Six three. If you're six three, there is not a pack in REI Sportsman's Warehouse or Cabela's that is going to fit your body, which you probably experienced, meaning be able to carry the weight on your hips.

Right.

So it's vitally important to have a frame and suspension that are actually fitted correctly to each person.

Got it? Okay, cool. So it sounds like what it comes down to is you got to have your waist pad or the part, the belt that Goes around your waist. You have to have that about midsection of your hips. That load sits high enough up to where when you pull your load lifting straps, the actual top of the backpack is a little bit above your shoulders. And then you also need to ensure that, like you mentioned earlier, the lighter part of your load is distributed lower in that backpack with the heavier part in the middle so that you're not putting as much stress on your lumbar spine and you're more kind of distributing the weight like up around like your thoracic mid spine area, right?

Yeah, exactly. Well, you pretty much how you explained it is correct. And if, if you don't. I would say for lack of a better explanation, if any of those don't work or coincide with another meaning, let's say you have a really tall frame, but your waist belt sucks and it doesn't stay on your hip bones, vice versa. They all have to coincide with each other. They work as a team. Basically. If there's one of those parts that screwed up, they're not going to work. It's not going to. None of this will work, I guess that we're talking about.

Okay, gotcha. And a quick question. Not to put you on the spot too much, but your guys packs are expensive. I mean, compared to like REI or Cabela's or something like that. I mean, you know, I think I, I paid north of like, you know, 600, 700 bucks for the pack. What is it about a pack that would make it that expensive? Like what are you doing to a pack to actually cause it to cost that much?

Well, number one is we're 100% made in America and not made in America with Asian components, which is something that I've noticed in the industry today. They'll put that big made in America stamp, but it's all with Asian components. Our buckles are webbing, all the thread, the needles were inspected. It is all made in America with obviously American labor in the building I'm sitting in right now that there's a price tag that goes along with that. Compared to exporting things to China where they make like three bucks an hour or whatever it is, we pay a very good rate here. All made in America. American mil spec components are generally more expensive than an Asian type of a component. Just because they're more durable, they last longer. There's a testing process through all of the different components we use from the government to meet a spec, which like throwing it out of a blackhawk and different things. The military test our components, meet those specs there. That is the major reason for the, the price American made here, all American components. The other thing after that really is you're paying for comfort. You're paying for the very, the versatility of our packs. As you've noticed we have almost too many options. It's confusing. A pack from 10 years ago will fit on a frame that we just introduced six months ago. We try to make sure obviously we don't ever screw our customer base. We want to make sure you can use our pack for the rest of your life. So if you have a bag or a frame from 10 years ago, our current products will fit on that.

So you can just slide it off whatever frame is already fit to your body and, and put a different bag on basically.

Exactly. With the frame system we offer several different frames but you can interchange the bag. So in the case of like with what I do, I have kind of a shed hunting photography scouting type bag. Obviously I get them all free, I run the company. But if I want to go on a 14 day jeep hunt, I can pop my day hunt photography pack off and pop the 8,000cubic inch bag much like you have and go on a sheep hunt with the same frame. And it's still custom fitted to me. Everything's precise. Nothing needs to be changed. I'm just putting a different bag on.

Gotcha. Okay.

Those have a lot of options, you know, as far as pockets to attach to to where you can really cater that to each person. And there's a lot of R D that goes into that is a lot of people know a lot of the reasons I'm in the field all the time that you know who I cut my teeth under, which is Patrick Smith is his name. He owns Kufaru. He started Mountainsmith in the 70s, the backpack company Mountainsmith. He's taught me so much about the industry, but he's ingrained several things into me. Obviously comfort is important, things like that. But testing, it's mandatory for me in the position I'm in at Kafaru to be in the field a minimum of 100 nights a year for testing. He basically comes down and cracks me in the back of the head and yells at me when I'm not in the field enough. That's the kind of company we are where we don't want to design it and test it in a building, we want to design it in the field, produce that design in a building and then I head right back out. Like I'm leaving tomorrow to test a shelter. Right. I'm going to set it up for.

Which is why every time I try to get a hold of you, you're out in the mountains somewhere.

Pretty much. Yeah, exactly.

You're always like text me next week, Ben. I'm on some 14 day epic trip out in the middle of nowhere with satellite phone access only.

Right, the DeLorean reach in the satellite phone.

Definitely. Exactly. So that leads me to another question I want to ask you, Aaron. Oh, and by the way, for those of you listening in, not only am I going to put a link to everything Aaron and I talk about, from trend blown supplementation to the gritty Bowman podcast, to these train to hunt competitions, to everything else, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com AaronSnyder and Aaron's name is spelled A R O N Snyder S N Y d e r BenGreenfieldFitness.com AaronSnyder But I'm also gonna give you guys a special link over to the KFARU website, which is where I get all my packs, all my gear and there's going to be a discount that you guys get a pretty fat discount on Kafaru stuff if you want to try out some of this stuff for yourself. But, but speaking of these packs, Aaron, for a multi day pack, let's say you were, you were going out in the field for let's say a week. What, what would be the crucial components found in your pack? Like what would be the must have items for you?

I would say the. I'm trying to pull up my gear list here right now. I've got it so I don't forget anything. So for me, one of the crucial things, Astero pin, which is a water purification system which a lot of people are a little bit nervous about because it is a pen that just emits light out of it. But it's called a Steripen Steripin. It I carry a 32 ounce Nalgene bottle. I stop at a mud puddle or a creek, I fill it up, I put the pen in there, I swirl it around for 60 seconds and it's purified. Now I did very in depth testing with Outdoor Life where I was testing every purification system just about on the planet with water that had tested positive for giardia to see what purified how many times, the whole nine yards. And the Steripin was the only thing that constantly never had an issue. Right. It always worked. So I carry a Steripin and then I carry a backup water purification which is Aquamira. It's drops. It's like seven drops per quart.

Is that like iodine?

Kind of. Same principle. Iodine, obviously you can pills or what? Iodine. Most people use it just. It tastes. It doesn't have a bad taste to it. Iodine tastes like crap.

Gotcha.

Same principle though. So I bring that as my backup or my lightweight. Sometimes I'll use aqua tabs. Same principle. It's a tablet. It just doesn't leave the crappy taste in the water.

Okay.

So that's one very vital thing for me. And then obviously depending upon the situation, optics are hugely important. But we're not talking about optics probably as much as survival.

Yeah, yeah. Like more. More the type of things that, you know, even if someone's not say, hunting what they need for survival.

So obviously the stair pin. My what? My fire starting system, which I use trioxane and you know, I'm, you know, I'm obviously doing it like a Native American where I'm building it with a flint and steel and a rock or whatever. But trioxane you can buy at an army surplus store. It's $0.89 a tablet. It'll light in water, in the rain. It'll light anytime. I bring that with the flint and steel to start it. That's something that I've pretty much have on me no matter what, all the time. I also bring.

Yeah, the trioxane. Those are those little cubes, right? They're like little like fuel cubes, like whitish type of cubes.

It's a purple. It's actually that. That's an ESBIT cube you're talking about. Which those work. This is a purplish cube.

Okay.

Burns at some insane rate. I've never not gotten a far fire started in any situation.

Yeah, I'd never seen him before until I did this race called the Spartan Agoji in Vermont a few ago years weeks ago, and it was 38 degrees below zero. One of the guys there had a bunch of these cubes with him and he. And he dropped one on a fire we were making. And I'd never seen something like that before, like a fire go up that fast in that cold of conditions. It was pretty amazing. So. So you have these fire starter cubes. What else?

I. Even though it's not survival, the Delorme inreach has been pretty vital not only to my job, my marriage and my relationship with my daughter and everything else, but the Doloremi inreach is for lack of very technical explanation. It is like a hotspot that uses satellites where you can text from your Cell phone through that inreach to whoever you want. So you don't have to do like the you know 70s style ABCD type text and you text through your cell phone just like normal. It goes straight and the text is sent through Iridium satellites. Which has the most satellites of. Of any satellite communication system is Iridium.

How much does something like that cost? One of the satellite phones couple.

Now that's not a satellite phone. I'll go into that one in a sec. This is just for texting so you can't.

You can't call or anything but you can pretty much text anybody on the face of the planet if you're out in the middle of nowhere.

Right. And that compared to a satellite phone which I also have an Iridium satellite phone. A text always goes out because it only needs that signal for a second. Where the satellite phone. I've had a couple survival situations with hikers I've run into that were having issues. It can be a 15 minute conversation. Could take literally 15 to 30 phone calls. If you're in a bad position where a text message it goes right through. Obviously you know because you're talking on one one is just sending text. So the Doloremi inreach has been hugely important for me. It's been a great piece of kit and I suggest really for everyone to get. It's a couple hundred bucks for the actual unit. It might be 229, I can't remember. And then you pay a monthly. They have several different plans but you pay a monthly fee or you can. I did that unlimited is what I've gotten. Just paid it off for the year. But literally for day to day use if a tower goes down, if you're out of service and you need to send in the case with you. You're super busy guy. You need to send your assistant a message. That inreach is basically Bluetooth to your phone. You can send it at any time.

That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. But do you use a satellite phone as well or is that Delorme inreach kind of like more of your. The one that you'd recommend is a crucial one with the satellite phone being an option.

I would say that the inreach unless your wife is just or husband is super pissed all the time and wants to talk to you. The inreach gives you not like one and done text meaning full conversation texts. It always works. It's less expensive. You know my satellite phone was $1200 and it's 280aminute after that. So it's more cost effective than a satellite phone. But if I'm traveling to Mexico, you know, on a hunt, or if I'm going to the Northwest Territories or wherever, I'll have a satellite phone and we'll, you know, one of our, you can hook up several phones on the inreach so somebody in the party will have an inreach so we can all use it and someone in the party will have a sat phone so it works well. But most people should probably rent a sat phone and buy an inreach because you can use the inreach year round where with a sat phone it's probably a seven to ten day type of a deal. You can get them. I use Explorer satellite systems out of Florida is where I get my satellite phones from and my minutes, stuff like that.

Okay, gotcha. So I know that we're coming up on time, but we've covered water, we've covered fire, we've covered the pack, obviously we've covered a little bit of communication. Obviously. Though a big part of survival is also shelter. What do you carry in your pack as far as like a shelter system?

So for the most part, and I test all of them. Kufaro International makes several shelters. We make ultralight backpackable stoves and then we make ultralight teepees and shelters. They're single wall, meaning there's no floor on them, but you can put a wood stove in them that weighs 1 pound 9 ounces for me for solo use, the Kufaru super tarp and the Megatarp are definitely my go to shelters. And I also carry an 18 inch Smith cylinder stove which is a 1 pound 9 ounce wood stove. People don't realize what a game changer in bad weather an ultralight stove can be because you can dry out your gear which is huge and obviously stay warm. You can get an 80 degrees inside of a super tarp which is 11ft long and 6ft wide in 15 minutes and maintain that heat by sticks that are laying outside.

So, so you're, you're using sticks as your fuel on the stove, not gas.

Exactly. It's, it's, it's all, it's self sustainable and man packable. So literally you and I went in 10 miles. We have a stove, a heat Source for a 15 day hunt where we can dry our stuff out every day, we can heat our food up, we can heat our bodies up every day. And honestly, like I say, the, the stove's 1 pound 8 or 9 ounces and the shelter is 1 pound. Add some stakes to that and everything else, you're. You're pretty much tax, title and license. At £3 for a shelter with a wood stove in it, it is a game changer, especially if you've experienced some crappy weather conditions.

And then you, you combine that with a tarp and this is like, it's not a tent. It's just like a tarp tarp that you, that you set up and that you can put that stove inside.

Exactly. And when I say tarp, it's a, it's a. It's a tarp that actually forms into a tent. So you can pitch it flat or you can pitch it as an a frame with some vertical wall space with the pull outs, and it turns into something just like a tent that weighs one pound and you can put a stove inside of it. So if I need shade on the side of a Mountain at 13,000ft, glassing up mountain goats, I'll pitch it flat to stay on the shade if I need to, you know, bomb proof, stake it straight to the ground, throw in the wood stove, and weather the storm, which happens seriously at Colorado at 12,000ft. 11. 5. I'll drop down into tree line, pitch that thing. I'm happy as a camper. You know how fire is, man. Fires like, that's ranger television. You basically are sitting there and there's something about it that just ups the spirits tenfold when you have it.

So that's really cool. Okay, I'm taking notes furiously. And again, folks, if you want to, if you want to check out the notes, you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com AaronSnyder Although I know that probably we've only tapped into a very, very small part of Aaron's brain when it comes to this stuff. Aaron, there is one other question I wanted to ask you, because I know you take a lot of really cool photography, and obviously a podcast is probably one of the crappiest venues in which to talk about photography, because there's no visuals whatsoever. But tell me about the photo that you're most proud of and if possible, where people could go to see that photo or a series of photos you've taken that you'd really like to showcase, folks.

So my Instagram page is the easiest, obviously, which it's just Aaron Underscore Snyder, and that has a lot of my low resolution, Obviously, it gets compressed. That has a lot of my cooler photos in it. The gritty Bowman podcast that you mentioned before on his website. We're actually selling my Prints on there. We had such a demand for them.

Oh, really?

Before, I was just selling them to magazines. Backpacker whoever asked for them. Occasionally I would sell one to somebody on Facebook that just asked me if they could have the raw edited image or the raw or edited image.

I'm looking at your. Your Instagram posts or your Instagram page right now. Some of these are pretty epic. But I'm. I'm curious. Is the picture of that tarp with the stove pipe ish thing sticking out of it what you were just describing?

That's it right there. That's my. That's my happy home. In that particular trip that we had three guys fall in a river. Me being a weenie and not fall in. I walked straight across. When we got to camp, everything was soaked literally the next morning. Boots, gear, everything was dry because of those heated shelters, which, like I said, is a game changer. Not that it was life or death, but we got to go fishing for three days and. And be happy and not frozen and cold where. If I would have had a normal tent, yeah, I would have been. I wouldn't have died, but I certainly wouldn't have had dry boots.

So what is the most amazing photo that. That you've ever taken or the one that you're most proud of?

Man, that's difficult.

That comes to mind.

Three of them. Derek o' Driscoll on the side of a mountain is the COVID of the Kafaru catalog.

All right.

Just not just because of the photo. All the photo is epic, but 13,000ft the trip, we both lost 16 pounds. Even consuming 3,600 calories a day gain and losing 12,000ft. That photo sums all that trip up in a split second for me, looking at it, remembering that the trip. The next one is a sheep. It's a fan and sheep. A mix between a doll and a stone sheep. The two hunters that harvested the sheep. The 100 did. The two hunters are coming from behind it. I've got the sheep real close up in the photo and them as a shadow coming in the background. And then a shelter photo, a night shelter photo with the stars in the background lit up would be my third.

Do you have those on your Instagram page?

Yeah, they are. They'll pop out as you're scrolling down. I post too many photos.

So you. Yeah, I'm scrolling through your page right now. These are amazing. Wow. I don't even know if I follow you on Instagram. I don't know why I wouldn't. Because we've known each other For a while I knew you're a photographer, but I gotta add you, man. This is a cool page. So folks, I'll link to Aaron's Instagram. Instagram page. Very cool. Very cool, man. I love it. I like that you're out there, not just surviving in the wilderness, not just hunting, but also collecting some amazing photo documentation of of some very cool places I'm sure a lot of people have never been to. You live a cool life, man.

For sure.

Yeah. Well, folks, if. If you've got got questions or you have comments about some of the things that Aaron and I talked about, if you want to hook up with Kufaru and try some of their stuff, if you want to leave a question for me or a question for Aaron, you can access the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com AaronSnyder that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com A R O N S N Y D E R Aaron is working on getting all of you a really cool discount on some of this Kfaru stuff too. Like the, like the tarps and the stoves and the packs and stuff that he talked about. So if you visit the show notes, I'll make sure that I have those in there for you as well. And Aaron, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing everything from how to get swole to how to lose your erections to how to get fit for wilderness. We covered it all, man. Thanks for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. Anytime. Anytime. For sure.

Sweet. Yeah, we'll definitely have to have you back. I can, I can tell already. But in the meantime, folks, this is Ben Greenfield and Aaron Snyder from BenGreenfieldFitness.com signing out. Have a healthy week. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance device.

Sam.