Not quite, says Chad Belding, champion duck caller, serial entrepreneur and host of The Fowl Life, now in its 12th season on The Outdoor Network.
“Picture this,” he says. “It’s 19 degrees and a bunch of geese come into a cornfield in North Dakota and you do your thing and harvest some of them. Now there’s another flock coming, so you’re running out to grab those downed birds and get back in your blind. If you’re out of shape and your heart rate gets too elevated, you’re not going to be able to make an accurate, safe, clean shot on the next one.”
“But,” Belding continues, “if you’re training regularly in the weight room, you’re doing cardio intervals, you’re building your stamina, you can control your breathing. You’re going to get your heart rate down before that next flock arrives. When you’re strong and limber, you’re going to be a better hunter.”
Although he’s famous for it now, Chad Belding wasn’t a duck hunter growing up — instead, his father Orville would take him and his two brothers, Clay and Clint, out in the mountains and high desert around their northern Nevada homestead chasing mule deer, antelope and chukar partridge birds. His first duck hunt in 1997 changed his life.
“We went to some flooded sagebrush below a gold mine in Nevada,” Belding recalls. “I saw these Gadwalls come over the top of us, and my buddies, Jim and John, hit them with this duck call, and the flock spun and came in toward us and I was like, ‘Man, I’m hooked.’ I said right then and there, I wanted to learn the vocalization and how to call game.”
“Matt knows that I fly in planes and I’m behind a steering wheel often, and that I’m sitting or lying in duck blinds a lot,” Belding explains. “So, he focuses on the core and lower back. We’ll also do a lot of legs, because I’m squatting to pick up decoys or pushing equipment around, or wading in waist-deep water. I’m walking on uneven ground, where there’s stumps and roots, and you need the ability and athleticism to get your foot down and plant it and keep your balance and equilibrium.”
Instead of a standard bodybuilding approach of bench presses or barbell curls, Pendola — a sports strength coach and EXOS performance specialist who talks all things fitness on his Pendola Project podcast — prescribes a gauntlet of functional movements, everything from jumping rope to flipping tires to pulling sleds to scaling a peg board on the wall.
“Hunting isn’t a single-plane sport, and it can create stress on your mind and body for long periods of time,” Pendola says. With that in mind, Belding’s focus is on power and explosiveness, as well as general physical preparation, taking reps as high as 30 for some movements and as low as sets of two for others. A sample day could look like this, with a five-minute warm-up and cool-down walk at the start and finish:
On lighter days, Belding will walk continuously without breaks; heavier days, he’ll rest 3-5 minutes for every minute of work
In addition to weight workouts, Belding does “fragmented” cardio, which is designed to build stamina while avoiding overtraining.
“This can be a 20-30 minute session of eight minutes of walking with two minutes of dynamic movements, such as knuckle draggers for 2-3 sets,” Pendola explains. “Or we may do a powerwalk over a 15-minute course, or a longer hike for 70-plus minutes, with the goal of improving his power economy over a six-week progression.”
If Belding happens to be on the road—which is more often than not—he doesn’t relent in his workouts. Whether it’s a hotel gym or the back of his pickup truck, he has options.
“Matt is creative,” Belding says. “Maybe I’ll be doing tailgate jumps, or box squats on a cooler, or one-leg squats to really give my quads a workout.”
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Tom Rassuchine
Tending the Flock
While he admits that the purpose behind his training is not only to perform better in the field, but look good for the cameras as well — “I’m on TV 52 weeks a year and I don’t want to look at myself and say, ‘Hey, man, you need to lose 15 pounds,’” he says with a laugh. Belding is also driven by a tragedy in his personal life.
“I lost my dad at 54 years old of a heart attack,” he recalls. “And he was in the best shape of his life when it happened. So I know with the heart, genetics is a big part of it, and I need to do everything I can to stay fit, make sure I’m here and I can swim and run and hunt with my 9-year-old daughter, Alyssa, and stay active. I’m 45 right now and I’ll be damned if I’m going to go out at 54.”
He’s also firmly focused on having fun, as he expands his business and embraces the comradeship of the hunting community.
“I dreamed of being a major league baseball player when I was a kid,” he says. “But when that didn’t work out, I had a new vision — to make my livelihood in hunting, and made it happen. Now, because of duck hunting, I have a lot of friends in the major leagues, like George Brett, and it’s allowed me to hold onto those old dreams. I go hunting with football players, hockey players, MMA fighters, with celebrities like Zac Brown … I guess everything kind of came full circle for me.”
