Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
chris duffin
the mad scientist of strength he's one
of the strongest
people in the world but is also an
engineer of some of the most
innovative strength equipment i've ever
seen check out his company
kabuki strength he is the only person
who squatted
and deadlifted 1 000 pounds for multiple
reps
and achieved many other amazing feats of
strength he has lived one hell of a life
of hardship and triumph as he writes
about in his book
called the ego and the dragon quick
mention of our sponsors
headspace magic spoon sun basket
and ladder check them out in the
description to support this podcast
as a side note let me say that i was
always a fan of strength
both power lifting and olympic
weightlifting
both as a fan and practitioner
mostly i'm a fan of people who are
willing to put in years of hard work
towards finding out what the limits of
their body is and then
smashing past those limits people like
chris duffin
or on the olympic weightlifting side
people like
dmitry klokov that guy's great
this is why i love watching the olympics
both the heartbreaks and the triumphs
they all reveal the incredible heights
that the human mind
and the human body can reach this is the
lex friedman podcast
and here is my conversation with chris
duffin
you've been a part of several incredible
feats of strength
which was the hardest or maybe one
you're most proud of
definitely the one i'm most proud of is
that journey
for the the grand goals it was like a
five-year scope that i chased this
and so when you think about training it
took more than five years obviously
by that point i've been training for
over 25 years
but it makes me proud i mean there was
three distinct things that i wanted to
accomplish out of this so it was really
thought out
um and this was kind of my exit from
being a
a competitive lifter and basically
saying hey i'm gonna be
you know an instagram lift or an uh
exhibition lift or a whatever
i've done this for 16 years i was number
one in the world for like eight years
straight all-time world records and i'm
like i'm not going to do that anymore
what i want to do
is just something deep down to me that
is really important
and there's three things that were
driving this and this is a five year
journey that i
that i went through to do this i really
wanted to showcase
that you could do something that is well
beyond the scope of what people think is
humanly possible so
just this inspiration thing this
grand over the top like if you set your
mind to a single-minded goal you can go
so much further and i didn't even say
what the goal was up front
because it was so far out there i would
have been laughed at and that's
i i think big goals should be kept
pretty damn close uh to start with for
that reason too
um but and then the second piece was to
to to walk the walk to show
like the principles of what i believed
in around human movement
um the ability to manage and control the
spinal mechanics and the output that can
have on the body
and so i wanted to take the two most
basic movements that
every able-bodied person should be able
to do so fundamental
movement patterns the squat which is
like in the developmental approach is
around nine months as a baby from a
developmental kinesiology
standpoint and a really basic pattern
that
every able-bodied person should be able
to master the other one being the hip
hinge
being able to pick something up off the
ground a deadlift
and i wanted to do those two not just
one
because i wanted to show the principles
that i wasn't
uh built for one i wasn't a specialist
because of
my lever links torso links all that any
outliers
because nobody had ever done a thousand
pound squat so this is it
is and a thousand pound deadlift
it was outside of the scope of what
anybody's there's like half a dozen
people that have done one
or the other but nobody's ever done both
and i wanted to do something unique i
wanted to do them
not only do it but do them for reps to
leave literally
no question out there and there's no
competition for that
so it was this is what i'm gonna go do
and
to pull it off i had some past issues
with my elbows and stuff that i couldn't
work around so i had to wear
straps which was another reason i
couldn't do it in the competition
setting
so the first year i worked up and i did
a thousand and two
pound deadlift we plates were weight
afterwards it was a couple a little bit
over
and i did it for almost three reps
and that still stands as a guinness
world record the just the one rep does
is the most weight ever sumo deadlifted
and
one other person has deadlifted a
thousand for reps at this point and that
was uh thor
bjornsson uh from game of thrones he's
done a thousand for a double as well so
then the next four years and i did a
bunch of feats of strength on the way
but it was
all about building that axial loading
capacity the strength of because now i'm
moving the weight from my hands up to my
shoulders
and so to do it for reps is like so much
harder than a single
like 5 to 10 seconds versus 30
plus seconds to be able to buffer and
manage all that
with that kind of load is just crazy so
it's literally about the duration that
your body is carrying the load
yeah that's a big part of it yeah
because you have to
you're using the resource of the
diaphragm for stabilization
and so it it's also responsible for
respiration and all this other stuff so
even when you're not squatting you've
got to be handling those loads
just holding that weight is fascinating
it's like it's fascinating that the
human body
can do that can can maintain that
structure
just everything working together that
the biology
the skeletal structure the the
musculature on top of that can
hold the weight it's fascinating to
watch everything is very intentful about
positioning
and how you're creating pressure and all
this sort of stuff especially for me so
when i mentioned that
half a dozen people have squatted it and
half a dozen people have deadlifted it
you understand those people all weigh
380 to 440 pounds
i weighed 265 to 285 depending on the
where i was between the two
so there's that as well right so big big
difference
and uh over the course of that i did a
lot of
other feats of strength that fit in that
capacity and we can skip over those but
that was hugely invested as far as you
know
what i put into being able to accomplish
that because it's it's over the top
which means
the other stuff had to shift and i had
to learn something
there's so many things that came into
place to pull that off and so yeah last
march
two days before the world shutdown i did
it it was supposed to be
at the largest equipment exhibition in
the world down in san diego
as an event and that got shut down a
week beforehand obviously so we moved to
let's do it in my gym and invite people
and that was on a saturday and thursday
or friday they limited it to
25 people for gatherings i did it on
saturday
and then monday everything shut down so
wow
it was kind of surreal for timing-wise
right and so if i hadn't done it it
would have never got done like because i
i'd pushed to the limit i couldn't come
back and do it it was at the total
limitation of my capabilities so
i'm pretty i'm pretty proud of it and
the last piece was uh
every one of these feats along the way i
collaborated with a charity that i
believed in and there was a lot of those
tied to my life
story uh which we probably will get into
um so it was threefold so that
inspiration piece
inspiration motivation walking the walk
and showing
like just the these methodologies that a
guy that
had to learn to walk again can do
something like this with no back pain if
you
if you there is a way and the third one
is is to provide awareness and
recognition around a lot of
um key charities so so
your heart was in this journey but also
your mind is just you're like a scholar
of strength a scientist of strength an
engineer of strength
for reps do a thousand pounds squat and
deadlift
let's first talk through the actual day
you did it
what does it take to lift that much
for reps the day of is really easy
the really the lift itself other than a
few seconds
is really easy and not challenging
people always ask me
what was it like how beat up were you
after that and the deadlift and the
simple fact is it was easy
the work to get there was horrendous
so so even the psychology of the day
you weren't there was not a fear there
was not a nervousness there was not a
doubt
in your mind uh there were certainly
doubts on that day um
from some training history so there was
some major
breaks to my confidence in the couple
months leading up
where i had issues with passing out
under the bar so completely losing
consciousness and this was
on weight less than a thousand pounds
even so
that was like all this build up in me
going
what if what if it i think i have this
resolved
but what if i get up there and i can't
even do a rep
how embarrassing will this be that i've
been talking about this and planning for
this for so long
but outside of that i knew i could do it
in fact i wanted to do even more even up
to the
the second rep training is about you
know working
into a fatigue state so you're building
uh an amount of fatigue in your system
and then when you let off of it that's
when you get a compensation and that's
how you stair-step training this is
periodization but leading into a big
event
you're accumulating this massive amount
of fatigue and so
i was performing at a level that i could
do it and so i knew
i was going to be able to on meet
because then you then you give yourself
that window
to be able to recover and super
compensate and be able to do a little
bit more so like that first rep when i
did it
strength wise i went i could do this for
five reps
like it went through my head i'm like
dealing i mean it was easy and it was
fast and it felt like amazing and i'm
like i'm gonna crush this
and then set rep two uh the realization
kicked in is like
oh this is for reps with a thousand
pounds on your back
and you're fatiguing just like and then
the third one was
every last thing i could muster to just
finish that i mean
i just barely got it done because it's
the strength is
like there but like that capacity to be
able to manage
all those resources for that amount of
time because not just leg strength when
we're talking about this stuff so
what does it take to go from the
from i don't know what like from 500 to
a thousand
that feels like a journey that's like
exponential
it's it is exponentially harder it does
in the early 2000s like i said i started
lift in 1988
um but my first meet in the early 2000s
my
my max deadlift was 523 and my first
squat was 550.
so uh friends that's a heck of a journey
it is a journey for people that like to
lift
what should they understand about the
difference between doing 500 and a
thousand
in terms of the actual lift that you
were experiencing that day
in terms of the mechanics in terms of
all the things you have to be like the
neurological adaptation you mentioned
the breathing
the core strength what like techniques
like little tricks
psychological tricks anything that kind
of stands out to you
the level of intent and the opportunity
for
error are at a different level so
just the minutes changes of position by
quarter inch
half inch can be make or break at that
level so
these things everything gets amplified
so the ability to start with having
the pelvis just in the right orientation
to the diaphragm before we start
initiating what we call the the
eccentric loading of the abdominal
cavity
to create this intra-abdominal pressure
of working against
this outward expansion working against
the outer sheath of
abdominal thoracic lumbar musculature
obliques
causing the co-contraction at the pelvic
floor
all this stuff and how you cue that
because you can't think about all this
stuff you need to break it down and
distill and practice to like it's
one simple cue that we now lock down
and control this torso stability because
this is what these fundamental movements
are about is being able to control
our spinal mechanics and then now be
able to
maintain that while articulating the
joints around that through a range of
motion uh and then using
the main power drivers so in this
instance both instances
it's the you know the hip complex to
generate
that power and transfer it from how
we're rooted and connected to the floor
through to the distal end you know which
would be the barbell on the shoulder
you know there's a couple key concepts
so one is that what we just talked
through is
how to actually maintain that stability
so if you have
either the diaphragm so which is
connected at the rib cage so out of
alignment
in any position it needs to be in
alignment
with the pelvic of the pelvis so those
two in opposition so this is simple
engineering here
because what we're going to do is
eccentrically load this we're going to
use the diaphragm just like you would in
a diaphragm pump
where it's going to press down on all
the tissue in there so we're not using
breath
so our breath was actually a lot of
times a default pattern when people do
that because they'll bring it into their
chest
and raise their rib cage so
what we want to do is just initiate the
diaphragm air can be used as well over
the top
at the final to create just a little bit
more downward pressure
but if we have out of alignment there we
have
a pressure get leak where it's going to
be push out the front or the rear if
you're either in flexion or extension
all right and then that causes this
co-contraction and all this pressure of
of uh the organs essentially against
outward against all those tissue for the
co-contraction as well as surrounding
the spine to be able to stabilize that
and then it puts all the muscles on both
sides of the body
in what we call the the best length
tension relationship so if you think
about a curl and we reach our arm out
at the extended length our bicep is not
as strong
and then all the way in the curl
position it's not in strong there's
somewhere in here that
this control of both and so when you're
sitting there
arched or bent over we have muscles that
are
past either one of those ranges so
they've got a lot of tension which then
will create relaxation on the other side
right so we want to have
and all of that needs to be working and
now the next important thing is the foot
so it's actually this connection to the
ground
and how we're actually using the foot
and ankle complex
to grab and grip this connection to the
ground
and elicit uh an effect and because of
this
and then the everything between will
naturally kind of do what it needs to do
so people like to focus on knee knee
position or how far out their hips are
or all this other stuff which is outputs
of this
so if we control the torso and the knee
the only thing that can happen from that
point
is for the squat to happen
all right um so this allows us to use
this massive
you know the hip complex for all the
muscles around that that are
built to drive through hip extension to
complete the squat
i did actually miss one thing in there
so this torso people
often miss the lat is a spinal
stabilizer as well
so that's key in controlling function at
the the tl junction
which is um just above the the lumbar
spine so
kind of right opposite where your
sternum is and you'll see people kind of
roll over sometimes like an olympic
squad or something like that where they
lose position
and that's often because they're close
grip because you can't engage the lats
very well that way and they're pushing
up in the bar
but you want to be able to drive and
pull the bar to your center and that's
going to create and use the lats now to
drive
and connect the shoulder into this
we're kind of compressing and tightening
all this stuff towards that center to
create
that entire torso stability that's why i
was using torso stability not just
core stability uh in my conversation
earlier
okay so there's all these like modules
yeah with the body
then connected to the grounding with
like your feet on the ground
everything you're speaking to how do you
work each of those modules
is this over time you kind of develop
the feel that ultimately boils down to
this one simple cue that you mentioned
or do you can you like literally study
each particular module and yourself and
see how it affects the
lift so the best way and i believe it's
because i hate just like
people getting out and just doing just
movement stuff and not actually adding
load because
we only adapt when there's load maybe we
can get some
you know some proprioception or
awareness of position and other stuff
doing some some corrective patterns and
other stuff
but this is basic physiology
is that there must be an imposed demand
for us to have adaptation and this is
mental this is emotional this is
all these areas um but
and people miss that so i prefer to be
able to
look at a person and this is our
methodology and do the assessment
in any basic loaded movement so with
developing an eye for that you can
actually see and go
okay we've got a fault pattern right
here in the foot and use a queue or a
set of cues doesn't really matter until
we find the one that works
and bring that and now we know we want
to simplify this stuff i just walk
through that sounds really complicated
and it
it is if we try to break down and
distill it all but like let's just
find the basic stuff that gets us in the
range start working and then find the
next as we add load
now we find where's our next area that
we're starting to fault at and then go
there again next so
this is what we do what we teach in our
educational platform so we
are the only i believe everybody wants
to do a lot of these like
assessments you know on a bench on the
table body
and and it's like no let's let's go
squat let's go deadlift if you do
strongmen in a ceo carry let's go carry
because these are basic human
fundamentals it's not powerlifting
like this is how we function this is why
we we work with
29 of the 30 major league baseball teams
and
90 of all professional sports out there
in north america sorry
although we do some work with tour de
france and other stuff as well um
and uh north america i do mean hockey
too
but uh these principles like you know if
if the dodgers
won't bring us in they're not learning
how to
power lift you know we're gonna
obviously we'll probably
do we do a little bit more uh shoulder
focus than hip focus with their athletes
or their coaches we're usually working
with coaches not the athletes and so you
help them
and then the same thing on yourself and
to understand the role that these
different muscle groups have
yes on the holistic yeah so it's all
about
getting the joints in the appropriate
position so that we can
that we can manage loads so that we're
not putting undue stress in the joint
we're getting the proper length tension
we're getting these basic fundamental
things with the body and so
the the largest global impact that you
will have
is through spinal mechanics i can't look
at a shoulder
if i'm not managing this because it's
your spine so for those that are just
listening like
i'm arching and then and then flexing um
that's going to affect shoulder
extension flexion all these sorts of
things so
it could even affect things down what's
looking at dorsiflexion issues on the
foot like
and then that's why i go to the foot
next because it has the second largest
global impact
and then from there now i'm going to
look at the big energy drivers which is
the hip complex
shoulder complex and then we can start
looking at kind of the peripheral
things but usually that's some sort of
output of the other but
the knees the elbows the things like
that so it's all about
getting the stack which affects
neurology
so let's talk engineering terms you get
in a car
modern car today and a lot of them will
have this traction control button in
there and there's a big misconception
that
you know i'm i'm out and it's it's
snowier here in austin only rainy well
probably doesn't rain much but
you're going around a corner starts
slipping it's like oh it's going to send
the powers from the wheels that are
slipping through the ones that are
gripping
and keep me from crashing and dying a
fiery death
well that's not how it works it's the
exact same we've got we've got the
we've got the tires which are our foot
you know the connection to the ground
right we've got the power driver
which is you know the the engine the
transmission delivering
you know the power through it and we've
got the stability our suspension
and then we have the neurology
and what the neurology is doing it's
sensing
that we don't have good stability or
loss of connection somewhere
and so i need to save you from crashing
and hurting yourself
and so it goes to the engine and says
let's retard the timing
let's reduce the shift patterns and
we're just reducing the power output
and that's straight how the human body
works so when i do this stuff
it's actually affecting that i mean i
can take somebody and do some minute
changes with the neck
position at the thoracic outlet okay and
immediately see an enhancement in power
output and i can measure it we measure
this stuff
with uh velocity uh devices and see like
a 10
boom jump and so if you think about that
what about all your training through the
years
where you actually had additional
capacity
but you weren't using it because your
traction control was on
now you figure this out stuff and now
you start stacking it now you can see
so much greater so it's not just injury
prevention
this is performance and additive
performance
over time this is huge and people don't
really think about this stuff
but we can turn that stuff off which is
actually going to also again make us
make us safer but what we want to do is
the performance tuned race car do they
have a traction control button
no they got some amazing tires to grip
the ground
a performance tuned suspension and that
driver is going to put what
his foot to the metal he's going to put
it to the floor
okay that's a performance vehicle that's
what we want to be
i want to continue on that line but
first i have to ask
like how did it feel to accomplish the
grand goal oh my god
okay when you just stand back oh
my thousand pounds for reps what it feel
like
anybody can go watch the video online
um 12 film by the way got me all
like excited oh well the the movies so
we actually have the final footage of
that the good footage not posted yet so
it's literally just an instagram video
or a phone video right now the only one
online yeah
it's on your youtube channel but it's
dramatic yes it is yeah it came out just
time to the music perfectly too
which is i listened to some odd music uh
which there's some reason behind that
okay um but um
fooling footage there's a documentary
that's
it's got a little slowed because of
kovit because it's also a backstory of
the eagle and the dragon my book about
why i do
kind of the things that i've done in my
life or that's what i'm assuming the
director is working on i don't really
have
the control of the movie right
but okay but the videos okay incredible
how did it feel how'd it feel
i started crying it was overwhelming
to have worked so intensely and so long
and hard at something that
pushed every ounce of me to the limit
that
and and i did it i'm getting a little
emotional i did exactly what i said i
was going to fucking do
like and it was it was
overpowering i mean i was just crying
uncontrollably
um just with a mixture of i i don't
know what th the mixture of emotions is
hard to explain
um because it was
the completion of something it was a new
phase of my
i i mean there's so many things here so
one you set an impossible goal and you
accomplished it one
two is like on the broader humanity
aspect
like how many humans in this world
accomplish
perfection in a particular direction
required to do this so like you're
basically representing
like uh one little like like little
glimmer
of excellence of the human spirit
there's always more
so understand this this is a basic
fundamental
you can always do better there is no
such thing as perfection you could
always
there is always more so any time you
reach something
any amazing workout or accomplishment in
life
could you have put more into it could
even yes but
here's the thing i left on my terms
i said this is it i'm going to work
towards i've been training for 30
years i'm gonna do this thing that is un
like i couldn't even
say that i was gonna do it years before
i'm gonna do it and then i'm done
and i didn't leave from an injury i
wasn't forced to i wasn't
i left on i did exactly what i said i i
went to a level that i
i left on my terms and that's unique
because that's usually not the case
usually you kind of either taper out or
it doesn't matter
i'm talking like anything in life in
general right like
um you taper out you fail you hurt like
you look you lose it
like something you know you roll into
retirement like
you accomplished something truly great
and you walked away in your own terms
is there a sadness completing something
like that
because it's it's in one
perspective the greatest thing you'll
ever do
and like when you accomplish such a
great height
in some sense you have to face your
mortality at that point
so good question but it is certainly not
the greatest thing that i'll ever do
it's the greatest physical there's
always dude the greatest
yes but
that was an expression of some of my
values
and the way that i want to live it was a
way of expressing it so
understanding that is hugely fundamental
because we do see so many athletes
get to the end of a career and then they
fall into
a depressive state and struggle with
drugs
alcohol depression so on because they
lost how they identified themself and
trying to figure out where to turn what
to do but a
big central component of their identity
is lost
so i
knew that this was one way to express
that and my grand goals
have shifted they're shifted to other
outlets that allow me to express that
like my companies
kabuki strength i'm going to change the
face of fitness
as well as all the way through with its
integration with clinical medicine and
telemedicine
and you know i got another five years
before even people see what i'm working
on five years in right now because i had
to invent
equipment i have to develop
methodologies that were talking i had to
do this stuff that ground layer wasn't
done
to create a cohesive ecosystem of
training methodology tied to the tools
that we're using today to the
environment tied to the clinical
practice assessment tied to the
the interaction between all those and
how that actually needs to be reframed
because so much of this is broken okay
so but there is sadness
i won't deny that and the sadness comes
in
the singularity of focus
that i had at that time the being
in the process not necessarily doing but
like
having being in this place that the rest
of the world kind of fell away for me in
those final faces to have something
so intense to have a team around me so
focused on supporting and like
it took me a couple months after that
squad i finally one day i woke up and i
was like
oh welcome back to the world like i was
in such a mental
fog like i was it took me a while to
climb
out of that but that that space that
level of intensity and driving
and living and being in that space
i i do miss that but i also i can't
continue that i couldn't contin like
there's a point of like you push it so
hard
the level to try to go from there is not
acceptable for what you
the impacts that will have on your life
for how you want to live and it was
taking away
those final like i had to do extreme
things and live in an extreme way to
to get there you're just a genius in
this whole space of strength and health
and by
almost like biology that uh
this strength feat is just one
representation of that
but this particular strength required
that kind of singular focus
which i think i don't know there's
something beautiful about that singular
focus there is often only
truly perfected athletics i see it with
the greatest olympic athletes as well
the kind of singular focus required
there is incredible it's
somehow some of the most beautiful
things that humans can do and achieve
just that thing
so that's the thing it's like oh that
must be it when we say singularity focus
it's not like
here's it because it it covers a vast
array of stuff like
i was working with people you know
all well yeah all around north america i
wouldn't say anybody around the globe
but professionals coming in working on
different aspects of rehab
and and recovery and like i mean i'm
tapping all sorts of stuff
in so many platforms from nutrition
to drugs to uh again
like you know various uh chinese
medicine
you know as far as you know but also
humans in your life just love and
and uh positivity and just inspiration
all those kinds of aspects
i mean you probably would have done much
more if you
uh went outside north america and talked
to some russians just between you and i
some russians possibly they give you
some uh
i don't know those there's some
incredible strength athletes in eastern
europe uh
absolutely um i've got the best one uh
coming
in september uh to get fixed so what do
you mean by fixed
so i'm not sure what his particular
issues are but uh he
has held the all-time world record
repeatedly for a long time
and uh he hasn't competed for some time
and he just reached out saying
he would like to come and have me take a
look and see if i can get him fixed
because the return
yes okay so it's more injury centric
versus like form
and uh fundamental essential combination
of everything
everybody always wants to focus on the
output how do you how do you give me the
fix for that but
it ties right back into all those other
things right
so uh but yeah the eastern the eastern
bloc
continued to be a dominant force uh in
regards to
uh athletics and strength athletes
without a doubt
some of my big rivals in my competitive
days were
who it was rivalry brings out the best
in us
can you tell me the story of your
childhood it's definitely outside the
scope of the norm
well today maybe not 150 or 200 years
ago
but uh my parents
highly intelligent you know people
coming out of the bay area
my mom was you know going to school to
be a chemical engineer she was a top
top student athlete graduated of her
school my father was a member of mensah
my stepfather was just a genius but not
able to really function in society
but my mom was you know she had some
demons and some other stuff and just
she just said one day she's like i just
don't want to be part of society
she still isn't uh lives out in the
desert but uh has her minds but
she wanted to figure out a way to make a
life
outside of that and so that's where we
ended up
is up in the mountains in northern
california and
a lot of that was you know them trying
to
get into successfully growing marijuana
which
back in that you know wasn't legal back
then highly illegal
and in fact those areas where some of
the areas where lived were quite
dangerous so there's a documentary
murder mountain that came out recently
if you watch that
you'll tie into my book uh just the
understanding of
the stuff that i was talking about
dealing with serial killers
human trafficking police corruption
uh murderers like just
how real that stuff is if it doesn't
capture you from the book
okay the book by the way is the eagle
and the dragon yeah thank you
yeah it's a great i'm a terrible sales
person like i told you so
but a good uh it's a good title i don't
know if you came up with it but uh
i did yeah so yeah we'll talk about that
anyway we're living by a stream
you know alpha meadow there's no roads
into where you have to hike in
and we've got beams lashed into the
trees up above us because that's where
our bedding is because there's
rattlesnake dens
all around and six years old i'm being
taught
how to capture and handle live
rattlesnakes
because that's what i need to do to be
safe and you can imagine six years old
sitting there with a live rattlesnake in
your hand grabbing it you know by the
side of the head controlling so it can't
can't bite you and it's just wrapping
itself around your arm and
you're staring like it's only intent is
right then is
to kill you like that's it right um
you want to take a bath it's filling up
the jug in the stream and setting it out
on the rockster and uh
during the sun so you dump it over your
head and you know not all the living was
that way
you know good part was similar to that
tent living
living in a 16 foot trailer with a
family of six
which is not much bigger than the space
that we're sitting here
so we're talking hard winters with feet
of snow on the ground nowhere to go
i'm living in the back of the pickup
truck in a
just a standard sleeping bag that we get
from the salvation army not the
not the blow zero so i'm uh i'm i'm not
sleeping well
there's living in homes that were maybe
uh
condemned there's no no doors even on
them no electricity or running water or
one or the other or both
and sometimes a little bit better by the
time we got to high school
we had a mobile home so my stepfather
had won a disability payment because he
had a broken arm that whole time
from an accident a long time ago and
finally got
an award and got a down payment on this
mobile home that
didn't have again doors on the inside it
did have running water did have
electricity didn't have a kitchen
you know the windows would crank close
and open but they wouldn't close all the
way so the
trim them in with uh plastic to be able
to try to protect from the elements
that was my environment like learning
how to forage for mushrooms i mean
there's summers i would send
and my parents would be out they were in
the drug trade earlier we got taken by
the
by the police and put into
foster care for for a while which
ties into some of the stories with human
trafficking and honestly
it's in my book but it's really hard for
me to
talk about that stuff um
and obviously not all that's in the book
so but
they got us back we moved to oregon and
they stayed out of the drug trade from
that time
to ensure that they didn't lose us again
but quickly we kind of fell back into
the same thing so at that point it was
learning about geology and starting to
do mining
and firewood cutting but mostly
mining because pat's broken arm chainsaw
made a little tough
if you remember just the sequence of
moments do you
um are you haunted by the the darker
moments of your childhood
do you remember moments of simple joy
and happiness outside of the
living around dangerous people and the
interactions that came from that
we were a family like we were a cohesive
unit battling against the world together
we spent all our time together
work play i was there i was helping
raise my my siblings
where i was working with them and you
know it was a constant
like i said we were very physically
active so you know i had that in my
upbringing
plugged for my shoe company barefoot
b-e-a-r
i ran around the wilderness and bare
feet all the time you know but it was
i had a lot of great moments and i'm
thankful for a lot of that childhood
once we take out the trauma
and the other stuff associated with it
right
and so the connection that i have with
my sisters
um is is is huge um that goes a bit
further to because i am kind of like a
little bit of a father figure because
i was home raising them and then later i
took custody of them
while i was going to school because the
environment at home deteriorated further
their stepfather like i said was
he wasn't capable of managing life and
my mom had a mental breakdown and took
off to montana
and he descended into madness even worse
actually took my 13 year old sister and
kicked her out in the middle of winter
a couple feet of snow on the ground
because he thought she stole his
favorite cereal bowl
um type so that's when i took in and
i was going to college putting myself
through college and i started taking
custody of my sisters and raising them
so
anyway but we're still like very
very tight family um it took there was a
few years later
in life like that the connection with my
mother was
kind of broken um i didn't speak to her
for years because
of her basically abandoning my sisters
and me having to come in but
that we've worked through that as best
we can so you
anger on your part it wasn't
there might have been some anger um did
you always love her
yes and i still do and i'm so she's
taught me
basically everything i know about
strength and perseverance and
living life on your terms and being able
to
to create that and so much of what i am
is from that
right we've all had to learn to
be okay with the way she is because she
is just
blunt but you know she's the one that
figured out that the human trafficking
situation and
got uh got the da involved and got all
the
she's the one that
i've learned a lot from her and uh did
you inherit some of the demons
almost certainly and i it's something
i've continued like
and my father's side of has been really
tough on that because some of it is
just based genetic as well so my my
stepfather made
i think six or seven attempts on his
life during his lifetime
one of those in front of me uh his
mother
blew her head off with a shotgun uh her
brother jumped out a window in l.a
their father did something similar and i
don't know how far back it goes
because there is no family except for me
and my my children
you spoke about going to depression
yourself
yeah can you um talk about some of the
darker moments of that have you ever
like many in your family have you ever
considered suicide yes i have
yes i have you've achieved a lot of
exceptional things in your life
can you talk about those early days of
depression
and how you overcame it yeah
so the things that i did that people
give me accolades for are the things
that i did selfishly
to save myself the things like
taking custody of my sisters being the
person
that everybody around you know the the
important people relied on the fact that
i had to
step to the plate and be present and be
that person
because if i failed
they failed they would be like the
people that i grew up with
that are dead or in prison
or on drugs and they're either way to to
one of those
right that's where everybody ended and i
wasn't gonna let that happen
what about saving yourself and so that's
how in those early days that's how i did
it not saying it's the best approach but
it was survivor mentality it was
i can't selfishly do that because i have
them to take care of
right and then that continued where i
would keep putting myself in these
leadership roles or other things and
this always being
this person that was
at the center at the hub that
forced me to be there and so it's only
in the more recent you know last decade
or so that i have had to really
learn how to come and start confronting
some of those demons and you think man
why is the guy so successful like i mean
and we haven't talked about all the
stuff that i've done but like
i've seen a lot of success in both
business leadership athletics
academics uh entrepreneurship all these
sorts of things right
but if it wasn't for you know having
kids
and the same being in the position i
wouldn't be here
if it and that's just that's the reality
of it
and i'm learning to to come
and manage those as best i can learning
to
meditate into those things and really
feel what the driver is so i can get to
those
those root understanding um and and
having some guidance doing so like
if you've got mental health issues this
isn't something that you need to tackle
on your own
like having a professional that can help
guide you on that introspective journey
is is something like
it's not like hey i'm big tough guy i
can handle everything
you know that's fascinating that um
you saved yourself that's quite
powerful to save yourself by uh having
others depend on you and so you can't
fail you can't fuck it up and that's a
reason to keep
moving forward but on the flip side
that's not
addressing the darkness it's not and
it's probably not a sustainable strategy
either right so i i
recognize these things i don't know and
uh
perhaps it is sustainable perhaps that's
i mean there's something beautiful about
giving yourself basically in service of
others
and thereby creating purpose
and then like it's almost like fake it
till you make it and then you make it
eventually
that is purpose though that is purpose i
mean you have to
to me life is about
taking your cup and how you choose to
pour it out how you choose to give
what is your purpose what is that
connection with everybody around you
this is
that's that's the intent that's the life
that's that's what life is about
how are you going to help those around
you how are you going to help the world
you know
your purposes is right here figuring out
what this is
and then how to do that but at the same
time
you can't let that run dry so you have
to make sure
right that you're filling that's the
other side that's the other side right
that's the other side yeah we'll return
to your engineering degree which
you're obviously scientifically
engineering-minded which is fascinating
your book is titled the eagle and the
dragon
uh what do the eagle and the dragon
symbolize
they're pretty big symbols for me in
fact that covers my entire body
as a tattoo so the first one i had done
is around
19 years old and so this is or started
at 19.
uh it's an uh an eagle that covers my
entire
front you know my stomach rib cage and
and one that was on my back that covered
most of my back and there's
chained at the well at the claw i guess
and the chain wraps down around and
attaches to to my ankle and there's a
shackle there
and so this was something that i had
done at that age because it was
to me it was a representation of
your potential your strengths your
abilities that you can fly
to whatever height that you want in this
world
the only thing holding you back at the
end of the day is yourself
and this was that's i hadn't necessarily
accomplished a whole lot that time i
mean i was
valedictorian for high school small high
school
does that even count uh as a state level
wrestler
this was my belief and you sensed that
there was a potential in you
and the only thing that could stop you
from realizing that potential
was yourself that's right that's a heck
of a tattoo
to get by the way at 19 but
40 hours went into that thing it shows
you got some guts
and then the next tattoo so i only have
two uh i had done in
2015 2016
uh when i so at this point in my life
so i had done that i had flown to
whatever heights right so i had
i had proven to myself and and maybe
done what i thought i needed to do to
show the world that
this poor kid from the sticks this
this kid growing up in the mountains
with nothing could achieve the american
dream
i was a corporate executive sought after
that i'd come in i'd fix companies i'd
turn around and prep them for sale
i'd take a company and grow it from a
regional to a national to a global
presence i did this in the
automotive manufacturing aerospace
manufacturing high tech heavy industry
and i had a house with a white picket
fence
i was a successful athlete with all-time
world records i owned a gym on the side
where i coached people
and uh had a comfortable marriage
that everything was hunky-dory with no
arguments at home
and uh i walked away from all of it
i left everything behind except for my
kids
i wanted
to chase what i was meant to do
and chase what i was capable of doing
i wanted to become a better version of
myself but
very intentfully
and that's what i did i
sold i had multiple homes sold my homes
i cashed in all my retirement that i'd
earned for 20 nearly 20 years
and i lost all that i leveraged myself
millions of dollars of personal debt so
that if i
failed there was no way out even going
back to that old career that i did well
i'd be living in an apartment the rest
of my life paying it off
people questioned people questioned me
at the time because i had a comfortable
easy marriage
and i chose to ask for a divorce
and i ended up living in an apartment
for a couple years with
no income selling off every last thing
that i had except for my two vehicles
that i built
and with my with my kids
and i've started my businesses
to help people live a better quality of
life
to get them out of pain to help them
live better
through strength to realize that
stress demand those things that they
don't have to be the thing
that if you look back made you had the
bad back
made you have the bad ds but they do the
opposite they get you out of pain and
then i started work on my book to
to to hit on those other things the
mental the emotional
maybe even spiritual i don't touch on
that one too much in there but
it's all the same that
things that happen around you to you
like maybe they're bad
i can't take away that but why can't you
use what you have of it
to become a stronger and better person
to become more resilient to be able to
take the things that you don't know that
are coming in the future
and so this is very intentful and that's
what the second
i'm long-winded to answer in your
question here the dragon the dragon
the dragon is an aura boris and so yeah
it is it circles my entire upper body my
shoulders my back my chest everything
it's
right here there's this big dragon head
and its tail is right there in its mouth
that's eating itself
and that may sound a bit graphic or
whatever but it is
it's the eating of the old becoming the
new it is
the purposeful reinvention of oneself it
is the deciding
not realizing just your potential but
deciding specifically who you want to be
in this fucking world
and becoming that person can you comment
on the the value and the power of
putting a flame to you know
your old life your old self just
destroying all of it
as you walk into the new life you know
did you have to do that
i don't recommend this by the way
because when you put yourself in no way
out
there is no way out yeah okay like
you gotta really no
but i i can be an overconfident
individual at times and uh
i live i live through extremes i think
it's a
great way of actually finding your real
values and how you want to live honestly
to chase the having absolutely perfect
squat technique but chase putting
every freaking thing that you've got in
it which most people would say those are
those are opposite those are
diametrically opposed
i wanted a better home life
i wanted to do more in the world through
my work
and the burning the bridges mentality is
not necessarily
you know the the best there was some
temperament
in that though because i i was not i was
slow to make the shift for a long time
because i'd been thinking about doing it
but i was thinking about doing it in a
healthcare perspective i'm gonna go back
to school to be a surgeon or a physical
therapist or cairo because that's where
like all my research and stuff was in
this this human movement
and rehab and recovery this is the
mentors that i've been developing were
the best in the world in these things
in these disciplines those were my
friends and
and uh but i wasn't able to compromise
my family's certain quality of life i
wanted to to keep this it was
it was slow and hard for me to make that
transition but i didn't do it until
i had a platform built enough that those
first few years
i did have an income i was able to make
enough from the business until it grew
so fast
that i needed so much more needed to
come in living in the apartment piece
and doing all that that was actually a
couple years
into uh into that process maybe like two
years
uh i'm with you on that so i'm actually
going through that very process now
i put everything i quit everything gave
away everything and starting
new and uh unfortunately or fortunately
this podcast
somehow became quite um popular
so it's getting in in the way of my
burning everything to the ground
but in that it's a source of joy but the
main thing i'm after
is the similar project as you as
building a business
sense of joy so this this is the point i
want to drive home right now
right now because when i say burn i
learned the burning the bridges works
because
that's how i had to succeed when i was
earlier
the bridges weren't burnt they didn't
exist there was no couch to go home to
there was no there was no fallback plan
and it forced me and gave me the
confidence to know that i can pull it
off
but i don't encourage people because
there's so much out there of this hustle
porn and other stuff going
just grind just go after it get in and
start your like
you'll get there and it's all about the
output to make money to be somebody to
do this
and i'll tell you what that is some
short-term motivation right there i feel
like dropping a few swear words but
um you're always welcome
we've already done a few so we'll uh all
right balance it out
that is short term that is not going to
keep you going
this neat if you're going to go that
approach it needs to be because
this is your north star there's going to
be
so much hard work there's going to be
years of just
pushing through where your quest not
only is everybody around you questioning
you and your family is questioning you
you're questioning yourself going man i
don't know if i can pull this off
you're going to be stressed you're going
to be pulled to the max if somebody
comes up to me and says should i start a
business i'm going to say no
and they'll be like oh you're supposed
to motivate me if you need me to
motivate you this is the wrong damn
approach for you
this is gonna be hard this is gonna be
harder than you expect even with me
telling you this
and so it better damn well
be worth it this better be your north
fucking star this
better live and be a way for you
to be able to articulate or realize
those values that you want to live
this isn't something to make money this
is a way for you to live the life
and be able to share the values that you
have with the world
and that's w