Blue Lips, Meat Packs, Baling Hay & Beyond: The Man Responsible For Sparking A Fitness...

Yo, hello. That was my best Paul Harvey impersonation. Or does he say good day, Good day? I don't know. Whatever he says, he ends it like it's a question. Like that. Anyways, though, in case you're wondering, this is not Paul Harvey. You might not even know who Paul Harvey is. I guess, if you're a young buck listening in, this is Ben Greenfield. And speaking of young buck, today's show talks a little bit, a lot, actually, about hunting and hunting fitness. And so if, if you're like a mushroom forager or some kind of a green smoothie fanatic, please don't run for the hills because it's actually pretty entertaining. We also get into Chinese herbal remedies for rheumatoid arthritis and how to ruck for copious amounts of time in a heavy backpack, et cetera. So I think you are going to dig this one. I have a few special announcements. The first is pretty quick, and that is that Detox with Ben over@detoxwithben.com kicks off in two weeks from the time this podcast is being recorded. So get in on that if you haven't yet. I spent almost four hours over Christmas weekend cause apparently I don't have a life writing out the entire workout portion of this program. And we're combining workouts. We're combining bio hacks like dry skin brushing and coconut oil pulling. We're adding in a brain detoxification program, a body detoxification program. I've partnered up with one of the most brilliant detox minds on the face of the planet, this guy named Dr. Dan Pompa. And anyways, we're opening up to 100 people to do the detox along with me. So everything I do every day, you're going to be doing whether you like it or not. You're going to be just drinking copious amounts of bone broth and weird teas and all these different recipes I've uploaded. It's going to be fun. Detoxwithben.com and then speaking of strange biohacks and weird pieces of fitness gear and conventional pieces of fitness gear, I every month put together just a few packages like these little boxes, and I just put all sorts of cool stuff in them. Supplements, oils, books, gear. And I choose about 300 bucks worth of product and then I ship it anywhere in the US free. But you pay 50% off, so it's 150 for 300 bucks worth of a complete goodie box. It's like Christmas at any time of year and you can get any of Those surprise gift boxes. All you do is go to greenfieldfitness systems.com that's greenfieldfitness systems.com and you can get your hands on a nice little box for me. I promise I won't send you anthrax. That's not what that white powder is. It's not cocaine either. I'm sorry, it's probably magnesium powder. But anyways, and ask me some time about how I get through the TSA with those big bags of white powder because it actually is pretty entertaining. The trick is take them out before your bag goes through because the x ray machines make magnesium powder or anything like that look like a bomb. So there you have it. This podcast is brought to you by the Nutritional Therapy Association. The Nutritional Therapy Association. This is not like one of those ho hum dietetics course like I took in college where I learned, you know, basically what the Gatorade Sports Science Institute churns out when it comes to eating, you know, 65% fructose and maltodextrin based diet each day. The Nutritional Therapy association is not like that. They teach you how to use nutrient dense foods. They use what's called a bio individualized ancestral approach to healing the body and optimizing performance of the body and the brain using a whole foods diet. And you learn how to program this diet and how to be a nutritionist. When you go to nutritionaltherapy.com and you get on one of their certifications now, the registration for all their classes closes on February 6th. Their classes start February 13th. So if you're thinking about doing this, you should head over to nutritionaltherapy.com pretty soon. The other thing that they're doing is a big conference that I'm speaking at in Vancouver, Washington from March 3rd through the 5th. I guarantee tasty food and heck if I'm there, a good time to boot. Tickets are on sale now. You go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com NTA to register and if you tell them that I sent you over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com NTA you'll get the white glove treatment. This podcast is also brought to you by something that has a compound in it that has been found to cross the blood brain barrier and help to prevent Alzheimer's disease. What this pigment does is it's found in this special spice I'll tell you about in a moment. It binds to amyloid beta, which is a protein fragment that is the key agent in the development of plaque in brain cells. And when that plaque accumulates, it produces oxidative stress inflammation. It forms plaques between nerve cells or neurons and that disrupts brain function. And that's one of the reasons that you get Alzheimer's. So what this thing does, it's called curcumin and it's a pigment found in the curry spice turmeric and it crosses the blood barrier and binds to amyloid beta. It's a very, very cool way to basically shut down inflammation in your brain. Also works well for hangovers, by the way. Anyways, though, this green juice powder has not just turmeric in it, but chlorella, moringa, spirulina, mint, beets, matcha, green tea, wheatgrass, ashwagandha. The list goes on and on. And it's called organifi green juice. Organifi green juice. And you can get a 20% discount on it if you go to the following BenGreenfieldFitness.com FitLife that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com fitlife and you can begin sucking down as much potent brain anti inflammatory as you would like to go along with your nutrition certification, your detox and your surprise gift box. So do all that stuff so that you can live life to the fullest. And let's jump into today's interview with Kenton Claremont, a Repeat guest@BenGreenfieldFitness.com in this episode of the Benchmark Greenfield Fitness Show.

I want you to do as many rounds as you can of five push ups, five squats, five sit ups. I want you to do that over and over and over for the next five, ten minutes that you have on your lunch break or whatever. That would be a typical like really quick hotel, maybe lunch break style of training. You load your 50 pound pack on, you get it where you want it. You grab the two arrows you have left, put them in your quiver. Very important. You can't run with arrows in your hand. You have to have them in a quiver or in a hip quiver. You have to have them secure so that if you trip and fall, you'll end up getting snapped. We don't want but kidnapped.

He's an expert in human performance and.

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Need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power.

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The Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Hey, what's up, folks? It's Ben Greenfield. And I gotta tell you, I've raced plenty of triathlons. I've done sprint distance up to Ironman distance, and I've also done a lot of obstacle races, including, you know, some of the. Some of the toughest Spartan challenges, particularly in the world. And I've done it, you know, adventure races and brutal workouts that say that they're, like the hardest workout in the world, and seal fit training and Spartan agoji challenges and the world's toughest mudder and all sorts of crazy, crazy things that I think are probably going to take a few years off my life, but also make life a lot more fun. But I have to tell you, my lungs have never sucked quite as much, and my brain and body at the same time have never been challenged quite as much. And I've never really experienced any form of competition so freaking functional as this. This challenge that I do every year called Train to Hunt. And my guest today is the evil mastermind behind Train to Hunt and everything that it involves. If you've never heard of it before, if you're not interested in hunting at all, I think you're still going to find some of this stuff fascinating in terms of how to challenge your brain and body with things like bow hunting and shooting when you're tired and activating your nervous system and training in a way that makes you be able to be real, a real predator in the mountains, so to speak. And my guest name is Kenton, Kenton Claremont, and he's the owner and the creator of Train to Hunt. Like I mentioned, it's a unique mashup of bow hunting and obstacle racing. It's taken the nation by storm. They're opening up challenges in a whole bunch of different states, and today we're going to delve into hunting fitness and Train to Hunt. So, Kenton, welcome to the show, man.

Thanks, Ben. It's an honor to be here, my man. It's been a while since we talked, and I'm just excited to be back on the phone with Ben Greenfield.

It has been a while since we talked, and I think one interesting thing is that you and I both went back in the day to the same college down at Lewis Clark State College. You played baseball and I played tennis.

Yeah. That's wild. It's funny because I've known who you are for probably 15 years, and then when we kind of, for the first time, got formally introduced and started talking, it was really interesting to know that we went to the same College. We were both into a hand eye striking.

Sports. I would definitely say that tennis players are.

Mine is a little bit more refined and preppy though.

Yeah.

Yours is more red blooded American male.

Yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true. A little bit more red blooded American male. However, I would say that you definitely have to be in better shape to play tennis than baseball. I'm just saying.

Yeah.

You know, but yeah, it's crazy. I loved the college. I went too small and, and I don't know, I love the LC community down there and it was fun to realize that we both had the same experience down there.

Yeah. The one prevailing characteristic though that defines both baseball and tennis is that you can be amazing at either sport and not possess the ability to run any longer than a half mile.

Correct. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Explosive sports, I would say. And hand eye coordination for sure.

Yeah, I remember that. That blew my mind when I was reading. It didn't blow my mind, it just made me understand physiology more. When this was before I started studying exercise science at college and I was reading an article, I believe it was an interview with Venus Williams and she was just getting started in her pro career back in the day, but she was already cleaning up on the pro level. And I remember reading in the interview, she's like, I've never run a mile in my life. My coach actually has me avoid running a mile. And it's so she can maintain that, that fast twitch explosiveness, of course. But it's, it's pretty interesting how, how we, we perceive these athletes who last like four to five hours during a match out in the sun in Australia. They must be able to run a marathon. But the fact is, you know, they rarely run more than a mile.

Yeah, yeah. Crazy stuff, crazy stuff.

Yeah. So. So you were playing baseball and we, we've done a couple of podcasts with you before. We have a whole bunch of podcasts about hunting and hunting fitness. And I've interviewed you guys like Aaron Schneider and Shad Wheeler and Mark Warrenke and some of these people who are helping even beginner hunters not just get fit, but also get into hunting. And I'll put a link to all of these previous episodes that we've done if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kenton2 that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kendon the number two. But one thing that we kind of touched on the last time that I interviewed you, but we didn't take too much of a deep dive into. You had a, you had kind of like an autoimmune disease that. That hit your body. Was it when you were playing baseball at lc?

You know, it was. Well, after that, then I had. I had been out of baseball. In fact, I stopped. You know, I graduated from college and went on to the workforce and was out trying to get a teaching job because I went to college for a PE in health teaching, and then I got a kinesiology degree on top of that. And once my baseball career was over in college, like I think like most collegiate athletes, once that's over and you haven't made it to the next level, you kind of make a decision, am I going to start my career? Am I going to. Or am I going to continue to try to fight for a position as a pro athlete? And I just decided that, you know, I'm going to start my career. I'm 23. It's time to move on and grow up. And I got into, you know, substitute teaching and being a baseball coach and a wrestling coach and a football coach. Then at 25, I was coaching this baseball team and they said, hey, you know, coach, you should really just go try out someplace because you still got it. You can still throw and run and hit real well. And long story short, I made it. And I went on and I played one year of single A ball, and that was at 25. And at 26, I came back and was really.

Just, really. It was just a really good time in my life because I realized that I could still play baseball. I still liked having fun, and I was having fun again playing sports and kind of moved past the whole obsessed and nightmare. You know, I think it's pretty common for college athletes when they have these big dreams of being professional athletes that once they. Those dreams are kind of decided for them, at some point they started having nightmares. Those. Those went away after I played my one year in the sun and I. But I came back to reality and decided I was, you know, my career again. And I got a job at a private school and I was teaching PE and then I. It's the age 30 is when I, you know, just started feeling these aches and pains and I wonder what's going on with my wrists and my knees and. Well, shoot, Ben, I'd been, you know, I wrestled for 20 years. I played baseball for 20 plus years.

Now, if I could interrupt you there, Like, a lot of people get aches and pains, dude. I mean, like, I wake up sore a lot of times some morning, usually related to some crazy workout that I did the day Before.

Right.

But you know, when you say you were waking up with aches and pains, I mean, you were an athlete, that this was something that you weren't used to, Right?

Right. Well, no, I wasn't, frankly, used to it. It was above and beyond the pain that I was used to. But I had just figured that I'm just going to let this play out because it might be because, you know, we turned 30. I was like, well, maybe I'm just, maybe I'm just. It's just as you get older, you are feeling a little more pain than you normally do and it takes a little longer for, you know, for you to recover than you normally do. And I just written it off to age and overuse of my body throughout my, you know, my 20s, early life. And about six months into this.

That I recognized I was definitely more so than I normally was because I was still training and I was still lifting weights, still, you know, running and that kind of thing. I, I realized that this is above and beyond just being sore from my, from working out because I would wake up and like, both of my feet felt like I, you know, had sprained both my ankles and my wrists, my hands, I could barely move my hands. And when my feet hit the floor, I felt like I was walking on nails. And this would last for about 20 to 30 minutes in the morning, but then as I moved around, I'd feel better.

And so, so it was like deep, it was like deeper, more intense or more sharp than what you'd get from, from say, like delayed onset muscle soreness.

That's right. That's right. It was way beyond doms. It was, it was concerningly painful. It was like, like, why do I, why do I feel like my ankles, Literally, it felt like I sprained both my ankles and that my hands felt like there was something wrong. I just knew I, you know, I'd been sore. Like you said, I've been sore before, but there was something above and beyond this soreness. So I went and got checked out and lo and behold, it was, you know, they said you have rheumatoid arthritis, non immune system disease. And I learned a lot about, you know, what it means to have an autoimmune system disease. And luckily.

Luckily, if there is such luck in attracting an autoimmune system disease, I found out that it was probably the most treatable autoimmune system disease that there was at the time. And so I just started getting treated and.

I've actually been able to live a normal, functional 12 years since I've been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I still have my bad days then, but for the most part, it's not like it was before I got treated, which was just, you know, indescribable. I would never. I would never want anybody to have to go through that kind of pain. And mental. Really, the mental anguish was probably the hardest. I was really depressed. I had a really tough time kind of coming to grips with. I may never run again. I may never, you know, be able to jump or. And again, it was tough. It was a really tough time in my life. But since then, again, I've come to control it via diet, via natural supplements, you know, turmeric and these things that anti.

That's actually what I was going to ask you. Like, like what. What. What moved the dial the most from. From a diet or a supplement standpoint? Or did you do anything else? Like, did you do infrared therapy or magnetic wraps or any of these other kind of things that some folks will do for joint pain?

You know, I haven't. The thing that moved the needle the most for me was just diet was really cutting back on red meat. It's funny to hear, like, a hunter say I have to cut back on red meat, but I just cut back on my red meat. I cut back on my.

You're a baseball player, too. Red meat and copious amounts of sunflower seeds.

That's right. That's right. That's right. And nightshade vegetables. I cut all my dairy out. Sugars. Anything that has an inflammatory response, I cut out. And that's helped a lot. But I'm still. Ben. I'm still taking methotrexate, which is a very common rheumatoid arthritis medication, because it doesn't help enough to allow me. Even my diet changes. They don't help me enough to allow me to live and move the way I need to be able to live and move. So I do still take.

Yeah. And that's just. Basically it's an immune system suppressant. Right.

That's all it is. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it was a tough time in my life, but I did march through it, and it was. It's great. I think it's a blessing in disguise, Ben, because when I got. When I attracted rheumatoid arthritis, I switched from I want to be a teacher and a coach to I need to get into the fitness industry and health and nutrition and really, you know, delve into this stuff pretty thick so that I could learn about how to take care of myself and others. And it's led me to where I am now. So it's kind of been a blessing in disguise, attracting disease.

Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting. And I want to hear more about how you got into, you know, starting a trained hunt from the CrossFit gym after that. But one thing I wanted to let you know, we didn't have a chance to talk about this. I think it was the last time you were over at my place. But there's an interesting study that they did on a Chinese herbal remedy that appeared to be just as effective as methotrexate and some other immune system suppressants at controlling the symptoms, specifically of rheumatoid arthritis. They did a big study over at a medical institute in China. And this stuff, it's kind of cheesy, but it goes by the name Thunder God vine over in China. And it's an extract of a special plant over there. And they gave it to these patients and combined the effects with patients who were taking the mtx, the methotrexate, and they actually found that the effects in most cases were the same or better without some of the side effects of the immune system suppressant. So I should shoot you a link over that study. But it's really interesting. It's just a Chinese herbal remedy.

Absolutely. You know, I'm. Anything to do with that. With new studies found with methotrexate, I'm in for sure. And that's. It's one of those like having an autoimmune system disease and being really having a decision, do you want to treat it or not? Because if you treat it, then there are some side effects to these treatments, you know, like nausea and your hot. It's hard on your kidneys and your organs and. And you have to get these panels done, you know, every couple of months to make sure that you still have proper liver function, kidney function. So I'm always up for. Is there. If there's some way to treat this thing naturally, I'm in. So, yeah, I'd love to hear that and read that study, Ben, for sure.

Yeah, yeah, I'll shoot it. I'll put it in the show notes too, for people listening. If you want to read that study, I'll put it over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kenton2.

And then Ken, like from there. I remember running into you again briefly back in the day, or I actually wasn't running into you, I was running into your name because I wandered into a CrossFit gym. It was Spokane Valley CrossFit, where my brother Zach was training. And there was a guy named Dan Statin. Dan Stanton. Dan Statin.

Staten. And he was, he was running, he was running a CrossFit gym with you focused on fitness for hunters, is that correct?

Well, our CrossFit gym really just started. We started so early then that it was like 2008 and it was just when we just got ahead of the big wave. I think when we opened CrossFit Spokane Valley, we were like number 590, some affiliate in the world. And I don't. There's thousands upon thousands. So when we opened that gym it was really, as the story goes, Dan and I worked together at Ozfit and we both had this entrepreneurial mindset of like, we could do this, we need to start our own gym. And, and really we really had a passion for helping people and helping young athletes. And we discovered CrossFit. And so we said, this is the way to go. This is a great business plan. It's a great, good support. And so we opened up across the Spokane Valley in 2008 and Dan and I were partners in it, on it for five or six years and we loved it. I mean, it was humble beginnings. Of course, we were standing out on the street and it was a time, Ben, when you would say, hey, have you ever heard of CrossFit? And nine out of 10 people would say, no, I've never heard of that. What is that? And we would just pull them in off the street and say, come get a free month of workouts. We'll just train you for free just so you can get a taste of what this new idea of training is, which is called CrossFit. And now of course it's huge, but that's how we start.

It's massive. I wandered into a gym, I had a bunch of guys over to my house last week and we were supposed to go run this obstacle course that I built on my land. But it's covered in snow and, and ice and we couldn't even get up on anything. So we rented a local CrossFit facility and went there and they ran us through workout. That was the first wad that I've done in quite a while. It was four different five minute long stations of going as hard as you go for a minute and then 15 seconds off. And I had forgotten how brutal it can be, especially from a muscular endurance or kind of like short term glycolytic stamina standpoint. I mean, I was, I was pretty wrecked the rest of the day.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, I mean, you kind of wrapped up what about 90% of CrossFit workouts are about. And it's that, you know, that ultra, like high, high intensity workouts and I loved them. And when I remember when I found CrossFit, I was, and I still do, I still do love CrossFit. I just, I branched out and really after doing the CrossFit competitions for five years, I was like, what am I really training for? Like, I really enjoyed the competitions, I really enjoyed daily workouts, I enjoyed the people. And, and at one point Dan and I were, were like, what are we really training for? You know, outside of just being able to say we're good at working out. And we said, you know, we're training for hunting. And so the light bulb went off and I thought, why, why don't we start, you know, a training regiment specifically for hunting? Because I mean, you, you have some experience in the hunting area now, Ben, that. And you, you can, you can attest to this. There's very specific movements and specific muscle groups and, and modalities you have to be good at and efficient at in order to be have, you know, move through the mountains with efficiency. Right? Like it's.

Oh yeah. Well, not just move through the mountains with efficiency because I mean, a lot of people think it just comes down to being able to ruck and hike for long periods of time, but I mean, also just, just freaking like, you know, drawing 65 pounds while you're in a lunging position with your bow and do and doing so in almost like, you know, it's not an isometric contraction, but it's a pretty slow, controlled contraction when you're trying not to spook an animal. And you know, little things like that that require. And in some cases, you know, as you just, you just touched on, your heart rate's jacked because you did just climb a hill or you did just make up the side of a mountain, or maybe you didn't even just hike, but you're just at 13, 000ft altitude because, because a lot of these places you hunt, you know, the air is thinner and yeah, those are a lot of the things people don't think about. You know, the stuff that goes above and beyond just rucking or hiking.

Correct. Yeah, yeah. And it's it. So, you know, with that said, that's why, that's why Train Hunt started. It was a, it was training regiment specifically for the hunter. And it made sense to me because every, you can find a training regimen for a volleyball Player, football player, triathlete, pretty much anything, a mountain bike racer. But there was nothing out there that was training the hunting athlete. Nobody had touched that area. I think it's for. For several reasons. I think that, you know, it's still a pretty controversial area for the most case. And then I think that it's kind of an old school traditional sport where there's a lot of resistance to change in that sport. And for people, even today, I get some backlash for even bringing up the fact that you will be a better hunter if you're in good shape, if you're fit, if you're healthy. I still get backlash for it. So I think that's why it hadn't been touched up to that point. But now it's. In the last six years, there's a lot of stuff that's coming up and people are starting to recognize that hunting is just easier, it's more enjoyable, and you can be better at it if you choose to be in hunting shape.

Yo, what's up? I'm interrupting this show to bring you a sweet recipe. I made this this morning. And I'm not kidding. I'm not just making that up. I made this this morning. It's gonna knock your socks off. It is called coconut chia pudding, and here's how it goes. It's two layers. The first layer, you take a bunch of chia seeds and you mix them in with almond milk, a touch of organic maple syrup, a little bit of full fat coconut milk, a pinch of sea salt, and a little bit of stevia or coconut sugar. And then you also make a second layer in a different container. And that one's chia seeds, almond milk, and coconut milk like the other one, along with sea salt and a little bit of sugar or Stev. But to that second pot that you put all this stuff into, you put a cup of coffee. And what you do then is you chill all of this for anywhere from 30 minutes to preferably overnight, if you can. You wanna stir it a couple of times. You're chilling it overnight. Make sure you stir it before you go to bed. And you're gonna get this thick chia pudding. And what you do is you take layer one and you'll scoop that into a bowl or a cup. And then you put layer two on top of it. And it tastes like this amazing coconutty chocolate coffee pudding. And you could put like peanut butter and almonds and bananas and dark cacao nibs or anything else that you want on there to amp up the flavor even more. So the Recipe that I just gave you comes courtesy of Camera Coffee. K I M E R A K O F F E e. And@kamaracoffee.com, you can get coffee with nootropics added to it. That up spin the dials in your brain and yes, I just made that word up. They up spin the dials in your brain. So we're talking about nootropics like Alpha GP and taurine and DMAE and L theanine, all these things that make coffee coffee. So check it out, kameracoffee.com and you want to use code Ben because that will get you 10% off. And if you go to that website and you click on recipes, you'll also get that recipe for that awesome two layer Chia pudding. Another thing you could add to that pudding, actually that would taste pretty good would be emulsified MCT oil. I have a new blend of emulsified MCT oil I've been using. It is perfect for the fall. It's called pumpkin spice. Now, if you've never had emulsified MTV Emulsified, MTV Emulsified mct, you are missing out because it's like MCT oil, but it doesn't clump. There's no mess, there's no cleanup because it's emulsified. What that means is it mixes into anything you put it into like teas or coffees or anything. And there's not just pumpkin spice. If pumpkin isn't your thing or you've got something against pumpkins, they've got strawberry, they've got vanilla, they've got coconut. And it is all brought to you by this company called Onnit O n n I T. And when you go to onnit.com ben10 that's onnit.com Ben10 you get 10% off this amazing emulsified MCT oil. And one of the things that I do in addition to putting the pumpkin spice in teas and coffees is I get the coconut one and I drizzle their coconut oil, emulsified MCT oil over, of all things, sushi. I know that I just completely insulted anybody who loves sushi. That's probably blasphemy in Japan to dump some coconut flavored emulsified MCT oil on sushi. But it makes sushi taste like, well, sushi. So check it out. Onnit.comBen10 all right, let's jump back in with Kenton.

You had, like, a pretty personal experience with this. I think this was a story you were telling me about how you went hunting with your dad. I think it was. And I want to hear that story because it highlights one really important thing, especially regarding hunting, you know, and even leading into at least the past few years of train hunt competitions, you know, the need to, to compete on, on back to back days. And, and I think we'll touch on that later and how you guys are going to change the competitions going forward. But like when I, when I hunt, like, you know, and I've interviewed, like I mentioned, like Mark Warnke from Got Hunt and Chad Wheeler and some of these guys who, who will put together hunts that I go on, but they're like five or six or seven or, you know, in one case eight days long. Day after day of getting up and having to perform. It's not just like one day and then you could sleep in the next day and recover and take a magnesium bath. So can you go into that story about. I think, I think it was you and your dad and your brother hunting sheep?

Absolutely. So. Well, it starts when we were super young, Ben, and that was with the idea that, man, those guys are super lucky to be able to go to Alaska like the great, the last, you know, unexplored place on earth and be able to hang out in Alaska and hunt these amazing animals, these sheep. And we used to watch them and talk about it and how great that would be, really understanding and knowing that that was something we would never be able to do. Fast forward, you know, 15, 20 years, and my brother's in the military, he's stationed in Alaska. And now we have the opportunity to go to Alaska. And for those of you that don't know Alaska, if you hunt sheep, if you do not have a next of kin, which is a brother, a dad.

You know, first generation, second generation, next of kin, you have to hire a guiding service in order to hunt Dall sheep. Well, my dad and I had Ryan up there, so we didn't have to hire a guide, which can be upwards of 15 to 20 thousand dollars. So we were saving a ton of money. We were able to get this opportunity to go hunt the Dall sheep. And it was something that has been a lifelong dream of all of ours, especially my dad, who at the time was 58 years old. And so he got in good shape. And, you know, he did some biking and some step classes and he did everything he could. He lost like 25 pounds. He did everything that he knew how to do to get ready for this sheep hunt. And we get flown in, dropped off, and it was a 10 day hunt that we planned, we planned for. So we got dropped off on day one. The, the plane flew out and we were left there with, oh wow, you.

Guys got dropped off by a plane out there, huh?

Yeah, yeah. 10 days, 10 days worth of gear in. Here we go.

So we, we hit it hard on day one and probably covered somewhere between eight and ten miles like you always do your first day because you're so excited about getting out there and usually end up going a little bit too hard on day one. And then, and on day two we hit it pretty hard again, probably another six to eight miles. And at the end of day two we found these band of rams that were above camp about 1500ft. And we went to bed that night knowing very well that in the morning they could still be there. And if they were there, we were going to go after. So on day three, we wake up and lo and behold, there they are. And we're in. My brother and I are up and we're looking at these sheep and we're like, dad, they're still there. That's just time to go. And my dad basically said, guys, I don't have it in me. I'm done. Like, I'm, I'm too sore, I'm too tired, I'm worn out. And you guys go ahead.

Bummer.

And then that it was like, it was really like take, it was like taking a bucket of ice cold water and just throwing it right on my head. You know, like it took me like my breath away when he said that. Because.

It was a lifelong dream of his. He can see the animal. He's always dreamed of being able to hunt and shoot and harvest and he can't get out of, he can't get out of his is sleeping bag. And I realized at that very moment that that is like, that's tragedy. That's, that's, that's beyond like, oh well that's too bad. He should have trained harder. That's like my dad did everything he could in order to get ready for this and it just wasn't good enough. And so it really hit home hard. Like there are good men out there, good women out there, good hunters out there who are, who want to be in shape, they want to do the right thing, they want to be in the, give themselves the best advantage they can to be able to withstand a 2, 5, 10 day hunt. And they're doing everything they can and they're doing it wrong. And I was like, I don't want that to happen to my dad again. I don't want that to happen to anybody again. If you want to be in shape, the top shape you can be in for hunting, you should have access to that information. And so that's why I started training. I was like, I'm gonna give people the information and make sure that does not happen to anybody, anybody else. And the story ends good. My dad does get, we do get dad out of, out of sleeping bag and getting stretched out and getting like, getting moving around, and it took us two and a half hours to get there, but we got there, man, and he ended up killing that ram. And, and it was a. It's probably one of my most cherished hunting moments I've ever had on the mountain with my dad and my brother and myself. And it was, you know, three grown men weeping over. Over an animal. It was, it was a here forever moment. So.

Oh, yeah. And I could just see it in my head. You, you guys filling up your dad with coffee and stretching him out and basically being like, like two, two massage therapists up there on the mountain trying to get him out. That's interesting. But, but you know, I've, I've had the same thing happen. Like, like, I remember one time when I, when I was up in Colorado, I was so exhausted from a day of, of horseback riding combined with a lot of steep hiking, and I think we were at about 13 and a half thousand feet. There was one morning where I, you know, usually, you know, I've got the alarm set and everything, and I went to bed, didn't set the alarm, and I woke up at like 7:30, which, when you're out hunting, like, to miss an entire morning, like that is, is just a heartbreaker. But I was just that beat up from the day before, you know, and, you know, and I, I do these things like obstacle course races and Spartan challenges and stuff like that. And I mean, there's, there's, there's still this weird subset of fitness that you need for hunting that, that I know you've tapped into with some of these trained hunt workouts. And that's, that's actually what I wanted to ask you, man, was, was if we could walk people through, like, what a sample workout would look like. And, and I know that you've got, you've got your Train to Hunt website and you've got like different workouts that come out almost like the CrossFit wad website where there's like a workout of the day for people, people who are, who are a member over there. But, but can you walk us through like what a typical day would look like.

Sure. So a typical, we have everything from the person who doesn't have any, like I got five minutes and I have no equipment. Right. That, that's going to be like we. I want you to do as many rounds as you can of five push ups, five squats, five sit ups. I want you to do that over and over and over for the next five, ten minutes that you have on your lunch break or whatever. And that would be a typical, like really quick hotel, maybe lunch break style of training too. What I would consider a true train to hunt workout. Because when you're hunting. We touched on it, Ben. When you're hunting, it's not about being able to do something high intensity for 20 minutes. Although I really, you know, you and I both know there's a physiological advantage to being able to do that. The time saver. On and on and on. In hunting, you have to be able to be able to get up and do work at kind of a lower intensity for a long period of time. So we do things.

Yeah, but, but, but granted, if I could interrupt you real quick. For people who, who don't have a lot of time to be able to build up like the mitochondrial density or the endurance, I mean, this was something I relied on when I used to train for Iron Man. I didn't have a lot of time. And something I talk about in the book, how there's kind of two different ways to build mitochondrial density or aerobic capacity. There's two different pathways. One's called a cyclic amp pathway, and that's the one you get a lot of professional athletes who just do copious amounts of aerobic work, achieve their mitochondrial density through that pathway. But then there's a second pathway. It's called the PGC1 Alpha pathway. And that's how high intensity interval training can actually work to say, like, make a marathoner fit, even though that marathoner is only doing, you know, say like a, a Tabata set and some hill sprints and some super duper anaerobic glycolytic work. So, so there's kind of like this strange crossover in the same way that there's like this weird crossover between like, like a triathlete who does jump squats to make themselves a better triathlete. You wouldn't think that'd work. You wouldn't think that'd make you like a better cyclist. But they've done research and they've shown like your, your muscles grab more motor units, you wind up with better efficiency, better Economy, et cetera, when power and strength for an endurance sport. So, so there is, you know, there is a little bit of crossover there.

Absolutely, there is, absolutely. And I, and you know, I've read your book, man. Like, if you guys haven't read beyond the Training by Pen Greenfield, get a copy. It's, it's really, it's, it is a wealth. Knowledge. It is, man. It's a wealth.

Thanks, man. Check, check. Checks in the mail.

Right on. But, and you're right, I mean, there's a ton of crossover on, you know, high intensity interval training or long drawn out workouts. And I like to do both. And I can tell you, I'll tell you why I like to do, like I like to do a two hour workout at least once a week on a weekend. And it's because I want to know how my body's going to react to that kind of a workout. Because, you know, if you're always doing just one style of workout, high intensity for 20, 15 to 20 minutes, and then you jump, put a pack on and you walk, you know, you walk forward six hours.

You know, you're just not going to know how your body's going to feel after walking with a pack for six hours. So I like to do both. All right, so to the point. Yeah, A typical Train to Hunt workout is going to have some sort of a gymnastic movement, whether it be a push up, a box jump, a squat jump, a scissor jump, a lunge, something that's going to get you fire up your, get your heart rate up, get your, you know, fire up those legs and get, get them ready for what we would consider some sort of mountain climbing strength. Like you're walking uphill, you're going to be using your quads, using your hamstrings, using your core, and then it will probably have some sort of a strength movement on it, whether it be a sandbag ground or shoulder, a sandbag.

Drop over your shoulder, a sandbag deadlift, some sort of, of a strength movement and then mixed with, you know, somewhere between 2 minutes and 10 minutes of cardio of a run of some sort or a row or a bike or some sort of, you know, high intensity, a kind of medium intensity cardio. We really like to make you put your pack on and go for a half a mile or 300 yards. You know, the shorter the distance, the heavier the pack, the further the distance, the lighter the pack. And you do that for. Sometimes we'll have you do as many rounds as you can for 30 minutes for 60 minutes for as long, for as long as you have. Maybe you only have 20 minutes. So you're going to do it for 20 minutes. Sometimes we'll do it for rounds like anywhere between two rounds and, and 10 rounds. And most of the time, if you have the ability, we'll throw on a shot at the end of each round. Like you get back from your cardio, you push hard, please around. Now I'm going to grab my bow. I'm going to go from focusing on physical movement to now I'm going to focus on accuracy and balance and a smooth release, which is really, I believe what separates a trained hunt workout from any other style of workout is that we are asking you to be laser focused and go through your shot sequence and be real cognitive right there at the end while your heart counted through your eyeballs.

Yeah, that's the tough part is. Well, I actually had two thoughts that came to mind as you were talking about how the workouts look Kentucky. One is that when you talk about the, the muscles needing to be prepared for long periods of time with that backpack on. Yeah. I could draw the same corollary again with triathlon. Right. Like I, like I used to do all that high intensity interval training, but about once a month I would just get on my bike and I would be on that bike for four to five hours just to teach my butt muscles. You know, build a little, little uncomfortable callus around your, around your absolute. And learn how many water bottles you need and learn how the body feels when you reach back for a water bottle and the right hip flexor cramps because you've been bent over for two hours. All those little things that you don't get when you're doing say a 20 minute intense workout on the bike. And the same can be said for the rucking too, right? Everything from pack fit and when I interviewed Aaron from Kafaro, we took a deep dive into how your pack should actually fit your body. But even if your pack fits your body perfectly, which is almost like an art and a science, you still have to build up things like calluses, like new bone formation in areas that are loaded, that would normally be loaded, like your clavicles and your, you know, the, the axial load on your spine. And you know, you have to, you have to get a feel for how your glute medius feels when the pack's riding low versus when it's riding high, when you're hiking at 20% versus when you're hiking at 10%. Like there's all those little things that if you just like, like put on a heavy pack and you say, okay, I'm just going to go ape nuts for 20 minutes and call it good. Sometimes you need a little bit more than that if you're going to have that pack for, for five to 10 hours a day for seven days in a row. And so you make a good point there. The other thing that, that I wanted to mention that you delved into, it wasn't the pack, it was the. Oh, the shot. Yeah, that was, that was the toughest part for me. Cause but it's kind of close to Spartan racing where you have to stop at some point during the race and throw a spear, right? And you need to take that deep, centering, anchoring breath. You need to get the heart rate down. You need to train in a way that you're actually training for heart rate recovery. Where you're say one common workout is you'll do five minutes of burpees and you'll try and keep your heart rate at your aerobic threshold the whole time you're doing burpees. It's actually really kind of a fun test. You wear a heart rate monitor and every time your heart starts to go beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, and the monitor alarm goes off, you have to stop doing burpees, make your heart rate recover, and then continue to do the burpees while keeping yourself in that aerobic zone. And the train to hunt stuff is like that because I'll do one of your workouts and go charging up my driveway and I'll do the cooler stepovers and the sandbag grounded chest and the get ups with a heavy weight and then you try to shoot and the target's moving all over the place and every time your heart beats that your pin's moving all over the place with each time your heart going ba boom, ba boom, ba boom. And you have to learn this weird meditative style way of getting your heart rate low, super duper fast, super fast. And it's all a big part of this is your vagus nerve, the health of your parasympathetic nervous system and its ability to be able to take over when you're stressed. And that's where I've done podcasts on the vagus nerve before, where we've talked about singing and chanting and humming and cold water immersion and meditation and deep nasal breathing. And there's all these techniques that you can learn to train your parasympathetic nervous system. But one thing that you touched on that I think is super unique about these, is that when you're doing the workout, you're actually training your parasympathetic nervous system. If you're doing the, the, the scaled form of the workout, you're alluding to where you got to stop and shoot as you go.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it's one of the, well, the part that stands out in my mind because I, I love the Spartan race. I love watching those things on tv. And it is when people ask me, so what's trained hunt kind of give me the. My elevator pitch is. Well, you know what a Spartan race is, right? Yeah, it's kind of like that with a bow. Like every, every station is.

Exactly. It's obstacle course racing. With a weapon.

With a weapon. And no matter. No matter. And you talk to anybody who does Spartan races and they will say the obstacle they dread the most is the, is the spear throw. Most of them are the spear throw. It's like a make or break station for a lot of especially elite athletes there. It's the spear throw. And it's because you have to switch gears. Like you said, you have to switch gears right away. Teach yourself to be able to, you know the right techniques and you have to practice these techniques. And it's not sexy, it's not something that's fun because you don't get your heart rate up. In fact, you're trying to bring your heart rate down and then focus, make it happen. And then you got to switch gears again and you're off and running. And it's challenging, but it is the thing that you have to be good at in order to be a successful hunter. If you want to be a provider for your family and your friends of meat, you have to be good at being able to switch gears, focus, go through your, your shooting sequence and make it happen. And if you can't, I don't care what kind of shape you're in, I don't care if you're the fittest man on the planet. You're a great tracker, a great stalker. You can go for days and days. If you can't, if you can't seal the deal, if you can't make it happen at the time.

If you can't focus and make that shot when you need to, you're never going to be successful. So that's from my passion. You can probably hear it in my voice. That's what I think. Yeah, that's what it's about.

Yeah. I don't think I got a chance to tell you this Kenton. But I was able to do the course that Spartan is proposing to the Olympics committee for obstacle course racing to be featured in the Olympics. And they actually switched out the spear throw with shooting. So it's an indoor track with multiple obstacles on it. Extremely precise course in terms of measured distance and in terms of the way that the obstacles are actually built. Right. So it could be repeated and measurable.

From country to country. But at one of the stations, as you're coming around the track, you run up on this big lineup of pistols, the exact ones that they use in Pentastonia. Right. So these are like. They're like laser guns, really. And you're shooting at a target. You've got five shots, and, you know, each. Or you have. You have five times that you need to hit bullseye, and each time that you shoot, you need to reload the gun. And so, you know, while I was there, you know, I watched the women compete, for example, and one woman went from being fourth place to winning the event overall because she ran up on that shooting station, and you could see her heart rate came down right away. And these other two girls who had. Or the three girls who had. Who had been destroying her around the track, this girl was just, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, took off. And all of a sudden, it reshuffled the entire deck when it came to shooting accuracy, which is exactly what happens in your Train to Hunt competitions. We didn't get to this part yet, but you put on these challenges all over the nation, and I've run into situations where. Where I'm, you know, you know, this. I'm. I'm pretty fit going in. I'm. Yeah, I'm probably, You know, I don't. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I'm probably fitter than the average hunter. But I go into those things, and I. I will get my butt waxed on some of those. Some of those challenge courses simply because somebody else shoots, you know, whatever, five bullseyes. And I've got three body shots and a wounded one bullseye. And so all of a sudden, I'm getting, like, seconds knocked off my time, and they're getting bonuses, bonus points, and. Yeah, so that whole, like that whole vagus nerve stimulation, parasympathetic nerve activation. I think that's one of the coolest parts of the workout.

Yeah, for sure. Without a doubt. And. And, you know, as you touched on with the challenges, that's the way when I designed the first train. The hunt challenge course back in 2012 has been a long time. My. I. I said, okay, there's two people. I don't want to win this competition. I don't want the ultra, like, basically the endurance pro, whether it be a cross country, a mountain bike racer, a triathlete, whatever, that doesn't ever shoot. I want to. I don't want him to be able to pick up a bow and come out and win the competition. So how can I avoid that? Well, you have to just give him lots of bonus points for shooting well, and that's how you can avoid that. Well, I don't want the pro to come out the guy who just is a great shot. He can shoot the eye out of an eagle at 100 yards. I don't want him to be able to win either. Well, how do you do that? Well, that part was easy. You just make the course tough enough physically that there's just no way that he can. He can. He can beat somebody by just shooting well, so by design, Ben, it was. Let's be able to test. And it was great to have you out because I know, you know, I know how into fitness you are, and I know that you're, you know, I know your history of the Ironman and how much success you've had there. And so it was great to have guys like you come out and go, well, this is going to be put to the test because I know Ben just started shooting, and if he wins, then maybe I need to, you know, maybe I need to rethink some stuff. And you, I mean, obviously the one that, like, meat pack, you slightly hammering everybody because you're just, like you said, you're. You're in better shape. And that's the case in with the Meat pack, which was you didn't have to be able to shoot well in order to do well in that event. So. And there's, you know, we need to get into that. Yeah, yeah.

I interviewed Trevor Nistrath, who won nationals two years in a row, 2015, 2016, for train to Hunt, and he's basically bailing copious amounts of hay. He's running, and then he's basically just hiking and hunting. That's the core of his workout program. And I think he's doing some very, very much trained to hunt style workouts. But yeah, it was interesting to hear his routine. He's like, I drive around, I find farmers need their fields done in terms of the hay baled, and basically I get paid to work out because I go out there and bail their hay for them. It was a pretty entertaining podcast to Hear his workouts. For those of you who want to listen to me, interview the guy who's won these things two years in a row. I'll put a link over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kenton2 Now, Ken, you dropped a term there that I think I know. When I tell people I do these competitions, it confuses them. And that's. That's the meat pack. They're like, you're. You're literally. You got a. A few dozen people out there in the middle of the forest doing a Train to Hunt challenge, and you have big piles of meat that you're shoving into your backpacks. And I. And I have to explain to them how. How it really works. You know, how we're using. We're using big old sandbags instead of meat. But let's. Let's walk through, like, what I think, you know, the last train hunt competition I did was. Was 2015 nationals down near Park City, Utah. So let's walk through.

How that weekend went so people can get a real taste of what a Train to Hunt challenge actually looks like. And again, for those of you listening in, you could go to Kenton's website and you could just do the train hunt workouts if you just want some new workout challenge or something like that. But I think the icing on the cake is you sign up for one of these challenges because that's where you get put to the test, aside from your actual days out hunting. So let's talk 2015 nationals, Kent. And we showed up. And for me, I showed up in my skinny man jeans and my preppy T shirt because all my luggage was lost. So.

I was getting some funny looks. And we showed up and we got a piece of paper. And this was whatever, 8, 9pm at night, piece of paper, headlamp. Tell us what shook down that first night of competition.

So understand that what we're about to talk about here is the national championship. So I put, you know, imagine I put 12 of these qualifiers on throughout the country, and now I've got the best of the best. And I got to put these guys through an additional test of. Of fitness and will and. And shooting. So the first thing that we did was we had them gather on Friday night at 8 o', clock, which is right, you know, right before dark. And we gave them a piece of paper that had three coordinates on it, and we had put out three spots. We just basically GPS three separate spots, put some letters, combinations in trees, and said, you guys have to find these, these. These waypoints and report Back before midnight or else you don't get the, you don't get the points for, for doing this event. And so that was the first thing we did because we believe that hunters should be able to use a gps, not necessarily, you know, map and compass or, or, you know, anything super, you know, fancy, but you should be able to get a waypoint and be able to find that point on the planet. So we gave three waypoints. Everybody went out with headlamps and found these waypoints and came back. That was the very first thing we did on Friday night.

Right. And some people were out there, were out there pretty late. I mean, my strategy, I think you said we had to turn them papers by 5am or 6am the next day. So I just boogies and headed out because I'm a little bit better at doing that stuff in the evening rather than the wee hours of the morning. But some people were out there a while and I thought that was a cool twist, needing to know how to just use a basic GPS system. You don't even need to, need to necessarily do old school map and compass, be able to ruck your way through the wilderness, find certain waypoints, come back, satisfy them. Because a lot of times when you are a hunter running, you got to find your way from point A to point B, back to camp, over to the truck, back over to where you were two days prior. And yeah, it's an interesting skill, but.

That one I didn't expect showing up. But it was kind of cool to be able to get out and do that. And then we slept. And the next morning we launched into the 3D shoot. And for those of you listening, in, a 3D shoot would, in a traditional sense, you'd be walking around, you get measured distances, 40 yards, 50 yards, whatever. You take a shot, you get a certain number of points based on that shot, but you have a lot of twists thrown into your 3D shoot. Kenton, can you walk us through what those four to five hours of wandering through the forest on the first morning of competition actually look like?

Sure. And it's all about how realistic can we make each shot? We break down each shot, and there's only 20 shots. For those of you that have done a lot of 3D shooting, you know, you're usually talking about 40, anywhere between 40 and 80 shots in a weekend. We're talking about narrowing it down to 20 arrows shot. And we in every single shot, there's some sort of a hunting scenario twist. Like what could you possibly run into in the woods? Whether it be you have to shoot from a kneeling position, which is a very basic, pretty common situation you might run into in a hunting situation. All the way to.

Drawing back and having to hold full draw for a minute before you can shoot. And that's a timed event. That's a. There's like somebody standing right there waiting for you to get to full draw. And then they start a timer and they, you just have to stand there full draw, you know, you know, keeping the isometric position until a minute's up and then you get to shoot. And that just simulates being caught by an animal drawing your bow. And it's, you know, you hear about it quite a bit. Being caught by an animal drawing a bow. They're not giving you a shot or they're behind a tree. And so you just got to stand there and wait, wait, wait, wait. Finally they step out. Now I can, I can execute my shot and everything in between, man. Like from a shooting from a tree stand. We have shooting from a blind. We have the follow up shot, which is you. It's usually kind of one of the. It's the shot that everybody talks about the most. I think it's because it's the shot that you shoot your arrow and you have 10 seconds to reload your bow and get a second shot off for those. For that case where you get a shot, you got a good. Even if you got a good shot on an animal, if they run just a little ways further and they get, they give you an opportunity for another shot. Most of the time, bow hunters will take an opportunity to shoot an animal the second time, if nothing else, so that the blood trail is better and there's a higher percentage or, you know, just. It gives you a better chance of recovering the animal, which is what? Oh yeah, everybody.

And there's so many, Everybody's. So many things you don't think about. You know, for you to say this, you know, it sounds pretty straightforward. Oh, you practice, take a couple shots. In a way. Practice, practice holding your bow. But there's little things like during that one minute hold, not only is your body shaking in a way similar to what I was talking about earlier when you're tired, but a lot of times you'll get to like 35 seconds and you'll feel, for example, if you're using a compound bow, which is what most people. Sometimes your cams will bounce around on you. And if your cams are bouncing around, sometimes you'll lose your full draw and then you're just screwed. You don't even get your Shot off at all or during that, two shots in 10 seconds. Like, it's about. There's little things that happen. Like, sometimes you can't get the knock on the string. Like, you get the arrow out and you're all ready to shoot, and you're fast. All of a sudden, the knock isn't on the string. Or a lot of people use these trigger releases, right. And the trigger release, when you shoot once, sometimes that trigger will stay down. I remember this happened to me in my first train hunt competition. So I was already released that next arrow, and I didn't even have the ability to hook my release onto the D loop of the string to pull the string back, because it just stays out. Or another interesting one. And this relates to the type of sights that people will use, the number of pins that they have on the side or how they have those pins set up is you'll have one shot. I know you did this at nationals. One shot's 15 yards away from a tree stand down at a deer, and the other shot's 60 yards away. And it's more of a straight shot across a ravine. And. And if you have a sight that's set up that's like, let's say, a single pin sight, you don't have enough time to shoot the first time at whatever, 15 yards, and then dial that sight in to adjust it for 60 yards to take that next shot. You have to be able to have some kind of a setup that lets you shoot on the fly like that at two different distances. So once you start to dig into the nitty gritty, there's all these little things that you don't think about that you have to be prepared for. For the unique nature of these 3D shoots.

Absolutely. And then I'll. I know it probably sound like a broken record, but it's all in the name of simulating what you might run into in, you know, while you're hunting. Because, I mean, that's the. That's how hunting stories go. That's how they're born, is. Oh, you'll never guess what happened to me. There was a little branch that I didn't see, and I ricocheted off the branch, or I. I pulled back and got stuck or, you know, for two minutes. And I. And I couldn't. I could get a shot off and finally pulled out, and I was shaking so bad I couldn't even shoot. Or I was in my tree stand and I pulled back and my aerial came off my screen. And that's what we want to simulate In a competitive environment, to get your heart rate up, to get your a. To give you the opportunity for your anxiety to be high and then have to perform, because that's how. What you're going to run into in the woods. So it's fun. It's great to see hunters and just archers and just people who fitness gurus alike come out and say how much fun it was. And that 3D shoot is always a very popular event. Yeah.

Get the 3D shoot and then we're on to the meatback.

Yeah, so we get. We get, you know, an hour or two of recovery. You usually have a chance to have some lunch. A lot of people will pack their lunch in. You know, most of the time these competitions are taking place at, like, at shooting facilities or, you know, at three different courses up in the mountains. And so a lot of times there's not like a, you know, like a 711 or a whole Foods or whatever that you just duck into. You know, you're out there camping, essentially, and then. So you've got the. You've got the meat pack that comes up next. Kenton, can you walk us through how that exactly goes? Because in my. In my opinion, that's. That's the hardest I've ever worked. I remember the first time I crossed the finish line of a meat pack, and I think you were catching me, because you literally have to catch people as they cross the finish line. They're so gassed. And you're like. Your lips are. Your lips are blue bed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That. It is. In my. In my opinion, it is the heart, and it's really the heart of the Train to Hunt competition is that meat pack scenario. Because what we do is we just depending on your division, and there's 10 divisions everywhere from, you know, what we call the Men's Open, which is the ability. If you're. If you're a male and you want to join the Men's Open, that's your division. We have the counter of Women's Open, and then we have the masters, which is 40 and over, and the supermasters, which is 50 and over. And we have teams, and depending on your division, we load you down with a certain amount of weight. Now with Nationals, it's a hundred. It's £100. The men's open had a hundred pounds. The men's Masters had 80. The Men's Supermasters, which is 50 and over 60. And you can see that the pattern is the older you are, the little bit. We just take a little bit of a load off of you and try to make it a little bit more realistic as how much weight you would probably be packing in the mountains for any kind of distance. And then we just put you through a mountain course. You know, it's just, it's a, it's a series of trails and turns and twist that you have to negotiate hills and, and walk, you know, over top of logs in some cases. And at nationals it was a bugger because we did one. We did two miles with a hundred pound pack through a mountain course, mind you. And then you dropped, you dropped 50 pounds of that. And this is, this was really the gut check. This was the who's tough, who's gritty, who's. Who's the guy you want on you in your hunting party?

Because it was a big gut check. There's not a lot of people that can do 1, 2 miles in a racing scenario with 100 pounds, drop it 50 pounds, and then go do that same trail again with 50 pounds.

There's a lot of people who can't even get the hundred pounds that's in the backpack onto their backs. I mean, that's the trickiest part is you're rolling around like a dead bug on the ground, trying to even put £100 on your back and then be able to stand up.

That's right. That's right. Just having the technique and the know how on how to get that 100 pound back from the ground to your. Your back standing is, Is definitely a feat in itself, but you know, that's what we do. We. And that is just, that's to simulate the pack out. Okay. I've been successful. I harvested my elk, my deer, my moose, in some cases, whatever it might be. Now the real work starts now. The real important stuff, you know, is about to begin. We need to get this meat from point A to point B. And point B is always cut, wrapped in my freezer. Well, the first part of that is got to get it from the, from where the kill site is to transport, you know, transport a vehicle. And that's what that is simulating is, all right, let's put this meat on our backs and let's go. And so it was, it's a really big part of hunting and it was a really, really big part of the train to hunt qualifiers and will remain a huge part of the nationals for sure.

Yeah. And I have to admit, sometimes that backpack is just such a pain in the butt to put on with £100 in it. When I'm training at home. All sometimes just grab a heavy Sandbag, slap that thing over my back, and do some hill climbing workouts or repeats just to at least get the feel without having to take that backpack on and off like you do in the meat pack part of the challeng challenge. But yeah, it's crazy because, for example, like, if your waist belt on your backpack is riding too low, all of a sudden your hip flexors are turned off and you got to take these teeny tiny steps and your glute medius, you know, your external rotators just blow up. Or, you know, in, in other cases, you, you set up the pack correctly. And this is what I do based on advice from, from Aaron Snyder over at Kafaru. You set up the pack correctly, you get it super duper tight on the upper body, so you've got some of the range of motion in the legs to be able to do what many of these packs weren't designed to be able to do, in which is run. But then all of your lung and your inspiratory and expiratory muscles are cut off to a certain extent, so you're turning blue in the face like I did. You have no upper body mobility. So, yeah, there's all these little curveballs that get thrown on you when you try and move from point A to point B with £100 on your back as quickly as possible. And then the little twist you threw in at nationals where you do all that, that and then you just lighten the load and do it again, made it just, just a little bit more, more brutal. And I have to admit that that doing it a second time with a weight that was like half as much still felt just as hard as doing it with the full weight. I think I was so, so gassed from the initial lap. Yeah, so, so we've got, we've got at that point the evening to recover. At least that was the way that that nationals went last year. And then you wake up the next morning and launch into really what you mentioned earlier, Ken, the obstacle course race with weapons. Can you walk us through how that goes?

Well, I'm excited to be able to announce that the Train Hunt Challenge course, as it's called, is going to be just like the Nationals, which is way more spectator friendly. It's more like an arena feel than it has been in the past. And what I mean by that is we have four lanes shooting lanes set up.

The targets are exactly the same target for all four shooting lanes and exactly the same distance. We've allowed the competitors to go up and range, find how far that target is. So it's a known distance in this case. And they, they know how far it is, they know where to shoot, where to aim at these targets. And then behind each shooting line are these challenges that are these physical challenges that are just lined up. And what they do is on the signal of go, four competitors at a time will drag a tire somewhere between 30 and 50 yards. They're going to be pull it, dragging this tire hand over hand, pulling it towards them in like a grip strength test. But it's, it's a fairly light tire. You know, Ben, it's a fairly light tire. It's not a huge test. It's just kind of get that upper body fired up a little bit and then, and then as soon as you get this tire to you, you are going to take off on a, on a loop run. The best way to describe it then is kind of like the biathlon, right? Like what you got to do, like these little loop, these, these penalty loop runs. If they miss a shot, they do these little penalty loop runs. Well, the same thing in training, the hunt challenges. You're going to do this, you're going to do this physical challenge. You're going to run this little 302 to 300 yard loop run. Then you'll grab your bow and you'll shoot target. You'll shoot your first arrow at your target and then you do the second. The second challenge. The second challenge is a sandbag you'll have to hang on to and you have to go up and over a 20 inch box, 20 inch step. You'll go up and over and up and over. You do that, you'll repeat this 10 times and then you'll do the loop and then you'll shoot your shoot arrow number two. When you, after you shoot the arrow number two, you'll do the sandbag over the shoulder drop. Now this is to simulate loading your pack. Believe it or not. It's to be able to efficiently grab the weight, a weighted pack or some weight from the ground and move it to your shoulder. And we just have you drop it over your shoulder. This makes it really easy on everybody to know whether, hey, I either dropped it over my shoulder or I. So you do 10 of those, you run your loop and you shoot your third shot. The next challenge you're going to have is, it's called the sandbag get up. And that is you're going to take the same sandbag that you were holding over your box. These suck ups and you're going to. Yeah. And you're going to lay flat on your back with this, this, this sandbag is going to be essentially sitting on your chest and you're laying flat on your back facing the sky. Okay. That's the down position of a get up. Then the top position of a get up. How to finish the get up is you stand back on your feet. Mind you, the bag can never touch the ground. You have to stand back on your feet and then stand with the bag sitting on your shoulder. And that completes one rep of stand, bag, get ups and then back to your back weight sitting on your chest, stand back up. That's two. Do 10 of those. Run, run the loop, shoot, shoot your fourth arrow and then the last thing we'll wrap it up with is burpees. And so you'll do a burpee. Everybody I would assume at this point knows at least what a burpee is and you'll do a burpee, you'll step over.

Everybody has their own version of what they think a burpee is. Kenton, as you know.

That's right. But it is right, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I can tell you that our version of the burpee is this bottom position is face down, chest on the ground, in contact with the ground. And the top, the top side of a burpee is back on your feet. On the other, once you've jumped over the sandbag, turn around and face the sandbag. That completes your burpee. And it's 10. And then you run the loop, you shoot your fifth arrow. You grab your 50 pound pack that's already pre packed. All right? So you, you load your 50 pound pack on you get it good, get it where you want it. You grab two, two arrows. The two arrows you have left, you put them in your quiver. Very important. You can't pack, you can't run with arrows in your hand. You can't. You have to have them in a quiver or in a hip quiver. You have to have them secure so that if you trip and fall, they don't, you don't end up getting stabbed. We don't want anybody getting stabbed. And then you hit the mountain course right from there, all in. This is all of under one block, under one time. And you're gonna do that a two mountain, a two mile mountain course. And two points along that course you're gonna stop and you're gonna shoot two targets. So you're, you're gonna have already gone through these five challenges, run these, the five loops, shoot these five arrows. Your heart rates already Beating through your eyeballs. You're gonna put on this weighted pack and you're gonna hit the ups and downs and overlogs of the mountain course. And you're gonna have to shoot two. Two targets along the way. So that is, you shoot the two arrows and then you'll finish that. Your clock will stop. And you have now accumulated what we call a runtime. This is how long it took you from.

Finish. That's how long it took you to complete the task. And then the scoring begins. And we score it. We score it so that the people who shoot really well for every. Or if you shoot really well, let's say you shoot a bullseye. Okay? We'll just keep the terms really simple. If you shoot a bullseye, you get 30 seconds taken off of your run time. If you shoot just outside the bullseye, we really pretty close to the bullseye, but not a bullseye. Then you don't. There's no penalty. You don't get a reward, but you don't get a penalty. And this is really just a shot placement where if you were shooting at an animal, it would be a very quick, humane kill where you know, the animal is going to be dead within, you know, yards. And we. And if you shoot outside of that zone, we actually penalize you pretty heavily. You get 30 seconds added to your run time. So you went and busted your tail. You did all these shooting. But if you shoot poorly, we penalize you for shooting poorly. And you get time added to your time, which, you know, Ben indicated to earlier about how, you know, if you shoot just a little, you know, poorly, it adds up pretty dang quick.

Yeah.

And then obviously there's the ultimate penalty, and that is if you miss. If you miss any of these seven shots, it is instantly 20 burpees.

And it's all. It's always burpees with your. It's not just burpees, it's birthy burpees with your pack on.

Yeah. Yeah. If you hit. If you get burpees in the mountains, you. You have to do those 20 burpees with your pack on.

Yeah, this.

So it's. It's brutal.

This new twist on it too, where you're doing everything in shooting lanes with a whole bunch of spectators, all of a sudden it turns into like a. A hunting version of the CrossFit games where you're surrounded by people cheering and shouting and judges shouting in your face. And in my opinion, it's far more fun than you just running through the forest with your bow and getting to A spot where you and maybe one or two guys, if they're on your tail or slightly ahead of you, are going to be there at the shooting station and then you take off again, man, when you're there with a whole bunch of people screaming and cheering and the music is pumping, it's quite the experience. I mean, I think, I think it's one of the coolest new twists that you've thrown into these Train Hunt challenges is this new version of the obstacle race. That's actually something I wanted to ask you though, Kenton, is this. So from what I understand, based off of what you've kind of hinted at with me, that's going to be the main part of Train to Hunt, along with the 3D shoot. Now, you still going to do anything like the Meat Pack, or is that just not going to be present for the 2016 season?

So for what we've done in the 2016, and I'm always trying to figure out how to reach more people, how to kind of, you know, take the intimidation factor out of it. How can I make it safer? How can I make it more attractive for people to come out and try? And the number one reason that people weren't coming out and just giving the Train, the Hunt challenges a shot, they weren't intimidated by the 3D shooting. They were intimidated really necessarily by the. The Challenge course as it was. It was really the meat pack that they were like, I do not want to risk getting hurt during the Meat pack and I do not want to go put myself through that, so I'm not going to do it. And so we got rid of the meat pack as it has been in the past, and we've. We've traded it in for a new version of the Meat pack, which I just want. And that is the 50 pound pack at the end of the Challenge course where you have to go through the two miles of trail. That is what we are calling the new version of the Meat pack. And it's half the weight as it has been in the past qualifiers, but it's also after a pre exhaust. So like you indicated, that second trip with 50 pounds at nationals didn't feel any easier than the first trip with £100.

Pounds. Yeah.

Because of the pre exhaust. Right.

That also is. Sorry to interrupt. That also, I think, is why CrossFit isn't going to get you ready for something like this, in my opinion. And this is what happens in Spartan races, right? Like the CrossFitters always just crush it for like the first mile or two miles and then once you're 25, 30 minutes in, once you're kind of getting past what a typical crossfitter would do for stamina or for endurance, you start to see folks fading and getting past and maybe even feeling some of the effects of not paying proper attention to nutrition or electrolytes or hydration. And so it's really interesting how that throws a whole new twist into things. And that's why I think doing something like the program that you've laid out or something close to it, where you have those sections of the week where you're just freaking putting on heavy stuff and going for a relatively long period of time is pretty crucial for this.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. And that. And when that meat pack is going to still separate, it's going to separate people. It's going to be a big separator even as, even though it's not a standalone event, it's going to be a really tough, tough finisher for most people at the qualifiers. But you know, Ben, we really just wanted to make it as far as the qualifiers go. We really wanted to make it a little more family friendly and we wanted to. And we did two things to make it a little more family friendly. One was we made it, we made some kids, some kids events that I'm really excited about because I believe that, you know, the kids are our future, you know, and they are the future of hunting and conservation and, and I think it's.

Being in the health and fitness and somebody who believes that everybody should have the knowledge to at least make the right decisions. I want the kids to have.

That knowledge as well and they have fun and they'll have a good experience in the outdoors.

I think it's great. I mean, my kids have a couple of bows now, Ken. And that's one of the things I want to do is take them to two or three competitions this year as a way for dad and the boys to not only see a few new states, but also for them to get out and learn some of these things. Like if, for example, just this morning, as hokey as this may sound, especially when they're on summer break or spring break or like they are now on Christmas break, I give my kids little tasks during the day, right? Like I'll go grab a wad from like gymnasticswad.com or I'll throw some deadlifts at them or this morning they actually had just the basic body weight push up, pull up, box jump workout and they're 8 year old twin boys. But then they had a candle meditation where all they had to do was light a candle and sit cross legged. In this case, they were inside the sauna for 20 minutes, controlling their heart rate, staring at the flame and allowing thoughts to just come and go through their head. And that might seem like a far cry from shooting a bow, but there's some parallel there where when you take a kid and you teach them how to focus, how to concentrate, how to say, you know, pull back on the boat when they're tired, you train something that a lot of children these days aren't training, which is focus and meditation and activation of that vagus nerve and parasympathetic nervous system.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I can't wait to see your boys do it. Come out and it's going to be fun. They're going to have a good time too, Ben, because they're going to be able to do these just as many times they want. It's going to be set up kind of like a carnival ride.

Right.

And all you do is pay that when the parents show up with their kids, they just pay the one time fee and then the kid can go do. They can do it 20 times.

Yeah, that's, that's the way they do it at Spartan race.

Yeah, just let them go where they'll. And so that, that's exciting and I, it will be interesting and it'll be great to just see the kid smile and competitiveness and there's just so much a kid can learn just from competition. That's a whole other podcast but I'm excited about the kids competition and we made it a one dare. Ben, There were some of the old, some of the old school guys were a little bit disappointed and that they feel like we may lose some of the community because it's not an overnight event where we run some of the event on Saturday and then big finale on Sunday. But I, you know, being a family man myself, I have a 5 year old and 23 year olds and a wife at home and I know the pain of as you know, as of leaving home on Friday and not really being able to be there till Monday is, you know, it's substantially different than being able to leave on Friday and come home Saturday night.

Yeah, that's actually going to be way, way better for the family. And plus, plus I guess it saves some people hotel fees and things like that too, if they are doing the hotel.

Yeah, that's right. Because essentially you could, if you live it though, if you live within say four hours of any of the sites, you could drive there that you Know, Friday evening or even Saturday morning and then leave Saturday after the competition and drive the four hours back. If you had a buddy wanted to just, you know, just team it up and go there and back, you'd be knock it out in one day and you're done. Rather than have to find a camping spot or a hotel or oh, we got to get food or whatever it might be overnight.

It's still, still going to be a long day. Man.

It will be a long day. It'll be one heck of a long day. And there's there's some give and take, right? Because I believe that hunting, we talked about it earlier in the podcast. Hunting is a multi day fitness arena. That's really what we're training for because anybody can do it for a day. It's that second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth day that really starts separating the men from the boys and men from the women. You know, like, that's, that's big time. But I wanted to do one day just because it's going to be more family friendly and I'm going to stick with it. Yeah, that's just, you know, if you want to get in shape using train to hunt, I get some great, you know, some great workouts, train every day in some way shape or form, you know, recover. That's traininghunt.com.

Yeah.

If you want to come out and do a train hunt challenge, family friendly, competitive atmosphere, meet some of the most.

Amazing people ever meet which states this year?

So we are in Oregon, Nevada, Arizona.

We are in Colorado and Wyoming. And then we start heading out Texas, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. And we get, we just finalized North Carolina. And then we're gonna do, we're teaming up with backcountry hunters and anglers again this year and we're gonna do a 100% of proceeds. Go. But it's backcountry hunters and anglers in a train hunt challenge in Anchorage, Alaska.

Nice. Nice. I like it. Yeah.

Yeah.

So that would be a ton of fun.

Anybody looking for. Yeah, anybody looking for an excuse to get to Anchorage, Alaska?

I was just gonna say my boys were telling me the other day they wanted to go see Alaska. So this might be a good excuse to throw them on a plane and fly up from Seattle. Nice. All right, cool. Well, I know, I know you actually conducted this entire interview while sitting in your car driving across Washington. I think you're headed somewhere in the snow. But, but you've been super generous with your time. And by the way, for those of you listening in, I've got a ton of previous podcasts that we've done on everything from how to build.

Primal fitness and endurance hunting to backpacking and bow hunting and shooting tips to wilderness survival and hunting fitness tips with all sorts of different folks. We've actually got about eight or nine different podcast episodes just devoted to hunting. And so I'll link to all those in case you just want to knock yourself out. Out. You get a long road trip. You want some cool stuff to listen to along with Train to Hunt and everything else that Kenton and I talked about today. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kenton2 that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kendon, the number two. And when you go there, be sure to click through and check out Train Hunt because he has everything from a workout generator on there to some blog posts about stuff we didn't even delve into nutrition and supplement supplementation and some of these things that are used in the hunting sector on that front. And so there's quite a bit over there. It's a fun website to explore. Try out some of the workouts. Let me know what you think. You can always leave a question or your own comment in the show notes again over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kenton2 and if you dug this, if you liked it, go leave a review in itunes as well. Unless you're vegan or vegetarian, in which case you probably didn't enjoy this episode too much.

Much.

But believe it or not, you could probably use, you could probably use some of these same fitness skills for what, Kenton like mushroom foraging if you're in the mountains.

These workouts for that. Yeah, yeah. Mushroom foraging. Just sightseeing. Birds watching.

Yeah, yeah. Spearfishing. I've actually had to use a lot of this when spear fishing because your heart rate gets high. You're down and up. You got to study your heart rate, take a shot. You got to have the endurance for a long day. So there's a lot of crossover to life in general. General. And I love what you're doing, man. Keep it up.

Thanks, Ben. Thanks. I, I just, I appreciate you having me on your podcast. If I can. I just want to mention one other thing.

Oh, yeah.

On Train to Hunt, we're really kind of pushing this Grand Slam membership because I feel like it's just such a really, really good buy for anybody who's out there looking for either personal training or maybe looking into doing one of these Train to Hunt challenges with a Grand Slam membership. You get to choose. I want the Grand Islam membership. It's $149 a year and you get a Train to Hunt Challenge pass. So you can go to any Train to Hunt Challenge you want for, you know, it's included with this, with this Grand Slime membership. If you're not interested in doing the challenge, but you're interested in the workouts, you can get a whole month of personal training from one of the train the Hunt Challenge coach or one of the Train Hunt coaches. So you get a whole month of training personalized to you, goal setting for you. And then on top of One of those two things, you also get 12 chances to win these monthly drawings. Like last month we gave away a pair of binoculars from Vortex. In January we're going to be giving away Earthmate, which is basically a GPS for your phone. In February we're going to be giving away a brand new Bowtech bow. So we're giving away some really great prizes to the Grandstand members. And then on top of that, every month, every the first Sunday and every month at 6 o', clock, we do what we just call a campfire. And all the Grand Slam members are invited to a live seminar on Grand Slam Facebook page. And we just do, we just do seminars. Like last in December, we did one on the 10 pieces of fitness equipment we felt like every hunter should own. And in January I'm doing a seminar on the proper how to set goals, proper way of setting goals. So you get it. There's a ton of value in the Grand Slam membership. You get a three month supply of Hydrate, recover from Wilderness Athlete, you get a free Grand Slam T shirt, ton of value. So if you go to trainhunt.com check it out, just check out what you get for your Grandstand membership. And I think that if you're in the, if you're going to train at all or if you're going to do a train on a challenge, that's the way to go.

Nice. I like it. You don't actually start something on fire during those campfire events, do you?

You, you know, well, sometimes, you know.

Like there, not yet, you're not there with a fire pit in front of your Skype or something?

No, no, not yet. Not yet. Maybe this summer.

Yeah, that, that'd be a cool twist. A Google hangout with a real fire. Nice. That Grand Slam membership actually sounds pretty cool. I didn't know about that, but I'm, I'm have to go check that out. So I'll, I'll link to that as well over in the show notes for any of you guys who want to get in on that or ladies, guys or gals that. This is, you know, we didn't mention this, but this, this is a, this is a. Why am I wanting to say unisex? I also want to say bisex. What's the word I'm looking for? Kenton? It's multisexual. It is. It's co ed. That's the word I was looking for. It's co ed. There's a men's division and women's division now apparently kids division, masters, men's masters, women's division. So anybody can go out there and have a good time with this stuff. So, Ken, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Pleasure. Thank you very much, my man. Have a, have a great new year, all right.

You too, man. Folks, this is Ben Greenfield along with Kenton Claremont signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting.

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