107 - Nate Pontious - How A Homeless Misfit Became A Father, Entrepreneur, & Rancher

**Nolan Wilson** (0:00)
We are joined today by Nate Pontius. Nate is a United States Marine veteran, entrepreneur, rancher and father. In this conversation, we discuss why Nate is grateful for the time he spent homeless, the importance and power of training for something specific, how becoming a father has changed his life, why men need wilderness and more. Nate has become a good friend of mine since the first time I had him on the podcast, episode 62, about a year ago. We got to go up and record this podcast after doing some ranch work and getting a nice workout in. So always good to talk to Nate. He's got a fascinating perspective given his very untraditional life path that has resulted in a really cool life that him and his family are building. So I think you can learn a lot as I did. Hope you enjoy the conversation.
Nate, I appreciate you come back on the show.

**Nate Pontius** (1:00)
It's interesting how much things have changed since I think you said it's been about exactly one year since I was initially on your podcast. And just one year ago, we met each other to do the podcast.

**Nolan Wilson** (1:13)
Yeah, a lot has changed. You became a father, we did high rocks. You've got more animals on the ranch, pretty wild. I wanna start with high rocks because that was a cool experience for me. I actually vowed, I don't know if I told you this, I vowed I would never do one. I don't know, did I tell you that before we did?

**Nate Pontius** (1:32)
So you vowed you would never do high rocks and whenever I texted you, hey, have you heard about high rocks? You wanna do one? You just, no questions asked. We're all, yeah, let's do it.

**Nolan Wilson** (1:43)
That is literally what happened. So I vowed, cause I'm like, I'll never do high rocks. It's not my style of training.
I won't do it. And then you texted me and within, I thought about it for like three minutes. So I'm like, yeah, man, let's do it. Because I think for some reason, I feel like there's like literally one, maybe two people in the world that could ask me to do high rocks that I would do with them. And it was you ended up being a fantastic experience. Like you've already done it before. But for me, it was, it was the first time I like really pushed myself for, for fitness since, you know, like college ball. I'm curious, cause that was your third or fourth? Third? Obviously, I mean, you grew up, or you are a cross fitter by nature. You're training physical fitness is very important for you. But like, what is it about high rocks that you've grown to like to do, to do three in a row or three?

**Nate Pontius** (2:34)
Ever since the first one, I've just, I've appreciated the beautiful simplicity of it. It's such a simple format, such a simple format. And what they've done so well is they've created a, a fitness competition of sort that can appeal to like very, I don't want to say low level, but like entry point average people that are really trying to push themselves and try something really challenging all the way up to elite level, like obstacle course racers, and even now professional crossfitters getting in and at it. So it's appealing to all those vast levels where crossfit is, it's got that big learning curve of skills and strength, and it's a little bit more intimidating. And I just think that Hirox has done such a good job of just the fundamentals, beautiful, basic fundamentals, and the course structure and setup is so beautifully done. And it's fun. It's fun. And I said this after my first Hirox race, that was more fun than any crossfit competition I had ever done.

**Nolan Wilson** (3:45)
Really?

**Nate Pontius** (3:46)
Hands down. It's just a lot more fun. And I don't know how you felt after it, but obviously it leaves you feeling exhausted, and you push yourself, but you don't feel like you got ran over by a freaking train.

**Nolan Wilson** (4:02)
Was that the case after crossfit?

**Nate Pontius** (4:03)
Oh, yeah. A lot of those crossfit competitions at the higher level, after you're done, especially if it's a two-day competition, you just feel like you got hit by a train.

**Nolan Wilson** (4:14)
Yeah.

**Nate Pontius** (4:16)
So there's that. Maybe it's just my getting into my old age, I've come to really appreciate those things more. And then another thing, I think that training for a hyrox, I think that training for hyrox is just like, so when you're when you're training and competing at a high level in crossfit, you should really do like, you know, like deload cycles. So you hit like really hard strength, you hit really hard endurance and you build different energy systems, and then you sort of deload to give your body a break. Training for hyrox is like, you're just, you're building that steady state aerobic system, you can do that all year long. And so that's really appealing, really appealing for me as well. And then also like the training aspect again, like a lot of times if you're training really hard for crossfit, again, your body's going to be feeling a little bit beat up. Hyrox, the carryover, you know, building that aerobic system, the carryover onto the farm was great. Like I would get out of the gym feeling loose, limber, got a good sweat, breathe heavy. I get on a farm and not feel like I'm completely depleted of energy. You know, I don't know how you were feeling.