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 what it is and if you don't
have that which is going to give you joy
then we can walk away yeah
this is not some way to make some money
and be known
i mean this this includes both like
simple day-to-day joy
and also deep meaning exactly the whole
thing
and that allows you to overcome all the
all the pain along the way
but i gotta say i mean it's a difficult
thing because you run a business
i'm this podcast and a lot of things i
do research-wise
is full of joy but it's simple running a
business
is hard so
it's something that i'm very hesitant
about
in that so to almost push back a little
bit
i think if i do get the guts
to start the business it will not be
because
i'm not choosing a more joyful life
because i'm already truly happy
the reason i'll choose is because i just
can't help it
there's this i've always had this dream
and i know it's gonna lead to suffering
and i know it's gonna
be a life that has less happiness in it
as sad as this to say
but it won't be it won't be less
happiness
because we talk about this cup and where
you choose to pour it
and what you choose to do with it and
when you look back on things
the things that are going to give you
the most joy the most proud the things
that are going to stand out in your life
that you
really remember are going to be those
days
and your those years you struggle you're
going to look back on
10 years later and go fuck
those were the glory days those were the
glory days
yeah and it won't feel like it at the
time yeah
so that's what life's made of and so
this is your this is your opportunity
you feel that so right now you got this
when you think about it
you got this little thing twisting up in
your gut right it's like
it's a mixture of anxiety and fear as
well as
excitement and that is that's your
signal that this is your opportunity for
that personal growth to challenge
yourself
this is your going for a run or working
out in the heat it's
it's those things it is your opportunity
to go
that maybe it even fails maybe it even
fails
but by turning into that you're gonna
learn so much and it's going to make you
so much better and it's the path that
you should take when you have
this stuff rolling around in there and i
don't
it could just be a hard conversation
with your partner
or your boss it could be taking on
a project that you know you know that
your boss is thrown out to the team and
you're like i'm gonna hide in the back i
don't want that one
and i was like maybe maybe you do maybe
it's going back to school yeah maybe
it's making that career move that you
always wanted but you're just
you're just afraid of all these things
are your opportunity for you to turn
into that
it is your workout it is your practice
because if you don't
you'll get soft and who knows what's
coming and you're not going to be ready
for it
and it's going to run right over the top
of you because you're going to be
weak you're going to be soft there's
some aspect in which choosing that hard
path
is actually the the way to arrive at the
richest kind of happiness
like the the greatest fulfillment
that's the funny thing about just the
human just make sure you're filling the
cup as you're going through it
all out so yeah that's the part to
figure out right sure
well life is short anyway um
eventually eventually the cup will be
empty
uh this will maybe time the refilling of
the cup correctly
so you maximize the little time you got
let me talk to you about strength a
little bit first
high level what are the differences in
the different disciplines of strength so
powerlifting we talked about
maybe just to clarify for people power
lifting olympic lifting
just regular gym fitness bodybuilding
doing curls in front of the mirror for
hours like i do what's what's the
difference between all these oh and also
strong man
every one of those as far as the
athletic uh disciplines
are different qualities so we want to
think about things as
terms of quality so there's strength
there's
power there's endurance there's
the ability to um be coordinated and
athletic there's
all these things and they're different
they're different qualities so
your training as it relates to that is
how you cycle in the development
of those qualities what we want to think
about is
there's a lot of different frames of
thought some very uh
classical maybe not classical russian
approach because there's a lot of
different approach from the eastern
bloc but one of the ones is developing
all the qualities at once you know
focusing on
building those more of a periodization
effect would be
focusing on one quality at a time
or one quality wall maintaining other
qualities
and then shifting that around so it's
just going to be a little different
based on
what the output is and what the desired
so like
powerlifting is actually power is the
wrong word there's actually no power in
it it's
just brute it's it's strength um
application of force uh so olympic
lifting would actually be a better
for powerlifting because that is more
explosive uh development there's
strongman is again now we're getting a
little bit more athletic it's equipment
based on the implements and stuff that
are used how fast you can move your feet
and run mixed with more endurance but
still very
strength focused and there's some things
with strong man that is straight like
each one of these is very
also focused on different
genetic dispositions so actually if you
look at the history of sports you'll
find that they're
a lot of times based on different
populations that sounds like it's very
on pc but like
highland games they've got deep deeper
hip sockets that are shallow so you're
going to see a lot of short hip hinge
movements like the
the caber toss and things like that muay
thai wrestling
they've got a completely different hip
joint and so strongman itself is
going to be for very large framed
individuals if you're not well over six
foot
and a large person you're probably not
going to perform well very few people
sub six foot have ever done well at
strongman just because it's it's
leverage based right um olympic lifting
we see consistently in in europe
uh the the history tells us a high
level of hip uh and back issues
because of the depth that that hip
socket has to go in to be able to
complete that lift
and so you're going to see issues with
populations that don't have the ability
to do that so
so we've talked a little bit about
training as well as
disposition yeah so and also crossfit
instance of that that's more like strong
man but for
a wider variety of bodies i suppose yep
and definitely more metabolic
conditioning focus than the
than the strength aspect of it um and
and conditioning is an interesting thing
too so that quality
in my opinion can be developed a lot
faster
but kind of peaks much faster as well so
you where strength we can continue to
add and add an add over
time so it's
for me like for conditioning with any
strength athlete i don't like to spend
as much time
on that so i'll cycle the conditioning
work for our strength athletes
and then taper that off leading into
meat so the more
metabolic work that means the more
capacity in strength training that you
can accomplish
which is the goal and recover from
but then as we lead to a competition we
want to spend more time on recovering
from that so we have to pull things out
so we'd pull out less so like
a typical approach would be like taking
a six-week cycle for conditioning
and ramping ramping up over three weeks
periods time then dropping back down
again
and ramping up and being slightly offset
by like a week or two from your strength
peaks
so that you've actually tapered the week
prior in your conditioning work to your
strength work
right and but that way we're not hitting
conditioning hard all the time which is
a common
common uh misstep that people make is
going well i need conditioning
so they just hammer that at a base level
over the top
instead of cycling that if we talk about
power lifting
in terms of regimen
in terms of exercise yeah in terms of
the process
the wood consistent with what is there
something to be said about
general qualities of the consistency of
the regimen required to get strong
yes so let's talk about some training
principles as a whole and this will
i think this will break the down what
you're what you're one
the more work that we can fit into a
given time
the more progress we're going to make
but that doesn't mean doing the max
amount of work
possible at any given time
so we know that we're always to to
accomplish more we're always going to
have more
and there's a certain ceiling that
you're going to hit that you're not
going to be able to add more so
you want to start and get the most
amount of results that you can with the
least
amount of work because you're going to
have to do it
again like this stair step over and over
year decades so on so when people is a
big miss people got they look at
uh a chico program from russia or so on
and they go
i'm gonna follow this and it's like that
was specifically written for somebody
with 20 years of experience
that's already built the capacities to
be at that level so it's all about
building that work capacity
so how much work can you give in a given
time so now we want to look at some
research
as it relates to injuries because
injuries are going to be a big driver
over time
of what holds you back so when we talk
consistency training hard for three
years
five years it's gonna be really good but
what we find is a lot of people train
really hard for nine months
have to slow back for a month get back
into it and miss another week because
and so on they're always like this
little nagging that little nagging
and so it's pretty clear in the research
we wanna we're looking at when we're
stair stepping this stuff we're looking
at acute and chronic loading so
some fancy words for average and like
what's happening right now
so this given week would be our acute
chronic would be what is our average
loading let's say over the last six
months
okay so the more that we can move the
chronic loading up the more work we're
getting done on
as a whole over time we're going to get
stronger the way that we build the
capacity to do that
is having spikes in acute loading okay
now as we do this the
the acute loading if it spikes more than
maybe 15 percent from what the chronic
loading
has been that accounts for
eighty percent of injuries out there
so it's not actually the movement
quality or this misstep or the other
it usually happens about four five six
weeks later it's like oh this nagging
and then it gets worse and then now you
gotta
you gotta do some rehab your training
sessions aren't as good and so on
so now we're starting to look at this
okay it's like i wanna do the
i wanna do the least amount of work
where i can still progress
i want to be able to have spikes in my
weekly demand
that don't go above 10 to 15 percent of
what i've been averaging for the last
month but every time i do a spike my
average goes up right
boom boom boom and then that becomes
very particular also when you take
when you do take plantain time off so a
lot of people
uh training session maybe they're doing
a five-week block with a
a deload week or you go on vacation for
a week
or any of those things that were a
downward what does that do to your
average in chronic loading
it brings it down and then what does the
person want to do when they come back
make up for it now they have a huge
spike above
five weeks later we're dealing with ah
this elbow this wrist whatever's kind of
bothering me and now you're not
performing as much so these are some
really fundamental pieces of
of of training and then now we can start
overlaying the qualities that we're
trying to develop that we were talked
about earlier so now it's
let's talk about my deadlift my thousand
pound deadlift we'll talk about the
training cycles for both the thousand
uh deadlift and squat so backing up
a year out from the deadlift knowing i
was training at the time
heavy deadlifts once a week and usually
it was
two of those sessions a month were
really heavy and the others weren't it's
like
okay how can we get this up to where i'm
deadlifting twice a week
because that's where i want to be uh to
be able to accomplish this i need to be
loading about
that much with frequency with a certain
volume to be able to accomplish this
goal
we're not going to go through all the
math and stuff like that and how that's
arrived but there is
there is math behind this and so instead
of just
like oh let's start dead lifting twice a
week no
so we start and we take the one session
that we've got
and we split it part of it take part of
it away and put it in the second half of
the week so the total volume is still
the same
and then we start adding some volume but
i'm doing it at a
off of block so that the actual load is
the cumulative load is less because i
have less range of motion
okay and then we start building that
closer to the ground closer to the
ground and so on
and now we start getting to where i'm
almost doing two sessions full sessions
a week
and then we start adding a little bit of
load
and so at my level this isn't talking
about adding another set
or another day a week we're talking like
in my squat
it might be one rep instead of doing
three sets of three at one week i do two
doubles
or two triples then two doubles to give
me one
more rep that's it and so we're doing
that from one week
to the next and that's a cycle training
cycle it might be five six weeks and
then so on
the next one and slowly bringing that
average load
up so the last phases of the squat for
example
we took the average loading every week
so my of my heavy sets
so once we developed all this stuff over
the last year to get to this point
now it is taking and going okay my
average load this week
is eight reps at 955 pounds and then the
next week
let's get it to nine nine fifty seven
nine sixty three and this was pretty
aggressive working up to where my
average loading the final
that fit the final was 985 pounds
average load for eight to nine reps
and that's what i said this is the
intense part that was why it was the day
of was much easier
that week over week is pretty brutal
may not sound oh you're just squatting
and now let's back up let's look at the
quality
development so a year out from the squat
obviously i've been working on
developing axial load capacity my
capacity to withstand load from top to
bottom so i like thinking about things
in movement vectors
so this vector is an axial loaded vector
is the hardest to recover from
uh so what's actual so like is deadlift
are they both they're both yep so a
horizontal
a front to back would be like a row or a
press
why is the axial uh hard to recover from
because this entire body the entire
entire body just anything that is
that that uh taxes the the the spinal
mechanics
i i don't i could tell you my beliefs
it's studied it is okay um
we can just keep the discussion on that
but short like that so
um so we start looking at those
different vectors that we're training in
so this is why
this is important to understand so i'm
not just getting into nuance here
so hey squatting is going to make me
make me jump further because it's legs
well squatting is an axial load vector
and
jumping is a vector this way so actually
hip thrust
would help with urine your and this is
proven in science
with your forward jumping ability uh
they're both working similar muscles the
glute extension
but they're working it in those
different platforms so it's really
important to understand because
people don't understand i'm building my
work capacity by doing
sled pushes you're not developing your
work capacity for squatting
most movements even ones as
holistic as a as a squat require
specialization
yeah you can't get strong at the squat
by doing you're going to have some
carryover
right obviously but because taking an
untrained person that hasn't done it
it's not still not going to do as good
as somebody that's done non-specific
work but done work
so but yes for the most part to get
truly strong
you need to specialize so but not all
the time
so now we talk about quality so and if
we specialize in the same thing too long
we stagnate because the body adapts to a
certain point and just can't make
progress
so we wanted to save the actual
squatting in the pattern with the bar
that i was doing
for the very end so starting a year out
i started doing work front squatting
like a squat
axial loaded pattern and worked on
maximizing that up
then i started shifting to doing
transformer bar squat it's this bar i
developed that actually changed and
manipulates spinal mechanics so i
started loading in these more forward
positions
and being able again so now i'm getting
closer than a front squat but not quite
squatting and then
i would start adjusting that bar every
training cycle to closer to a squat
toaster to a squat till it finally was
right so what's the difference between a
front squat
and a regular like a back squat like in
terms of the
the stress on the body the mechanics was
there something interesting to be said
about
like how fundamentally different are
they so what's interesting
people think about the weight in
imposition to them like oh the bar's in
front of me the bar's behind me
which is not the case the bar
is above your midfoot the load is above
your midfoot
so we're actually manipulating the spine
behind the bar
so we're causing spinal uprighting
behind the bar getting in a more erect
position
which is going to change the
relationship of the hip angle
it's going to change our ability to
maintain the spine it's going to change
the
uh how much the the core comes in how
hard it is to
maintain that sternum to diaphragm
relationship that we talked about
all this stuff starts changing so the
bar stays in the same place the bar's
still behind you but the load
moves around so but we're actually
manipulating the spine around the load
yeah it's incredible we can tailor it to
an athlete
which is great when you've got a seven
foot plus tall baseball player or
basketball player
that's why we work with all these teams
anyway so it's like you're taking
something and getting closer and closer
to it
at the same time we're looking at the
quality so like i needed to be able to
really hold this torso position with the
weight moving up here
now unlike the deadlift the ability to
manage this tl position
becomes much more challenging so that
was also why i was choosing the
transformer bar
because it actually challenges that more
in those big forward positions
i was also working on my back strength
tremendously
to be able to hold a maintained position
so there was a lot of like
i chose a bent over rows so bent over
row is a mixed vector so it's a forward
to back
so it wouldn't have as much carrier but
it's also um
got some axial loading components in it
as well
so we're working on that and then as it
as we get closer and closer to
competition i'm developing those
strengths but now i need to start
tapering those out so all of my recovery
needs can now go into the more specific
that i'm actually ramping the load up so
as i'm ramping the load on the weight
i'm able to ramp it a lot faster
because i'm tapering out the other stuff
so i can still keep my total load
high but now get it very very specific
wow so everything i've done has always
been kind of an annual training cycle
and then again this was like a this was
a five-year training cycle but we just
kind of walked through the last year of
each and you can see how these concepts
play out in reality so in the cycling
so this is both for you but also for
more recreational
strength athletes let's say
there's variety injected into the system
you need variety yeah
yeah because you will basically stagnate
at some level right so you should
should always be kind of shifting a
little bit so um
three to four month blocks in general
for an average you know just a
gen pop fitness is pretty good um
where you're going to spend more time
maybe in a higher rep range or lower rep
range a little bit more
uh work on uh endurance capacity or
maybe some more time hey i'm playing
around with
boxing or jiu jitsu or something like
that bring that a little bit more to the
front forefront for a while and bring
the other out but like
mixing mixing those variables up but
trying to keep the total load the same
and always kind of like
no do we add a little more again it
doesn't have to be major and it
shouldn't be major you don't want these
big jumps you don't go
oh my god let's move uh let's jump into
squatting every day
um you've got to build the capacity to
do that
it's simple what role would you say
strength has in sports that combine
skill and strength
so for me personally maybe i'll just ask
it selfishly which is uh
grappling wrestling mma yeah
how about i start with baseball please
uh no i wouldn't okay i know the sport
okay
like baseball and golf for the two of my
favorite sports
uh no i don't you don't have to be in
shape at all to excel at those sports
well
here's the thing there so you're gonna
get this argument
well i've got a perfect example because
this is this is why i sell so many
transformer bars into the
the major league baseball so they get
these people
uh that come in these athletes that have
been
baseball their whole life it is part of
the culture
and so they're great athletes they've
got all this skill
the only thing they have to do is
develop a little bit more resilience
so that they don't have the injury they
can push their training a little bit
more
that we can add a little bit more force
output and
be able to recover from it so the only
thing they've got to do
is add some training but there's no
training culture there so they don't
have any experience which is why
they love the transformer bar because
they don't have to worry about teaching
the technique we can actually set the
bar on a setting that makes their squats
perfect
by queuing all the stuff with actually
not having to coach it because when
you're coaching a room full of athletes
it's really hard to teach the nuance of
all this and not sure
that all that but that's all that they
have to do with these players with
a huge level of skill so once you reach
a certain level of skill
adding strength is the the only real
forward path
so so that's the the basic simple answer
to that
um so one of the benefits there being
like injury prevention actually
injury resilience because especially uh
fighting sports you're going to be
challenged and thrown and other things
happen to you
and the more resilient you can make your
structures the better you're gonna be
even a cyclist
mountain biking why would they need it
why would they need to do upper body
training
take a crash your shoulder's gone you're
done
your career is over unless you've done a
little training
right so so there's value in all this
stuff but uh the resilience is like
that's that's huge and then we can
overlay strength
the people where we miss is this focus
on strength when we haven't developed
quality motor patterns first so this is
a huge thing with uh
children because people want to know
what's the appropriate training age
i'd had my daughter training before my
son because she developed
movement patterns at a better quality
earlier there's no age because it's
going to be very
dependent on the individual there's no
point in having adaptation if we don't
have the right
thing to adapt to yet and that applies
to general movement but also
the sport you see you're saying the
skills should be developed first and the
strength applied on top of that yep
maybe you can educate me but
i actually quit lifting and powerlifting
for a long time after i started um
judo jiu jitsu grappling all this sort
of combat sports
because i found that it was preventing
me from
relaxing my body enough to uh
load in the skill so this isn't
a problem with the uh training this is a
problem with you
yeah so this is actually really really
important
the first product i ever released was
a loadable mace a swinging mace
and because every power lifter and body
well not every but most
serious power lifters and bodybuilders
like shoulders
mobility is pretty limited
and most of them really really struggle
with this
the problem is they've been taught to
have tension all the time
and that's not good so when we talk
about like the joint positions that we
were talking about earlier and having
those and the muscles in the right
length and tension relationship
athleticism is the speed to relaxation
because the counter is speed to to speed
to contraction
float like a butterfly sting like a bee
right
and so what a mace can do is use that
because this is a
ties back into a developmental
kinesiology because
a lot of like reset patterns are getting
back into these basic movements but it's
as much about relaxation as it is
contraction
okay so a mace we have this weight on a
big long lever
so i if i grab a kettlebell and be like
let's say movement is a kettlebell halo
it is the same movement but here in the
halo i'm on
the whole time with the mace at the
proper length
with the right distribution you cannot
do the movement
you could not move force your way
through it the only way that you can
accomplish that
is by relaxing and then
now we now we can contract all the
muscles related around
that shoulder girdle all at once we're
working
on off on off on off with moving
and contracting and now so what happens
a lot of times as we
you know this stiffness and tightness
happens if we're in poor positions we
start using
stabilizer muscles to do the movement
and then that's where this stiffness
come from so it means that
in some of whatever training that you're
doing there's a deficit
in the movement quality okay or
there's a deficit in the training
program and you're not recovering from
and 80
of the time that's the right answer
right but yeah that's where the
where the gap is and learning how to
relax
and the way a lot of the exercises are
taught
and have been taught for a long time
which is why there's a big gap and this
is why
both clinical rehab and all these other
components are mixed in my philosophy
and what i'm trying to do with kabuki
strength
because i'm looking at holistic movement
i'm not looking at powerlifting
bass movements are what i want to load
and be able to assess on
but this affects all sports
all activities and strength doesn't have
to be that
i mean i i'm i'm freaking a thousand
pound squatter and dead lifter
if you watch any of my videos where i do
like complete quad fallbacks
i don't stretch at all i can usually get
close to a full split like if i want to
um what no i did not see those videos
okay
that's uh it's hard to believe wow okay
well actually i do i just did one
recently a quad fallback with my with my
mace loaded way out to the end
tortioning on both ends of the other and
like i do a lot of i do a lot of weird
stuff
um that's awesome okay squatting doesn't
make your hips tight squatting like shit
makes
your hips tight and so
but there is no perfect world we're
always our training program isn't quite
perfect our movement isn't necessarily
perfect like so you're going to have the
needs for this stuff
but if you're always have to do some
soft tissue work to loosen up the same
one
for that exercise to be able to get a
joint in position
there is a problem and i'm not saying
don't do it do it because i don't want
you to have a joint
like if i can't get my shoulders in a
position i can't do overhead presses
because i'm going to compromise my spine
position then i'm going to end up with
some other problems right
so go ahead and clean that up so you can
get in position
but go figure out why it is and fix it
and then maybe next you know three four
months from now they're gonna get a
little something else going on
fix it but understand the deeper root
reason of why
so i'm i believe i am the only company
manufacturing and selling you know
fascial soft tissue tools and i'll tell
you
i don't want you to use them
because it's not helping you get to the
why why it was caused in the first place
yeah
the goal the goal the perfect state is
not having to use them
reality is you're going to have to use
them from time to time because the
world's not perfect
yeah so your discovery is 100 on point
well there's another side to combat
sports
when you're beginning a particular
combat sport
strength can be a negative because
human psychology because you can get
away with a lot when you're strong
uh-huh yes you can
so if your mind is strong enough to
where you can just
turn off that advantage and be a
beginner
truly in a particular art that's
probably the best way to do it but you
can get away and then you don't learn
yeah yeah it's hard uh
it's hard not to use the little
advantages you have because like jiu
jitsu
is a big hit on on the ego for
you know especially guys you know when
like a smaller
person just destroys you dominates you
when you can i don't know deadlift
whatever number of pounds
and uh it's hard not to use that
strength to then resist
the slow the ultimate destruction by
like 120 pound
but that and that's why i recommend
developing the skill quality first
but it doesn't it doesn't mean that you
can't i can't you can still do it so
that don't take it as like
oh i can't go that direction that's fine
but understand those things and then
also understand the jiu jitsu is
additional load on the body
yeah so you have to you can't just add
it on top yeah
you've got to taper back the other
you're going to have to make a i'm sorry
you may not want to hear
it but you're not going to be able to do
as much
and add that here yeah it's a compromise
because your total volume still has to
be there and there's not unfortunately
not really a way to measure
what the jiu-jitsu volume is with this
so you've got to
take a look at that and that's where
like measuring like heart rate
variability or other stuff
can be useful so you can see what is
happening from me from a sympathetic
versus parasympathetic nerve nervous
system standpoint yeah making sure your
body recovers sufficiently
and trying to put numbers to it you
mentioned kabuki strength
you run the kabuki strength lab
previously called the elite performance
center in oregon
you called it the perfect gym what makes
uh for
the perfect strength training gym where
i called it the program in the video
somewhere i watched oh man
i mean that's where my testing grounds
for developing all this stuff was
through the years
and and so this is like i said i started
developing relationships with
the best developmental kinesiologist in
the in the us
the best arguably the best or most
well-known physical therapist in the
world the best
spine biomechanist in the world i
started doing continuing education with
these clinical courses and learning this
stuff and going
but how does it work in my world right
and then i started lecturing with them
and all this other stuff but
the lab was like where do we test this
stuff right
and so let me get to a point there's
three things there's always three things
so um to be a success
to achieve success i believe there's
three things that really really come
into place
and it's the right methodology
the right tools and the right
environment
and so it was all about building that
and so the methodologies came from a lot
of that
different that gray area interaction of
clinical with sports science right
and then the tools i had to start
creating and designing and then
the environment is having this you know
focused environment of people that want
to do better and push each other and
having
community and culture right i end up
building
these connections this network
everything that i'm doing with my
businesses
is trying to create that into a scalable
fashion and so i'm building the
groundwork because
to have a system that like yeah i had
clinicals on site that knew
exactly what we were doing and when it's
me and a few people in a small team and
all this stuff
we're all just like easy to manage and
you can see these there's other models
around this so
i've been other areas since maybe
whenever it was i filmed that video
that said that that they have that same
same model and it's taken
probably about a decade usually to
develop that you know and
having the right people in this
community they can create this
this network and the tool and all this
stuff right except they still don't have
the best tools because kabuki strength
didn't exist
um but uh but
and so out of that was is essentially
started building
this business and people like when did
you know how all this stuff was
connected and i'm like
i don't know i didn't i just started
creating on the outset
the things that worked until finally i'm
like oh i'm recreating
a scalable version of this stuff here's
the methodologies and a coaching
platform that we can manage clients
around the globe and see what's working
and not based on the scientific
principles of training right
how do we create that into a database
that now we can train
new coaches and they can use those same
metrics and tools to create programs
that are tailored to fit
a person's individual needs right now
how do we integrate that with
um assessment and clinical care
assessment and
and all these other pieces so there's a
lot of work in that
and so that's where kabuki strength is
the genesis but we have
we call our gym the kabuki strength lab
literally people find about our gym in
the neighborhood like how long have you
been here why
why do i not know about this we don't
advertise our gym at all
i feel like that makes no sense well
it's because the only reason is to have
a testing environment
for the tools and methodology and having
enough people to have
the culture and fit and to be able to be
part of the experiment
what about the environment of the the
feel of it the actual gym
there's a i don't know a grunginess to
it
i recently became a member of planet
fitness
for for reasons that have to do more
with the heat in austin that sometimes i
need to put in time on the treadmill
uh i don't like i don't have any
judgment honestly i don't the best
gyms i've been in are kind of dirty
you walk in and you know that work is to
be done yes there's not another reason
to do there
it is the the environment is tight
there's a big piece of that
um i know it's studied sociologically i
believe i just i just pictured that word
too
but the intensity when you start growing
a space
the intensity drops and so
i i had that experience when we grew we
went from a 4 000 foot to a 9 000 square
foot gym at one time
and everybody's like it doesn't feel the
same like
people are complaining for years we've
shrunk it back down when we're down to 3
500 square feet and it creates
that intensity it creates the closest
the connection with the people around
you
and then like i said the the grunginess
like you go in you know the intention
when you walk in that environment
creates that tension but when i speak
environment it's not just the
it's not the physical it's the people
but you know when the
gym is a little bit beat up yes it also
tells a story
like there's a history to it you could
tell that not only
is there work to be done that work has
been done here
yes like battles have been fought
there's something to that where
you're just in a long line of people
you know that uh fought and won
and we could get into a whole other
space so this would be a whole other
topic but
that existing energy of a space i mean
uh we mentioned offline joe rogan he
talks about the same with comedy clubs
there's certain there's certain clubs
that just have a history
there's an energy there you can get all
woo
but you know there is it's there it's a
real thing i think
you walk in and you can feel it and you
feel you feel it
yeah that makes me feel that somehow
all of us humans are connected in ways
that's hard to describe
even the ones who are no longer here
just the greatness that once was is
still
in the walls in the space present there
yeah and we somehow can plug into that
energy yeah
it's we can go down and
go down a path there there's something
really powerful there you've also
mentioned
a bunch of cool equipment that you've
developed as part of
kabuki strength probably a little bit of
that has to do with your
engineering education but also just
generally with the spirit
of the uh innovator that you are what
are some cool
maybe uh revolutionary pieces of
equipment that you're particularly proud
of or just uh
you've been obsessed with recently yeah
developing love to talk about that so
we've got some wild crazy stuff that
just came out and is coming out too
so everything that we create and release
a kabuki strength
the industry hasn't seen before
there's stuff that's basic foundational
that's been around forever because it
works
but there's always more it could be
better
and why are we not looking at these
things these foundational things so
when people are coming up with novel
things they end up being way different
outside the perspective and i'm coming
up with
things that are way different that are
plays
on what we already know works so we
talked about the transform bar the only
bar in the world we can manipulate
spinal mechanics
we can so everything everything for me
from a design concept that we develop
is all about creating products that can
rapidly accommodate
to the variability of an individual's
leverages mobility
and training needs okay and that's going
to also create and
distill down the size and scope of space
that we need which is
going to be continue to be an ongoing
thing check out my instagram after this
and you'll see i put an entire gym on
the bed of my truck
and went on vacation uh last week we
drove to the desert oh no
and by entire gym i mean uh squat rack
full complement of our specialty bars a
horizontal and vertical pulley system
handheld weights shoulder like a
complete
an entire gym in product that took up
the space the size of this bed
right here that's incredible because of
the design scope of what we have
so the cool things that there's two
other bars that
fit our biomechanically sound barbell
lines we talked about the transformer
bar
the other two are built on this thing i
call playground physics
so we have these bars with handles
that are off um off parallel
with the axis so they've been around the
market for a long time one is a
hex bar or a trap bar another one is a
it's a pressing bar with uh the handles
turned as well
and both of them suck they're horrible
any time any lifter knows if you pick it
up
it's going to break your wrist and crush
into your face and it just
it just doesn't feel good pressing but
it alleviates the strain on the wrist so
people use it for that reason
and the the the trap bar same thing it's
always diving forward in your hand so
it's kind of limited it's also limited
in use
because you can't you could do a lot
more with it so these bars are really
cool playground physics
so as soon as the center of rotation
is on the same axis as the
center of mass and the handle
is off center you have you have a
teeter-totter
so and a teeter-totter has a balance
point but it's infinitely perfect so
technically you can never find it it's
always going to be sitting on one side
or the other in a playground
and that's what these bars are designed
so you got in instability right here you
can't find the center the bar is always
trying to tip in your hands on the trap
bar
so you can't do carries with it because
you're doing forward momentum and it
wants to
it wants to dip on you right um the
swiss bar wants to crush your face well
what do we do we just make a swing put
center of mass below center of rotation
and what does it do oh it always finds
center
so so the handles on the our pressing
bar
it's arced so the handles are above
center of rotation
and then and then every angle instead of
just being a certain fixed angles
each angle is based on the width the
average width of an individual so the
internal and external rotational bias is
based
of the shoulder is based on the width
leaving just a little bit left because
we talked about the lat being a
stabilizer you still need to have a
little bit of q of external rotation to
engage
that as a stabilizer boom now all of a
sudden you have a bar and i kid you not
this is a great story
major league baseball when i presented
it every head strength coach for a major
league baseball team maybe not every but
damn near most of them have bad
shoulders they can't press they've got
shoulder surgeries so on and so we're
showing they love all our stuff and i'm
like hey i've got this cool prototype i
want to show you it's a pressing bar and
they're like oh you know
major league baseball's a little
hesitant on pressing because the dangers
for the shoulder
and i i can't i haven't been able to
take a bar to my chest i mean i'd really
love to it's been five years since i've
i've been able to uh to xx train and i'm
like
just try it like i can't even get a bar
to my chest without pain like just try
it
that feels good now the arc makes it
actually three inches deeper
so people are automatically scared i
can't do that because that's an extra
range of motion right
like oh put a plate on there they're
doing it by the time the staff's like
they're all standing around
you see like what's going on put two
plates on you see the
just like it gets up how do you feel
like
i feel fine no pain at all yeah i did
this
with five teams with five of the it
happening
repeatedly five times and that
they and every one of them worked up the
two plates and did the reps varied
with zero pain to a three inch range of
greater range of mass because what did
we do
we stacked all the joints and we
provided stability at the end we
balanced the internal and external
rotation
i mean just basic playground physics and
it changed the game
now we get a greater range of motion
with a greater training effect with the
negative stresses removed
our trap bar opened up one side which
there was already something like that
out there
created um it pops up so you can pick up
take the weights on and off it's got a
built-in jack
and then created the high handle
position which already did everybody
uses the high handle on a trap bar they
just don't know why they like it
the handle that's on center we offset
just a little bit not enough to make a
difference on the range of motion lift
or even notice visibly but it still has
the same effect so both handles now have
that
we added the option of different handle
sizes based on whatever your needs are
even the one that rolls to develop a
grip and then different widths that you
could choose from based on whether
you're training a teen athlete
or a seven foot six nba player or a nfl
lineman
um so that we can accommodate for all
these uh differences
and so and then now it becomes the most
functional all-around bar
around because now you can do carries
with it you can do split squats with it
you could do curls with it because it
goes around the body you can do overhead
presses because you don't have a thing
that gets in your way and you can flip
it up into position
you can do bent over rows and not run
into your shins you can do seal rows off
of a bench you can do ab roll outs
you could should i go on yeah so you
could use it as like the main
the best multi-purpose bar around you
got a home gym one bar
like how do you develop totally new
equipment like this i uh
scratch it on paper maybe
maybe weld some cut up and weld up a
prototype but usually i just
hand the scratched up paper to my uh
engineering manager
and that's what he says his job is to
distill my chicken scratch into
something real
and then that team picks it up uh but in
the old days starting out i just walk
out
i just walk out and do it i you talk
about engineering i'm actually more i
work more of an artist fashion it's in
my head and i just go create
with no plans and so they have to pick
that up and actually do the engineering
and testing and all that
and then we got two other products came
out this year freaking wild are you
familiar with uh training with a
flywheel
no no it's a flywheel maybe a flywheel
is a spinning object
that uh creates an inertial mass yeah
and then it reverses direction
so whatever you put into it and there's
one's out there um
but ours is the first patent pending
that's all
everything all in one unit so it's a
floor based as well as a horizontal so
you can basically do any pulley movement
in the world
and now everything that you put into it
on a concentric force it whips right
back is
is centric load gosh sure so there's an
accelerating whipping motion
it just yeah basically yeah i mean okay
i have to
have trouble imagining exactly many of
the things you're describing
i i suppose have to be experienced right
yes
so it's imaginable and there's a lot of
research they've been around they're
adopted more heavily in europe quite
heavily in europe but not as much in the
us
because they sell them as a be-all
end-all tool which they're not they're
crazy for what they do
but it's not the it's another tool and
so we have
um a very high quality unit now that is
half the cost of everybody else's
because
the innovation of a movable mount point
that you for them you have to have
two pieces of equipment we have one so
um and then a few other things better
platform to be able to do things and
that we can do what we call off platform
work which allows us to do
movements like uh punches and stand-ups
things like that
and then i've got a handheld weight
coming out next month that we can
actually play with
so varying the load with it never
leaving your hand by changing the
leverage point
we're talking about here anything that
would be a a dumbbell or a kettlebell
movement
so it functions it does the function of
a kettlebell a dumbbell and what we call
a center mass bell
as well as provides variable loading
within a range so
how can you change like how can you
change the load
because the load well we don't actually
change the load we change the torque
on the on the joint that we're working
which is the same that's actually what
is creating the force right so if i'm
doing a front raise
it's where this this downward force is
times the distance away right
which also then makes it no force when
i've got at the bottom of the front ways
which is why it's so easy
with this it's like a kettlebell it's
offset except it has three different
handles
but it's offset just a kettlebell you
can't do it because the offset so far it
becomes a wrist movement
so ours has three different sizes in the
offset just enough
so that you can pick if i put it in the
front raised position or curl position i
could put it in outward position
and the force is almost what it is at
the at the top but then i get the top
and it's the same exact or the curl
so i can actually change the force curve
in the movement and then
i can just release the pressure a little
bit and let it swing into position and
keep doing a drop set with never letting
it down
yeah yeah so it's got a really nice
textured grip that allows you to hold it
in different positions
and then the load offset is just enough
that it doesn't overpower the wrist
and then you got different hand sizes so
that you can maximize this relationship
and hit
whatever joint that you're applying that
sounds incredible
it's really freaking well it's awesome
because you can because the variable
load
now i could go straight from front
raises to side raises or rear or curl
because without like because i don't
have to put it down so now my time under
tension
goes through the roof and by the way the
same effect with a flywheel trainer
because the variable res
whatever you put into it is what it
kicks back so you have
an constant time under tension because
there's no rest points either so all
this stuff is working on maximizing time
under tension
um which anyway it it's that's cool
stuff
anyway i get i get excited uh well let
me ask you about another thing you've
already mentioned but
i find this really interesting which is
barefoot running and
your sort of uh company barefoot
athletics
yeah b-e-a-r and the tagline is
optimizing the human
to ground interface we've talked about
this a little bit
with uh the power lifting how do you
think about
the the foot ground interface
it's interesting that we know
that we should train all these parts of
our body to be able to be stronger
be more resilient like
but we think that the foot is different
that we need to package it and modify it
and somehow that that's the science of
making
you know it healthy where i challenge
people
think about that like first thing you do
in the morning is
roll out of bed and put your
weightlifting belt on and wrap it on
tight and wear it till you go to bed at
night
do it with your shoulders your knees
wake up and put some knee wraps on
okay and elbow wraps and see what
happens
one you'll get weaker you'll lose
movement capacity
and you'll start affecting other areas
of the body very negatively because they
will start picking up the compensation
for those joints that are not moving
properly
this is it what shoes are for
is to protect you from the environment
from cuts and abrasions
and heat and things like that but the
foot
let me the mind blowing is like every
other
area of the body you need to use it and
you need to strengthen it and you need
to learn to control it
that's it that's all i have to say about
the subject okay
it's that simple but somehow we have
been
sold entire industries like the
orthotics industry
it's completely false meta-analysis of
the data shows that orthotics do nothing
beyond temporary relief
from pain over a six eight week period
of time and provide no long-term benefit
and i can't tell you how many people
i've eliminated back or knee or hip pain
from getting from working on
strengthening and controlling the foot
and ankle complex
we believe we've villainized and said a
low arch
is a condition that needs fixed
like when it really is just controlling
the foot and ankle complex and how they
relate to each other and how we use that
is it like
go put on boxing gloves in the morning
and do that for the next 20 years and
see what happens
it's not about finding the right shoe
that fits because your foot has been
deformed
and so i'm not like some wacky goo like
oh you got to be barefoot forever do
this like no i'm just saying
go spend some time using it strengthen
it
learn to control it and you'll work
better in a shoe but
the whole running shoe movement with the
raised heel that was
the person that that suggested that that
in
to nike way back when they were trying
to figure out what to do
the reason and he says it's it's the
worst thing that he ever did
um because we were coming from an
era of people wearing heeled shoes which
by the way came from um
stirrups way back in the day that's
where the whole heel came from is to go
into stirrup but then it went into
fashion and then
the running craze started coming around
in the
they're 70s they're starting to push
this the general mass population and
they realize that they were causing
injuries and like what are we gonna do
well that's because everybody was in
this position
and had a shortened uh shortened calf
muscle it's like well the work around
let's just put a heel on it so we don't
injure them
that's it and now because the raised
heel you got to raise the toe and then
now with that if you go stand on
something and pull your inner toe in
and in a squat position just reach down
and do it you'll see that you have no
control
over the internal and external rotation
of your of of your leg
you don't and or your foot and you
actually have to put a support in
for the arch to be able to passively
control those structures
it's just band-aid on top of band-aid on
top of band-aid
use it strengthen it if you want to wear
some shoes because they look good or
fancy i'm like i have no problem i mean
i got a wife my wife will put on some
high heels every now and again
like but all i'm saying is use your foot
my thousand pound squat my thousand
pound deadlift we're done barefoot i'm
not trying to sell you shoes
go do it with no shoe that's what i've
been promoting
i did that for six years and i promoted
it but people ask me like
what do i do because my gym requires
shoes
okay where do i go and uh and then i go
well
you know you could pick up these uh
other finger shoes or whatever and they
go man
my wife won't have sex with me and i go
i know
mine either like trust me i'm not making
this up
everybody in that market markets to one
segment and they're still missing some
gaps
because they they still have a little
bit too narrow of a toe box and with
your lifting you have the opportunity
to really get that splay and start
working on this stuff better
so i just wanted to create a shoe these
ones are odd colored because it's a
partnership with kabuki
normally we've got a black or a gray low
top high top
sticks to the ground for lifting so we
can do that and very pliable it's a
moccasin
it's a modern-day moccasin but looks
okay that you can wear it around in
other areas if you
if you so choose like you know what the
number one healthcare cost in america is
what's that diabetes
uh heart disease cancer
low back pain
now what do you attribute low back pain
to well it's attributed to a lot of
things
um but inability to control spinal
position um which
starts happening from uh some breathing
issues uh it also happens from
the foot um so there's a lot of stuff
but everything that i do actually
focus on improving this yeah so that and
it all starts with
this is one thing like this doesn't
affect breathing but um
so it does actually affect breathing to
some elections and spinal stabilization
so
the raised heel and toe will make you
stride further
because of just how it operates but that
over stride
is a result of opening this so we opened
the pelvis and diaphragm did we talk
about that and the impact that that has
for controlling in spine yeah i think we
touched on that yeah
um but it it's all this stuff plays
together so the gate affects that and so
the shoe affects the gate and then
so it's all connected all connected let
me be very
purposeful with some conversation here
though we've talked about periodization
this was a big gap so people go yeah
well when people started running with
those they started having injuries
back when the finger company produced
those and didn't do the education around
this very simple concept
you do not walk into the gym if you
haven't squatted and start squatting 225
from
for max rex every week day or every day
over day
yeah and that's what people did because
they did weren't told that
you need to build the capacity to do
this
you go wear these and walk around in
your office or wherever all day long
your feet are gonna hurt they're gonna
be sore
do it for 10 of your time yeah
do that for a month then add some that
will build the capacity
to do this and then that's going to
start having the ability to strengthen
manage the foot there's a whole lot of
other stuff i've got videos on
things that you can do buy whatever you
want or just
just spend some time out of them like
that's all that i want people to do
because it is so
simple and it has such a profound impact
yeah it does i
what i did uh i noticed when you walked
uh when i walked in i was like oh hey
you're spending some time without the
last shoes on
uh well what i did um i think it's
already now two years ago when i was
doing a lot of running i do like a 10
mile run
i would take my shoes off for the last
like half mile and i run like that
and that was for me really helpful to
ensure that i have proper form
form that minimizes pain on the way i
run i still like shoes
i benefit a lot from shoes the
protection they provide but
it's for running um we're referring to
especially trail lining and so on and in
the city when there's glass and all
those kinds of things
but it's really important to have
minimal sort of protection on your feet
for me at least it was to figure out
the ways that my form basic movement
and like the positioning in the foot the
impact of the foot
and everything you know the the the
lower leg
the entirety of the torso really how
it's improperly positioned
in terms for the objective of minimizing
pain and the barefoot running really
help
uh fix that for me because i figured out
that i need to take
shorter steps uh more frequent
you know all those kinds of things and
that really helps you figure that out
like let's be realist about stuff like
um
spend some time using it strengthen it
and i've got some great ways to to do
that and learn how to do that so
yeah what is a good diet for strength
development
i've uh just to give you some context
i've been eating mostly meat
not for strength mostly for mental
performance i just enjoy it
yes you need to have a base level of
protein
building blocks for tissue right we need
to have enough fats to be able to have
hormones work and key processes in the
body
we need to have well you don't need to
have from a performance aspect
carbohydrates necessarily because the
other ones can convert into injury
sources but
for a performance athlete carbohydrates
can be very beneficial
as well so so i look at it as
you want you need a base level fats you
need a base level of proteins and then
you adjust
the carbohydrate intake based on the
needs i'm not anti-carbohydrate by any
means
because a lot of people will they look
at me now when they see like how lean i
am and they are they jump to a
conclusion you must be keto you must be
carnivore you must be whatever and it's
like
so losing and gaining weight is simply
eating less
or eating more i mean it ah
and we get so complicated oh that my fat
they're like what's your fasting window
if i'm if i'm doing fasting it's just
because it works with my
my environment sometimes i do it
sometimes i don't
all that does is control how much
calories that you take
big success with keto and carnivore
diets it's hard to eat a lot
uh and and put on weight with those with
those diets
um you know protein actually has a
thermogenic effect
and so you have to have a massive amount
of fats if you have a
only meat diet because you can literally
starve to death
there's a there's a show where they put
people out in the wilderness and this
guy
the one that won one of the ones i
looked in they threw him away like up in
the uh
past a lot you know out the way out
there there was nothing but he somehow
got a caribou and killed it
and he still lost a pound a day for 30
days with a caribou
because his fat was stolen by a uh uh
and and he could eat all the meat he
wanted yeah and they he almost got
pulled because his weight lost right
um but that isn't actually a performance
so those type
keto and carnivore are not performance
diets so
they're not going to be as effective at
supplying
the energy needs for high capacity
training so don't get me wrong you can
do training but like
you can be a successful like elite
athlete
with a with a vegan diet but it's not
as easy to do it with other diets so
and you're missing some base nutrients
so many nutrients in meat
i believe uh having greens in your diet
is really beneficial lots of research
but there's people in the other worlds
that argue that you don't need them but
they help
clear organs provide micronutrients all
this sort of stuff so
i eat simply a whole well-rounded diet
and i've gone from
i can go from 285 pounds squatting a ton
of weight
to eating less and dropping all the way
down to you know seven eight percent
body fat with veins standing out
everywhere without a
tissue on me just with amazing great
tasting food
to lose weight or be healthy does not
mean that you need to eat
flavorless bland food so
that's the main thing portions it's eat
less to lose weight
eat more to gain weight yep make sure
that you've got enough protein make sure
that you've got your micronutrients
covered which is going to cover by
eating real food
don't go low fat no fat if you want a
performance don't go no carb but if it
works any of those things
so diet approach when you look at diets
understand that they're how aggressive
they are so
like keto can make you lose a lot of
weight carnivore can make you lose a lot
of weight a lot of that up front
is actually dropping glycogen stores so
you're actually just reducing water in
your muscle and fat tissue
um so which is why it doesn't isn't as
great for a performance diet
but understand that every diet
also has a level of discipline and does
it fit your
lifestyle so i suggest people don't find
a diet
you need to find a lifestyle because
that's what's sustainable i hate the
word
diet to begin with what behaviors
are sustainable and then do that
and then over time the things you'll get
to where you need to get
diet itself just by the name of it
is not sustainable because it it is a
short-term
thing to get somewhere yeah
i tend to try to measure it because i
definitely have a love-hate relationship
with food
i tend to look back and say like by
following this particular
protocol lifestyle whatever what was the
level of happiness
yes so not like weight loss or
weight gain or all those kinds of things
it's the entirety of the picture
productivity
just feeling good throughout the day
socially also like yeah
interacting with people because so much
of uh human connection like i mentioned
before is over food
and if you're going to limit yourself
well in that regard you're limiting a
certain fundamental aspect of life
a number of years ago um i did uh
like 20 to 22-hour fasts every day
and i'm like well this doesn't work i'm
i can't do business lunches and stuff
like that so when i was in my fasting
thing i went to a 16 so i could have a
light lunch
just for the social aspect of it and
perform a little perform that like
and then that's why and that's why like
the typical bodybuilding like the eight
meal a day diet
um has never worked for me because i've
always been a very bit like trying to
fit that between meetings and other
stuff
what that diet provides is it just you
get less bloat and distension of a
larger meal
but at the end of the day you get the
same exact results pick a lifestyle
live that you can have really great
tasting food
and that to me is the same thing and
this is why i'm like really hitting this
point
because also with the dieting and like
the approach like
oh i'm gonna do this and people pick
these chicken and broccoli
recipes and guess what you're going to
break if you do not in
if you do not enjoy it you will break
so that's it is a very important point
well i also slightly push back or maybe
to elaborate
if you don't enjoy moderation
for me particularly um i have trouble
moderating certain things
most foods i would say so my source of
happiness comes with
foods even if they're bland the ones
that can enjoy but enjoy moderation
so there's i mean i enjoy every piece of
food so it's like it's uh if you can
enjoy
the the full lifestyle it's not just the
particular experience but like
the full journey yep does it fit your
lifestyle yeah
yeah so let me ask about uh
a complicated uh topic that's sometimes
a bit controversial which is steroids it
may be
a trt testosterone replacement therapy
what role does that play in strength
training all right
we're gonna uh we're gonna go there
let's go uh yeah
but it's an important discussion to have
um i think that uh it's something that i
can be
more transparent on um in my past i
wasn't
able to do to the career that i had so
just like
covering that stuff in a you know one on
a public forum
when you're highly looked at
being an executive for recruiting and
other stuff like
it was an area i had to just kind of
pass on right now i've used steroids
i've used them since i was 33
and i basically just used trt
now after my big squat so for 10 years
i used them and there's some interesting
uh components to this so um
one is just the the gray area of what we
call performance enhancing
supplements so uh performance was it
peds
um that the line of what defines a ped
is ever shifting and it's shifting based
on
society norms cultural norms government
bonding agencies all these sorts of
stuff so i'm not making excuses here so
i just want to elaborate before i
actually start digging into the details
here
because performance enhancing i could
take
sodium bicarbonate and
enhance my ability to perform deadlifts
for reps
guess what i did that for my guinness
world record for deadlifts in a minute
okay people do it for rowing or other
they use high capacity uh
type stuff it is performance enhancing
it is a chemical it is baking soda
all right um they're not able to make it
illegal because they
everybody eats bread well not everyone
and so it's a little hard to test
for no matter what you do at any level
so that's an extreme example
but other examples um you're drinking a
an energy drink in that
cup there a little while ago and in
america you can get an energy drink with
240 milligrams of caffeine in it
in canada that's too dangerous you can
only get 140
but you can go buy ephedra and ephedra
is illegal in america
and so these things bounce back and
forth all the time
i could take yohimbi and in europe or
australia
it is a drug and classified and america
it's
it is not it's a it's an herbal root
uh in a lot i actually haven't won one
of my supplements except for the
overseas version
anyway the point i'm getting is no
matter what you do
at some point there's by someone's
standards
you are cheating and
because it is you're taking something
that
but you could work around these things
with nutritional ways or other ways
versus taking a chemical structure and
there's a whole lot of ways to do this
but
it's like oh no it's steroids it's not
it's injectable it's not well
somewhere there's a culture or a person
that will say you're cheating no matter
what so it's a self-defined
you need to define it for yourself
unless you're competing in an
organization
that has testing then it's a straight
ethical
uh thing and it's either right or wrong
in my opinion
that's that's kind of the the overall
dilemma of it is
if you want to see what you're totally
capable of
you have to decide decide yourself
what's
okay or not to to that level there is no
there is no body that can say something
yes or no
yeah when there's an event like the
olympics maybe then
you have a standard that you're all
trying to adhere to
and then it makes sense to keep a
certain like to be within there's an
ethical there's no so yeah i'm not
talking about
that i'm agreeing to compete in this by
these by these rules yeah but when
you're trying to
maximize your own performance whatever
that journey is whatever
that goal is that's a different story
and it's not it's not easy to figure
that out
you go up you're just like dancing
around the subject whatever
well guess what i've got a i've got a
prescription for growth hormone and
testosterone
it's legal for me to take and you know
what
a lot of the people that are in front of
the camera in the media
politicians and news people and the
people that
are there saying the the no drug stuff
they're going to anti-aging clinics to
look better and they have a prescription
for growth hormone
and testosterone themselves but in their
eyes
it's okay it is a prescription from
their doctor because they have the money
to do it so it's legal
and it's fine if i it's interesting in
oregon
anybody and i don't know what other
states over the age of 16
can without parents permission by the
way walk into a gender clinic
and as a female and get a prescription
for testosterone
but as an athlete if i've got low
testosterone
i am so low i've got depression i
can't have sex with my wife it's
affecting my quality of life
i will have to fight tooth and nail to
get testosterone
just as a prescription and then i will
get kicked out of my organization for
competing
like so you understand how gray this
stuff gets do you think the stigma
on testosterone is the reason we're not
having like a healthy conversation about
when it's proper
like what are the proper uses of
testosterone in an athlete's life in
just a regular human life
yeah absolutely i mean and it's just
it's like anything
it's like i said it is lines that we
pick and draw anytime you
put that out there people are going to
have different opinions where those
lines are
so now when it comes to strength here's
an interesting thing in powerlifting
there's tested federations and
non-tested federations so we can
literally look at the statistical data
and actually find out what do steroids
do
and so it's pretty clear that steroids
provide about a ten percent
increase in strength on average over
not now that does take out the fact that
steroids will put you in
uh allow you to put on more mass so
you'll go up a weight class
a lot of times so as a whole you could
definitely lift
more probably than the 10 over time
right and then we think about steroids
as the ability to just put on muscle
and here's where things get a little
interesting even with people that use
steroids is not understanding the
neurological impacts
that steroids have because you could
take some steroids
right now and be stronger in 10 minutes
that's clearly not done anything you
know from a physiology
standpoint to make you stronger but we
have a tapped in
neurologically to to elicit those gains
and there's a whole lot that happens
neurologically like how much science
is there in terms of all the different
ways you could take steroids
which kinds of steroids the timing the
the dose
the all of those things to develop the
the neurological the physical the
skeleton like all
all the you know you've talked with such
depth about the science
of strength building in terms of
form uh in terms of the equipment that
you use
it seems like a component
you know the use of steroids should be
an equal
level of scientific rigor when applying
them it is
now the research is harder to to get
because of what it is um but there is a
lot of research
that was done when they were legal so
they were legal up in
through the uh through i think the mid
80s and so
a lot of the classical um high
high benefit to low risk steroids were
studied
and then since then there's a lot of
like designer steroids or new steroids
that have come up that
don't have a lot of research around
safety
and risk and things of that nature and
we can't do that because it's
you know because of the legality around
these things
but some of the stuff on the
neurological function is really
just understanding how that chemical
structure uh
works and what it's doing to the
neurotransmitters what it's doing
and so some of it is is really talking
to people that have experience with it
um
and the other is understanding those
structures and what they do
the neurological component i think is
more interesting than
than most because the most steroids act
through increasing muscle protein
synthesis that's how you add more muscle
is they have an anti-catabolic effect
and they have a muscle protein synthesis
enhancing effect so it reduces the
amount of muscle that you waste and
increases the amount of muscle that you
put on
but the neurological component
is is tremendously valuable for what it
can do
for your training workout like if i
handle more load over time
i'm going to make more progress if i can
actually just stimulate more
neurological effects for a specific
event
it's going to have an impact right but
there's other ways that you can tap into
this too
things that you can tap into mentally
with great practice with meditation and
other stuff that
will have the same effect people
probably think i'm over speaking
especially
steroid users that are listening to this
at least i'm talking out my ass
but i'm not because i i
i have experience with this stuff on
both ends and some of those areas a lot
of people don't have
the experience with that what i've kind
of
heard from people is the the confidence
that comes with steroids it feels like
not to call it placebo but it seems like
the psychological benefits of steroids
is huge
and that you feel like uh there's a
confidence
that seems to be uh coupled with the
actual biological and chemical effects
i have a actually a neurological
condition um so i actually don't
feel a lot of that stuff that people
because there's certain steroids that
like people will like
you're like very extreme ones um
like that would make somebody bite
someone's ear off in a fight for example
yeah
um aggression that and
they'll literally do nothing i'm like
always just chilling and
they don't like effect
but but neurologically they're still
having those effects but i don't get
those feels that
other people uh have from those but yes
there's that immediate boost in
aggression
and the confidence and stuff that come
with a lot of those ones that deal on
the neurological
overall a good sense of well-being just
like from being on testosterone like
it's going to affect your mood and it's
interesting so testosterone replacement
therapy
if we walk down that path now and kind
of switch gears
you know we find that men today have
declining testosterone
over what has historically been in the
past so
right now i think a 35 year old
testosterone
is shown to be about half what it was
just 50 years ago so i don't know if
we could argue the point we don't really
have the science to validate any of it
but
it could be uh society as far as the
impact that it's having on the
mental uh health uh for
men it could be the the estrogens
floating around in the water
from all the chemicals and birth control
and all this sort of stuff could be a
lot of things
but it is a fact that average
testosterone is significantly lower
and that is going to end up affecting
life
quality of life as well as your
longevity because it will affect those
things but on the other end
steroids and trt particularly steroids
come with a lot of negative health
benefits
not benefits a lot of negative health
ramifications
and so you know if i knew what i know
now
i don't know that i would have gone that
path i didn't i didn't tell i was 33
which is kind of an outlier for a
strength athlete um
i was i was a four times body weight
deadlifter 800 plus pounds at
198 and it's pretty dang strong uh
before i
went down that path uh and that's
because i wanted to see what i was
capable of but i was reaching a point
that
it was either i need to do that or not
my testosterone my natural testosterone
levels
were actually um i think below 300
is actually the threshold so i was being
told to go on trt for the last
couple years probably just because i was
pushing so hard and the stress level was
driving my test down so it was
self-imposed
more than likely but i put it off
because i wanted to set all the
drug-free
records and i set the ones that i wanted
and then it was 33 i'm
you know entering the age category and
i'm like i'm going to go on trt
i did not feel like i should be with trt
personally my ethical standard was i
shouldn't be competing in tested events
anymore
um there are federations that will allow
you with your you show up with your
script and you do your test and you're
below a certain level but you're still
on
which but for me i'm like that's not
over you won't come so i'm like i may as
well at this point use steroids
um but since then you know understanding
all those ramifications
uh you know i might not have gone down
that route quite so fast
and easily but i continued because i
also have a lot of resources that other
people don't in being able to assess and
understand and put things in place to
mitigate that so you need to be
and the other thing is once you go on
it's literally a decision for life
not neces but realistically is because
your your quality of life your feeling
is going to be enhanced quite a bit
and you're not going to want to go back
and if you go back it's going to be less
than it was before
that's how the endocrine system works
there are ways to try to recover and
bring that up but it might be a while
and if you've been on for a while it
definitely is not an option
so those are big things that people need
to understand that you're going to have
some things in there
and even trt has some potential
especially with at higher levels that
it's going to
you know increase the risk for prostate
cancer
it's going to potentially cause some
hypertrophy of the left ventricle of the
heart and some potential
plaque buildup of the some of those key
arteries around there that's going to
have an impact on
your cardiovascular health there's
things that you can do
again but everything is like the shoe
story right where i'm anti-anti-shu
but i'm going well we can put band-aids
on this yeah um so it's
there's a quality of life that comes
with it the increase in quality of life
and if you do it correctly i think and i
think for me for me i definitely would
not live without trt even with knowing
what i know now
um it this age and the quality of life
and being able to be there have the
energy
the recovery that's a big thing where
all this so i talked about
muscle protein synthesis and
anti-catabolism as being big drivers
but recovery is the other big aspect
that they that they offer probably as a
result of those but
um that's gonna those are gonna be the
big enhancements so
just doing steroids steroids is going to
increase all the other stuff that you do
so if you've
if you have good training you have good
diet good quality of sleep like all this
other stuff
then you can take advantage of that but
you could shoot steroids and nobody
would know
and honestly you go down to 24-hour
fitness and you'll see a bunch of
you know late you know 19 to 21 year old
kids that are all kind of red and
150 pounds that look like that don't
look like anything yeah
and there a bunch of them will be using
steroids
because yeah they're not like so it's
it's not the it's not going to make a
champion like you said it's not going to
at most
guess what i was already at an elite
level i was one of the best in the world
before i started using it doesn't it
doesn't do that
it does a 10 increase at best yeah and
that's proven in the statistics which is
interesting because most people don't
know this like
it the data is right there yeah
yeah and that's why i i'm often saddened
by
maybe um the negative
view of somebody like lance armstrong
who's
one of the greatest athletes in history
and everybody else that he was competing
against i'm sorry
yeah i hate to blow anybody's bubble but
regardless if i told you my ethical uh
pieces with
saying that you're going to be at
something at an elite level
you look at most a lot of those big
figures out there
when the their income and your life
relies on it yeah you're going to push
those limits so
maybe maybe my ethical would change if
if if i was in that position too
because here's the thing what i believe
like
someone is i think people should avoid
steroids
um trt probably something worth taking a
look at what your levels are when you're
in the 35 to 45 range
and see what decision you decide to make
from there and that's a decision that
you make for
the rest of your life the only times
that you should be taking a look at
steroids
is if it's it's funding your life it's
creating
that it is your job and it's doing like
and honestly
it was for me like i so
was it the only thing no no
if you want to get into neurology uh
neurotransmitters
and alcohol there's a really interesting
discussion on performance enhancement um
so when i lift heavy
um and so i always promote it like not
more than a drink or two like once or
twice a month is what all i'm talking
about when i'm
when i'm saying this so like what's the
timing of the drink over talking
it's about three to five minutes before
yes
and we're talking about beer it doesn't
matter the uh the source
so um i shots are the easiest you want
something that is not going to have some
sort of regurgitatory effect or
bloating effect or anything like that
but you want to have the quick hit of
energy so it's a
preferential energy source moves above
ketones carbs
everything it's seven calories per gram
but then there's
some really interesting things that
happen spikes blood pressure which is
going to make weights feel lighter
so when you're in your early 20s and
you're trying to hit up you know
some attractive person at the bar and
you're with your buddies
and you're like ah you know and you got
second guess oh should i
and they go have a shot of liquid
courage
and you have one and all of a sudden the
the second thoughts the second guessing
all that drops away like you're focused
in the moment uh
and you walk over and you actually
perform a little better like
conversation wise than you normally
would now if you have five or six and
then go over
you're gonna make a fool of yourself so
it's all about timing an amount but
there is a reason that that happens
so anyway i'm known for promoting this
whiskey and deadlift concept
um i love this but but it works like the
eastern block bloc
that's where that's where i stole it
from because i was watching
all these russian lifters would have a
shot of vodka or something before they
go lyft and i'm like there's something
here
so i started experimenting with it and
i'm like that works and then i started
researching nobody talks about this
stuff so it takes a while to start
piecing together
all the stuff that actually happens to
make that happen but
it moves away the things that you're
going to
the concerns about the ramifications in
the future and the other stuff so the
um but brings you into the moment and
then the
the dopamine hit in the other and then
it uh enhances whatever mood that you're
in but all of a sudden you get
in the state much
easier and so it's really really
interesting but it's
very it's a very small amount needed and
very time sensitive
but it can be so much more powerful than
like drugs people use
for this stuff it ties really together
with meditative state and other pieces
to
to to get you into that flow state those
thoughts about
failure what if whatever like all that
you you get into
that zone that moment that time
um anyway so interesting and alcoholic
is promoting out you know
uh no but there's an important point
here it's not often talked about i think
it is fascinating that
because you can get into so much trouble
with alcohol when used in excess people
don't often talk about the
the positive aspects of alcohol even in
your
college years it had
it had a lasting effect on who i am as a
person i don't think people can
give enough credit to the positive
aspect see
you could have accomplished a lot of
those same things with a little more
moderation
which i think people should talk about
more which is like
the the way to open up a personality
like the flowering of the full character
and the weirdness
and the the like the beauty of who you
are as a human being could be opened up
with alcohol
and that's really interesting to think
about you should try some podcasts
with a with a shot and and these yeah
you know actually
with myself and guests and it will
change the conversation lubricates this
the conversation definitely not the
excess and which is what i learned
because i went all the way in because i
do everything at extremes
yeah so it was a really hard lesson that
took me a lot of time to unwind
but it is interesting and people don't
discuss those things because it's
it's either this or this you're one of
the greatest strength
athletes of all time so it's worthwhile
to consider
how you optimize the the feast of
strength that you
reach for uh with things like steroids
it makes perfect sense and i think that
was a
from my perspective i think it was
probably the right decision you've
achieved something incredible that
inspires
a huge number of people that's it and
you've shown to yourself into the world
but what the human body can accomplish
yep that's incredible
and no matter if i push to a less weight
and if i disclosed everything that i did
and i didn't when i wasn't using
steroids in my opinion if we went
through everything there would people
that would say
you're using performance enhancing yeah
no matter what like it is
it's straight up so you just need to be
okay with it yourself and so i had to
make the call
i want to see what the true potential is
of
ever let's throw everything out the
window that i feel unless i feel it's a
risk
from a from a health standpoint that i'm
not willing to take on
and because that's how do i like
it's just picking and choosing yeah and
it's just picking and choosing i
here's what i want to know this is what
i want to be able to try to achieve
and so yeah yeah that's what i did and
and what you did
is incredible like it's it's just awe
inspiring and it was pretty
strong did was incredible yeah and uh
and that aced me up
and what's funny is the people that
basham are like on the media or
politicians or maybe some actors
and guess what a ton of them are doing
the same thing
it's hypocrisy at its finest trust me
but how many
how many of those figures you're
watching in movies that love to talk
you know people you know be political
and do this and
the news and all this i'm telling you
there
there's anti-aging clinics like all
over california and everywhere else
who do you think just keeps them in
business well it's not the competitive
lifter i'll tell you that
well that's yes and they're using
peptides and also
in psalms and all sorts of like
you're speaking to the hypocrisy i also
want to speak to the
the fact you know somebody's a friend of
mine david goggins i don't know if you
know that is
ultra marathon runner um navy seal
he gets pretty incredible person yeah
incredible human being and he gets
criticism like
you know what you're doing is um is bad
for the body you know you're you're
pushing yourself too far
i find that the people that criticize
are often people that
haven't truly pushed themselves to the
limit
they haven't actually worked hard in
their life when you
work hard you realize how incredible it
is that a human being
can dedicate themselves so fully to an
effort
the way you did the way david goggins
does
the way the way the greatest athletes do
and
there's nothing that should be said
beyond just sitting back in awe
that humans can achieve that and that
inspires me
to do the best whatever the hell i do to
be the the best version of that
there's something about like athletic
feats especially like
strength that just en
inspire us to do the best uh to be the
best version of ourselves i don't know
and
that's the only thing you should be
saying as opposed to
uh criticizing some little detail of
this and that
it's just an awe inspiring that you push
yourself anybody that is at that level
and this is funny like in competitive
sports like you go online and people is
just bash bash bash
bash back back you go talk to anybody
anybody
anybody that's a high-level athlete
within that field
and nobody has a single bad thing to say
about each other
but all this chitter chatter down there
i mean i know exactly what you're saying
so if you i i would say because i have
love for
all those folks especially when you're
younger you have a little bit of that
desire to criticize others like i think
that should be channeled
in improving your own life any time that
you feel that way
that is when you need to turn inward
yeah and it's hard to do
but there is a reason that you have
those emotions
around someone else and what they're
doing that
you have an opportunity to look at
yourself and know why you
feel that way and that guess what that's
going to be the hard thing to do that's
going to be the thing again that's
stirring you a little bit because it's
so much easier to sit there
and uh or talk to your confidante or
whatever instead of go
why does that bother me yeah why does
what that person doing or what that
person's achieving
bother me it's like a difficult question
that i often ask others
whether it's better to work hard or work
smart
i like to ask that question because it
helps me get a sense of the human being
and i think i
let me just say like i often
i often like people that answer that
would work hard
even though the quote unquote right
answers work smart
meaning like finding the optimal
efficient way to achieve a certain goal
i find that people that answer work
smart
don't actually find the optimal
efficient way to achieve a goal
it seems like the people that at least
certainly early in life
strive to work their ass off even that
means
doing the inefficient the dumb thing
just to learn
the mistake the spirit behind the human
spirit behind the person that says
or a card is is the one that i connect
with but i'm
i'm torn especially in the in the war
culture in the tech sector where people
answer work smart
what would you um what would you say
about that technician
this definitely encompasses like
i i'm the intellectual and i'm the meat
head
i'm the work around the clock yeah and
go fix the processes and make it so much
better
type person right that's that's that's
me and all that's everything that's my
life story right
busting your ass to find the easiest way
possible
to both so like
i will i will build
a custom hydraulic cart that will lift
my plates up to the height of my
my squat so that i can minimize they
roll it over next to it and then
minimize the effort of it going on and
off
yeah to be able to lift the most amount
of weight as possible
yeah so so that i can save the energy
from here
from lifting those up and the fatigue of
my back being in bad position
so i can nearly kill myself over here
yes right i
[Laughter]
my wife anybody will say i'm a
workaholic yeah
and the the first thing that i would do
when it would be uh doing
a company a company turnaround they'd
hire me come in
and i would be taking over for someone
that wasn't successful
but it was usually hardly ever for lack
of want or trying
so a lot of times they knew they were
unsuccessful and they were running
around
working six seven days a week 12 hour
days
doing so much and be like well you need
to do this and they train me on like
all the reports and this and all the
things and like good luck
good luck i couldn't do it and the first
thing i would do
is nothing
i would do nothing
because then i would find what actually
keeps coming back the things that i need
to do and how much of it was filling the
space
because so much of human nature when
you're failing
is to make yourself feel like you're
accomplishing things this is when things
go on your list
on your checklist and you start like
rolling up so
are you running around just getting shit
done yeah yeah being busy
right and so yeah so
but at the same time like find somewhere
in my career something i've done
where i haven't outworked everybody just
so much on distilling
things down to what's important yeah and
you've got to make time to
sit back and assess and
think and be introspective you have to
make time for this
because if not you're going to waste so
much time sitting there
walking sideways when
all you got to do is move just one step
in front of the other each day just one
that's all i say because
it's gonna add up but you could spend
six months
knocking shit out doing your routine
busting your ass
and not take that one step
so you've got to distill stuff down
you've got to really understand
like what's important to you in life and
where you're going and
when you're looking at anything in your
life the first thing that you need to do
is figure out do i need to do it and
just
quit doing it just quit doing things in
your life
and you'll see that a lot of stuff that
you think has to be done
doesn't have to be done you'd be
surprised
and then from there this is the tech
okay then of that what can i
what can i automate what can i
not have to do in a repeated fashion and
then
the last one yeah wherever possible if
it's not something that i'm adding
tremendous value to
like my uniqueness people like oh you
must like do the auto work on your
vehicles because you love working like
fuck that i don't they're like what that
doesn't make any sense you and i'm like
no i love creating things yeah but i
don't want to do
that stuff so you could use delegating
if you're a manager position but it's
outsourcing whatev what
uh whatever it is but there are also so
many things
this and this this ties back to your
point uh around
just doing it there's a point to like
experiencing
all levels to really understand things
you need
to spend time at the same time doing all
those things because there could be good
huge massive gaps in there that you're
not aware of
that are key for you or key to be having
done different or so on
so um like in my company days
i was one of the few executives that
came in
that could do anything on the floor from
code
to machine run a lathe a mill weld
do all step into engineering like
and and that added tremendous value to
me to having had spent time
being a doer and not enough people want
to be
you've got to just go do shit yeah you
need to spend time in your life chopping
wood
yeah get a lot of shit doesn't matter
you gotta have experience
trying and doing and doing all these
things that you would never
like my skill set is massive because
i want to know like you need to have
those touch points
my job my title is chief visionary
but i've spent time doing everything
it's not about just like creating this
amazing strategy or vision and i'm just
going to be there and this person that
directs and like like
you can't be effective you cannot
connect the dots
unless you've been in the moment with
everything yeah
low-level stuff sometimes it's doing
stupid shit that you're not
uniquely qualified to do that anybody
could do but you did it anyway
just the training environment people hit
me up at
a school or wherever like hey how do i
get into i want to grow my grow my brand
online i want to do this like where do i
where do i start i'm like
go get a job at planet fitness or 24
hour fitness they're like but
i wanna you know where how do i get you
know recognize them write articles and
be an online coach i'm like
you need to go spend a few years
one-on-one training people yeah to learn
like the interaction how people there's
base levels you have to do
you've got to go work your way up from
the ground
yeah i truly believe it well i think
that's the hard work piece that i'm
speaking to
that i like it when people have been
humbled by the hardness of life
like how difficult it is to do stuff and
it does to me
i went and got my mba i went to mit i
don't need to do that stuff i'm above
that
yeah yeah that that's once you've been
humble by doing those things i feel
like you can truly explore
the the optimization that you're talking
to finding the ways where you're
uniquely
capable to add value to the world and
then
and then again work your ass off to be
the best in the world at that thing
yes uh so it's always then don't waste
your time on don't
shit that's not a line yeah that's the
only so that's i guess there's a lot of
context i put around that
um but yeah that was like a long answer
to uh
a long beautiful answer to a
unanswerable question
do you have advice outside of all this
discussion to young people today about
career about life
since you've done so many things you've
overcome a lot of things
i think high school college student
thinking about what to do in their life
do you have advice for those guys and
girls
yeah yeah first is
you don't have it figured out so don't
worry just jump in
yeah um we talked uh you know a lot
about
understanding your values and aligning
all that stuff but
you got to have a base level of start
exploring and learning
and uh just spending the time doing like
pick something let me elaborate a little
bit no you know what a lot of people
struggle with that aspect now because
the choice there's so much choice
it's difficult to pick something but i
think it does boil down to you should
pick something and don't worry about it
and then but within that
you can start discovering the things
that are there for you
like i i talked about i made this huge
shift i threw away a whole life
but i don't regret anything about that
i wouldn't be where i was if i didn't
walk through and learn those things and
in fact
in the course of that i learned just how
much
that inspiring people and helping them
realize the potential far beyond what
they thought was capable and guess what
that was leadership 101 in
managing people base level floor level
right
and i got a lot out it was perfectly
aligned with what and that's what i
realized it didn't matter
um what industry i was in or any of
those other things
but i was able you can see so many
things there's so many paths that you
can go down to help you
realize what those things are and you're
going to be able to find
a lot of those nuggets and develop those
do you think that i could have just
gone to school and got out and
started a globally recognized brand
within a few years
without having been schooled in business
while getting paid for it by others
for years and in fact that entire time i
knew that that's what i wanted to do but
i didn't go out on it
i mentored some of my friends along the
same path
to go no they're like i'm ready i'm
ready to go do this and i'm like no
now you need to go get a job you yeah
you know engineering management design
all that stuff
go get a job as a as a manager now like
oh that's a step down i can't do that
i'm like go try it
a couple years ago oh my god that was
such a good move i didn't know what i
didn't know
and now they're an executive for
freaking a fortune 500 company
and the same thing like i sat there
knowing that i was getting a free
education
don't stress yourself out as my that's
my advice
don't stress yourself out that you've
got to have this perfect thing
because this process of understanding
your values and the interest but that
takes time
you can get a job where you're getting
paid to learn
exactly that's a good deal before you
launch on your own
you mentioned um going back to darkness
i'm russian
so like going back to darkness you
suffered from depression
you considered suicide do you ponder
your own death these days
do you think about your mortality are
you afraid of death
i definitely think about mortality
and am i afraid of my own death
it depends on the moment if i'm in the
middle of a project i definitely want to
finish that project man
but i don't
fear it so much i fear
leaving my kids
or my wife um and not being able to be
there
for them that bothers me outside of that
i know that i put everything into
what i at the life that i've lived
like he said there's always more but
like i've lived hard
i've loved hard yeah i've
every moment in my life i've made
connections and impacted people around
me
for the better and this tracks back
which is crazy when we're doing the
documentary
and they're interviewing people through
my whole life and the consistency of the
themes of anyone like
anything for duffin like just sure i'll
fly in from boston all the like these
people like all the
like it was crazy like everybody had a
story
about me giving like just over and over
and i didn't even really
it's just the way you were but i've been
all in
i don't have like i have a lot more i
want to do
but i don't have things that
regret have not done in like i don't
fear it
i don't fear it yeah it's like the i
don't know if you know the bukowski poem
go all the way
otherwise don't even try uh it seems
like you embody that poem
and you've accomplished some incredible
things
and serve as an inspiration to a huge
number of people chris
you're an amazing human being i'm really
honored that you would spend your
valuable time with me
thank you so much for talking with me
today it was incredible i can't wait to
check out all the cool stuff you've
engineered with kabuki strength
so i'm uh obviously i love the i love
strength i love strength training i love
the idea of strength i love the
um the equipment and the engineering
approach
you take the strength you're an
incredible human
both on the things you've accomplished
in terms of your own
strength feats and uh the kind of
science and engineering you bring to the
field
uh that many others could use so thank
you so much for talking today
thanks for having me on that was that's
quite the
final thank you thanks for listening to
this conversation with chris duffin
and thank you to headspace magic spoon
sun basket and ladder check them out in
the description to support this podcast
and now let me leave you with some words
from arnold schwarzenegger
strength does not come from winning your
struggles
develop your strengths when you go
through hardship
and decide not to surrender that is
strength
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time
you