Dustin Diefenderfer is a man who knows what it means to be tough. He s also training thousands of men to do the same through physical fitness that matters not only in the mountains, but everyday life. Today we talk about the importance of brotherhood, the reason every man needs a purpose, passion, and plan, taking quote-unquote tests to quantify your progress, and also we go over what he calls the Spartan Effect.
00:00:00.000Tough is an adjective we often associate with our perception of manliness, but in the relative ease of modernity, men are becoming increasingly soft and pathetic.
00:00:10.980Being tough is no longer a matter of survival, but a matter of choice. And why wouldn't you want to be tough? It's rhetorical, I know, but why are so many men weak?
00:00:20.060My guest today, founder of Mountain Tough, Dustin Diefenderfer, is a man who knows what it means to be tough. He's also training thousands of men to do the same through physical fitness that matters not only in the mountains, but everyday life.
00:00:34.760Today we talk about the importance of brotherhood, the reason every man needs a purpose, passion, and plan, taking quote-unquote tests to quantify your progress, what he calls the 10-year rule, and also we go over what he calls the Spartan effect and so much more.
00:00:51.760You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.
00:01:01.920You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, or strong. This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become.
00:01:11.580At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
00:01:17.240Men, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler. I'm your host and the founder of this mission to reclaim and restore manliness.
00:01:23.800This is called the Order of Man Movement. Glad you're tuning in.
00:01:27.300It's my goal to bring on fascinating, interesting, and successful guests on this podcast, introduce them to you so that we can extract some of their hard-fought wisdom, knowledge, experience, lessons, perspectives, ideas, etc., and distill that information into usable information that we can actually apply in our lives.
00:01:46.800I've got Dustin on the podcast today, but we've had Chris Williamson, Jocko Willing, David Goggins, Ben Shapiro, Tim Tebow, Tim Kennedy, Andy Frisilla.
00:01:56.820I could go on and on and on. We've had, I think we're close to 500 incredible men on this podcast at this point, and I'm really glad that you've allowed me to do this by listening in.
00:02:06.600But more importantly, I'm excited that you're actually applying the information that we're teaching and that these guys are teaching.
00:02:13.280So I am going to get into the podcast very quickly. Very fast, though, I'm going to introduce you to my friends and podcast sponsors.
00:02:23.360These are the guys over at Montana Knife Company. You've heard me talk about them for months now, and I've been friends with these guys for years at this point, introduced by a good friend, Burt Soren, who's also been on the podcast.
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00:02:55.900They're making some incredible knives. They're doing very cool collaborations with some of the best hunters in the world. And I use their knives every single day.
00:03:05.460In fact, I've got hunts coming up that I use their knives for. I use their knives in my kitchen. I use their knives if I just need to cut a piece of string every day.
00:03:14.500I use their knives. And again, if you're looking for a very cool, a very useful and powerful product, then check out Montana Knife Company.
00:03:25.840Now, if you do go over there, use the code ORDER OF MAN, all one word at checkout, you'll save some money.
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00:03:39.060All right, guys, let me introduce you to my guest. His name is Dustin Diefenderfer. I know it's quite a mouthful.
00:03:45.580Him and I have some common heritage coming from Germany. Now, he is an avid bow hunter. He's a fitness enthusiast.
00:03:52.540He's also the founder of Mountain Tough, which is a fitness training company dedicated to improving the physical fitness of men, not only for the mountains, but for everyday life.
00:04:01.640He did grow up in the mountains and realized quickly there wasn't any training specifically catered to men who want to perform in the wilderness, but also in the home and in the walls of their business.
00:04:12.480So he created it like we often talk about here. He now works with thousands of men across the globe, including CEOs, members of special operations, Olympians, and backcountry hunters.
00:04:24.380The man's passion for fitness and mental fortitude is second to none. You'll hear it in the podcast today.
00:04:31.640Dustin, what's up, man? Great to have you on the podcast. I know we just ran into each other several weeks ago at the, where were we?
00:04:38.860Oh, the Hunt Expo in Salt Lake, but man, it's good to have you on the podcast. This has been a long time in the works.
00:04:45.520For sure, man. Great to be here. I'm excited.
00:04:48.520How was the, how was the Expo? That's something my boys and I do every year. I think for the past seven years now, we missed one year in there, but I think for seven years, other than that, we've been going and man, we enjoy that Expo a lot.
00:05:01.640Man, the Expo is something else. I remember last year was actually Mountain Tough's first time going and we'd heard about it for years and everyone always kind of told us we, we should be there.
00:05:15.240We'd gone to sheep show, but I hadn't been to Western Hunt before. And I was blown away by how big it is, how many hunters are there, how kind of engaged everyone is.
00:05:27.060And then like those peak audience days on Saturday where the, the hallways are full person to person, shoulder to shoulder. It's, it's crazy.
00:05:38.180I usually don't stick around for Saturday and Sunday. My boys and I made the decision that, Hey, we're going to go, we're going to check it out.
00:05:43.900I have a lot of friends like you and other people with mountain knobs and Jack car and a bunch of people who attend and, uh, canvas cutters. Another big one. I'm good friends with outdoor field solutions.
00:05:55.020I feel bad naming names cause I'm going to leave somebody out, but I've got a lot of good friends there and I always like to go visit the vendors.
00:06:02.700So we go Thursday and Friday, but we never go Saturday and Sunday. Cause I just, I don't want to be in that environment. I really don't. I like going to the show. I like being able to talk with my friends and people I like and care about Montana knife companies, another one.
00:06:15.600Um, but I don't want to be, you know, butt to nuts with a bunch of other dudes checking out a bunch of hunts and things like that.
00:06:24.300Saturday is just a blur that you can't, you can't talk to anyone. It's just chaos.
00:06:33.100I mean, it's good. You get, you get a lot of opportunity to, to meet people and, and they're, everybody in the community is amazing.
00:06:38.920I've only been hunting for about eight years and man, I think the community, the hunting community has probably been outside of maybe jujitsu has been the most welcoming community of, of men who are excited and passionate about what, and women too, uh, about what they're doing, uh, about conservation, about giving back about family values.
00:07:01.040Because I love the community and I love the community and I'm really curious about your introduction into the world of hunting and specifically with a company, you know, mountain tough with what you guys do with regards to fitness and how it might differentiate from your typical fitness coaching that is so prevalent in, in society today.
00:07:51.500And we were really, we were really, really outdoorsy family.
00:07:54.980So we spent a tremendous amount of time backpacking, backpack, fly fishing, fly fishing.
00:08:02.060We spent a lot of time in the, the Bighorn mountains outside of Sheridan, Wyoming.
00:08:08.700And a lot of that came from my dad's family.
00:08:12.620He was one of nine and seven out of that nine of his siblings were boys.
00:08:19.220So I had all these uncles plus my dad and we were just hunting, fishing, camping all the time.
00:08:26.620Um, and that kind of was just what we did.
00:08:31.160We were always every single weekend looking for an opportunity to be outside on some adventure as a family, no matter what the year is, the seasonality changed, but we were still either snowmobiling, skiing, uh, snowshoeing.
00:08:48.020So every weekend it was an outdoor adventure.
00:08:50.760And as I got older, right around middle school, my dad became obsessed with archery and it wasn't at first archery hunting.
00:09:02.740He was deeply, deeply, deeply passionate about competition, archery shooting.
00:09:20.360There was like these group of guys at the bow shop every day at noon that he shot with.
00:09:26.080And it was kind of like his support network getting through a really difficult time.
00:09:32.500And so I, in that middle school, high school era, I'd meet him down there all the time to, to shoot bows.
00:09:39.620And we were surrounded without really even knowing it with all these local Montana legends that just hung out at the bow shop too.
00:09:48.240And they were always pushing us and mentoring us and inspiring us to take the archery and really apply it out in the real world as archery elk hunting, which they were doing a lot in addition to their indoor shooting.
00:10:04.300And so that, that took us down this whole other journey of palling around with those guys and kind of traveling the Rocky Mountain West as September being the climax of the year, like the September archery elk, our life started revolving around that for a while.
00:10:23.440And it's because it's such a challenge and it's such an adventure with, with bulls just screaming at you in September.
00:10:31.540And that was our passion since I was 14.
00:10:36.960It was, you know, Rocky Mountain, Western States, archery elk.
00:10:40.680And when I got into college, because that passion had been building for so long, I, I'd always like right around that college age, I'd started really being a gym rat.
00:10:53.560I was really interested in the gym, but it was a unique twist to my story because the guys I started working out with were gym rats as well, but they were wildland firefighters and a different breed.
00:11:25.520They're like, I want to, I want to push myself in the gym.
00:11:28.300But as a wildland firefighter, they were pushing themselves to be better in the mountain for the summer fire season.
00:11:35.900And so these mountain tough like ethos were building through my childhood and through my college years and becoming an adult without me really ever knowing it.
00:11:47.560So it was, you know, outdoors, archery, elk, archery, and then this gym training around the mountain.
00:11:55.280At that same time, I met my wife and my wife is a really passionate runner.
00:12:00.840So I, I'll run, but I don't like running.
00:12:04.060She's the type that will like get the runners high.
00:12:21.340But it was cool because like in, in support of her and our blend of passions, we started doing marathons and half marathons and ultra marathons.
00:12:32.960And so I had this cardio foundation going now with her running plus my gym foundation focused on training for the mountain.
00:12:42.680And at first I thought it was going to be the perfect way to train for September elk.
00:12:51.600I thought if you're running ultra marathons in the mountains all summer, a lot of times you're running in the same exact mountain range that you're going to get to hunt in a few months later in, in Montana.
00:13:07.980And it kind of was, I remember going into that season after a very heavy couple of years of running and ultra marathons and you, you are lean and you're mean and you're able to kind of fly through the back country, but it actually, it ended up being the worst pack out of my life.
00:13:26.400Why, why do you, I'm curious as to why that was, it was definitely because there was too much focus on running and cardio and not enough focus on strength.
00:13:40.440And that's really what makes the back country hunter so unique is they are unlike any other athlete where they have a multiple day extended event.
00:13:51.700And the biggest amount of work they're going to have to perform is after they're successful.
00:13:57.480And that's on the tail end of their event.
00:13:59.860So the mountain kind of beats you up for three to four days on a back country hunt.
00:14:05.300And then if you're successful after you've been beaten up by the mountain, you have to do the heaviest workload, which is your pack out.
00:14:13.960And especially walking around with your boat is not as difficult as having hundreds of pounds of, of meat on your back.
00:14:22.560Especially, especially back country elk.
00:14:25.380I mean, all, all hunting is special and hard, but the elk are so big.
00:14:30.860And if you're hunting with one buddy or yourself or two buddies, most of these Western state hunts, you're, you're three, four, five, six, seven miles back.
00:14:41.120And if you have an elk down, that's four 80 pound loads for, so you got to come off the mountain four times with an 80 pound load.
00:15:49.140So the meat pulled off the bone, you're in it.
00:15:53.160What, what, what we usually talk about out West is like, you will pack out a front shoulder and a hind quarter if you're fairly close to the truck.
00:16:03.820But if you have to cover seven or eight miles, uh, usually that 80 pounds is kind of your sweet spot.
00:16:11.160Seven or eight miles in the treadmill in the morning on a Wednesday is different than packing 80 pounds out up and down these, just the Rockies essentially, you know, and, and all the variability that comes with the elevation, lower oxygen levels, ups and downs of the hike itself.
00:16:30.540And then the being not so stable with the unsure footing of, of rocks and loose gravel.
00:16:43.200But when it comes to the real world, there's a little bit of variability that you need to take into consideration.
00:16:50.620That's what I love about it so much though.
00:16:52.880It's so cool because the, like the NFL, the NHL, MLB, uh, the military, the military athlete comes close to a back country hunter for sure.
00:17:06.980But if you look at elite professional sporting organizations, it's not even close.
00:17:13.720There's so many factors that make what we're trying to train for really unique and special.
00:17:20.140So, and a lot of that is high elevation, rugged terrain, you got steep climbs and descents, you got slippery, loose terrain, but the extended event makes it very, very unique.
00:17:39.080You think about like a football or a basketball game, um, a fighter, they're going all out for less than an hour, sometimes 90 minutes, but a hunter needs to be able to perform for three, five, six, seven, eight, up to 10 days.
00:17:56.300So it does make what we're training for very unique.
00:18:00.440And that's when that light bulb moment went off that ultimately ended up leading to the creation of mountain tough was because that pack out was brutal.
00:18:10.060After doing all that cardio, the light bulb went off in 2016.
00:18:14.920And it was like, someone should do mission specific training for the back country hunter.
00:18:20.140And no one in 2016 was doing that, but that is what all other elite sporting organizations do.
00:18:27.540They look at what are the skill requirements required to be successful at this job?
00:18:32.820Whether you're an operator, an offensive lineman, a wide receiver, those coaches are going to coach to those training requirements that make you successful.
00:18:44.660And no one was doing that for the back country hunter.
00:18:47.660And so that's, that's what we launched in, in 2016.
00:18:51.580And it's just evolved and gotten better ever since.
00:19:02.020Um, I do a lot of strength training, but there's other components to go back to what you were saying about being in the mountain that you wouldn't necessarily receive if you were in maybe the military, to your point, certainly not baseball, MLB, basketball, football, none of that stuff.
00:19:16.340But it's three, these three factors that we didn't address.
00:19:25.620You're not getting the nutrients you need because you're eating off freeze dried food if, if, if, if you can.
00:19:30.780And then the level of exhaustion over sustained periods of time, you know, you're not, you're not, you're not going to work on eight hours of sleep.
00:19:39.720You're going to work on four hours of sleep if you're lucky in the cold and the discomfort of having, you know, this half inch, quarter inch air mattress.
00:19:50.340Again, if you're lucky, so they're, they're so, but you know, the other thing I was thinking too, is I'm sure you talk about in 2016, there really wasn't anybody doing this, but then you have guys that I think have come onto the, into the spotlight since you've started in 2016.
00:20:06.100And I don't want to take away anything from what this particular individual has done, but he's really gained a lot of traction over the past, I would say five years.
00:20:17.340And, and, and again, that's not to take away anything he's been doing over the past three, four decades, but over the past five years, there's really become, uh, an emphasis and a spotlight on him.
00:20:30.940And he, his motto is run, lift, shoot, right?
00:20:34.420So he's running every day and he's running marathons on his lunch break kind of thing.
00:20:39.140He's lifting heavy every day and he's shooting his bow.
00:20:42.000Like this is somebody that from the outside looking in, and I know Cam a little bit, but from the outside looking in is, as he would say, working to become that apex predator.
00:20:52.400And I, I think that probably draws a lot of light to what you were doing.
00:20:56.400Like, yeah, we talk about that all the time as a staff and with, with the mountain tough team and my general consensus is I, I'm like really proud of what Cam has done and what he has done to inspire people has been one of the coolest things ever.
00:21:17.180Like him pushing the limits over decades and pushing his body through a lot of those difficult runs and marathons.
00:21:26.920And then just the discipline it took to do a marathon on your lunch break, have the time to strength train and shoot your bow that day is so inspiring.
00:21:37.940That it did take a lot of people and kind of turn their ceilings into floors.
00:21:44.620So people were able to look at what Cam was doing and get all of this inspiration lit inside of their belly.
00:21:52.340And I think you can't discredit how amazing that was for the, this generation of hunters.
00:22:00.600I think the, the only thing that was missed and I don't think it was really missed.
00:22:07.580It was just not part of his purpose, passion, or plan was he didn't give anyone an achievable step-by-step plan to how they could get close to his level or get from beginner to intermediate or from intermediate to advanced.
00:22:25.740And so he was kind of highlighting this advanced elite level of human performance, but he wasn't saying like, Hey, if you have never worked out in 20 years or you're just getting off the couch, here's a few ways to start or a few things to think about.
00:22:42.660And so I think the inspiration was, was a game changing.
00:22:48.840The inspiration inspired like hope and dreams and so many people.
00:22:52.780And I think that there was just, it left some people looking for a practical approach.
00:23:02.320How am I going to run a marathon on my lunch break?
00:23:04.400And, and that's what we've tried to do is we started training a lot of elite athletes.
00:23:10.840Like in 2016, 17, 18, 19, our mountain tough programming was really hardcore.
00:23:16.180And we were pushing mountain athletes and hunters really at an elite level in our lab.
00:23:23.980And then that was going into our digital content, which is something I'm really, really proud of, but I'm, I'm almost more proud over the last couple of years, how we have focused on how do we get a beginner to intermediate?
00:23:40.600And I think that that is where that big life transformation happens.
00:23:46.060And it's been really, really cool to kind of broaden our lens a little bit and focus on elites like we've always done.
00:23:54.740But I think helping someone get into the back country is a lot more about life than it is about hunting.
00:24:04.980So we always talk about hunting is not the end game.
00:24:08.660A hunting is just an event, but physical and mental toughness training does create a life transformation and back country hunting creates the urgency for that to happen.
00:24:23.960So if a, if someone who's never has hunted before gets inspired by Cam Haynes and they apply and draw a Colorado elk tag, that gets me so excited because this whole life transformation is going to start to happen.
00:24:41.240We tell people all the time, like if you're struggling with anxiety, depression, suicide, a lack of, or if, if you're struggling with those plus complacency and passivity, one of the best things you can do is just go in the back country for four days without your phone, because all these magical elements are going to start to happen.
00:25:03.680And, and that's what back country hunting is doing for this generation.
00:25:07.560And I'm really excited that it's gotten more and more popular.
00:25:11.240Like we see at the Western Hunt Expo, like it's so popular and you can't discredit how, like how much the back country is doing to change people's lives.
00:25:20.380But it's not really about hunting because they become better fathers, husbands, friends, bosses, employees.
00:25:27.960And so I think that we're looking for more of that life change than that, that inspiration.
00:25:35.280Yeah, I can see how valuable that is because when you were talking about that, the only thing that came to mind for me was testing in, in academia, right?
00:25:44.140So you, you have a test every quarter or every trimester or whatever it is, right?
00:25:50.340At the end of the year, certain benchmarks, you have a test, but really the real value comes in learning to prepare for that test.
00:26:01.700Like, sure, you want to get an A, you want to pass the test, but it's everything that you've done up to that point.
00:26:06.680And what I'm hearing you say is the hunt is good.
00:26:09.460There's a lot of value in the hunt itself.
00:26:11.200You're providing for your family, you're achieving goals, you're feeling good, you're developing self-confidence and self-worth.
00:26:17.520But what, if I've got a hunt this fall and I'm spending days and weeks and months preparing for not only physical, but the mental aspect of a hunt,
00:26:30.180and then I go out and have a successful hunt, it wasn't the hunt that did all the work for me.
00:26:36.680It was everything leading up to the hunt that made me a better human being.
00:26:40.560And then I was able to successfully complete the hunt as a byproduct of everything that I learned leading up to it.
00:26:48.300Man, I'm just going to step away from our conversation very quickly.
00:26:51.980I just came back last week from my home in Maine and I brought the rest of my inventory back to Utah.
00:26:58.740So I am happy to announce that the Order of Man store is officially back up and running.
00:27:04.720We've been closed and had limited stuff for a very long time, but we've got hats and shirts and battle planners and decals and patches and a whole lot more.
00:27:13.040So if you're looking for a way to support the mission to reclaim and restore manliness like we're doing here,
00:27:18.260this is a small and simple way to do it and also look good in the process.
00:27:22.440So if you head to store.orderofman.com, you can check out all of our newest gear and also our most popular merchandise that will help you look, feel, and perform well.
00:31:32.200And it's – Randy's 59 and he's had the privilege and like honor to hunt all over the world.
00:31:41.980But for some reason this is his biggest bucket list hunt and he's going into the biggest dream hunt of his life with some injuries and a little bit out of shape.
00:32:00.040And so it's kind of like the biggest dream hunt of his life.
00:32:04.280He has the most work to do to make it happen which is really interesting with how many places he's got to hunt.
00:32:12.080But when we first sat down with him it was really cool because he said that if more people knew how hard hunting was it would be good for them to know that on the front end knowing that it's a process.
00:32:30.720It's not just about killing an elk on your first year, the first time you tried.
00:32:37.180But Randy who is a hunting celebrity in his category, he acknowledges that it took him like 10 years of trying to successfully kill a bull elk with his bow.
00:32:52.380So, you know, looking at him now, he's a professional hunter and content creator.
00:33:01.980But there was 10 years where he was unsuccessful that no one ever sees, that no one ever talks about.
00:33:08.340But when you talk to him and others like that, like even Bert Soren has a talk on the 10-year rule.
00:33:17.160Most people are putting in 10 years of hard work behind the scenes before you ever know what they do or what their name is.
00:33:25.640But Randy talks about how special that was because it's the process.
00:33:33.100It's the process of becoming a better outdoorsman, meeting a lot of really good friends through that process.
00:33:40.760But it also makes that special moment when he did finally harvest an elk with his bow that much more meaningful and powerful and special.
00:33:50.420We talk about it all the time that the hardest things in life are the best things.
00:33:57.140And a lot of times people think that's like a really hard hunt is the best hunt.
00:34:03.020But sometimes it's a hard 10 years to create a really special moment.
00:34:11.740You know, I think a lot of people look at it.
00:34:13.400Again, I've only been hunting for almost eight years now.
00:34:15.860And I think a lot of people from the outside looking in think, well, you just get a gun, you go shoot it a few times, and then you just go out and find an animal and take a little pop shot and it's done.
00:34:26.500I'm like, that'd be really nice if that were the case.
00:34:29.920And maybe sometimes it works out like that.
00:34:31.740I've got a friend in Maine who a couple of years ago shot this deer off his back porch.
00:34:38.380He was having some coffee, if I remember correctly, in his kitchen.
00:34:41.820He looked out and he saw this incredible buck, grabbed his rifle, got on his back deck and shot this deer, and it ended up scoring third in the state that year for harvested deer.
00:35:43.060And then it becomes ruthless and cold and calculated.
00:35:47.500And it paints a bad light on the hunting industry in general.
00:35:53.340Yeah, I was just talking to Remy Warren.
00:35:57.200And we were talking about this exact topic.
00:35:59.880And he's like, some year, someday, I want to make a film that just shows failure after failure after failure after failure because that's really what most of hunting is, which is funny.