January 3, 2015
Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/fitness-podcasts/are-hunters-the-fittest-people-in-the-world/
[00:00] Introduction
[01:17] Kenton Clairmont
[09:10] How Kenton Got Into Train To Hunt
[14:28] Hunting Culture Limiting One's Self
[16:40] Train To Hunt Versus Crossfit
[20:32] Quick Break with greenfieldfitnesssystems.com
[21:08] Continuation/Kenton's Workout
[29:43] The Most Challenging Place Kenton Has Hunted In
[33:58] What Goes On In A Train To Hunt
[37:41] This Year’s Train To Hunt
[44:48] Finding The Champion For The Train To Hunt
[55:34] The Future Of Train To Hunt
[1:02:08] End of Podcast
Ben: Hey, it's Ben Greenfield here. If you want to support this podcast, you can definitely do so by going over to the one website where I store everything that I've ever recommended for you to get your goals as quickly, and safely, and effectively as possible, and that website is greenfieldfitnesssystems.com. So check out greenfieldfitnesssystems.com. It helps to support this show. And now on to today's interview.
Welcome to the show. Cool. We're ready to rock and roll. I'm Ben Greenfield, of course. And across from me is Kenton Clairmont. Now before we jump in to today's show, you may be interested in the fact that we're sitting at a Rebel desk and you can get $40 off a Rebel desk. It might be 50 or 60. I'm really not sure. I don't remember. But you use code Ben at rebeldesk.com. And you can also get a Rebel desk chair as well if you use code Greenfield. So grab your Rebel desk which Kenton and I are comfortably lounging on, and I'm going to kick my dog out of here and then we're going to rock and roll. Alright. So, Kenton?
Kenton: Yes, sir?
Ben: Fellow Vandal. Attends University of Idaho. What do you do?
Kenton: Right now for most of my time, I'm a cowboy. I'm a rancher. I basically work at a big mommy factory. There's 700 cattle on the ranch and we take care of them 'til they kick the cows out and we take care of the calves and the mama's until it's time to sell 'em. And fix fans and feed cows and all that. But the exciting thing that I do is I train people online. I train hunters specifically. Then even a step-up from that is the Train To Hunt challenge. I run the Train To Hunt challenge races. Right now they're all over the West, everything, Washington, Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and I just put people kind of to the test, to test whether they're efficient with it, with archery equipment and see how fit they are.
Ben: I want to pick your brain about the Train To Hunt stuff here in a little bit, but you and I have crossed paths before. I know that you ran a Crossfit facility in Spokane Valley. And even farther back than that, you were a baseball player at the same college that I played tennis for. Lewis-Clark State College.
Kenton: Yeah. We were Lewis-Clark State athletes, Ben.
Ben: Yeah. So you played baseball, I played tennis. I went on to University of Idaho and I studied sports science and you were up there as well.
Kenton: Yeah, I was. I was actually studying sports psychology. So that's exactly what happened was I got out of graduate, or undergraduate school and didn't make it big just like when you're a little kid, that's all you ever plan on doing is being a professional athlete and that didn't pan out. So I started teaching, and I was teaching a prep school in North Idaho and then decided I really want to coach baseball again, but I have to go back to graduate school to do that because I want to coach college baseball. So, I went to University of Idaho and I thought there's nothing better to marry a kinesiology degree with than a sports psychology degree to coach athletes, and especially baseball players. They're all [0:04:21] ______.
Ben: Yeah. That's what I hear. That was the one sport I played until eighth grade, and I was the pitcher. The joke of course was that I was the pitcher pitching machine. So I was the guy who stayed by the pitching machine and put the ball into the pitching machine. That was my big experience with baseball. A lot of professional baseball players on my mom's side, but I never really got into that sport as much as hitting the good old green fuzzy ball with a racket. After you graduated from the University of Idaho, I know you eventually wound up at a Crossfit facility up here in Spokane Valley because that was where I met your partner at this time. But between baseball and getting involved with the Crossfit box, what were you doing?
Kenton: Well, I went to graduate school and then figured out that it's not as easy as you would think to get a college coaching job even with a graduate degree. And they're just really good jobs and they're not easy to come by. So I was just kind of hanging out, waiting to see if something would come up, working with a private school again, and really probably the thing that happened to me the most, Ben, that landed me in Spokane for sure was I came down with rheumatoid arthritis and had a really big bump in the road there for about a year. And to go from being a college athlete and in mid-20's I played some professional baseball for the Pirates organization. And then when I was 30 years old I got diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and did some research and really found out that they didn't really know a ton about rheumatoid arthritis, where it came from. There are some people that will speculate it's from allergies and that kind of thing. But I knew that I needed to start moving, I need to get in the fitness industry specifically, personal training so I could just be moving all the time and keep my joints going. So I moved to Spokane and I was a trainer at a big box gym, and then opened up Crossfit Spokane Valley with Dan Staton and we ran that facility for about five years.
Ben: Yeah. I went there a few times. I did a few WODs with my brother Zach. He worked out there. He's kind of a beast. We were talking about him a little bit earlier. Zach, he's been at bengreenfieldfitness.com. If you go there and do a search for Zach Greenfield, he's in the article about how to build muscle on a high fat diet. He used to be a model, so there's a bunch of modeling photos of him there.
Kenton: Oh, yeah. That's right.
Ben: He dragged me over to that box. But were you there when he was training there?
Kenton: I was. In fact, I saw Zach most of the time. He was training in the morning, I was the morning guy so I'd get in there and train Zach. He's a great guy. He's fun to be around and just an athletic built guy. Just a great guy.
Ben: That's funny. Zach knows that I do a lot of stuff on the internet. He pushed me last year about the internet business. He's like, “I want to do stuff on the internet.” ‘Cause right now he's a paramedic and a firefighter. So I told him he should just start selling stuff on Amazon. What people do a lot of the time, and I know if you're listening in or watching, you might wonder about how you make money on Amazon. Basically you order stuff from a website like Alibaba or some other wholesome website, and you source it, and you store it on Amazon's warehouses you listed on Amazon. If you list it correctly and you've got the right follow-up mechanisms in place, you solicit reviews and everything, you can increase your ranking on Amazon. So he you started selling kitchen gloves on Amazon.
Kenton: Really?
Ben: Kitchen gloves on Amazon and netted $300,000 in past 30 days alone. And pretty soon I'm going to have to come to him for a loan because the margins like kitchen gloves are pretty good. So he's rocking it.
Kenton: There must be a high demand for kitchen gloves.
Ben: I guess so. It's the number one ranked kitchen glove on Amazon.
Kenton: Who knew.
Ben: I know.
Kenton: Apparently Zach did.
Ben: Yeah. So anyways, you ran this Crossfit box for a while, and I think that briefly, Dan, your partner at the Crossfit box, he had mentioned to be about this Train To Hunt program. I honestly, at that time I wasn't that interested in hunting, hadn't gotten into farming, and gardening, or anything like that. So I wasn't super interested in it. But then Chad Wheeler, I interviewed Chad in a show about endurance and hunting, hunting can be used as a passive mode of fitness, and he mentioned your name as well. And then I looked into the whole Train To Hunt thing and it's crazy. It really is pretty cool, what you're doing. And I want to pick your brain a little bit about, like I mentioned, about how'd you go from the Crossfit box into doing that thing.
Kenton: Well, it was one of those things that, Dan and I really enjoyed hunting and we would take the whole month of September off and we would just, we'd employ to just do our classes so that we could hunt for the whole month of September. And it was something that we really had in common. We were both entrepreneur-minded, we both loved to work out, we both loved to hunt. And we knew there was a market out there for training the hunters specifically. Because in general, most of the hunters that we have been exposed to mostly, our dads and our dads' friends and that kind of thing. They weren't big into going into going to the gym and lifting weights, and hitting the treadmill, and that kind of thing, but they did want to be in shape for hunting. And so most of them would just get in shape during the season and we thought, “Man, that's a huge mistake. There's a lot of guys out there that are getting hurt, having heart attacks, that are passing on opportunities because of their fitness level.”
Ben: Are there really guys out there getting heart attacks?
Kenton: It's probably the number one killer in hunting, heart attacks.
Ben: Really?
Kenton: Now you have to consider that most of the hunting in the United States is done east of the Mississippi. And most of the hunting out here, and I'm not going to get hang up there, but most of their hunting out there isn't real physical, it's mostly, the physical part is setting up food plots, and setting up tree stands, and working the ground. And sometimes it'd be, they'll hire that out, and then they'll go out and shoot deer, and then their dragging it out. And one of the hardest things to do…
Ben: So they're not training up to the shot, then they're having to drag it out.
Kenton: And then they're dragging this buck, and they're dragging it out for 200 yards. Their heart rate is through the roof and they have heart attacks.
Ben: I mean I'm in shape and the last buck I shot was literally like 150 yards from where we're sitting right now out in the forest, so I don't need to drag a football field. I was gassed. I mean it's tough.
Kenton: Yeah. Dragging dead weight is no joke. And I think that guys want to be in shape, but they didn't want to go to the gym, they wanted to train like a hunter. They wanted somebody to give them a program to follow where they put their pack on their back, go out in the backyard, grab their bow, do some exercising, kind of hide the exercise and the fitness, if you will. Kind of like with what you do with kids. We're going to play tag for five minutes, they run around and they're, lo and behold, they're getting some exercise. With some people who prefer outside, do-it-yourself fitness they say, you just kind of hide their programming in backpacks and shooting. And in between there, you make 'em do some exercises and they'll do 'em so that when they get to the shooting part, or get to the packing part…
Ben: You ever run into a situation where somebody basically either lost an animal or destroyed a hunt because they weren't fit enough? You know, these guys back east who are dropping dead of heart attacks?
Kenton: There is, I've never been with somebody who has lost an animal. But I've been with tons of guys who have just passed on opportunity that they literally, Ben, will say, they know that there's a bull down there because he viewed one, but there's no way that I could get down there and then get him out of there. There's just no way. So we're going to have to let him walk. So it's not so much that guys will get themselves, that I've experiences, guys who're getting themselves in really life threatening situations…
Ben: It's just more like lost opportunities.
Kenton: Lost opportunities, yeah.
Ben: Yeah. Interesting. So heart attacks is one thing that happens. What else have you seen out there when people are trying to get their own food that holds them back?
Kenton: I think just, when you get fatigue, you don't have as much confidence, you won't go to places that you normally will go. I have a buddy who hunts back in Arkansas and he was telling me about who had set up on his tree stand and the guy went in there and he saw 15 bucks, hoping there’s more. Walked back to the cabin, they were sitting around talking about the day, and Tim says, “Hey. You going to go back in that stand?” And the guy said, “No way I'm going back to that stand. That is way too far. And Tim said it is one mile from where they are. One mile on flat ground. So it's really just missed opportunities and guys really putting up these huge limitations that are unnecessary only because they're choosing not to be in shape.
Ben: Is part of that the culture of hunting? And I know this is partially stereotyping, but you've got pickup trucks, chicken wings, fried food.
Kenton: Beer…
Ben: Yeah. A lot of beer, a lot of carbohydrates, a lot of excess body weight. Poor body to power weight ratio. And I'm curious, how far fitness has pervaded the hunting culture versus kind of the more pervasive, or the seemingly more pervasive kind of sit-around-and-just-basically-eat-crap-food and…
Kenton: And drive your truck down the road until you see something then shoot it. That's a good question. I have been in a hunting circle, I guess, my whole life. I was raised hunting. And in the last probably five years, you're seeing a lot more people being aware of their fitness. And I think that there's a few things that are happening. Number one, a guy, Cameron Hanes, I don't know if you've heard of Cameron Hanes but he's really kind of brought fitness into the hunting world as a tool like your bow, like your camo. Fitness is a tool. Guys have been doing for a long time, Dwight Schuh's been doing it, I mean Dwight Schuh's been doing ultramarathons for a long time and Cameron…
Ben: What was his name? Dwight Schuh?
Kenton: Dwight Schuh. Yeah. He was kind of the original get-in-shape guy to go hunting and there's pictures of Cam doing ultramarathons and Dwight Schuh's in the background and tying his shoes at the same station as he is. I mean the guy's an animal.
Ben: Yeah. You ever compare your fitness scores or your [0:15:31] ______ with those guys?
Kenton: They don't do [0:15:34] ______.
Ben: They aren't Crossfitters?
Kenton: No, they're not. They're not.
Ben: See, I was, and I don't want to talk crap about people too much, but I actually went to Cameron's YouTube page yesterday 'cause I knew you were coming over tonight and I wanted to come and check out what some of the other people were doing. And he was, it looked like he was throwing around a barbell doing some deadlifts or something like that, but he's not a Crossfitter?
Kenton: No. Cam is, his motto is lift, run, shoot. And Cameron Hanes…
Ben: Lift, run, shoot?
Kenton: Lift, run, shoot. And Cameron Hanes lifts, runs, and shoots every single day without exception. Without exception. That's what I believe Cameron to be known for is just his, just doing it everyday.
Ben: Sounds just like stubborn consistency.
Kenton: Yeah. Exactly. Stubborn consistency.
Ben: Well what do you do? Are you mostly still doing Crossfit?
Kenton: I do actually Train To Hunt workouts. Here's the thing about Crossfit. And a lot of people have asked me this. Isn't Train To Hunt just Crossfit? Nah. Crossfit has done a really good job, again I'm not talking bad about anybody and I don't think this is come off that, but Crossfit's done a really job of actually classifying everything as Crossfit because it's constantly very functional movements performed at high intensity. Now they also say…
Ben: And they have to make money off the Crossfit brand.
Kenton: That's right. And so if you lift weight, it's Crossfit. If you run an ultramarathon, it's Crossfit. If you run with a bow and shoot, that's really considered Crossfit because it's constantly varied. The idea behind Crossfit is pull three exercises out a hopper and that's what you do for 20 minutes. So everything is really Crossfit. What I do is a version of Crossfit which is Train To Hunt, but specifically for hunting which is a lot more weighted walks or light weighted runs mixed with a lot more box mountain climbers, and burpees, and moving your body with weight on your back just like you're going to be doing in the mountains. And then shooting your…
Ben: When you say moving your body with weight on your back, do you mean that you're doing your Train To Hunt WODs. Do you call 'em WODs same as Crossfit or…
Kenton: I call 'em workouts.
Ben: Okay, workouts. Your Train To Hunt workouts, are you doing those wearing vests, or rucksack, or something like that? Or wearing on your back like a barbell or dumbbells?
Kenton: Most of the time it's a pack. We'll do 200-meter interval sprints with a 50 pound sandbag. So do a 400-meter sprint, and then do 20 ground-to-shoulders, and then take three minutes to recover and do four to eight rounds. So most of the time, I'm really trying to simulate, Ben. I'm trying to simulate that same movement that you're going to get in the mountains. Because believe it or not, most hunters have to dust their backpacks off before hunting season. They'll be in the gym, they'll be doing bench, they'll be doing squat, they'll be doing curls. They'll be doing some elliptical, even some running. Hunting season comes around and they dust off their bow, they dust off their pack, and now they're going. I think it's just a mistake.
Ben: When you're using the pack, are you using the nice Kelty Internal Frame Pack or do you just have a crappy rucksack that you fill with weight and throw around?
Kenton: I use it. I use the top of the line. I use a Kifaru pack, which is…
Ben: That was my mistake when I was training for SEALFit is…Well I heard about the packs that they give you down there at US Crossfit and they're literally like a 25, 30 dollar pack you can get off Amazon.
Kenton: Oh, really?
Ben: No frame.
Kenton: Like a book bag.
Ben: It's basically a book bag that you fill with sandbags. So trained for that thing all summer. And if you look at my back, I've got scars going on my lower back because it rubs, and the sand chafes, and the weights bounce up and down. I show up to SEALFit for the week-long academy that happens before you jump into the 60 hours of Kokoro suffering.
Kenton: Kokoro, baby.
Ben: There's a bunch of guys there with these fancy internal frame packs who are out rucking every day. And by the end of that, by the time I got into Kokoro, I was destroyed. Like my back, like my traps were destroyed. I just had no clue about choosing a proper backpack to carry with. But with you, when you're out there doing your Train To Hunts, you got an in internal frame? Like a good pack filled with weight?
Kenton: Absolutely. And we actually do a “Gear With Me” video showing people how to properly fit yourself to a pack, the importance of not saving your good pack for hunting and using your book back for training because you're going to spend way more time in your training bag than are your hunting bag. You can always just wash it because you don't want to end up with scars…
Ben: It's a problem. Just like your traps are all hard, tight all the time. You just destroyed…
Jessa: Hey! Quick break here. This is Jessa Greenfield, Ben's boss. I mean wife. I'm not sure if you know this, but Ben, being the complete nerd that he is, keeps track of everything he's ever recommended and found to work really well and puts it all over at greenfieldfitnesssystems.com. From books, to lab tests, to supplements, he has all there. So whether you want to build muscle, burn fat, fix your gut, sleep better, balance hormones, learn about smart drugs, whatever, it's all there. Check it out at greenfieldfitnesssystems.com. Okay. Now back to the podcast.
Ben: Before I ask you a little bit about what goes on at these Train To Hunt competitions that you put on, help me wrap my head a little bit more around what your workout looks like start to finish. Like what's one of your go-to workouts as far as how you guys are warming up, what you're doing during the workout as far as carrying these deadweights and stuff, and then what happens after. And by the way, one of the reasons I ask this is if you look at a Crossfit WOD, you've got 20, 40 minutes. If you look at a SEALFit WOD, something like Mark Divine's stuff, that's a warm up. And you're out there for three hours in the grinder. So I'm curious what it is that you're doing.
Kenton: So I still have to cater to guys who have families and they have a limited amount of time. So during the week, Ben, most of the time, we always do some sort of a dynamic warm-up which includes, you're doing everything from…
[Ben's dog comes in the room]
Ben: Hey, boy. Go ahead.
Kenton: You're doing everything from giant walks to…
Ben: Giant walks? What's a giant walk?
Kenton: Giant walk's when you're walking across, you're just taking big walks and you're kicking your hand…
Ben: Okay, yeah. Like Frankenstein walks.
Kenton: You're going to get a good sweat, a good proper warm-up. You're doing the warm up. You're basically just getting a good total warm-up. Then you're going to jump right into the workout. And most of the time, you're going to do two to three different movements. Most of them are going to do gymnastics. I don't have a ton of weightlifting. We will do something strength at the beginning. Three times a week we'll do a squat, we'll do a dead, we'll do something like a shoulder press, and then we'll go into our conditioning which you're doing two or three movements, whether it be a box jump, a burpee, some sort of a running with a sandbag around your shoulder, any varieties of a burpee. And then at the end of each round, you'll shoot your bow from various positions. From a kneeling position, from a standing position.
Ben: So you're doing the workout, and then at some point during the workout you're actually taking out your weapon and shoot it?
Kenton: That's right. So it's…
Ben: While you're gassed? Or somewhat gassed.
Kenton: It is. The idea is to teach, I get that question a lot too is, “Aren't you teaching guys bad habits by having them pick up their weapon and they're all wobbly and they're brain's not functioning well.” And I argue that when you're hunting and you've been walking all day, you're going to have some fatigue. And when it happens, it happens quick in the woods. I mean you've hunted before. It seems to happen pretty quick, and your heart rate, your heart can jump, you're not clear-minded. So it's a really good opportunity to teach yourself a shooting routine. Like you're going to do two box breaths and then focus, I'm going to draw, bubble, anchor, shoot. So I am stressing them out and then having them shoot.
Ben: You guys use the box breathing, huh? The count in, hold…
Kenton: Yeah, yeah.
Ben: That's so good for settling down.
Kenton: It is.
Ben: I've never had the opportunity to actually do a full box breath before taking a shot. That just, I mean I haven't. But I don't hunt out of stance, or anything. I'm just usually sitting behind a tree. But as far as sympathetic nervous system activation goes, the ability to quickly settle it down is something that I think can be taught. Whether it's alternate nostril breathing, or box breathing, or just getting yourself quickly from one mindset to another. So that's interesting that you do your shooting during the actual WOD.
Kenton: That's right.
Ben: How do you set that up? Are guys out working out by themselves, like out in the trees, just out where they've got a little bit of a range to shoot from? Or are they just doing this in their backyard, shooting at a hay bale or something?
Kenton: All of the above. Most guys are doing it just in their backyard. And some guys are doing it in their workout room and they're shooting at five feet in their house. And some guys are going to a range. And some guys just don't have access to anywhere to shoot, so they're doing the workout minus the shooting. And then Saturday's just always a big one, Ben. ‘Cause hunting is usually a long day.
Ben: You don't see the long days in Crossfit.
Kenton: You don't see those long days. And I think it's something that is really missing from the gold standard is and they're trying…
Ben: Stamina.
Kenton: Yeah. They're…
Ben: Slow twitch stamina.
Kenton: Yeah. They're trying but it's still, in my opinion, it's still kind of the missing x-factor.
Ben: Yeah. That's why I think arguably, even though I haven't run into many of your Train To Hunt devotees yet, I think that the average good Spartan athlete for example, or obstacle racer is better than a Crossfitter because of that endurance component.
Kenton: Sure.
Ben: Like one of the guys I've been hanging out with, Hunter McIntyre, he can lift just as much weight, this gym that we're next to, we were working out, he can throw a weight around. But the dude can also just like take off and run a half marathon in the mountain, which is nothing.
Kenton: Which is good.
Ben: Yeah. And I agree. That's kind of the missing component is the stamina and the endurance.
Kenton: They've got a lot of things going for 'em, and I really enjoy Crossfit, and it's really when I discovered Crossfit Methodology, I guess, is the best way to describe it. It really made me, it was something I've been looking for forever. Since I was little kid, I have been a four, five sport athlete. I mean I played football, and wrestled, and then did track, and then played baseball. And when I could, I played basketball. I mean I did everything because I was pretty darn good at everything, but never really great at one thing. And so when I found the Crossfit methodology or the philosophy behind it, I thought that's exactly what I believe people should strive for is to not be too one-sided. And when I first discovered the whole idea of this, cross training has been around for a long time. But when it was actually put into words and I read it about it doesn't matter if you can run a four minute mile if you can't do a single pullup because it just doesn't seem to be in your best interest.
Ben: But even with Crossfit, like from a functional standpoint, they not doing the endurance but the other thing it sounds like you have is you got a, during the workout, engage in accuracy and precision in firing the weapon. Always a bow or a firearm that you guys are using?
Kenton: There has been a couple people who have done with a firearm and I tell 'em really your only alternative is either work out at a firing range, which has its risks. Or you can dry fire your weapon and just put a dot on the wall, get down on the gun, squeeze, click, and then go off and do…
Ben: Or your paintball gun.
Kenton: Yeah. Something like that. But most of the guys that I have right now are bowhunters only because I think, just out of necessity, most guys who do, generalizing it, most guys who do a lot of the deep back country stuff are mostly bowhunters.
Ben: Why is that?
Kenton: I think it's just because the mentality of a bowhunter is more adventure-seeking. I think that's why people bowhunt. That's why I bowhunt. I've been asked the questions many times if I rifle and I say, “Yeah, I rifle.” “Well why do you bowhunt?” And I say, “Well, it's because I'm not that hungry.” Because if I'm hungry, I'm not bowhunting. And that's kind of where, that's why the bowhunting population, I believe, is building so quickly. It's because we're adventure-seekers. We are men and women who are seeking adventure in the things that we love in nature.
Ben: But it's still functional. You're still eating what you shoot, right?
Kenton: Completely. Yeah. Absolutely. And you'd be hard-pressed to find a bowhunter who isn't real respectful of the nature of an animal and they're super diligent about [0:29:20] ______ in the field and that kind of thing. And for the most part, the big guys that I hang out with and choose to put myself around, they're all real diligent about the animals that they take because there's something special about an animal giving up their lives so that yours can go on.
Ben: What's the most challenging place that you've ever hunted where this fitness has really been put to the test for you?
Kenton: Well, I did a 10-day hunt in the Brooks Mountain Range in Alaska for dall sheep. This was a drop-us-off, unload-all-our-gear, and wave-to-the-plane-goodbye, and it's take off, and we're off. I would say the single…
Ben: Is that just on your own or did you go up there with a hunting outfit or something?
Kenton: I don't know. My brother, and myself, and a friend of my brother's who's an anesthesiologist out of Fairbanks, and we threw 75 pounds what we had in our packs, that was our whole lives for 10-days, and we took off. I think we walked for about 11 hours that day. And that was probably one of the hardest days that I've ever come because we got dropped thinking that we were probably eight miles from where we wanted to pitch camp. And as soon as the plane took off, we grabbed our map and started looking. We're 11 miles from where we thought we were being dropped, Ben. So we took off, we walked that.
Ben: When was this?
Kenton: This was last year. We walked 11 miles, and we're pooped. We just walked 11 miles in the tundra, and tundra's kind of like walking on a waterbed. So it's not real easy stuff. We decided we're going to turn, go up, we were going to gain 3,000 feet elevation. So have to walk a mile to the river and we filled up our six liter bags of water, and then we hiked back, and the hiked up the mountain, 3,000 feet, we got there at 11 o'clock at night. And that time, it's early August, is basically light year round for the whole 24 hours. So we were there at 11 o'clock, we were like, “Man, I'm bushed.” We looked at our watch. “Well no wonder we're bushed. We've been walking for 12 hours.” So that was probably the single most challenging day.
Ben: That was the first 12 hours of the 10 days.
Kenton: That was the first 12 hours of the 10 days. We ended up shooting two dall sheep about, gosh I think it was like 13 miles from the air strip. And so I packed out my pack and then an entire sheep 13 miles.
Ben: How much weight was that?
Kenton: It was 145 pounds.
Ben: How'd you pack out the sheep? Did you put that in your pack?
Kenton: Yup.
Ben: Did you quarter it and everything first?
Kenton: Yeah. Boned it out. We cooled it by the creek. And funny story, 'cause we shot a dall sheep on a windy day, and then we took care of that one and put it down another creek so that we can cool it so that bacteria didn't grow on it and stuff. And then we went up, back up into the hills, I shot my sheep on day two, came back down and put it back in the cache, checked the meat, had the thermometer, made sure it was below temperature so that bacteria couldn't grow on it, and then we were gone for about a day, came back and the horns on the sheep were gone. A wolverine had got in there and grabbed my horns and dragged the thing probably 600 feet up the hill along with the cape and he took one little tiny sack of meat and that was it. But when we got there, we were like, “Oh my gosh. What happened?” But it was a really cool trip, man. Not everybody gets to see a musk ox. We saw a musk ox. It was 300 yards from our camp. We got out of bed and started glancing, “What's that? A grizzly bear?” “No, man. That's a musk ox.”
Ben: A musk ox! Those are the ones with the big curly horns or…
Kenton: Yeah. The big like…
Ben: Like the ones that kind of go off to the side.
Kenton: A musk ox in the middle of Brooks Mountain Range. It was a pretty cool sight.
Ben: Wow. That's amazing. So these Train To Hunt Challenges…
Kenton: Yeah?
Ben: I've been to your website, traintohunt, and you've got these competitions that are in a bunch of different states. Saw there was one in Idaho, and one in Washington. There's not a lot of videos on there much showing too much about what happens at those things but what is a Train To Hunt competition? What goes down in that?
Kenton: Okay. So it's kind of on purpose…
Ben: It's kind of secretive.
Kenton: It's a little bit. A little bit of what goes on in each competition because I want people to be training everything. I want to…
Ben: Well that's how SEALFit was, actually. When I went down and did SEALFit, you had no clue what you were going to be doing. You showed up and the recommendation was you do the WODs, the SEALFit the WODs, and you'll be good. You'll be prepped. And that was the truth. But, yeah. It was very similar. It was a secret. It was kind of weird.
Kenton: Yeah. Side note. That Mark Divine, he's an interesting guy, man. I watched a podcast with Barbell Shrugged and him this morning. He's a really interesting cat.
Ben: Mark Divine's cool. I was actually just down there a couple of weeks ago at his Unbeatable Mind Summit and the dude's just a beast. And he's, whatever, 50 now, I think, and just killing it.
Kenton: Yeah. Just a remarkable guy. Just really interesting. Alright. So at the Train To Hunt Challenge what happens is it's a two-day event and we run qualifiers. This year we have seven qualifiers. And you have to qualify for the national championships. Now keep in mind, Ben, that the first year that decided to take on the Train To Hunt Challenge, I had no idea if anybody would do it. And the reason I even came up with it was because I'd launched a website and had a lot of people come in and start training and they'd peter out…
Ben: So you're putting out your workouts for the first time?
Kenton: Yeah. Putting out my work…
Ben: Daily?
Kenton: Yeah, daily workouts.
Ben: People log in and download their workout?
Kenton: That's right.
Ben: Just like a Crossfit WOD?
Kenton: Yeah. Basically. And I just noticed that the membership was petering out right around November. And the reason is because everybody needed something to train for.
Ben: And how long ago was this?
Kenton: This was coming along five years ago.
Ben: Okay.
Kenton: Yeah. So we ran one full year and then the next year was like, “We're not gaining any ground here. We need to give these guys something to train for.” So I came up with this idea to put guys through basically a challenge course and it was just the challenge course. It was just I'm going to have them run, do a few exercises, shoot, run, do a few exercises, shoot, and then take their time, and then analyze how they shoot, and then…
Ben: You have time and accuracy?
Kenton: That's right. And subtract time from their total run time or add time to their total run time for an overall time, and then place them, and see how it works out. So that's how we started. And we just hung a point bow in a tree and said, “If you think you can get through this course the fastest, take your 10 bucks, sign a waiver, and go. Well it's evolved now in over the last three years. This'll be the third year of what I'm calling kind of the travel and race season. And last year was the first year that we did a national champion. Because the first year I tried to set up each course so similar that I figured if I could just take whoever had the fastest time through the course, I could just crown them the national champion. Well it's pretty tough when you're talking about setting up a course in Arizona and Colorado. Like you couldn't get a whole lot different topography.
Ben: It's the same problem I run into at Spartan races. You've got some courses that are good for the skinny me, runners, and some courses that are catered to the big strength and power athletes.
Kenton: That's right. And it's tough to compare those two. This race winner versus this…
Ben: Who really truly is the best.
Kenton: That's right.
Ben: The best fittest hunter.
Kenton: That's right. So last year I said, “Let’s bring this together.” I'll take the top five placers in each division, put 'em together, and we'll just put them head to head in Colorado and we'll see who ends up winning. So this year we're doing the same thing. We're going to do these seven qualifiers. And on day one, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to do what I call a “hunter's 3D course”. And partially the Train To Hunt Challenge course was born because of the standard 3D shoot was just too boring. And if you've ever been to a 3D shoot, which you probably haven't, but here's the standards of this 3D shoot. You basically get in line at target one, wait for the group of two to six people that are shooting in front of you to get done, and then out of the way, and then you shoot the next target. And then it get backed up. It'll take you four hours to shoot 20 targets.
Ben: The targets are progressively farther away in a 3D…
Kenton: They're 20 to 60 yards. And most of the time, sometimes you have to use a range finder to know how far it is. Sometimes they don't let you use a rangefinder. And that's usually what that whole idea, what that is testing is your consistency, your accuracy, and your ability to judge the arch. Well I put a spin on it and said that doesn't feel like true hunting. True hunting is when you draw your bow and that animal faces you and now you don't have a shot. So you have to hold it, and hold it, and hold it, and hold it, and hold it. So what I do is I…
Ben: Is that hard?
Kenton: It is. If you hold your bow for 60 seconds, you start getting…
Ben: How many pounds are you holding on like a typical compound?
Kenton: 60 to 70 is a typical compound. Some people will shoot, to be legal, you only have to shoot 40 to 45 pounds. But most guys, and even most women, are shooting above 50. And most guys are shooting 60 to 70.
Ben: Could you parallel that for our listeners who haven't shot a bow to like leaning over and doing a dumbbell row with a 50, or 60, or 70 pound weight? Holding that with your elbow back?
Kenton: That's right. If you got down in like a plank position, put your arms straight out, grab the dumbbell, and you held a 30 or 40 pound dumbbell right here for one minute…
Ben: Oh, right. ‘Cause you're accounting for the weight that you're pushing out against…
Kenton: Yeah.
Ben: Kind of like a renegade row.
Kenton: Yeah. One minute, and then put it back, and then try to be active.
Ben: Yeah, it’s a good exercise.
Kenton: Yeah. And I'll have 'em draw kneeling, and then stand, and they can't even see this target when they're kneeling. So they draw, stand up, now they can see the target, and they can shoot at will whenever they feel comfortable shooting, have draw, and move out from behind a tree and shoot. Just more realistic hunting situation where you're not just standing there all comfortable getting your rangefinder. The animals are just not going to stand there. You're kind of in a hidden position and most of the time you're either kneeling or you're behind something. So I set up this 3D course and we just score it regularly. There's a 10 ring and 8 ring, and anything that is outside the 8 ring is scored as a five.
Ben: Yeah. The rings being the target.
Kenton: That's right. And so that's one event. And I'd like to that one first because it gives the competitors a chance to pair up and get to know each other a little bit and just kind of buddy up. And then the second event happens in the afternoon, which is the meat pack which is I think probably the most intimidating one. I get the most questions about it. So last year it was a little heavy. Last year I had 'em packing 200 pounds from point A to point B and they could do it however they wanted. They could take 20 trips of 10. They could just pick…
Ben: Oh, so you aren't carrying all 200 pounds at once necessarily?
Kenton: They did not have to.
Ben: Packs. Is this like weights? Is this actual meat that you have them carrying?
Kenton: This is sandbags.
Ben: Okay. I was going to say it could get expensive if you have multiple 200 pound piles of cuts of meat. Sand.
Kenton: Yeah. It's sand.
Ben: They're sandbags.
Kenton: Yup. Sandbags. And it's broke up. Like the 200 pounds are just broken into two 50's and four 25's. And you could break it up however you want. It was really to simulate, alright I'm away from my house, my truck, whatever. I've shot something, I've scanned it, I've cornered it, now I need to get that meat from that point to my truck or to my house.
Ben: How far are they…
Kenton: Last year it was about anywhere between 600 yards and 800 yards. It wasn't that far. It wasn't really that far. There were some…
Ben: So it's pretty anaerobic.
Kenton: It is.
Ben: You're pushing that…
Kenton: It is.
Ben: It sounds, I don't know if you hear much about Spartan World Championships this year, we came up at one obstacle, some guys took literally like 60, 70 minutes to get through this one obstacle. It was basically two 60 to 70 pound sandbags straight up the side of a mountain, about a half mile, you start it back. You could do it however you want. Like most guys, 'cause this is very, very difficult, to carry 140 pounds on your back, and actually the guy that wound up, he didn't win, he came in second, he was one of the few guys who was able to just grab both sandbags just 'cause he's got deadlifting strength.
Kenton: Oh. He just…
Ben: Just dragged them on the side…
Kenton: Really?
Ben: Both sandbags up and I put 'em on my shoulder, and I took 10 steps and I was like, “There is no freaking way I could do this.” So I just dropped one and would carry one up 20 feet, come back and grab the other. This sounds kind of similar physiologically to that.
Kenton: Very. Very similar.
Ben: So these guys could carry it however they want. They can put it on their chest, they can put it on their back.
Kenton: Last year they did it. The qualifiers, they could do it however they wanted. They could carry it, they could put as much in their pack. And a lot of guys, what they did was they put 150 pounds in their pack, and then they just carried 25 in each hand, and just go for it. Because it is…
Ben: Oh, so they have a pack. They could put in…
Kenton: Yeah. Absolutely. To simulate the pack out. It's trying to get as close as we can to a real hunting situation. So this year, this is for all you Train To Hunt people out there, this is inside stuff. This year I'm going to make it a lot more [0:43:56] ______. It's going to be a lot further and it's going to be a lot lighter. So I won't give away the exact weights, but it's not going to be [0:44:09] ______. You're not going to be as taxed.
Ben: Feeling a little bit more ancestral…
Kenton: Yeah. Exactly. And we need that component. We need the component because ideally I'd have a whole day where we start doing in the morning and we go 15 miles. Because that's really a good hard hunting day. But with time restraints, we're just going to have to go you know…
Ben: So you do the same kind of approach as 3D shoot and this pack. Every single course that you're running [0:44:44] ______ and then the winners of each event come together and compete at one final championship.
Kenton: Yeah. The top three from each division come together for a challenge. On Sunday, it's kind of the grand finale. The shooting portion of the Train To Hunt Challenge is worth 25% of your total score. And the meat pack is worth 25% of your total score because you can be a really good archer and not necessarily have the other components. You could be a great archer, but…
Ben: You're just basically a fat guy who shoots good.
Kenton: Exactly. Or you could be a beast of a man, just a pack mule everybody calls when he kills that and you can get around mountains, but you can shoot for [0:45:28] ______ . So it's worth 25% of your score. On Sunday we run what's called the Train To Hunt Challenge Course, and this is a run, exercise, shoot. You have penalties for missing a target. If you miss a target, it's 25 burpees with your pack on.
Ben: Oh, burpees?
Kenton: Yeah. With your pack on.
Ben: Yeah, [0:45:50] ______ burpees. They've run to this problem in Spartans with some guys' burpees are different than others.
Kenton: Oh, really?
Ben: Yeah. I mean some guys will go chest-to-ground, feet out, stand up, jump, arms above the head. But some guys will read the rules that say technically a burpee is your chest going lower than your feet and your head going higher than your feet. So they'll just touch the chest to the ground, almost do like this wormy action on the ground instead of a burpee.
Kenton: Right. Alright so I have eliminated a lot of the grey area because I didn't want my judges to be put in a situation where they had to basically stop somebody and say, “You have to do them all over because you're doing the worm.” What I did was I put lines on the ground, and you do a burpee over here, and then you got to get over here and do your next WOD. So I don't care…
Ben: So you have to be vertical between each burpee.
Kenton: Yeah. I mean you can hunch over and go over instead of standing all the way up.
Ben: Joe De Sena, Robert Coble, you guys, I hope you're watching this, listening. So that's how you need to start doing things.
Kenton: That's how you do it.
Ben: Kenton's figured it out.
Kenton: Yeah, that's right. It's two vertical lines. Just do a burpee over here, go over here, burpee over here. And that way, if you're touching your chest on the ground over here, you have to get up and walk.
Ben: Of course what they're doing as far as GoPro at each of the burpee stations, the penalty stations. And if you're on podium, or you're in the cache, or you're in any position, you make sure you did, in this case it's 30, so they'll check your camera footage to make sure that you really, so they have a good four to five hours between the end of the race and the award ceremony for you to be able to dispute or for them to be able to review footage from the top finishers. Them, they just started doing that with the cameras.
Kenton: They have to do that with Spartan race because you guys are, I don't know how many guys are running at a time…
Ben: It sounds like you don't have a ton of burpee stations or…
Kenton: We have six.
Ben: Six. Okay. Fair amount.
Kenton: There are six possible burpee stations. Some people only end up doing 25 burpees at the burpee station. So for instance Ben will go run and then will go 50 pound sandbag ground-to-shoulder. The bag has to touch the ground, the bag has to get on your shoulder, and you have to stand up. Now there has been some in the past, some judges having a tough time having people stand all the way. So this year, what I may do is have them touch the ground, and they got to throw the sandbag over their shoulder, and then turn around, and touch the ground, and throw it on their shoulder. Just [0:48:29] ______ some of that grey area. I want it real black and white. You did it, you didn't. That's it. And then they'll shoot, and then they'll go on to the next station, and they'll pick up 70 pounds…
Ben: Carrying the bow in between stations.
Kenton: Carrying their bow, yeah. Always having your bow. The bow always has arrows in the quiver or your arrows in your backpack too so you don't fall on an arrow while you run. You get to the next station, you do the exercise there, which is, let's say, it's a 400-meter run up the hill with a 70 pound pack and your bow. So you're walking around the cone, judges just make sure they see you go around the cone, come back around, shoot. If you hit the target…
Ben: You're not going to do the chip timing yet?
Kenton: No, we're not. Not yet, but it's around the corner. It is. It's something that, as we get bigger, it's just an obstacle that I continue to have to get over is how to do it with more people. How can I be more inclusive?
Ben: Yeah. That's the trick which is scalability.
Kenton: Exactly.
Ben: Have you done an obstacle race before, like a Tough Mudder or a Spartan…
Kenton: It's on my list of things to do.
Ben: You'd probably be pretty good at it if you put together these Train To Hunt competitions. And they've run into a lot of scalability issues as far as like you have your elite waves that go, I'm sure you can go fast when the obstacles aren't gummed up, but I've gone back after running in the elite wave and helped the others through other waves, and I mean sometimes you're standing there for like five minutes just waiting to get on an obstacle to complete. It's not a race anymore. It's just got…
Kenton: No, it's not. That's right.
Ben: So who wins these things?
Kenton: The right guys. They do. I did a lot of thinking about how to avoid allowing the professional shooter to win and the cross-country runner who takes the rigor and just kind of flings out as they run by from winning. And that's where the 25 burpee penalty comes in and that's where the meat pack comes in. The guys who win these are legit shooting, fit guys.
Ben: Did you compete? Or are you just ref 'em?
Kenton: I don't. I usually run the courses once I set 'em up to see if there's any snags, if there's any places up on the trail where somebody could get lost or anything like that. But unfortunately I don't get to do my own races.
Ben: These guys are pretty fit.
Kenton: These guys are pretty fit, man. There are some guys out there, God bless 'em man, they just get out there and it's not really about competing against others, it's about being able to say “I did this. I got there and did it.” And you probably see a lot of the, in the Spartan Race, you wouldn't guess the guys are competing when it's all said and done because there's a lot of camaraderie, kind of we're-all-in-this-together, and a lot of pats on the back. And like I was telling somebody prior to the national championship was that, because it was the first time he had ever seen a Crossfit, or a Train To Hunt competition, and I say, “This thing will be the only place you'll ever see somebody go up, hand somebody a water, help 'em out with their backpack, take their bow, make sure they're okay, and they didn't have to talk to each other ever. And they're our competitor. There's a lot of friendships built in these competitions and a lot of, I think that what happened, Ben, is that kind of the high go, high motivated, elite, kind of out-of-the-box fitness guys think a lot of times you feel like you live on an island because our whole lives, we've had a tough time finding training partners, and finding hunting partners, and finding people who kind of take tick the same way we tick. And what I'm finding is these competitions are attracting a lot of these guys who felt like they lived on an island for a long time and they're all, they all come together and they find out they're like-minded, they live close to each other. There's guys right now, there's 15 guys right now in Colorado that get together at least twice a week and they work out specifically for the Train To Hunt Challenge because they met at the Train To Hunt Challenge last year and they're going to do better this year.
Ben: How many people are doing this? Do you have any idea?
Kenton: Yeah. Last year I think ran 460 total people through. So it's pretty small scale still. And I really am trying…
Ben: Is that how many people are doing the competitions? Do you have more people than that actually going to your website and doing the workouts?
Kenton: Right now there's somewhere between four and 500 people doing the workouts every day. And the competitions are drawing between four and 500 people. And the spectators are coming in, again this will only be the third year of the traveling competition, and we don't advertise. I do some flyers, I get some guys some booths on the ground at each spot and have the spread the word. But inevitably, it always comes about the, I'll go to a site and start setting up, and somebody will say, “What do you got going here?” “Oh, it's the Train To Hunt Challenge.” “Oh, I've never heard about it.” And he's local, and he's an archer, and…
Ben: Where do you do these on? On private land like ranches and stuff like that or…?
Kenton: No. What I do is recruit bow clubs from different towns like [0:53:47] ______, Cascading Bowman, I give 'em call and say, “Hey. Do you guys have anything going on this weekend?” And they say, “Well, I don't.” I say this is who I am, this is what I want to do, this is what I'll pay.
Ben: Something like use their 3D range, everything.
Kenton: Yeah. I use their targets in the range and I give them a percentage of the entry fee. And it works pretty well. It's pretty stiff because, I mean everything's already setup, I have targets there, I would like to get on a little bit bigger scale and possibly be able to run more people at a time so I can, right now I'm kind of hold up about 130 people per event just because of the logistics. You can't have somebody waiting. You can't. But you're a little bit limited to how many shooting stations you can get on one target and have very similar shots. It's first come, first serve. The first person there, they can go do station number one, and then you just file in, you all take a shot, and then you move on. It's first come, first serve. But again I don't want the last guy there to have a huge disadvantage and can't even see a target.
Ben: Yeah. I mean like if you look at Ironman triathlon, they ran into a similar issue and they went a different way than Spartan Race. Spartan just simply added more waves, like you just go farther into the night. Ironman has added more races, like more locations so there's just like tons of, there were like 12 initially and now there's like 40 plus races around the globe 'cause they top 'em off at 1500 people and then they just add another race. It's a good model for them. It sounds like you just have to hook up with a lot of archery clubs.
Kenton: Yeah. And it's not hard to do. It's not. I can tell you that right now…
Ben: Are you having to go to each of these races, or do you have people like certified coaches, things like that?
Kenton: No. If it's happening, if it's a Train To Hunt event, it's me. If it's a workout, if it's an event, if it's an e-mail, if it's a phone call, I [0:55:45] ______ right now. But I do have some guys lined up that are training here. We've got six guys right now that are lined up that just really want to be part of it and see the future in it and want to be, and so I'm calling 'em future directors. So I'm going to train them on how to facilitate and event from start to finish, and then next year I'll turn over the events to these six guys, and then I'll expand. I'm going to go Texas, Pennsylvania, California, and then I'm going to try and get another one out there in the east coast, somewhere like Arkansas, Alabama, some place like. But I'll get two or three phone calls a week about how can I get the Train To Hunt Challenge in my state. And I just, there's just not enough of me to go around.
Ben: That's a smart move though. Get more boots on the ground.
Kenton: That's right. And I did contemplate, “You know what? Let's just go huge. I'll figure it out when we get there.” And then I decided really what I need to focus on is making a really great event. And if you have a great event, people will travel, people will come to you. If you have a great event, people will travel miles and miles to come to you.
Ben: Yeah. Of course you have the Ironman, they start charging a thousand bucks for a race. So there's that. So they'll just…
Kenton: They have a few more logistics than…
Ben: Yeah. Exactly.
Kenton: But they're also [0:57:09] ______. They're not.
Ben: Do you guys do water? Do you have any water crossings?
Kenton: Not yet. This thing is going to take on a life of its own and the limitations, the lid's off the jar.
Ben: No, it will. I mean I guarantee that as people become more aware, I was actually talking to Tawnee Prazak from Endurance Planet this morning about this podcast she was asking me about, Fitness, or Nutrition Tracks for 2015. And so people are going to become more aware of the functional, and the psychological, and physical benefits of gathering your own food. Whether gathering your own food is spending time in the backyard garden pushing a wheelbarrow around or trekking up a mountainside to get an animal. And I think that that form of functional fitness, rather than just exercising for exercise sake or exercising and so you've got the top number on a whiteboard. You're actually exercising to bring back food to your family, to provide for somebody. If it's not you, for somebody. And I think that's, to me, the ultimate form of functional fitness.
Kenton: For sure. You're speaking my language, man. To me that is the ultimate goal of it is to be the ultimate provider. And I listened to The Man Show, is that what it was? The guy on the…
Ben: Man Show?
Kenton: No.
Ben: The Art Of Manliness?
Kenton: The Art Of Manliness.
Ben: The Art Of Manliness. Yeah, [0:58:38] ______.
Kenton: Yeah. And the providing portion of that was like it was spot on. Whether you're providing meat, or going to the garden, or in some, way, shape, or form you are constantly providing for your community, whether it just be your family or your neighbors, whatever that might be, it is part of something that I take pride in. It's something that, do we have to? Do we have to hunt in order to survive. The answer is no. But there is something really pure about knowing exactly where that meat came from. How it was handled from the time it was killed to the time it was in your stomach. And the fact that you were able to do that and you were able to provide that for your family, it's just a different world we live in now than it was just 50 years ago, not even that long ago. I mean number one, there wasn't that many bowhunters because you only go bowhunting if you couldn't afford a rifle. Number two, everything's really [0:59:41] ______. We can get into this whole thing about America being lazy and we're getting bigger and bigger because of convenience and I think that at the heart of people, they really do, and maybe men specifically, they do want that adventure. They want to fulfill what maybe what their ancestors were doing. I believe the technology that's probably advancing faster than our DNA and so we have this rub that goes on inside of us about we're fighting ourselves about wanting to provide and wanting to be out in nature and wanting to play that role, and yet there's a lot of things that happen in society, in the community, in the United States that are saying that may not be alright.
Ben: Yeah. Get out, get your hands dirty, you experience life. That's what you hear a lot of people say about obstacle races, like the first time they're back, they'll cut up a barbed wire and cross the finish line bleeding with their feet burnt from jumping over the fire. You'd think they'd be just be bawling at the finish line and it's the first time they've actually lived. Or the first time in the long time since they've been a kid and they've just gone out and just played and gotten scraped up. It's a very, very cool feeling that I think we'll see more and more people tapping into.
Kenton: Absolutely.
Ben: I've personally gotten pretty good at being gassed and nailing a target from 30 feet with a spear, so I may have to take the next step here and grab a bow.
Kenton: I'd love to see it.
Ben: And try one of these competitions. They sound pretty sick. So Kenton Clairmont, traintohunt, thanks for coming on the show, man.
Kenton: You bet. Thank you. It's an honor. Thank you.
Ben: Alright, folks. Thanks for tuning in.
Is the ultimate functional blend of fitness the “hunter-athlete”?
Could a guy who trudges through mountains for days and shoots 700 pound animals with a bow be more fit than a Crossfitter, Spartan athlete, or Ironman?
Could training to hunt and hunting fitness competitions finally be the way that you can scratch that primal itch to provide food for yourself and your family, while also building amazing cardiovascular and muscular fitness?
In this podcast, recorded live from the Greenfield barnhouse in Spokane, Washington, you’ll find out – as I interview bowhunter Kenton Clairmont from TrainToHunt. You’re going to learn about the gnarliest hunting workouts, how hunting can get you to the extreme edge of fitness, Kenton’s go-to hunting workouts, and much more.
Click here to download the audio version, or watch the video below.
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about hunting for fitness? Leave your thoughts below, and if you liked this episode, you may also want to tune into “How To Build Primal Fitness And Endurance By Hunting: An Interview With A Bowhunting Triathlete” and “3 Ways Hunting Can Get You Ripped And 10 Ways To Get Fit For Hunting”.