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The following is a conversation with Chris Duffin, the mad scientist of strength.
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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.
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Check out his company, Kabuki Strength.
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He s the only person who squatted and deadlifted 1,000 pounds for multiple reps and achieved many other amazing feats of strength.
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He has lived one hell of a life of hardship and triumph, as he writes about in his book called The Eagle and the Dragon.
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Quick mention of our sponsors, Headspace, Magic Spoon, Sun Basket, and Ladder.
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Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
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As a side note, let me say that I was always a fan of strength, both powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting, both as a fan and practitioner.
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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.
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People like Chris Duffin, or on the Olympic weightlifting side, people like Dmitry Glokov.
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That guy s great.
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This is why I love watching the Olympics, both the heartbreaks and the triumphs.
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They all reveal the incredible heights that the human mind and the human body can reach.
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As usual, I ll do a few minutes of ads now.
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I try to make these interesting, but I give you timestamps, so if you skip, please still check out the sponsors by clicking the links in the description.
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It s the best way to support this podcast.
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I m fortunate to be able to be very selective with the sponsors we take on, so hopefully if you buy their stuff, you ll find value in it just as I have.
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This show is sponsored by Headspace, a meditation app.
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I ve used it off and on for many years.
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I ve looked into this, it s since 2014.
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I ve used it both for more and less structured meditation sessions.
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Friends have told me that they love using it for, quote, emergency meditation sessions, like if there s drama at work or a fight with a significant other.
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I find it fascinating.
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how much of a roller coaster the human mind can be.
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Like one moment I can just be full of temper and passion and kind of intensity and the whole world seems like it s in turmoil.
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And then the next my mind can be calm.
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And all it takes is just to breathe, bringing the mind back to a calm place, letting thoughts of doubt or even just like thoughts that are just polluting your mind slip away.
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The whole thing is a really important, powerful process that Headspace can guide you through.
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It s meditation made simple.
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Go to headspace.com slash lex.
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That s headspace.com slash lex for a free one month trial with access to Headspace s full library of meditations for every situation.
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Again, that s headspace.com slash lex.
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This episode is also sponsored by Magic Spoon, low-carb, keto-friendly cereal.
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It has zero grams of sugar, 13 to 14 grams of protein, only four net grams of carbs, and 140 calories in each serving.
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My favorite still, after all this time, is still cocoa.
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Happiness of childhood is you don t really care about anything.
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And happiness of adulthood is sort of having everything together, just being healthy and not going off the rails in any kind of way.
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So.
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It s the best way to be a kid and an adult at the same time.
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That s magicspoon.com slash lex and use code lex.
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This show is also sponsored by Sun Basket.
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Sun Basket delivers fresh, healthy, delicious meals straight to your door.
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They have prepared meals, meal kits, raw ingredients like just a nice New York-stripped steak, but also trout, sea bass, salmon, and much more.
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I love fishing.
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I used to fish a lot.
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It s just such a meditative experience, but I also love eating the fish I catch, like cooking and eating it, just the whole process.
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It s a celebration of life.
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It s a celebration of just nature.
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It s probably also connected to sort of childhood roots of fishing with my family.
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I just love it.
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Just me, alone with nature.
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Anyway, like I said, Sun Basket has both the sort of the raw ingredients, but I also really just love their prepared meal kits, and they re very affordable too, which is great.
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That s sunbasket.com slash Lex with code Lex.
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This show is also sponsored by Ladder.
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I often talk about Ernest Becker s work Denial of Death.
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I often meditate on death together with the Stoics.
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I think meditating on your own mortality is both honest and clarifying.
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for who you are as a human being and for who you want to be and how you want to spend your remaining days.
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The fact that life can end at any moment is one hell of a motivator to live an amazing life.
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At least it is for me.
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Once again, for the seats in the back, ladderlife.com slash Lex.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast, and here is my conversation with Chris Duffin.
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You ve been a part of several incredible feats of strength.
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Which was the hardest or maybe one you re most proud of?
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Definitely the one I m most proud of is that journey for the grand goals.
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It was like a five-year scope that I chased this.
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And so when you think about training, it took more than five years, obviously.
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By that point, I d been training for over 25 years.
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But it makes me proud.
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I mean, there was three distinct things that I wanted to accomplish out of this.
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So it was really thought out.
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And this was kind of my exit from being a competitive lifter.
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And basically saying, hey, I m gonna be an Instagram lifter, an exhibition lifter, a whatever.
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I ve done this for 16 years.
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I was number one in the world for like eight years straight, all time world records.
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And I m like, I m not gonna do that anymore.
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What I wanna do,
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is just something deep down to me that is really important.
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And there s three things that were driving this.
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And this is a five-year journey that I went through to do this.
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I really wanted to showcase that you could do something that is well beyond the scope of what people think is humanly possible.
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So just this inspiration thing, this
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grand, over the top, like if you set your mind to a single-minded goal, you can go so much further.
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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.
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And that s, I think big goals should be kept pretty damn close to start with for that reason too.
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And then the second piece was to walk the walk, to show like the principles of what I believed in around human movement.
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the ability to manage and control the spinal mechanics and the output that can have on the body.
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And so I wanted to take the two most basic movements that every able-bodied person should be able to do.
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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.
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The other one being the hip hinge, being able to pick something up off the ground.
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a deadlift.
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And I wanted to do those two, not just one, because I wanted to show the principles that I wasn t built for one.
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I wasn t a specialist because of my lever links, torso links, all that, any outliers.
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Because nobody had ever done a thousand pound squat, so this is it, and a thousand pound deadlift.
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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.
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And I wanted to do something unique.
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I wanted to do them, not only do it, but do them for reps to leave literally no question out there.
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And there s no competition for that.
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So it was, this is what I m going to go do.
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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.
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So the first year, I worked up and I did a 1,002-pound deadlift.
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Plates were weighed afterwards.
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It was a little bit over.
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And I did it for almost three reps.
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And that still stands as a Guinness World Record, just the one rep does, is the most weight ever sumo deadlifted.
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And one other person has deadlifted 1,000 for reps at this point, and that was Thor Bjornsson from Game of Thrones.
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He s done 1,000 for a double as well.
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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, because now I m moving the weight from my hands up to my shoulders.
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And so to do it for reps is so much harder than a single.
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five to 10 seconds versus 30 plus seconds to be able to buffer and manage all that with that kind of load is just crazy.
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So it s literally about the duration that your body is carrying the load.
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Yeah.
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That s a big part of it.
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Yeah.
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Because you have to,
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You re using the resource of the diaphragm for stabilization.
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And so it s also responsible for respiration and all this other stuff.
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So even when you re not squatting, you ve got to be handling those loads.
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Just holding that weight is fascinating.
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It s fascinating that the human body
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can do that, can maintain that structure, just everything working together, that the biology, the skeletal structure, the musculature on top of that can hold the weight.
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It s fascinating to watch.
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Everything is very intentful about positioning and how you re creating pressure and all that sort of stuff, especially for me.
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So when I mentioned that half a dozen people have squatted it and half a dozen people have deadlifted it, understand those people all weigh 380 to 440 pounds.
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I weighed 265 to 285 depending on where I was between the two.
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So there s that as well, right?
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So big, big difference.
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And over the course of that, I did a lot of other feats of strength that fit in that capacity.
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And we can skip over those.
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But that was hugely invested as far as what I put into being able to accomplish that.
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Because it s over the top, which means the other stuff had to shift.
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And I had to learn something.
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There s so many things that came into place to pull that off.
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And so yeah, last March, two days before the world shut down, I did it.
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It was supposed to be at the largest equipment exhibition in the world down in San Diego as an event.
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And that got shut down a week beforehand, obviously.
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So we moved to, let s do it in my gym and invite people.
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And that was on a Saturday.
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And Thursday or Friday, they limited it to 25 people for gatherings.
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I did it on Saturday.
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And then Monday, everything shut down.
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So it was kind of surreal timing-wise, right?
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And so if I hadn t done it, it would have never got done.
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Because I d pushed to the limit.
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I couldn t come back and do it.
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It was at the total limitation of my capabilities.
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So I m pretty proud of it.
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And the last piece was every one of these feats along the way,
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collaborated with a charity that I believed in.
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And there was a lot of those tied to my life story, which we probably will get into.
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So it was threefold.
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So that inspiration piece, inspiration, motivation, walking the walk and showing like,
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just these methodologies that a guy that had to learn to walk again can do something like this with no back pain.
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There is a way.
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And the third one is to provide awareness and recognition around a lot of key charities.
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So your heart was in this journey, but also your mind.
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You re like a scholar of strength, a scientist of strength, an engineer of strength.
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For reps, do 1,000 pounds of squat and deadlift.
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Let s first talk through the actual day you did it.
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What does it take to lift that much for reps?
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The day of is really easy.
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Really?
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The lift itself.
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other than a few seconds is really easy and not challenging.
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People always ask me, what was it like?
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How beat up were you after that and the deadlift?
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And the simple fact is it was easy.
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The work to get there was horrendous.
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So.
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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.
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There was certainly doubts on that day from some training history.
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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.
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So completely losing consciousness.
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And this was on weight less than a thousand pounds even.
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So that was like all this buildup in me going, what if?
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What if I think I have this resolved, but what if I get up there and I can t even do a rep?
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How embarrassing will this be that I ve been talking about this and planning for this for so long?
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But outside of that, I knew I could do it.
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In fact, I wanted to do even more, even up to the second rep.
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Training is about, you know, working into a fatigue state.
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So you re building an amount of fatigue.
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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.
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This is periodization.
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But leading into a big event, you re accumulating this massive amount of fatigue.
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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 give yourself that window.
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to be able to recover and super compensate and be able to do a little bit more.
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So like that first rep when I did it, strength-wise, I went, I could do this for five reps.
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Like it went through my head.
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I m like, I mean, it was easy and it was fast and it felt like amazing.
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And I m like, I m going to crush this.
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And then set rep two, the realization kicked in as 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,
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every last thing I could muster to just finish.
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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 it s not just leg strength when we re talking about this stuff.
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So what does it take to go from the from I don t know what like from five hundred to a thousand?
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that feels like a journey that s exponential.
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It seems like way harder.
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It is, it gets exponentially harder, it does.
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In the early 2000s, like I said, I started lift in 1988, but my first meet in the early 2000s, my max deadlift was 523 and my first squat was 550.
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So, for reference.
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That s a heck of a journey.
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That is a journey.
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For people that like to lift, what should they understand about the difference between doing 500 and 1,000?
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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.
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the breathing, the core strength, like techniques, like little tricks, psychological tricks, anything that kind of stands out to you?
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The level of intent and the opportunity for error are at a different level.
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So just the minutest changes of position by quarter inch, half inch can be make or break.
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at that level.
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So these things, everything gets amplified.
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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 eccentric loading of the abdominal cavity to create this intra-abdominal pressure of working against
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this outward expansion working against the outer sheath of abdominal, thoracolumbar 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 in 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,
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be able to maintain that while articulating the joints around that through a range of motion and then using the main power drivers.
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in this instance, both instances, it s 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, which would be the barbell on the shoulder.
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There s a couple of key concepts.
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So one is that what we just talked through is how to actually maintain that stability.
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So if you have either the diaphragm, which is connected at the rib cage, so out of alignment in any position, it needs to be
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in alignment with the pelvic, the pelvis.
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So those two in opposition.
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So this is simple engineering here because what we re gonna do is eccentrically load this.
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We re gonna use the diaphragm just like you would in a diaphragm pump, where it s gonna press down on all the tissue in there.
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So we re not using breath.
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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 ribcage.
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So what we want to do is just initiate the diaphragm.
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Air can be used as well over the top at the final to create just a little bit more downward pressure.
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But if we have out of alignment there, we have a pressure leak where it s going to be pushed out the front or the rear if you re either inflection or extension.
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And then that causes this co-contraction and all this pressure of the organs essentially outward against all those tissue for the co-contraction as well as surrounding the spine to be able to stabilize that.
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And then it puts all the muscles on both sides of the body.
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in what we call the best length tension relationship.
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So if you think about a curl and we reach our arm out, at the extended length, our bicep is not as strong.
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And then all the way in the curl position, it s not as strong.
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There s somewhere in here that s this control of both.
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And so when you re sitting there,
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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
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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 an effect.
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And because of this, and then the everything between will naturally kind of do what it needs to do.
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So people like to focus on it.
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knee position or how far out their hips are or all this other stuff, which is outputs of this.
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So if we control the torso and the knee, the only thing that can happen from that point is for the squat to happen.
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All right.
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So this allows us to use this massive, you know, the hip complex for all the muscles around that that are
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built to drive through hip extension to complete the squat.
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I did actually miss one thing in there.
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So this torso, people will often miss, the lat is a spinal stabilizer as well.
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So that s key in controlling function at the TL junction, which is just above the lumbar spine.
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So kind of right opposite where your sternum is, and you ll see people kind of roll over sometimes like in an Olympic squat or something like that where they lose position.
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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.
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but you want to be able to drive and pull the bar to your center.
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And that s going to create and use the lats now to drive and connect the shoulder into this.
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And we re kind of congressing and tightening all this stuff towards that center to create that entire torso stability.
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That s why I was using torso stability, not just core stability in my conversation earlier.
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Okay, so there s all these like modules of the body then connected to the grounding with like your feet on the ground.
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Everything you re speaking to, how do you work each of those modules?
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Is this over time you kind of develop the feel that ultimately boils down to this one simple cue that you mentioned?
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Or can you like literally study each particular module in yourself and see how it affects the lift?
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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.
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Maybe we can get some, you know, some proprioception or awareness of position and other stuff doing some, some corrective patterns and other stuff.
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But
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this is basic physiology, is that there must be an imposed demand for us to have adaptation.
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And this is mental, this is emotional, this is all these areas, and people miss that.
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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.
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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 cue or a set of cues doesn t really matter till we find the one that works and bring that.
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And now we know we want to simplify this stuff.
1
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I just walked through.
1
SPEAKER_01
That sounds really complicated.
1
SPEAKER_01
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,
1
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Now we find where s our next area that we re starting to fault at and then go there again next.
1
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So this is what we do, what we teach in our educational platform.
1
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So we are the only, I believe, everybody wants to do a lot of these assessments on a bench, on a table, body.
1
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And it s like, no, let s go squat.
1
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Let s go deadlift.
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If you do strongman and it s a yoke carry, let s yoke carry.
1
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Because these are basic human fundamentals.
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It s not power lifting.
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Like this is how we function.
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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.
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Sorry.
1
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Although we do some work with tour de France and other stuff as well.
1
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And North America, I do mean hockey too.
1
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But 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 be do, we do a little bit more shoulder focus than hip focus with their athletes.
1
SPEAKER_01
or their coaches, we re usually working with the coaches, not the athletes.
1
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And so you help them, and then the same thing on yourself, to understand the role that these different muscle groups have on the holistic list.
1
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Yeah, so it s all about getting the joints in the appropriate position so that we can
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that we can manage loads so that we re not putting undue stress in the joint, we re getting the proper link tension, we re getting these basic fundamental things with the body.
1
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And so the largest global impact that you will have is through spinal mechanics.
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I can t look at a shoulder
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if I m not managing this, because it s your spine.
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So for those that are just listening, I m arching and then flexing.
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That s going to affect shoulder extension, flexion, all these sorts of things.
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So it can even affect things down to what s looking at dorsiflexion issues on the foot.
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And then that s why I go to the foot next, because it has the second largest global impact.
1
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And then from there, now I m gonna look at the big energy drivers, which is the hip complex, shoulder complex.
1
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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.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it s all about getting the stack, which affects neurology.
1
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So let s talk in engineering terms.
1
SPEAKER_01
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
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You know, I m out and it s snowy or here in Austin only rainy.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, it probably doesn t rain much, but you re going around a corner, start slipping.
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It s like, oh, it s gonna send the powers from the wheels that are slipping to the ones that are gripping and keep me from crashing and dying a fiery death.
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Well, that s not how it works.
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It s the exact same.
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We ve got the tires, which are our foot, you know, the connection to the ground, right?
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We ve got the power driver, which is, you know, the engine, the transmission delivering, you know, the power through it.
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And we ve got the stability or suspension.
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And then we have the neurology.
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And what the neurology is doing, it s sensing that we don t have good stability
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or lost a connection somewhere, and so I need to save you from crashing and hurting yourself.
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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.
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And that s straight how the human body works.
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So when I do this stuff, it s actually affecting that.
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I mean, I can take somebody and do some minute changes with the neck position at the thoracic outlet, okay?
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And immediately see an enhancement in power output.
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And I can measure it.
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We measure this stuff with velocity devices and see like a 10%, boom, jump.
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And so if you think about that, what about all your training through the years where you actually had additional capacity
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but you weren t using it because your traction control was on.
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Now you figure this out stuff, and now you start stacking it, and now you can see so much greater.
1
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So it s not just injury prevention.
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This is performance and additive performance over time.
1
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This is huge, and people don t really think about this stuff, but we can turn that stuff off, which is actually gonna also, again, make us safer.
1
SPEAKER_01
But what we wanna do is the performance tuned race car.
1
SPEAKER_01
Do they have a traction control button?
1
SPEAKER_01
No, they got some amazing tires to grip the ground, a performance-tuned suspension, and that driver s going to put his foot to the metal.
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He s going to put it to the floor.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay, that s a performance vehicle.
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SPEAKER_00
That s what we wanna be.
1
SPEAKER_00
I wanna continue on that line, but first I have to ask, how did it feel to accomplish the grand goal?
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SPEAKER_00
Oh my God.
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SPEAKER_00
Okay, when you just stand back.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh my.
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1,000 pounds for reps.
1
SPEAKER_00
What d it feel like?
1
SPEAKER_00
Anybody can go watch the video online.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s well filmed, by the way.
1
SPEAKER_00
Got me all excited.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, well, the movies, so we actually have the final footage of that, the good footage, not posted yet.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it s literally just an Instagram video or a phone video right now.
1
SPEAKER_01
They re the only one online.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
It s on your YouTube channel.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s dramatic.
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SPEAKER_01
Yes, it is.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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It came out just timed to the music perfectly too, which is, I listened to some odd music, which there s some reason behind that.
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Okay.
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I liked it though.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was great.
1
SPEAKER_00
It does work.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re saying there s full length footage.
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There s a documentary that s, it s got a little slowed because of COVID, 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 s working on.
1
SPEAKER_01
I don t really have the control of the movie, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
But... But okay, but the video is incredible.
1
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How did it feel?
1
SPEAKER_01
How did it feel?
1
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I started crying.
1
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It was overwhelming to have worked so intensely and so long and hard at something that pushed every ounce of me to the limit.
1
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And I did it.
1
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I m getting a little emotional.
1
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I did exactly what I said I was going to fucking do.
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And it was overpowering.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I was just crying uncontrollably, just with a mixture of,
1
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I don t know what the mixture of emotions is hard to explain.
1
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Cause it was the completion of something.
1
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It was a new phase of my life.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s so many things here.
1
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So one, you set an impossible goal and you accomplished it.
1
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One.
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Two is like on the broader humanity aspect, like how many humans in this world accomplish
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perfection in a particular direction required to do this.
1
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So you re basically representing one little glimmer of excellence of the human spirit.
1
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There s always more, so understand this.
1
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This is a basic fundamental.
1
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You can always do better.
1
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There is no such thing as perfection.
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You could always, there is always more.
1
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So anytime you reach something, any amazing workout or accomplishment in life, could you have put more into it?
1
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Could you?
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Yes.
1
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But here s the thing.
1
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I left on my terms.
1
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I said, this is it, I m gonna work towards, I ve been training for 30 years, I m gonna do this thing that is, like I couldn t even say that I was gonna do it years before.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m gonna do it, and then I m done.
1
SPEAKER_01
I didn t leave from an injury, I wasn t forced, I wasn t, I left on, I did exactly what I said.
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I went to a level that I, I left on my terms, and that s unique.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because that s usually not the case.
1
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Usually you kind of either taper out or it doesn t matter.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m talking like anything in life in general, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Like you taper out, you fail, you hurt, like you lose a job, like something, you know, you roll into retirement.
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Like I did.
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You accomplished something truly great and you walked away on your own terms.
1
SPEAKER_00
Is there a sadness completing something like that?
1
SPEAKER_00
Because it s in one perspective, the greatest thing you ll ever do.
1
SPEAKER_00
And when you accomplish such a great height, in some sense, you have to face your mortality at that point.
1
SPEAKER_01
So, good question, but it is certainly not the greatest thing that I ll ever do.
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It s the greatest physical streak I ll ever do.
1
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There s always more.
1
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The greatest, yes.
1
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But that was an expression of some of my values and the way that I want to live.
1
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It was a way of expressing it.
1
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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, and so on.
1
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they lost how they identified themselves and trying to figure out where to turn, what to do, but a big central component of their identity is lost.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I knew that this was one way to express that, and my grand goals have shifted.
1
SPEAKER_01
They re shifted to other outlets that allow me to express that.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like my companies, Kabuki Strength, I m going to change the face of fitness,
1
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as well as all the way through with its integration with clinical medicine and telemedicine.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I got another five years before even people see what I m working on.
1
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I m five years in right now, because I had to invent equipment.
1
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I have to develop methodologies that we re talking.
1
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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, to the environment, tied to the clinical practice assessment, tied to the
1
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the interaction between all those and how that actually needs to be reframed because so much of this is broken, okay?
1
SPEAKER_01
But there is sadness.
1
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I won t deny that.
1
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And the sadness comes in the singularity
1
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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 from me in those final phases, 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 squat, I finally one day, I woke up and I was like, oh,
1
SPEAKER_01
Welcome back to the world.
1
SPEAKER_01
I was in such a mental fog.
1
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It took me a while to climb out of that, but that space, that level of intensity and drive and living and being in that space,
1
SPEAKER_01
I do miss that, but I also, I can t continue that.
1
SPEAKER_01
I couldn t continue, 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 it ll have on your life or how you want to live.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it was taking away those final, like, I had to do extreme things and live in an extreme way to get there.
1
SPEAKER_00
You re just a genius in this whole space of strength and health and almost like biology.
1
SPEAKER_00
that this strength feat is just one representation of that.
1
SPEAKER_00
But this particular strength feat required that kind of singular focus, which I think, I don t know, there s something beautiful about that singular focus.
1
SPEAKER_00
There is.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s often only truly perfected in athletics.
1
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I see it with the greatest Olympic athletes as well.
1
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The kind of singular focus required there is incredible.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s somehow some of the most beautiful
1
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things that humans can do.
1
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And it s not just that thing.
1
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So that s the thing, it s like, oh, that must be it.
1
SPEAKER_01
When we say singularity of focus, it s not like, here s it, because it covers a vast array of stuff.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like I was working with people, you know, all, well, yeah, all around North America.
1
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I wouldn t say anybody around the globe, but professionals coming in, working on different aspects of rehab and recovery.
1
SPEAKER_01
And like, I mean, I m tapping all sorts of stuff in so many platforms.
1
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from nutrition to drugs to, again, like, you know, various Chinese medicine, you know, as far as, you know.
1
SPEAKER_00
But also the humans in your life, just love and positivity and just inspiration, all those kinds of aspects.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you probably would have done much more if you went outside North America and talked to some Russians, just between you and I. Some Russians.
1
SPEAKER_01
Possibly.
1
SPEAKER_00
They give you some, I don t know, there s some incredible strength athletes in Eastern Europe.
1
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
1
SPEAKER_01
I ve got the best one coming in September to get fixed.
1
SPEAKER_01
What do you mean by fixed?
1
SPEAKER_01
So I m not sure what his particular issues are, but he has held the all-time world record repeatedly for a long time and he hasn t competed for some time and he just reached out saying,
1
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he would like to come and have me take a look and see if I can get him fixed because he needs to return.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so it s more injury-centric versus like form and fundamental-centric, a combination of everything.
1
SPEAKER_01
Everybody always wants to focus on the output, how do you give me the fix for that, but it ties right back into all those other things, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, the Eastern block continued to be a dominant force in regards to athletics and strength athletics, without a doubt.
1
SPEAKER_01
Some of my big rivals in my competitive days were, that s who it was.
1
SPEAKER_00
Rivalry brings out the best in us.
1
SPEAKER_00
Can you tell me the story of your childhood?
2
SPEAKER_01
outside the scope of the norm.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, today, maybe not 150 or 200 years ago.
2
SPEAKER_01
But my parents, highly intelligent, you know, people coming out of the Bay Area,
2
SPEAKER_01
My mom was going to school to be a chemical engineer.
2
SPEAKER_01
She was a top student athlete, graduated out of her school.
2
SPEAKER_01
My father was a member of Mensa.
2
SPEAKER_01
My stepfather was just a genius, but not able to really function in society.
2
SPEAKER_01
But my mom, she had some demons and some other stuff.
2
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She just said one day, she s like, I just don t want to be part of society.
2
SPEAKER_01
She still isn t.
2
SPEAKER_01
Lives out in the desert, but has her minds, but she wanted to figure out a way to make a life outside of that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so that s where we ended up is up in the mountains in Northern California.
2
SPEAKER_01
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.
2
SPEAKER_01
And in fact, those areas were some of the areas where I lived were quite dangerous.
2
SPEAKER_01
So there s a documentary.
2
SPEAKER_01
Murder Mountain that came out recently.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you watch that, you ll tie into my book just the understanding of the stuff that I was talking about dealing with serial killers, human trafficking, police corruption, murderers.
2
SPEAKER_01
like just how real that stuff is if it doesn t capture you from the book, okay?
2
SPEAKER_01
The book, by the way, is The Eagle and the Dragon.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, thank you.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a great one.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m a terrible salesperson, like I told you.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it s a good title.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if you came up with it, but... I did, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, we ll talk about that anyway.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re living by a stream, off a meadow.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s no roads into where you have to hike in.
2
SPEAKER_01
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.
2
SPEAKER_01
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.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you can imagine, six years old, sitting there with a live rattlesnake in your hand, grabbing it by the side of the head, controlling so it can t bite you.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s just wrapping itself around your arm, and you re staring at it.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, its only intent is,
2
SPEAKER_01
right then is to kill you.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s it.
2
SPEAKER_01
You want to take a bath, it s filling up the jug in the stream and setting it out on the rocks during the sun so you can dump it over your head.
2
SPEAKER_01
Not all the living was that way.
2
SPEAKER_01
A 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.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re talking hard winters with feet of snow on the ground, nowhere to go.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m living in the back of the pickup truck in just a standard sleeping bag that we get from the Salvation Army, not the Blow Zero, so I m not sleeping well.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s living in homes that were maybe condemned.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s no doors even on them.
2
SPEAKER_01
no electricity or running water, or one or the other, or both, and sometimes a little bit better.
2
SPEAKER_01
By the time we got to high school, we had a mobile home.
2
SPEAKER_01
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
2
SPEAKER_01
Didn t have, again, doors on the inside.
2
SPEAKER_01
It did have running water.
2
SPEAKER_01
It did have electricity.
2
SPEAKER_01
It didn t have a kitchen.
2
SPEAKER_01
The windows would crank closed and open, but they wouldn t close all the way.
2
SPEAKER_01
So they ll trim them in with plastic to be able to try to protect from the elements.
2
SPEAKER_01
That was my environment, like learning how to forage for mushrooms.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there were summers I would send and my parents would be out.
2
SPEAKER_01
They were in the drug trade earlier.
2
SPEAKER_01
We got taken by the police and put into foster care for a while, which ties into some of the stories with human trafficking.
2
SPEAKER_01
And honestly, it s in my book, but it s really hard for me to,
2
SPEAKER_01
talk about that stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
And obviously not all that s in the book.
2
SPEAKER_01
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.
2
SPEAKER_01
So at that point it was learning about geology and starting to do mining and
2
SPEAKER_01
firewood cutting, but mostly the mining, because Pat s broken arm chainsaw made it a little tough.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you remember just the sequence of moments, are you haunted by the darker moments of your childhood?
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you remember moments of simple joy and happiness?
2
SPEAKER_01
Outside of the living around dangerous people and the interactions that came from that,
2
SPEAKER_01
We were a family, like we were a cohesive unit battling against the world together.
2
SPEAKER_01
We spent all our time together, work, play, I was there.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was helping raise my siblings or I was working with them.
2
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, it was a constant, like I said, we were very physically active.
2
SPEAKER_01
So, you know, I had that in my upbringing.
2
SPEAKER_01
I had a plug for my shoe company, Barefoot, B-E-A-R.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ran around the wilderness and bare feet all the time, you know, but it was,
2
SPEAKER_01
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?
2
SPEAKER_01
And so the connection that I have with my sisters is huge.
2
SPEAKER_01
That goes a bit further because I am kind of like a little bit of a father figure because I was at home raising them and then later I took custody of them.
2
SPEAKER_01
while I was going to school because the environment at home deteriorated further.
2
SPEAKER_01
Their stepfather, like I said, he wasn t capable of managing life.
2
SPEAKER_01
And my mom had a mental breakdown and took off to Montana, and he descended into madness, even worse.
2
SPEAKER_01
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.
2
SPEAKER_01
type.
2
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, that s when I took in and was going to college, putting myself through college, and I started taking custody of my sisters and raising them.
2
SPEAKER_01
So anyway, we re still like very
2
SPEAKER_01
very tight family.
2
SPEAKER_01
There was a few years later in life that the connection with my mother was kind of broken.
2
SPEAKER_01
I didn t speak to her for years because of her basically abandoning my sisters and me having to come in, but we ve worked through that as best we can.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you anger on your part?
2
SPEAKER_01
It wasn t
2
SPEAKER_01
There might ve been some anger.
2
SPEAKER_01
Um, did you always love her?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I still do.
2
SPEAKER_01
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 create that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so much of what I am is from that, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
We ve all had to learn to,
2
SPEAKER_01
be okay with the way she is because she is just blunt but you know she s the one that
2
SPEAKER_01
figured out that the human trafficking situation and got the DA involved and got all the... She s the one that... I ve learned a lot from her.
2
SPEAKER_01
And... Did you inherit some of the demons?
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, most certainly.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s something I ve continued, like, in my father s side has been...
2
SPEAKER_01
really tough on that because some of it is just based genetic as well.
2
SPEAKER_01
So my stepfather made I think six or seven attempts on his life during his lifetime.
2
SPEAKER_01
One of those in front of me, his mother blew her head off with a shotgun.
2
SPEAKER_01
Her brother jumped out a window in LA.
2
SPEAKER_01
Their father did something similar.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I don t know how far back it goes because there is no family except for me and my children.
2
SPEAKER_00
You spoke about going through depression yourself.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Can you talk about some of the darker moments of that?
2
SPEAKER_00
Have you ever, like many in your family, have you ever considered suicide?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes, I have.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes, I have.
2
SPEAKER_00
You ve achieved a lot of exceptional things in your life.
2
SPEAKER_00
Can you talk about those early days of depression and how you overcame it?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
So the things that I did that people give me accolades for are the things that I did selfishly to save myself.
2
SPEAKER_01
The things like taking custody of my sisters, being the person that everybody around, you know, the important people relied on, the fact that I had to step to the plate and be present and be that person.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because if I failed,
2
SPEAKER_01
They failed.
2
SPEAKER_01
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 one of those, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
That s where everybody ended, and I wasn t gonna let that happen.
2
SPEAKER_01
What about saving yourself?
2
SPEAKER_01
And so that s how, in those early days, that s how I did it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m not saying it s the best approach, but it was survivor mentality.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can t selfishly do that because I have them to take care of.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then that continued where I would keep putting myself in these leadership roles or other things.
2
SPEAKER_01
And there s always being this person that was at the center, at the hub that
2
SPEAKER_01
forced me to be there.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so it s only in the more recent last decade or so that I have had to really learn how to come and start confronting some of those demons.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you think, man, why is the guy so successful?
2
SPEAKER_01
And we haven t talked about all the stuff that I ve done, but I ve seen a lot of success in both
2
SPEAKER_01
business leadership, athletics, academics, entrepreneurship, all these sorts of things, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
But if it wasn t for having kids and the same being in the position, I wouldn t be here.
2
SPEAKER_01
If it, and that s just, that s the reality of it.
2
SPEAKER_01
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.
2
SPEAKER_01
those root understanding and having some guidance doing so.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you ve got mental health issues, this isn t something that you need to tackle on your own.
2
SPEAKER_01
Having a professional that can help guide you on that introspective journey is something like, it s not like, hey, I m a big tough guy, I can handle everything.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, that s fascinating that you saved yourself.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s quite powerful to save yourself by having others depend on you.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so you can t fail, you can t fuck it up.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s a reason to keep moving forward.
2
SPEAKER_00
But on the flip side, that s not addressing the darkness.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s not.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s probably not a sustainable strategy either, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So I recognize these things.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_00
Perhaps it is sustainable.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s something beautiful about giving yourself basically in service of others and thereby
2
SPEAKER_00
creating purpose, and then it s almost like fake it till you make it, and then you make it eventually.
2
SPEAKER_01
That is purpose, though.
2
SPEAKER_01
That is purpose.
2
SPEAKER_01
That is purpose.
2
SPEAKER_01
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.
2
SPEAKER_01
What is your purpose?
2
SPEAKER_01
What is that connection with everybody around you?
2
SPEAKER_01
This is
2
SPEAKER_01
that s the intent, that s the life, that s what life is about.
2
SPEAKER_01
How are you going to help those around you?
2
SPEAKER_01
How are you gonna help the world?
2
SPEAKER_01
Your purpose is right here, figuring out what this is, and then how to do that.
2
SPEAKER_01
But at the same time, you can t let that run dry, so you have to make sure that you re filling that up.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s the other side, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
That s the other side.
2
SPEAKER_00
We ll return to your engineering degree, which you re obviously scientifically engineering-minded, which is fascinating.
2
SPEAKER_00
Your book is titled The Eagle and the Dragon.
2
SPEAKER_00
What do the eagle and the dragon symbolize?
2
SPEAKER_01
They re pretty big symbols for me, in fact, that covers my entire body as a tattoo.
2
SPEAKER_01
So the first one I had done, it s around 19 years old.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so this is, or started at 19.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s an eagle that covers my entire front, you know, my stomach, ribcage, and one that was on my back that covered most of my back.
2
SPEAKER_01
And there s chained at the,
2
SPEAKER_01
well, at the claw, I guess.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the chain wraps down around and attaches to my ankle, and there s a shackle there.
2
SPEAKER_01
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.
2
SPEAKER_01
The only thing holding you back at the end of the day is yourself.
2
SPEAKER_01
And this was, I hadn t necessarily accomplished a whole lot at that time.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I was valedictorian for high school, small high school.
2
SPEAKER_01
Does that even count?
2
SPEAKER_01
I was a state level wrestler.
2
SPEAKER_01
This was my belief.
2
SPEAKER_00
You sensed that there was a potential in you and the only thing that could stop you from realizing that potential was yourself.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s a heck of a tattoo to get, by the way, at 19.
2
SPEAKER_00
But 40 hours went into that thing.
2
SPEAKER_01
It shows you got some guts.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then the next tattoo, so I only have two, I had done in 2015, 2016, when I, so at this point in my life,
2
SPEAKER_01
So I had done that.
2
SPEAKER_01
I had flown to whatever heights, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So I had proven to myself and maybe done what I thought I needed to do to show the world that this poor kid from the sticks, this kid growing up in the mountains with nothing could achieve the American dream.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was a corporate executive sought after.
2
SPEAKER_01
that I d come in, I d fix companies, I d turn around and prep them for sale.
2
SPEAKER_01
I d take a company and grow it from a regional to a national to a global presence.
2
SPEAKER_01
I did this in the automotive manufacturing, aerospace manufacturing, high-tech, heavy industry.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I had a house with a white picket fence.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was a successful athlete with all-time world records.
2
SPEAKER_01
I owned a gym on the side where I coached people.
2
SPEAKER_01
And...
2
SPEAKER_01
I had a comfortable marriage, that everything was hunky-dory with no arguments at home.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I walked away from all of it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I left everything behind, except for my kids.
2
SPEAKER_01
wanted to chase what I was meant to do and chase what I was capable of doing.
2
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to become a better version of myself, but very intentfully.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s what I did.
2
SPEAKER_01
I sold, I had multiple homes, sold my homes.
2
SPEAKER_01
I cashed in all my retirement that I d earned for 20, nearly 20 years.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I lost all that.
2
SPEAKER_01
I leveraged myself millions of dollars of personal debt so that if I failed, there was no way out.
2
SPEAKER_01
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.
2
SPEAKER_01
People questioned me at the time because I had a comfortable, easy marriage and I chose to ask for a divorce.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ended up living in an apartment for a couple of years with no income, selling off every last thing that I had except for my two vehicles that I built with my kids.
2
SPEAKER_01
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, they don t have to be the thing that
2
SPEAKER_01
if you look back, made you have the bad back, made you have the bad knees, but they do the opposite.
2
SPEAKER_01
They get you out of pain.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then I started working on my book to hit on those other things, the mental, the emotional, maybe even spiritual.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t touch on that one too much in there, but it s all the same.
2
SPEAKER_01
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.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so this is very intentful and that s what the second
2
SPEAKER_01
I m long-winded to answering your question here.
2
SPEAKER_01
The dragon.
2
SPEAKER_01
The dragon.
2
SPEAKER_01
The dragon is an Ouroboros.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so it is, it circles my entire upper body, my shoulders, my back, my chest, everything.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s right here, there s this big dragon head and its tail is right there in its mouth.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s eating itself.
2
SPEAKER_01
It may sound a bit graphic or whatever, but it is, it s the eating of the old becoming the new.
2
SPEAKER_01
It is the purposeful reinvention of oneself.
2
SPEAKER_01
It is the deciding.
2
SPEAKER_01
not realizing just your potential, but deciding specifically who you want to be in this fucking world and becoming that person.
2
SPEAKER_00
Can you comment on the value and the power of...
2
SPEAKER_00
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?
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t recommend this, by the way, because when you put yourself in no way out, there is no way out.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, you got to really
3
SPEAKER_01
No, but I can be an overconfident individual at times.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I live through extremes.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think it s a great way of actually finding your real values and how you want to live, honestly.
3
SPEAKER_01
To Chase, having absolutely perfect squat technique, but Chase putting every freaking thing that you ve got in it, which most people would say, those are opposite.
3
SPEAKER_01
Those are diametrically opposed.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wanted,
3
SPEAKER_01
a better home life.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to do more in the world through my work.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the burning the bridges mentality is not necessarily the best.
3
SPEAKER_01
There was some temperament in that though because I was slow to make the shift for a long time because I d been thinking about doing it.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I was thinking about doing it in a healthcare perspective.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m going to go back to school to be a surgeon or a physical therapist or a chiro, because that s where all my research and stuff was in this human movement and rehab and recovery.
3
SPEAKER_01
The mentors that I ve been developing were the best in the world in these things, in these disciplines.
3
SPEAKER_01
Those were my friends.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I wasn t able to compromise my family s certain quality of life.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to keep that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it was slow and hard for me to make that transition, but I didn t do it until
3
SPEAKER_01
I had a platform built enough that those first few years, I did have an income.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was able to make enough from the business until it grew so fast that I needed, so much more needed to come in.
3
SPEAKER_01
The living in the apartment piece and doing all that, that was actually a couple years into that process, maybe like two years.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m with you on that.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I m actually going through that very process now.
3
SPEAKER_00
I put everything, I quit everything, gave away everything and starting anew.
3
SPEAKER_00
And unfortunately, or fortunately, this podcast somehow became quite popular.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s getting in the way of my burning everything to the ground.
3
SPEAKER_00
But in that it s a source of joy.
3
SPEAKER_00
But the main thing I m after is the similar project as you is building a business.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sense of joy.
3
SPEAKER_01
So this is the point I want to drive home right now, right now.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because when I say burn, I learned that burning the bridges works because that s how I had to succeed when I was earlier.
3
SPEAKER_01
The bridges weren t burnt, they didn t exist.
3
SPEAKER_01
There was no couch to go home to, there was no fallback plan.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it forced me and gave me the confidence to know that I can pull it off.
3
SPEAKER_01
But,
3
SPEAKER_01
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.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s all about the output, to make money, to be somebody, to do this.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I ll tell you what, that is some short-term motivation right there.
3
SPEAKER_01
I feel like dropping a few swear words, but- You re always welcome.
3
SPEAKER_01
We ve already done a few, so we ll- All right, we ll balance it out.
3
SPEAKER_01
That is short term.
3
SPEAKER_01
That is not going to keep you going.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you re going to go that approach, it needs to be because this is your North Star.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s going to be so much hard work.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s going to be years of just pushing through where your question, not only is everybody around you questioning you and your family s questioning you, you re questioning yourself going, man, I don t know if I can pull this off.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re going to be stressed.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re going to be pulled to the max.
3
SPEAKER_01
If somebody comes up to me and says, should I start a business?
3
SPEAKER_01
I m going to say no.
3
SPEAKER_01
and oh, you re supposed to motivate me.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you need me to motivate you, this is the wrong damn approach for you.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is gonna be hard.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is gonna be harder than you expect, even with me telling you this.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so it better damn well be worth it.
3
SPEAKER_01
This better be your North fucking star.
3
SPEAKER_01
This better live and be a way for you to be able to articulate or realize those values that you want to live.
3
SPEAKER_01
This isn t something to make money.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is a way for you to live the life and be able to share the values that you have with the world.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s what it is.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if you don t have that, which is gonna give you joy, then freaking walk away.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s just not some way to make some money and be known.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, this includes both like simple day-to-day joy and also deep meaning, the whole thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then that allows you to overcome all the pain along the way.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I gotta say, I mean, it s a difficult thing because you run a business.
3
SPEAKER_00
This podcast and a lot of things I do research-wise is full of joy, but it s simple.
3
SPEAKER_00
Running a business is hard.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s something that I m very hesitant about.
3
SPEAKER_00
in that 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.
3
SPEAKER_00
The reason I ll choose is because I just can t help it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ve always had this dream
3
SPEAKER_00
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.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it won t be.
3
SPEAKER_01
It won t be less happiness.
3
SPEAKER_01
because we talk about this cup and where you choose to pour it and what you choose to do with it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And when you look back on things, the things that are gonna give you the most joy, the most proud, the things that are gonna stand out in your life that you really remember are gonna be those days.
3
SPEAKER_01
And those years you struggle, you re gonna look back on 10 years later and go,
3
Fuck.
3
SPEAKER_01
Those were the glory days.
3
SPEAKER_01
Those were the glory days.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it won t feel like it at the time.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s so weird.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s what life s made of.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so this is your, this is your opportunity.
3
SPEAKER_01
You feel that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So right now you got this, when you think about it, you got this little thing twisting up in your gut, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like, it s a mixture of anxiety and fear as well as excitement.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that is, that s your signal that this is your opportunity for that personal growth to challenge yourself.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is your going for a run or working out in the heat.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s, it s those things.
3
SPEAKER_01
It is your opportunity to go, heck,
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe it even fails.
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe it even fails.
3
SPEAKER_01
But by turning into that?
3
SPEAKER_01
You re gonna learn so much and it s gonna make you so much better.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s the path that you should take when you have this stuff rolling around in there.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I don t, it could just be a hard conversation with your partner or your boss.
3
SPEAKER_01
It could be taking on a project that your boss has thrown out to the team and you re like, I m gonna hide in the back, I don t want that one.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s like, maybe you do.
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe it s going back to school.
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe it s making that career move that you always wanted, but you re just afraid of.
3
SPEAKER_01
All these things are your opportunity for you to turn into that.
3
SPEAKER_01
It is your workout.
3
SPEAKER_01
It is your practice.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because if you don t, you ll get soft.
3
SPEAKER_01
And who knows what s coming and you re not gonna be ready for it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s gonna run right over the top of you because you re gonna be weak.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re gonna be soft.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s some aspect in which choosing that hard path is actually the way to arrive at the richest kind of happiness, the greatest fulfillment.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s the funny thing about just the human.
3
SPEAKER_01
But just make sure you re filling the cup as you re going through it, not pouring it all out.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that s the part to figure out, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, life is short anyway.
3
SPEAKER_00
Eventually the cup will be empty.
3
SPEAKER_00
So maybe time the refilling of the cup correctly so you maximize the little time you got.
3
SPEAKER_00
Let me talk to you about strength a little bit.
3
SPEAKER_00
First, high level.
3
SPEAKER_00
What are the differences in the different disciplines of strength?
3
SPEAKER_00
So powerlifting we talked about.
3
SPEAKER_00
Maybe just to clarify for people, powerlifting, Olympic lifting, just regular gym fitness, bodybuilding, doing curls in front of the mirror for hours like I do.
3
SPEAKER_00
What s the difference between all of these?
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, and also strongman.
3
SPEAKER_01
Every one of those as far as the athletic disciplines are different qualities.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we wanna think about things as terms of quality.
3
SPEAKER_01
So there s strength, there s power, there s endurance, there s the ability to be coordinated and athletic, there s all these things and they re different qualities.
3
SPEAKER_01
So your training as it relates to that is how you cycle in the development of those qualities.
3
SPEAKER_01
What we want to think about is there s a lot of different frames of thought, some very 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, focusing on building those.
3
SPEAKER_01
More of a periodization effect would be
3
SPEAKER_01
focusing on one quality at a time or one quality while maintaining other qualities and then shifting that around.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s just going to be a little different based on what the output is and what the desired.
3
SPEAKER_01
So like power lifting is actually, power is the wrong word.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s actually no power in it.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s just brute.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s strength.
3
SPEAKER_01
application of force.
3
SPEAKER_01
Olympic lifting would actually be a better name for powerlifting because that is more explosive development.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s strongman is again, now we re getting a little bit more athletic.
3
SPEAKER_01
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.
3
SPEAKER_01
And there s some things with strongman that is straight, like each one of these is very also focused on
3
SPEAKER_01
different genetic dispositions.
3
SPEAKER_01
So actually, if you look at the history of sports, you ll find that they re a lot of times based on different populations.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it sounds like it s very un-PC, but like Highland Games, they ve got deeper hip sockets that are shallow.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you re going to see a lot of short hip hinge movements, like the caber toss and things like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
Muay Thai wrestling, they ve got a completely different hip joint.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so strongman itself is going to be for very large frame individuals.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you re not well over six foot and a large person, you re probably not going to perform well.
3
SPEAKER_01
Very few people at sub six foot have ever done well at strongman just because it s leverage based, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Olympic lifting, we see consistently in Europe,
3
SPEAKER_01
The history tells us a high level of hip and back issues because of the depth that that hip socket has to go in to be able to complete that lift.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so you re gonna see issues with populations that don t have the ability to do that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we ve talked a little bit about training as well as disposition.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and also CrossFit fits into that.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s more like strongman, but for a wider variety of bodies, I suppose.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yep, and definitely more metabolic conditioning focused than the strength aspect of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And conditioning is an interesting thing, too.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that quality, in my opinion, can be developed a lot faster, but kind of peaks much faster as well.
3
SPEAKER_01
So where strength, we can continue to add and add and add over time.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s, for me, like for conditioning with any strength athlete, I don t like to spend as much time on that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I ll cycle the conditioning work for our strength athletes and then taper that off leading into meat.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the more metabolic work, that means the more capacity in strength training that you can accomplish, which is the goal.
3
SPEAKER_01
and recover from, but then as we lead to a competition, we want to spend more time on recovering from that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we have to pull things out.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we d pull out less.
3
SPEAKER_01
So like a typical approach would be like taking a six week cycle for conditioning and ramping up over three weeks periods time, then dropping back down again.
3
SPEAKER_01
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?
3
SPEAKER_01
But that way we re not hitting conditioning hard all the time, which is a common misstep that people make is going, well, I need conditioning.
3
SPEAKER_01
So they just hammer that at a base level over the top instead of cycling that.
3
SPEAKER_00
If we talk about powerlifting in terms of regimen,
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SPEAKER_00
in terms of exercise, in terms of the process, that would consistent with what?
3
SPEAKER_00
Is there something to be said about general qualities of the consistency of the regimen required to get strong?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_01
So let s talk about some training principles as a whole.
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SPEAKER_01
And this will, I think this will break down what you re wanting.
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The more work that we can fit into a given time, the more progress we re going to make.
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SPEAKER_01
But that doesn t mean doing the max amount of work possible at any given time.
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SPEAKER_01
So we know that to accomplish more, we re always going to have more.
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SPEAKER_01
And there s a certain ceiling that you re going to hit that you re not going to be able to add more.
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SPEAKER_01
So you want to start and get the most amount of results that you can with the least amount of work.
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Because you re going to have to do it again, like this stair step, over and over.
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year, decade, so on.
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SPEAKER_01
So when people, this is a big miss people got, they look at a Chico program from Russia or so on and they go, I m going to follow this.
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SPEAKER_01
And it s like, that was specifically written for somebody with 20 years of experience.
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SPEAKER_01
that s already built the capacities to be at that level.
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SPEAKER_01
So it s all about building that work capacity.
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SPEAKER_01
So how much work can you give in a given time?
3
SPEAKER_01
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.
3
SPEAKER_01
So when we talk consistency,
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training hard for three years, five years, it s gonna be really good.
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SPEAKER_01
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, then miss another week because, and so on.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re always like this little nagging, that little nagging.
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SPEAKER_01
And so it s pretty clear in the research, we re looking at, when we re stair-stepping this stuff, we re looking at acute and chronic loading.
3
SPEAKER_01
So some fancy words for average and like what s happening right now.
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SPEAKER_01
So this given week would be our acute.
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SPEAKER_01
Chronic would be what is our average loading, let s say, over the last six months.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
3
SPEAKER_01
The way that we build the capacity to do that is having spikes in acute loading.
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SPEAKER_01
Now, as we do this, the acute loading, if it spikes more than 10, maybe 15% from what the chronic loading has been, that accounts for 80% of injuries out there.
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SPEAKER_01
So it s not actually the movement quality or this misstep or the other.
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SPEAKER_01
It usually happens about four, five, six weeks later.
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SPEAKER_01
It s like, oh, this nagging, and then it gets worse.
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SPEAKER_01
And then now you gotta do some rehab.
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Your training sessions aren t as good and so on.
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SPEAKER_01
So now we re starting to look at this.
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SPEAKER_01
Okay, it s like, I wanna do the least amount of work where I can still progress.
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SPEAKER_01
I want to be able to have spikes in my weekly demand.
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SPEAKER_01
that don t go above 10 to 15% of what I ve been averaging for the last month.
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SPEAKER_01
But every time I do a spike, my average goes up, right?
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SPEAKER_01
Boom, boom, boom.
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SPEAKER_01
And then that becomes very particular also when you do take planned time off.
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SPEAKER_01
So a lot of people,
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SPEAKER_01
training session, maybe they re doing a five-week block with 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 and chronic loading?
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SPEAKER_01
It brings it down.
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SPEAKER_01
And then what does the person want to do when they come back?
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SPEAKER_01
Make up for it.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
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SPEAKER_01
So these are some really fundamental pieces of, of, of, of training.
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SPEAKER_01
And then now we can start overlaying the qualities that we re trying to develop that we were talking about earlier.
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SPEAKER_01
So now it s, let s talk about my deadlift, my thousand pound deadlift.
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SPEAKER_01
We ll talk about the training cycles for both the thousand deadlift and squat.
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SPEAKER_01
So backing up a year out from the deadlift, knowing I was training at the time, heavy deadlifts once a week.
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SPEAKER_01
And usually it was two of those sessions a month were really heavy and the others weren t.
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SPEAKER_01
And it s like, okay, how can we get this up to where I m deadlifting twice a week?
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SPEAKER_01
because that s where I want to be to be able to accomplish this.
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SPEAKER_01
I need to be loading about that much with frequency with a certain volume to be able to accomplish this goal.
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SPEAKER_01
We re not going to go through all the math and stuff like that and how that s arrived, but there is math behind this.
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SPEAKER_01
And so instead of just like, oh, well, let s start deadlifting twice a week.
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SPEAKER_01
No.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
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SPEAKER_01
So the total volume is still the same.
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SPEAKER_01
And then we start adding some volume, but I m doing it off of blocks so that the actual load is, the cumulative load is less, because I have less range of motion, okay?
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SPEAKER_01
And then we start building that closer to the ground, closer to the ground, and so on.
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SPEAKER_01
And now we start getting to where I m almost doing two sessions, full sessions a week.
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SPEAKER_01
And then we start adding a little bit of load.
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SPEAKER_01
And so at my level, this isn t talking about adding another set.
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SPEAKER_01
or another day a week, we re talking like in my squat, it might be one rep.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
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SPEAKER_01
That s it.
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SPEAKER_01
And so we re doing that from one week
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SPEAKER_01
to the next, and that s a cycle, training cycle, it might be five, six weeks, and then so on, and then the next one, and slowly bringing that average load up.
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SPEAKER_01
So the last phases of the squat, for example, we took the average loading every week, so of my heavy sets.
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SPEAKER_00
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.
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SPEAKER_00
And then the next week, let s get it to 957.
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SPEAKER_00
963, and this was pretty aggressive, working up to where my average loading the final, that the final was 985 pounds, average load for eight to nine reps.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s what I was saying, this is the intense part.
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SPEAKER_00
That was why it was, the day of was much easier.
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SPEAKER_00
That week over week is pretty brutal.
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SPEAKER_00
May not sound, oh, you re just squatting.
4
SPEAKER_00
And now let s back up, let s look at the quality development.
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SPEAKER_00
So a year out from the squat,
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SPEAKER_00
Obviously, I ve been working on developing axial load capacity, my capacity to withstand load from top to bottom.
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SPEAKER_00
So I like thinking about things in movement vectors.
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SPEAKER_00
So this vector is an axial loaded vector, is the hardest to recover from.
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SPEAKER_00
So what s axial, so like is deadlift, are they both?
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SPEAKER_00
They re both, yep.
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SPEAKER_00
So a horizontal, a front to back would be like a row or a press.
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SPEAKER_01
Why is the axial hardest to recover from?
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SPEAKER_01
Because it s the entire body, the entire torso?
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SPEAKER_00
Entire body, just anything that taxes the spinal mechanics, I could tell you my beliefs, it s studied, it is, okay?
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SPEAKER_00
We can just keep the discussion on that short like that.
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SPEAKER_00
So we start looking at those different vectors that we re training in.
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SPEAKER_00
So this is why, this is important to understand, so I m not just getting into nuance here.
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SPEAKER_00
hey, squatting s gonna make me jump further, because it s legs.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, squatting is an axial load vector and jumping is a vector this way.
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SPEAKER_00
So actually hip thrusts would help with your, and this is proven in science, with your forward jumping ability.
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SPEAKER_00
They re both working similar muscles, the glute extension, but they re working it in those different platforms.
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SPEAKER_00
So it s really important to understand because people don t understand.
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SPEAKER_00
I m building my work capacity by doing sled pushes.
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SPEAKER_00
You re not developing your work capacity for squatting.
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SPEAKER_01
most movements, even ones as holistic as a squat, require specialization?
4
SPEAKER_00
You can t get strong at the squat by doing- You re gonna have some carry over, right, obviously, but because taking an untrained person that hasn t done it is still not gonna do as good as somebody that s done nonspecific work, but done work.
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SPEAKER_00
But yes, for the most part.
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SPEAKER_00
To get truly strong, you need to specialize.
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SPEAKER_00
But not all the time.
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SPEAKER_00
So now we talk about quality.
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SPEAKER_00
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.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we wanted to save the actual squatting in the pattern with the bar that I was doing for the very end.
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SPEAKER_00
So starting a year out, I started doing work front squatting.
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SPEAKER_00
like a squat, axial loaded pattern, and worked on maximizing that up.
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SPEAKER_00
Then I started shifting to doing transformer bar squat.
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SPEAKER_00
It s this bar I developed that actually changed and manipulates spinal mechanics.
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SPEAKER_00
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.
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SPEAKER_00
And then I would start adjusting that bar every training cycle to closer to a squat, closer to a squat till it finally was.
4
SPEAKER_01
So what s the difference between a front squat and a regular back squat?
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SPEAKER_01
In terms of the stress on the body, the mechanics, was there something interesting to be said about, how fundamentally different are they?
4
SPEAKER_00
So what s interesting, people think about the weight in position to them like, oh, the bar s in front of me, the bar s behind me, which is not the case.
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SPEAKER_00
The bar is above your midfoot.
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SPEAKER_00
The load is above your midfoot.
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SPEAKER_00
So we re actually manipulating the spine behind the bar.
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SPEAKER_00
So we re causing spinal uprighting behind the bar, getting in a more erect position, which is gonna change the relationship of the hip angle.
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SPEAKER_00
It s gonna change our ability to maintain the spine.
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SPEAKER_00
It s going to change how much the core comes in, how hard it is to maintain that sternum to diaphragm relationship that we talked about.
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SPEAKER_00
All this stuff starts changing.
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SPEAKER_00
So the bar stays in the same place.
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SPEAKER_00
The bar s still behind you, but the load,
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SPEAKER_00
moves around so, but we re actually manipulating the spine around the load.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
It s incredible.
4
SPEAKER_00
We can tailor it to an athlete, which is great when you got a seven foot plus tall baseball player or basketball player.
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SPEAKER_00
That s why we work with all these teams.
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SPEAKER_00
Anyway, so it s like you re taking something and getting closer and closer to it.
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SPEAKER_00
At the same time, we re looking at the quality.
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SPEAKER_00
So like I needed to be able to really hold this torso position with the weight moving up here.
4
SPEAKER_00
Now, unlike the deadlift, the ability to manage this TL position,
4
SPEAKER_00
becomes much more challenging.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that was also why I was choosing the transformer bar because it actually challenges that more in those big forward positions.
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SPEAKER_00
I was also working on my back strength tremendously to be able to hold and maintain position.
4
SPEAKER_00
So there was a lot of like, I chose a bent over rows.
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SPEAKER_00
So bent over row is a mixed vector.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it s a forward to back.
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SPEAKER_00
So it wouldn t have as much carrier, but it s also, um,
4
SPEAKER_00
got some axial loading component in it as well.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we re working on that.
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SPEAKER_00
And then as we get closer and closer to competition, I m developing those strengths, but now I need to start tapering those out.
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SPEAKER_00
So all of my recovery needs can now go into the more specific that I m actually ramping the load up.
4
SPEAKER_00
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.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I can still keep my total load high, but now get it very, very specific.
4
SPEAKER_00
So everything that I ve done has always been kind of an annual training cycle.
4
SPEAKER_00
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.
4
SPEAKER_01
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.
4
SPEAKER_00
You need variety.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Um, because you will basically stagnate at some level, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So you should, should always be kind of shifting a little bit.
4
SPEAKER_00
So, um, three to four month blocks in general for an average, you know, just a gen pop fitness is pretty good.
4
SPEAKER_00
Um, where you re going to spend more time maybe in a higher rep range or lower rep range a little bit more.
4
SPEAKER_00
work on endurance capacity or maybe some more time.
4
SPEAKER_00
Hey, I m playing around with boxing or jujitsu or something like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Bring that a little bit more to the forefront for a while and bring the other out.
4
SPEAKER_00
But like mixing those variables up, but trying to keep the total load the same and always kind of like, do we add a little more?
4
SPEAKER_00
Again, it doesn t have to be major and it shouldn t be major.
4
SPEAKER_00
You don t want these big jumps.
4
SPEAKER_00
You don t go, oh my God, let s move.
4
SPEAKER_00
Let s jump into squatting every day.
4
SPEAKER_00
You ve got to build the capacity to do that.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s simple.
4
SPEAKER_01
What role would you say strength has in sports that combine skill and strength?
4
SPEAKER_01
So for me personally, maybe I ll just ask it selfishly, which is grappling, wrestling, MMA.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
How about I start with baseball?
4
SPEAKER_01
Please.
4
SPEAKER_01
Baseball and golf are two of my favorite sports.
4
SPEAKER_01
You don t have to be in shape at all to excel at those sports.
4
SPEAKER_00
Here s the thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re going to get this argument.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, I ve got a perfect example because this is why I sell so many transformer bars into the Major League Baseball.
4
SPEAKER_00
So they get these people that come in, these athletes, that have been baseball their whole life.
4
SPEAKER_00
It is part of the culture.
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SPEAKER_00
And so they re great athletes.
4
SPEAKER_00
They ve got all the skill.
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SPEAKER_00
The only thing they have to do is develop a little bit more resilience.
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SPEAKER_00
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.
4
SPEAKER_00
So the only thing they ve gotta 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 cueing all the stuff with actually not having to coach it, because when you re coaching a room full of athletes,
4
SPEAKER_00
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.
4
SPEAKER_00
So once you reach a certain level of skill, adding strength is the only real forward path.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that s the basic simple answer to that.
4
SPEAKER_00
So one of the benefits there being like injury prevention, actually.
4
SPEAKER_00
Injury prevent, resilience, because especially 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.
4
SPEAKER_00
Even a cyclist, mountain biking, why would they need it?
4
SPEAKER_00
Why would they need to do upper body training?
4
SPEAKER_00
Take a crash, your shoulder s gone.
4
SPEAKER_00
You re done, your career s over, unless you ve done a little training.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So there s value in all this stuff, but the resilience is like, that s huge.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then we can overlay strength.
4
SPEAKER_00
Where we miss is this focus on strength when we haven t developed quality motor patterns first.
4
SPEAKER_00
So this is a huge thing with children, because people want to know what s the appropriate training age.
4
SPEAKER_00
I d have had my daughter training before my son because she developed movement patterns at a better quality earlier.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s no age because it s gonna be very dependent on the individual.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s no point in having adaptation if we don t have the right thing to adapt to yet.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that applies to general movement, but also to sport.
4
SPEAKER_01
So you re saying the skills should be developed first and then the strength applied on top of that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yep.
4
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you can educate me, but...
4
SPEAKER_01
I actually quit lifting and power lifting for a long time after I started judo, jiu-jitsu, grappling, all this sort of combat sports, because I found that it was preventing me from relaxing my body enough to load in the skill.
4
SPEAKER_00
So this isn t a problem with the training.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is a problem with you.
4
SPEAKER_00
So this is actually really, really important.
4
SPEAKER_00
The first product I ever released was a loadable mace, a swinging mace.
4
SPEAKER_00
And because every power lifter and body, well, not every, but most serious power lifters and bodybuilders, like shoulders, mobility is pretty limited.
4
SPEAKER_00
And most of them really, really struggle with this.
4
SPEAKER_00
The problem is they ve been taught to have tension all the time.
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SPEAKER_00
And that s not good.
4
SPEAKER_00
So when we talk about 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 contraction.
4
SPEAKER_00
float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
And so what a mace can do is use that, because this 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?
4
SPEAKER_00
So a mace, we have this weight on a big, long lever.
4
SPEAKER_00
So if I grab a kettlebell, and some people are like, that s the same movement as a kettlebell halo.
4
SPEAKER_00
It is the same movement as a kettlebell, but here in the halo, I m on the whole time.
4
SPEAKER_00
With the mace at the proper length, with the right distribution, you cannot do the movement.
4
SPEAKER_00
You could not move, force your way through it.
4
SPEAKER_00
The only way that you can accomplish that is by relaxing.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then, now we can contract all the muscles related around that shoulder girdle all at once.
4
SPEAKER_00
We re working on, off, on, off, on, off.
4
SPEAKER_00
with moving and contracting.
4
SPEAKER_00
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.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then that s where this stiffness comes from.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it means that in some of whatever training that you re doing, there s a deficit in the movement quality.
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
Or
4
SPEAKER_00
there s a deficit in the training program and you re not recovering from.
4
SPEAKER_00
And 80% of the time, that s the right answer, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, that s 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.
4
SPEAKER_00
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.
4
SPEAKER_00
because I m looking at holistic movement.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m not looking at power lifting.
4
SPEAKER_00
Base 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.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I m freaking the 1,000 pound squatter and deadlifter.
4
SPEAKER_00
If you watch any of my videos where I do complete quad fallbacks, I don t stretch at all.
4
SPEAKER_00
I can usually get close to a full split if I want to.
4
SPEAKER_00
What?
4
SPEAKER_01
No, I did not see those videos.
4
SPEAKER_01
OK.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s hard to believe.
4
SPEAKER_01
Wow, OK.
4
SPEAKER_00
Actually, I do.
4
SPEAKER_00
I just did one recently, a quad fallback with my mace loaded way out to the end, torsioning on both ends of the other.
4
SPEAKER_00
I do a lot of weird stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s awesome.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
Squatting doesn t make your hips tight.
4
SPEAKER_00
Squatting like shit makes your hips tight.
4
SPEAKER_00
Beautiful.
4
SPEAKER_00
But there is no perfect world.
4
SPEAKER_00
We re always, our training program isn t quite perfect.
4
SPEAKER_00
Our movement isn t necessarily perfect.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, so you re going to have the needs for this stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
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.
4
SPEAKER_00
there is a problem and I m not saying don t do it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do it because I don t want you to have a joint.
4
SPEAKER_00
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.
4
SPEAKER_00
Then I m going to end up with some other problems, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So go ahead and clean that up so you can get in position.
4
SPEAKER_00
But go figure out why it is and fix it and then maybe next, you know, three four months for now They re gonna get a little something else going on Fix it, but go understand the deeper root reason of why so I don t 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.
4
SPEAKER_00
I
4
SPEAKER_01
because it s not helping you get to the why, why it was caused in the first place.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
The goal, the goal, the perfect state is not having to use them.
4
SPEAKER_00
Reality is you re going to have to use them from time to time because the world s not perfect.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
So your discovery is 100% on point.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, there s another side to combat sports.
4
SPEAKER_01
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 stronger.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes, you can.
4
SPEAKER_01
So if your mind is strong enough to where you can just turn off that advantage,
4
SPEAKER_01
and be a beginner, truly, in a particular art, that s probably the best way to do it.
4
SPEAKER_01
But you can get away, and then you don t learn.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s hard.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s hard not to use the little advantages you have, because jujitsu is a big hit on the ego for, you know, especially guys.
4
SPEAKER_01
like a smaller person just destroys you, dominates you, when you can, I don t know, deadlift whatever number of pounds.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s hard not to use that strength to then resist, slow the ultimate destruction by like 120 pounds.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s why I recommend developing the skill quality first, but it doesn t mean that you can t.
4
SPEAKER_00
You can still do it, so don t take it as a like, oh, I can t go that direction.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s fine, but understand those things, and then also understand that jujitsu is additional load on the body, so you have to, you can t just add it on top.
4
SPEAKER_00
You ve got to taper back the other, you re gonna have to make a, I m sorry, you may not wanna hear it,
4
SPEAKER_00
but you re not gonna be able to do as much and add that here.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a compromise because your total volume still has to be there.
4
SPEAKER_00
And there s not, unfortunately, not really a way to measure what the jujitsu volume is with this.
4
SPEAKER_00
So you ve got to take a look at that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s where like measuring like heart rate variability or other stuff can be useful.
4
SPEAKER_00
So you can see what is happening for me from a sympathetic versus parasympathetic nervous system standpoint.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, making sure your body recovers sufficiently and trying to put numbers to it.
4
SPEAKER_01
You mentioned Kabuki Strength.
4
SPEAKER_01
You run the Kabuki Strength Lab, previously called the Elite Performance Center in Oregon.
4
SPEAKER_01
You called it the perfect gym.
4
SPEAKER_01
What makes for the perfect strength training gym?
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know where I called it the perfect gym.
4
SPEAKER_01
In a video somewhere I watched.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, man.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that s where my testing grounds for developing all this stuff was through the years.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so this is, like I said, I started developing relationships with the best developmental kinesiologist in the US, the best, arguably the best or most well-known physical therapist in the world, the best spine biomechanist in the world.
4
SPEAKER_00
I started doing continuing education with these clinical courses and learning this stuff and going, but how does it work in my world, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
And then I started lecturing with them and all this other stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
The lab was like, where do we test this stuff, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
And so let me get to a point.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s three things.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s always three things.
4
SPEAKER_00
So to be a success, to achieve success, I believe there s three things that really, really come into place.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s the right methodology, the right tools, and the right environment.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so it was all about building that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so the methodologies came from a lot of that different, that gray area, interaction of clinical with sports science, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
And then the tools I had to start creating and designing.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then the environment is having this focused environment of people that want to do better and push each other and having community and culture, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
I end up building these connections, this network.
4
SPEAKER_00
Everything that I m doing with my businesses is trying to create that into a scalable fashion.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so I m building the groundwork because to have a system that like
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I had clinicals on site that knew exactly what we were doing.
5
SPEAKER_00
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.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you can see these, there s other models around this.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I ve been other areas since maybe whenever it was I filmed that video that said that, that they have that same model.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it s taken probably about a decade usually to develop that.
5
SPEAKER_00
you know, and having the right people in this community, they can create this network and the tool and all this stuff, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Except they still don t have the best tools because Kabuki Strength didn t exist.
5
SPEAKER_00
But, and so out of that was, is essentially I started building this business and people like, when did you know how all this stuff was connected?
5
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, I don t know.
5
SPEAKER_00
I didn t, I just started creating on the outset the things that worked until finally I m like, oh,
5
SPEAKER_00
I m recreating a scalable version of this stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
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?
5
SPEAKER_00
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 person s individual needs, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Now, how do we integrate that with assessment and clinical care assessment and all these other pieces?
5
SPEAKER_00
So there s a lot of work in that.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so that s where Kabuki strength is the genesis, but we have, we call our gym, the Kabuki strength.
5
SPEAKER_00
lab, literally people find about our gym in the neighborhood.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re like, how long have you been here?
5
SPEAKER_00
Why do I not know about this?
5
SPEAKER_00
We don t advertise our gym at all.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re like, that makes no sense.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, that 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.
5
SPEAKER_01
What about the environment of the feel of it, the actual gym?
5
SPEAKER_01
There s a, I don t know, a grunginess to it.
5
SPEAKER_01
I ve recently became a member of Planet Fitness for reasons that have to do more with the heat in Austin that sometimes I need to put in time on the treadmill.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t like that gym.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t have any judgment, honestly.
5
SPEAKER_00
The best gyms I ve been in are
5
SPEAKER_00
kind of dirty.
5
SPEAKER_00
You walk in and you know that work is to be done.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s not another reason to do there.
5
SPEAKER_00
It is, the environment is tight.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s a big piece of that.
5
SPEAKER_00
I know it s studied sociologically, I believe.
5
SPEAKER_00
I just, I just butchered that word too.
5
SPEAKER_00
But the intensity, when you start growing a space, the intensity drops.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so I had that experience when we grew, we went from a 4,000 foot to a 9,000 square foot gym at one time.
5
SPEAKER_00
And everybody s like, it doesn t feel the same.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like if people are complaining for years, we ve shrunk it back down.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, we re down to 3,500 square feet and it creates that intensity.
5
SPEAKER_00
It creates the closest, the connection with the people around you.
5
SPEAKER_00
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.
5
SPEAKER_00
But when I speak environment, it s not just the, it s not the physical, it s the people.
5
SPEAKER_01
But you know when the gym is a little bit beat up?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_01
It also tells a story, like there s a history to it.
5
SPEAKER_01
You could tell that not only is there work to be done, that work has been done here.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like battles have been fought.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s something to that where you re just in a long line of people, you know,
5
SPEAKER_00
fought and won.
5
SPEAKER_00
And we could get into a whole nother space, this would be a whole nother topic, but that existing energy of a space.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, we mentioned offline Joe Rogan, he talks about the same with comedy clubs.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s certain clubs that just have a history, there s an energy there, you can get all woo woo, but you know, it s there.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a real thing, I think.
5
SPEAKER_00
You walk in and you can feel it.
5
SPEAKER_00
You feel it.
5
SPEAKER_00
You feel it.
5
SPEAKER_01
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.
5
SPEAKER_01
just the greatness that once was is still in the walls, in the space, present there.
5
SPEAKER_01
And we somehow can plug into that energy.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s, we can go down a path there.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s something really powerful there.
5
SPEAKER_01
You ve also mentioned a bunch of cool equipment that you ve developed as part of Kabuki Strength.
5
SPEAKER_01
Probably a little bit of that has to do with your engineering education, but also just generally with the spirit of the innovator that you are.
5
SPEAKER_01
What are some cool, maybe revolutionary pieces of equipment that you re particularly proud of or just you ve been obsessed with recently that you ve been helping?
5
SPEAKER_00
Love to talk about that.
5
SPEAKER_00
So we ve got some wild, crazy stuff that just came out and is coming out too.
5
SPEAKER_00
So everything that we create and release at Kabuki Strength,
5
SPEAKER_00
The industry hasn t seen before.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s stuff that s basic foundational that s been around forever because it works.
5
SPEAKER_00
But
5
SPEAKER_00
There s always more.
5
SPEAKER_00
It could be better.
5
SPEAKER_00
And why are we not looking at these things, these foundational things?
5
SPEAKER_00
So when people are coming up with novel things, they end up being way different outside the perspective.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I m coming up with things that are way different that are plays on what we already know works.
5
SPEAKER_00
So we talked about the transform bar, the only bar in the world.
5
SPEAKER_00
We can manipulate spinal mechanics.
5
SPEAKER_00
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,
5
SPEAKER_00
and training needs, okay?
5
SPEAKER_00
And that s gonna also create and distill down the size and scope of space that we need, which is gonna continue to be an ongoing thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
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.
5
SPEAKER_00
Uh, last week we drove to the desert and by entire gym, I mean, uh, squat rack, full compliment of our specialty bars, a horizontal and vertical pulley system, handheld weights, shoulder rock, like a complete, an entire gym in product that took up the space, the size of this bed right here.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s incredible.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because of the design scope of what we have.
5
SPEAKER_00
So the cool thing is that there s two other bars that fit our biomechanically sound barbell lines.
5
SPEAKER_00
We talked about the transformer bar.
5
SPEAKER_00
The other two are built on this thing I called playground physics.
5
SPEAKER_00
So we have these bars with handles that are off
5
SPEAKER_00
off parallel with the axis.
5
SPEAKER_00
So they ve been around the market for a long time.
5
SPEAKER_00
One is a hex bar or a trap bar.
5
SPEAKER_00
Another one is a, it s a pressing bar with the handles turned as well.
5
SPEAKER_00
And both of them suck.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re horrible.
5
SPEAKER_00
Anytime, any lifter knows if you pick it up, it s going to break your wrist and crush into your face.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it just, it just doesn t feel good pressing.
5
SPEAKER_00
but it alleviates the strain on the wrist.
5
SPEAKER_00
So people use it for that reason.
5
SPEAKER_00
And the trap bar, same thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s always diving forward in your hand.
5
SPEAKER_00
So it s kind of limited.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s also limited in use because you could do a lot more with it.
5
SPEAKER_00
So these bars are really cool, playground physics.
5
SPEAKER_00
So as soon as the center of rotation is on the same axis as the center of mass,
5
SPEAKER_00
and the handle is off center, you have a teeter-totter.
5
SPEAKER_00
So a teeter-totter has a balance point, but it s infinitely perfect.
5
SPEAKER_00
So technically you can never find it.
5
SPEAKER_00
So it s always gonna be sitting on one side or the other in a playground.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that s what these bars are designed.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you got instability right here.
5
SPEAKER_00
You can t find the center.
5
SPEAKER_00
The bar is always trying to tip in your hands on the trap bar.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you can t do carries with it, because you re doing for momentum and it wants to dip on you, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
The Swiss bar wants to crush your face.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, what do we do?
5
SPEAKER_00
We just make a swing.
5
SPEAKER_00
put center of mass below center of rotation.
5
SPEAKER_00
And what does it do?
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it always finds center.
5
SPEAKER_00
So the handles on our pressing bar, it s arced so that the handles are above center of rotation.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then every angle, instead of just being a certain fixed angles, each angle is based on the width
5
SPEAKER_00
the average width of an individual.
5
SPEAKER_00
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 lap being a stabilizer.
5
SPEAKER_00
You still need to have a little bit of cue of external rotation to engage that as a stabilizer.
5
SPEAKER_00
Boom.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now, all of a sudden you have a bar and I kid you not, this is a great story.
5
SPEAKER_00
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.
5
SPEAKER_00
They can t press, they ve gotten shoulder surgeries, so on.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so we re showing them, they love all our stuff, and I m like, hey, I ve got this cool prototype I want to show you.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a pressing bar.
5
SPEAKER_00
And they re like, oh, you know.
5
SPEAKER_00
Major League Baseball is a little hesitant on pressing, because of the dangers for the shoulder.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I haven t been able to take a bar to my chest.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I d really love to.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s been five years since I ve been able to XX train.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, just try it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, I can t even get a bar to my chest without pain.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m like, just try it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Put it in there.
5
SPEAKER_00
Ooh, that feels good.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now, the arc makes it actually three inches deeper.
5
SPEAKER_00
So people are automatically scared.
5
SPEAKER_00
I can t do that, because that s an extra range of motion, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
I m like, oh, put a plate on there.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re doing it.
5
SPEAKER_00
By that time, the staff s like, they re all standing around.
5
SPEAKER_00
You see like, what s going on?
5
SPEAKER_00
Put two plates on.
5
SPEAKER_00
You see the, just like, Eggie gets up.
5
SPEAKER_00
How do you feel?
5
SPEAKER_00
I feel fine, no pain at all.
5
SPEAKER_00
I did this with five teams, with five of it happening repeatedly five times.
5
SPEAKER_00
And every one of them worked up to two plates and did reps varied with zero pain to a three inch greater range of motion.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because what did we do?
5
SPEAKER_00
We stacked all the joints and we provided stability at the end.
5
SPEAKER_00
We balanced internal and external rotation.
5
SPEAKER_00
basic playground physics and it changed the game.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now we get a greater range of motion with a greater training effect with the negative stresses removed.
5
SPEAKER_00
Our trap bar opened up one side, which there was already something like that out there, created, it pops up so you can pick up, take the weights on and off.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s got a built-in jack.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then created the high handle position, which already did it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Everybody uses the high handle on a trap bar.
5
SPEAKER_00
They just don t know why they like it.
5
SPEAKER_00
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.
5
SPEAKER_00
So both handles now have that.
5
SPEAKER_00
We added the option of different handle sizes based on whatever your needs are, even a one that rolls to develop a grip.
5
SPEAKER_00
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 so that we can accommodate for all these differences.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so, and then now it becomes the most functional all around bar around.
5
SPEAKER_00
because now you can do carries with it.
5
SPEAKER_00
You can do split squats with it.
5
SPEAKER_00
You could do curls with it because it goes around the body.
5
SPEAKER_00
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.
5
SPEAKER_00
You can do bent over rows and not run into your shins.
5
SPEAKER_00
You can do seal rows off of a bench.
5
SPEAKER_00
You can do ab roll outs.
5
SPEAKER_00
You could, should I go on?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so you could use it as like the main bar.
5
SPEAKER_00
The best multi-purpose bar around.
5
SPEAKER_00
You got a home gym, one bar.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, how do you develop totally new equipment like this?
5
SPEAKER_00
I scratch it on paper, maybe cut up and weld up a prototype, but usually I just hand the scratched up paper to my engineering manager.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that s what he says his job is, to distill my chicken scratch into something real.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then that team picks it up.
5
SPEAKER_00
But in the old days, starting out, I just walk out.
5
SPEAKER_00
I just walk out and do it.
5
SPEAKER_00
You talk about engineering.
5
SPEAKER_00
I work more of an artist fashion.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s in my head, and I just go create with no plans.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so they have to pick that up and actually do the engineering and testing and all that.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then we got two other products came out this year.
5
SPEAKER_00
Freaking wild.
5
SPEAKER_00
Are you familiar with training with a flywheel?
5
SPEAKER_00
No, what s a flywheel?
5
SPEAKER_00
Maybe I am.
5
SPEAKER_00
A flywheel is a spinning object that creates inertial mass.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then it reverses direction.
5
SPEAKER_00
So whatever you put into it, and there s ones out there, but ours is the first patent pending that s everything all in one unit.
5
SPEAKER_00
So it s a floor-based as well as a horizontal.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you can basically do any pulley movement in the world.
5
SPEAKER_00
And now everything that you put into it on a concentric force, it whips right back as a concentric load.
5
SPEAKER_01
Gotcha.
5
SPEAKER_01
So there s an accelerating whipping motion.
5
SPEAKER_01
It just, yeah, basically.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, okay, I have to have trouble imagining exactly many of the things you re describing, I suppose, have to be experienced, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
So it s a magic.
5
SPEAKER_00
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 a
5
SPEAKER_00
crazy for what they do, but it s another tool.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so we have a very high-quality unit now that is half the cost of everybody else s, because the innovation of a movable mount point, for them, you have to have two pieces of equipment.
5
SPEAKER_00
We have one.
5
SPEAKER_00
So, um, and then a few other things, better platform to be able to do things and that we can do what we call app off platform work, which allows us to do movements like, uh, punches and, and standups, things like that.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then I ve got a handheld weight coming out next month.
5
SPEAKER_00
that we can actually play with.
5
SPEAKER_00
So varying the load with it never leaving your hand by changing the leverage point.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so with that- What exercise are we talking about here?
5
SPEAKER_00
Anything that would be a dumbbell or a kettlebell movement.
5
SPEAKER_00
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.
5
SPEAKER_00
So how can you change, like, how can you change the load?
5
SPEAKER_00
Because load, well, we don t actually change the load.
5
SPEAKER_00
We change the torque on the joint that we re working, which is the same.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s actually what is creating the force, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So if I m doing a front raise, it s where this downward force is times the distance away, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Which also then makes it no force when I ve got it at the bottom of the front raise, which is why it s so easy.
5
SPEAKER_00
With this,
5
SPEAKER_00
It s like a kettlebell.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s offset, except it has three different handles.
5
SPEAKER_00
But it s offset just that a kettlebell, you can t do it because the offset so far, it becomes a wrist movement.
5
SPEAKER_00
So ours has three different sizes and the offset just enough so that you can pick, if I put it in the front race position or curl position, I could put it in outward position.
5
SPEAKER_00
And the force is almost what it is at the top, but then I get to the top and it s the same exact or the curl.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I can actually change the force curve in the movement.
5
SPEAKER_00
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.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
So it s got a really nice texture grip that allows you to hold it in different positions.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then the load offset is just enough that it doesn t overpower the wrist.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then you ve got different hand sizes so that you can maximize this relationship and hit whatever joint that you re applying.
5
SPEAKER_00
That sounds incredible.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, it s awesome because the variable load, now I could go straight from front raises to side raises or rear or curl because I don t have to put it down.
5
SPEAKER_00
So now my time under tension goes through the roof.
5
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, the same effect with the flywheel trainer because the variable, whatever you put into it is what it kicks back.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you have a constant time under tension because there s no rest points either.
5
SPEAKER_00
So all this stuff is working on maximizing time under tension, which anyway,
5
SPEAKER_00
It s cool stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, I get excited.
5
SPEAKER_01
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 company, Barefoot Athletics.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
B-E-A-R.
5
SPEAKER_01
And the tagline is optimizing the human to ground interface.
5
SPEAKER_01
We ve talked about this a little bit with the power lifting.
5
SPEAKER_01
How do you think about the foot ground interface?
5
SPEAKER_00
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.
5
SPEAKER_00
But
5
SPEAKER_00
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 it healthy.
5
SPEAKER_00
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.
5
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Do it with your shoulders, your knees.
5
SPEAKER_00
Wake up and put some knee wraps on, okay, and elbow wraps, and see what happens.
5
SPEAKER_00
One, you ll get weaker.
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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.
5
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This is it.
5
SPEAKER_00
What shoes are for is to protect you from the environment, from cuts and abrasions and heat and things like that, but the foot,
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SPEAKER_00
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.
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That s it.
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That s all I have to say about the subject.
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SPEAKER_00
It s that simple, but somehow we have been sold entire industries like the orthotics industry.
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SPEAKER_00
It s completely false.
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SPEAKER_00
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.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I can t tell you how many people I ve eliminated back or knee or hip pain from working on strengthening and controlling the foot and ankle complex.
5
SPEAKER_00
We believe we ve villainized and said a low arch is a condition that needs fixed.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like when it really is just controlling the foot and ankle complex and how they relate to each other and how we use that.
5
SPEAKER_00
Is it like, go put on boxing gloves in the morning and do that for the next 20 years and see what happens.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s not about finding the right shoe that fits because your foot has been deformed.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so I m not like some wacky, like, oh, you gotta be barefoot forever or do this.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, no, I m just saying, go spend some time using it.
5
SPEAKER_00
strengthen it, learn to control it, and you will work better in a shoe.
5
SPEAKER_00
But the whole running shoe movement with the raised heel, that was the person that suggested that to Nike way back when they were trying to figure out what to do, the reason, and he says it s the worst thing that he ever did.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because we were coming from an era of people wearing heeled shoes, which by the way came from stirrups,
6
SPEAKER_00
way back in the day, that s where the whole heel came from, is to go into stirrup, but then it went into fashion.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then the running craze started coming around in the 70s.
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SPEAKER_00
They re starting to push this to the general mass population and they realized that they were causing injuries.
6
SPEAKER_00
And like, what are we going to do?
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s because everybody was in this position and had a shortened calf muscle.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it s like, well, to work around, let s just put a heel on it so we don t injure them.
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SPEAKER_00
That s it, and now, because the raised heel, you gotta 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 internal and external rotation of your leg, you don t, or your foot, and you actually have to put a support in for the arch to be able to passively control those structures.
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SPEAKER_00
It s just Band-Aid on top of Band-Aid on top of Band-Aid.
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SPEAKER_00
Use it, strengthen it.
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SPEAKER_00
If you wanna wear some shoes cause they look good or fancy, I m like, I have no problem.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, I go out on a wife, my wife will put on some high heels every now and again.
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SPEAKER_00
But all I m saying is use your foot.
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SPEAKER_00
My thousand pound squat, my thousand pound deadlift were done barefoot.
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SPEAKER_00
I m not trying to sell you shoes.
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SPEAKER_00
Go do it with no shoe.
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SPEAKER_00
That s what I ve been promoting.
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SPEAKER_00
I did that for six years and I promoted it.
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SPEAKER_00
But people ask me like,
6
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Well, what do I do?
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SPEAKER_00
Because my gym requires shoes.
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SPEAKER_00
Okay, where do I go?
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SPEAKER_00
And then I go, well, you know, you could pick up these other finger shoes or whatever.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they go, man, my wife won t have sex with me if I do that.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I go, I know, mine either.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, trust me, I m not making this up.
6
SPEAKER_00
Everybody in that market markets to one segment and they re still missing some gaps because they still have a little bit too narrow of a toe box.
6
SPEAKER_00
And if you re lifting, you have the opportunity to really get that splay and start working on this stuff better.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, I just wanted to create a shoe.
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SPEAKER_00
These ones are odd colored because it s a partnership with Kabuki.
6
SPEAKER_00
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.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s a moccasin.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s a modern day moccasin, but looks okay that you can wear it around in other areas if you so choose.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, you know what the number one healthcare cost in America is?
6
SPEAKER_00
What s that?
6
SPEAKER_00
diabetes, heart disease, cancer, low back pain.
6
SPEAKER_00
Hmm.
6
SPEAKER_01
Now, what do you attribute low back pain to?
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, it s attributed to a lot of things, but inability to control spinal position, which starts happening from some breathing issues.
6
SPEAKER_00
It also happens from the foot.
6
SPEAKER_00
So there s a lot of stuff, but everything that I do, I actually focus on improving this.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
And it all starts with the feet.
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SPEAKER_00
This is one thing.
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SPEAKER_00
Like, this doesn t affect breathing.
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SPEAKER_00
So it does actually affect breathing to some extent and spinal stabilization.
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SPEAKER_00
So the raised heel and toe will make you stride further because of just how it operates.
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SPEAKER_00
But that overstride is a result of opening this.
6
SPEAKER_00
So we open the pelvis and diaphragm.
6
SPEAKER_00
Did we talk about that and the impact that that has for controlling and spine?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think we touched on that.
6
SPEAKER_00
But all this stuff plays together.
6
SPEAKER_00
So the gait affects that.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so the shoe affects the gait.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then so it s all connected.
6
SPEAKER_00
All connected.
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SPEAKER_00
Let me be very...
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SPEAKER_00
purposeful with some conversation here, though.
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SPEAKER_00
We ve talked about periodization.
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SPEAKER_00
This was a big gap.
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SPEAKER_00
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.
6
SPEAKER_00
You do not walk into the gym if you haven t squatted and start squatting 225 for max reps every weekday or every day over day.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that s what people did because they weren t told that
6
SPEAKER_00
You need to build the capacity to do this.
6
SPEAKER_00
You go wear these and walk around in your office or wherever all day long, your feet are going to hurt.
6
SPEAKER_00
They re going to be sore.
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SPEAKER_00
Do it for 10% of your time.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
Do that for a month, then add some that will build the capacity to do this.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then that s going to start having the ability to strengthen, manage the foot.
6
SPEAKER_00
And there s a whole lot of other stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
I ve got videos on things that you can do by whatever you want, or just, just spend some time out of them.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like that s all that I want people to do because it is so simple and it has such a profound impact.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
It does.
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SPEAKER_00
What I did- I noticed when I walked in.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was like, oh, hey, you re spending some time without shoes on.
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, what I did, I think it s already now two years ago, and I was doing a lot of running.
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SPEAKER_01
I d do like a 10 mile run.
6
SPEAKER_01
I would take my shoes off for the last half mile, and I d run like that.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that was, for me, really helpful to ensure that I have proper form.
6
SPEAKER_01
form that minimizes pain on the way I run.
6
SPEAKER_01
I still like shoes.
6
SPEAKER_01
I benefit a lot from shoes, the protection they provide, but it s for running we re referring to, especially trail running and so on.
6
SPEAKER_01
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.
6
SPEAKER_01
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 lower leg, the entirety of the torso really, how it s improperly positioned,
6
SPEAKER_01
in terms for the objective of minimizing pain.
6
SPEAKER_01
And the barefoot running really helped fix that for me.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because I figured out that I need to take shorter steps, more frequent, you know, all those kinds of things.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that really helps you figure that out.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, let s be realist about stuff.
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SPEAKER_00
Like, spend some time using it, strengthen it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I ve got some great ways to do that and learn how to do that.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
What is a good diet for strength development?
6
SPEAKER_01
I ve, just to give you some context, I ve been eating mostly meat.
6
SPEAKER_01
Not for strength, mostly for mental performance.
6
SPEAKER_01
I just enjoy it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes, you need to have a base level of protein building blocks for tissue, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
We need to have enough fats to be able to have hormones work and key processes in the body.
6
SPEAKER_00
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.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I look at it as,
6
SPEAKER_00
You need a base level of fats, you need a base level of proteins, and then you adjust the carbohydrate intake based on the needs.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m not anti-carbohydrate by any means because a lot of people, well, they look at me now when they see how lean I am and they jump to a conclusion, you must be keto, you must be carnivore, you must be whatever.
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SPEAKER_00
So losing and gaining weight is simply eating less or eating more.
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SPEAKER_00
And we get so complicated.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, what s your fasting window?
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SPEAKER_00
If I m doing fasting, it s just because it works with my,
6
SPEAKER_00
my environment.
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SPEAKER_00
Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don t.
6
SPEAKER_00
All that does is control how much calories that you take.
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SPEAKER_00
Big success with keto and carnivore diets.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s hard to eat a lot and put on weight with those diets.
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SPEAKER_00
Protein actually has a thermogenic effect, and so you have to have a massive amount of fats if you have an only meat diet because you can literally starve to death.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s a
6
SPEAKER_00
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 at, and they threw him way up in the, past the way out there, there was nothing, but he somehow got a caribou and killed it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he still lost a pound a day for 30 days with a caribou because his fat was stolen by a, and he could eat all the meat he wanted, and then he almost got pulled because his weight loss, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
But that isn t actually a performance.
6
SPEAKER_00
So those type keto and carnivore are not performance diets.
6
SPEAKER_00
So they re not going to be as effective at supplying the energy needs for high capacity training.
6
SPEAKER_00
So don t get me wrong, you can do training, but like.
6
SPEAKER_00
You can be a successful athlete with a vegan diet, but it s not as easy to do it with other diets, and you re missing some base nutrients.
6
SPEAKER_00
So many nutrients in meat.
6
SPEAKER_00
I believe having greens in your diet is really beneficial.
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SPEAKER_00
Lots of research, but there s people in the
6
SPEAKER_00
There are other worlds that argue that you don t need them, but they help clear organs, provide micronutrients, all this sort of stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I eat simply a whole well-rounded diet, and I can go from 285 pounds, squatting a ton of weight, to eating less and dropping all the way down to 7%, 8% body fat with veins standing out everywhere without a tissue on me.
6
SPEAKER_00
with amazing, great-tasting food.
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SPEAKER_00
To lose weight or be healthy does not mean that you need to eat flavorless, bland food.
6
SPEAKER_00
So that s the main point I try to get across.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s eat less to lose weight, eat more to gain weight.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yep, make sure that you ve got enough protein, make sure that you ve got your micronutrients covered, which is gonna cover by eating real food.
6
SPEAKER_00
Don t go low-fat, no-fat.
6
SPEAKER_00
If you want a performance, don t go no-carb, but if it works, any of those things.
6
SPEAKER_00
So diet approach, when you look at diets,
6
SPEAKER_00
Understand how aggressive they are.
6
SPEAKER_00
Keto can make you lose a lot of weight.
6
SPEAKER_00
Carnivore can make you lose a lot of weight.
6
SPEAKER_00
A lot of that up front is actually dropping glycogen stores, so you re actually just reducing water in your muscle and fat tissue, which is why it isn t as great for a performance diet.
6
SPEAKER_00
Understand that every diet
6
SPEAKER_00
also has a level of discipline and does it fit your lifestyle?
6
SPEAKER_00
So I suggest people don t find a diet.
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SPEAKER_00
You need to find a lifestyle because that s what s sustainable.
6
SPEAKER_00
I hate the word diet to begin with.
6
SPEAKER_00
What behaviors are sustainable?
6
SPEAKER_00
and then do that, and then over time, the things you ll get to where you need to get.
6
SPEAKER_00
Diet itself, just by the name of it, is not sustainable because it is a short-term thing to get somewhere.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I tend to try to measure it, because I definitely have a love-hate relationship with food.
6
SPEAKER_01
I tend to look back and say, by following this particular protocol, lifestyle, whatever, what was the level of happiness?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
6
SPEAKER_01
So not like weight loss or weight gain or all those kinds of things.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s the entirety of the picture.
6
SPEAKER_01
Productivity, just feeling good throughout the day.
6
SPEAKER_01
Socially also, like interacting with people.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because so much of human connection, like I mentioned before, is over food.
6
SPEAKER_01
And if you re going to limit yourself in that regard, you re limiting a certain fundamental aspect of life.
6
SPEAKER_00
A number of years ago, I did like 20 to 22 hour fasts every day.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, well, this doesn t work.
6
SPEAKER_00
I can t do business lunches and stuff like that.
6
SPEAKER_00
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 to perform that.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s funny.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that s why the typical bodybuilding, like the eight meal a day diet, has never worked for me because I ve always been trying to fit that between meetings and other stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
What that diet provides is that you get less bloat and distention of a larger meal.
6
SPEAKER_00
But at the end of the day, you get the same exact results.
6
SPEAKER_00
Pick a lifestyle, live that.
6
SPEAKER_00
You can have really great tasting food.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that, to me, is the same thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
And this is why I m really hitting this point, because also with the dieting and the approach, like, oh, I m going to do this.
6
SPEAKER_00
And people pick these chicken and broccoli recipes, and guess what?
6
SPEAKER_00
You re going to break.
6
SPEAKER_00
If you do not enjoy it, you will break.
6
SPEAKER_00
So it is a very important point.
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, I also slightly push back or maybe to elaborate, if you don t enjoy moderation, for me particularly, I have trouble moderating certain things, most foods, I would say.
6
SPEAKER_01
So my source of happiness comes with foods, even if they re bland, the ones that can enjoy, but enjoy moderation.
6
SPEAKER_01
So there s, I mean, I enjoy every piece of food.
6
SPEAKER_01
So it s like, if you can enjoy the full lifestyle, it s not just the particular experience, but like the full journey.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yep, does it fit your lifestyle?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yep.
6
SPEAKER_01
So let me ask about a complicated topic that s sometimes a bit controversial, which is steroids and maybe TRT, testosterone replacement therapy.
6
SPEAKER_01
What role does that play in strength training?
6
SPEAKER_00
All right, we re gonna go there.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but it s an important discussion to have.
6
SPEAKER_00
I think that it s something that I can be more transparent on.
6
SPEAKER_00
In my past, I wasn t able to due to the career that I had.
6
SPEAKER_00
So just like covering that stuff in a public forum, when you re highly looked at being an executive for recruiting and other stuff,
6
SPEAKER_00
It was an area I had to just kind of pass on, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Now, I ve used steroids.
6
SPEAKER_00
I ve used them since I was 33.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I basically just use TRT now after my big squat.
6
SPEAKER_00
So for 10 years, I used them.
6
SPEAKER_00
But there s some interesting components to this.
6
SPEAKER_00
So one is just the gray area of what we call performance-enhancing supplements.
6
SPEAKER_00
So performance, was it PEDs?
6
SPEAKER_00
that the line of what defines a PED is ever shifting.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it s shifting based on society norms, cultural norms, government bodying agencies, all these sorts of stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I m not making excuses here.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I just want to elaborate before I actually start digging into the details here.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because performance enhancing, I could take sodium bicarbonate,
6
SPEAKER_00
and enhance my ability to perform deadlifts for reps.
6
SPEAKER_00
Guess what?
6
SPEAKER_00
I did that for my Guinness World Record for deadlifts in a minute.
6
SPEAKER_00
People do it for rowing or other, they use high capacity type stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
It is performance enhancing.
6
SPEAKER_00
It is a chemical.
6
SPEAKER_00
It is baking soda.
6
SPEAKER_00
All right?
6
SPEAKER_00
They re not able to make it illegal because everybody eats bread.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, not everyone.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so it s a little hard to test for, no matter what you do at any level.
6
SPEAKER_00
So that s an extreme example.
6
SPEAKER_00
But other examples, you re drinking an energy drink in that cup there a little while ago.
6
SPEAKER_00
And in America, you can get an energy drink with 240 milligrams of caffeine in it.
6
SPEAKER_00
In Canada, that s too dangerous.
6
SPEAKER_00
You can only get 140.
6
SPEAKER_00
but you can go buy Ephedra and Ephedra is illegal in America.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so these things bounce back and forth all the time.
6
SPEAKER_00
I could take Yohimbe and in Europe or Australia, it is a drug and classified and in America, it is not.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s an herbal root and a lot, I actually have one of my supplements except for the overseas version.
6
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, the point I m getting is no matter what you do at some point,
6
SPEAKER_00
there s, by someone s standards, you are cheating.
6
SPEAKER_00
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, and there s whole lots of ways to do this, but it s like, oh no, it s steroids, it s not, it s injectable, it s not.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, somewhere there s a culture or a person that will say you re cheating no matter what.
6
SPEAKER_00
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 thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it s either right or wrong, in my opinion.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s kind of the overall dilemma of it is if you want to see what you re totally capable of, you have to decide yourself what s okay or not to that level.
6
SPEAKER_00
There is no body that can say something yes or no.
6
SPEAKER_01
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 imperative there.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I m not talking about that.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m agreeing to compete in this by these rules.
6
SPEAKER_01
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 easy to figure that out.
6
SPEAKER_00
You go, oh, you re just like dancing around the subject, whatever.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, guess what?
6
SPEAKER_00
I ve got a prescription for growth hormone and testosterone.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s legal for me to take.
6
SPEAKER_00
And you know what?
6
SPEAKER_00
A lot of the people that are in front of the camera in the media,
6
SPEAKER_00
politicians and news people and the people that are there saying 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.
6
SPEAKER_00
But in their eyes, it s okay.
6
SPEAKER_00
It is a prescription from their doctor because they have the money to do it.
6
SPEAKER_00
So it s legal and it s fine.
6
SPEAKER_00
If I, it s interesting, in Oregon, anybody, and I don t know what other states, over the age of 16 can, without parent s permission by the way, walk into a gender clinic as a female and get a prescription for testosterone.
6
SPEAKER_00
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.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, so you understand how gray this stuff gets.
6
SPEAKER_01
Do you think the stigma on testosterone is the reason we re not having like a healthy conversation about when it s proper?
6
SPEAKER_01
Like what are the proper uses of testosterone in an athlete s life and just the regular human life?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, absolutely.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, and it s just, it s like anything, it s like,
7
SPEAKER_01
said, it is lines that we pick and draw.
7
SPEAKER_01
Anytime you put that out there, people are going to have different opinions where those lines are.
7
SPEAKER_01
So now when it comes to strength, here s an interesting thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
In powerlifting, there s tested federations and non-tested federations.
7
SPEAKER_01
So we can literally look at the statistical data and actually find out
7
SPEAKER_01
what do steroids do?
7
SPEAKER_01
And so it s pretty clear that steroids provide about a 10% increase in strength on average over not.
7
SPEAKER_01
Now, that does take out the fact that steroids will put you in, allow you to put on more mass, so you ll go up a weight class a lot of times.
7
SPEAKER_01
So as a whole, you could definitely lift more probably than the 10% over time, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
And then we think about steroids as the ability to just put on muscle.
7
SPEAKER_01
And here s where things get a little interesting, even with people that use steroids, is not understanding the neurological impacts that steroids have.
7
SPEAKER_01
Because you could take some steroids right now and be stronger in 10 minutes.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s clearly not done anything.
7
SPEAKER_01
from a physiology standpoint to make you stronger, but we have tapped in neurologically to elicit those gains.
7
SPEAKER_01
And there s a whole lot that happens neurologically.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like how much science is there in terms of all the different ways you could take steroids, which kinds of steroids, the timing, the dose?
7
SPEAKER_00
all of those things to develop the neurological, the physical, the skeletal.
7
SPEAKER_00
You ve talked with such depth about the science of strength building in terms of form, in terms of the equipment that you use.
7
SPEAKER_00
It seems like,
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SPEAKER_00
a component, you know, the use of steroids should be an equal level of scientific rigor when applying them.
7
SPEAKER_01
It is.
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SPEAKER_01
Now, the research is harder to get because of what it is.
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SPEAKER_01
But there is a lot of research that was done when they were legal.
7
SPEAKER_01
So they were legal up in through the, I think the mid 80s.
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SPEAKER_01
And so a lot of the classical
7
SPEAKER_01
high, high benefit to low risk steroids were studied.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
7
SPEAKER_01
And we can t do that because it s
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SPEAKER_01
you know, because of the legality around these things.
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SPEAKER_01
But some of the stuff on the neurological function is really just understanding how that chemical structure works and what it s doing to the neurotransmitters, what it s doing.
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SPEAKER_01
And so some of it is really talking to people that have experience with it.
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SPEAKER_01
And the other is understanding those structures and what they do.
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SPEAKER_01
The neurological component, I think, is more interesting than most, because most steroids act through increasing muscle protein synthesis.
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SPEAKER_01
That s how you add more muscle, is they have an anti-catabolic effect.
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SPEAKER_01
and they have a muscle protein synthesis enhancing effect.
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SPEAKER_01
So it reduces the amount of muscle that you waste and increases the amount of muscle that you put on.
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SPEAKER_01
The neurological component is tremendously valuable for what it can do for your training workout.
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SPEAKER_01
Like if I handle more load over time, I m going to make more progress.
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SPEAKER_01
If I can actually just stimulate more neurological effects for a specific event, it s gonna have an impact, right?
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SPEAKER_01
But there s other ways that you can tap into this too.
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SPEAKER_01
Things that you can tap into mentally with great practice, with meditation and other stuff that will have the same effect.
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SPEAKER_01
People probably think I m over-speaking, especially steroid users that are listening to this.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, at least I m talking out my ass.
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But I m not.
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SPEAKER_01
Because I have experience with this stuff on both ends.
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SPEAKER_01
And some of those areas, a lot of people don t have the experience with that.
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SPEAKER_00
what I ve kind of heard from people is the confidence that comes with steroids.
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SPEAKER_00
It feels like, not to call it placebo, but it seems like the psychological benefits of steroids is huge in that you feel like there s a confidence that seems to be coupled with the actual biological and chemical effects.
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SPEAKER_01
I have a, actually a neurological condition.
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SPEAKER_01
Um, so I actually don t feel a lot of that stuff that people, cause there s certain steroids that like people will like, you re like very extreme ones.
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SPEAKER_01
Um, like that would make somebody bite someone s ear off in a fight, for example.
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SPEAKER_01
Um, that aggression that, and they literally do nothing.
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SPEAKER_01
I m like always just chilling.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t like have an effect, but
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SPEAKER_01
But neurologically, they re still having those effects, but I don t get those feels that other people have from those.
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SPEAKER_01
But yes, there s that immediate boost in aggression and a confidence and stuff that come with a lot of those ones that deal on the neurological.
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SPEAKER_01
Overall, a good sense of well-being, just like from being on testosterone, like it s gonna affect your mood.
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SPEAKER_01
And it s interesting, so testosterone replacement therapy, if we walk down that path now and kind of switch gears,
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SPEAKER_01
You know, we find that men today have declining testosterone over what has historically been in the past.
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SPEAKER_01
So right now, I think a 35-year-old testosterone is shown to be about half what it was just 50 years ago.
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I don t know if we could argue the point.
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SPEAKER_01
We don t really have the science to validate any of it, but it could be society as far as the impact that it s having on the mental health for men.
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SPEAKER_01
It could be the estrogens floating around in the water from all the chemicals and birth control and all this sort of stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
It could be a lot of things.
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SPEAKER_01
But it is a fact that average testosterone is significantly lower.
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SPEAKER_01
And that is going to end up affecting life, quality of life, as well as your longevity, because it will affect those things.
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SPEAKER_01
But on the other end, steroids and TRT, particularly steroids, come with a lot of negative health benefits.
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not benefits, a lot of negative health ramifications.
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And so, you know, if I knew what I know now, I don t know that I would have gone that path.
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I didn t.
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I didn t until I was 33, which is kind of an outlier for a strength athlete.
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SPEAKER_01
I was a four times body weight deadlifter, 800 plus pounds at 198, and I was pretty dang strong before I went down that path.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
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SPEAKER_01
My testosterone, my natural testosterone levels were actually I think below 300 is actually the threshold.
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SPEAKER_01
So I was being told to go on TRT for the last couple of years, probably just because I was pushing so hard and the stress level was driving my test down.
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SPEAKER_01
So it was self-imposed more than likely.
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But I put it off because I wanted to set all the drug free records and I set the ones that I wanted.
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SPEAKER_01
And then it was 33 I m entering the age category and I m like, I m going to go on TRT.
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I did not feel like I should be with TRT personally.
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My ethical standard was I shouldn t be competing in tested events anymore.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
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SPEAKER_01
But for me, I m like, that s not okay.
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So I m like, I may as well at this point use steroids.
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SPEAKER_01
But since then, you know, understanding all those ramifications, you know, I might not have gone down that route quite so fast and easily.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
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SPEAKER_01
So you need to be... And the other thing is, once you go on, it s literally a decision for life.
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Not in a...
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But realistically is, because your quality of life, your feeling is going to be enhanced quite a bit, and you re not gonna wanna go back.
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SPEAKER_01
And if you go back, it s going to be less than it was before.
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That s how the endocrine system works.
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There are ways to try to recover and bring that up, but it might be a while.
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SPEAKER_01
And if you ve been on for a while, it definitely is not an option.
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SPEAKER_01
So those are big things that people need to understand that you re going to have some things in there.
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SPEAKER_01
And even TRT has some potential, especially at higher levels, that it s going to, you know, increase the risk for prostate cancer.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
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SPEAKER_01
That s going to have an impact on your cardiovascular health.
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SPEAKER_01
There s things that you can do.
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SPEAKER_01
Again, but everything is like the shoe story, right, where I m anti-shoe, but I m going, well, we could put Band-Aids on this.
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SPEAKER_00
So it s... But there s a quality of life that comes with it, the increase in quality of life.
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SPEAKER_01
And if you do it correctly, I think... For me, I definitely would not live without TRT, even with knowing what I know now, at this age and the quality of life and being able to
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SPEAKER_01
be there, have the energy, the recovery.
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SPEAKER_01
That s a big thing where all this, so I talked about muscle protein synthesis and anti-catabolism as being big drivers.
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SPEAKER_01
But recovery is the other big aspect that they offer, probably as a result of those.
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SPEAKER_01
But those are going to be the big enhancements.
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SPEAKER_01
So just doing steroids.
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SPEAKER_01
Steroids is going to increase all the other stuff that you do.
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SPEAKER_01
So 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.
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SPEAKER_01
But you could choose steroids and nobody would know.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
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SPEAKER_01
And they re a bunch of them will be using steroids because.
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SPEAKER_01
They re not, like, so it s not going to make a champion.
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SPEAKER_01
It s not going to, guess what?
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SPEAKER_01
I was already at an elite level.
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SPEAKER_01
I was one of the best in the world before I started using.
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SPEAKER_01
It doesn t do that.
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SPEAKER_01
It does a 10% increase at best.
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SPEAKER_01
And that s proven in the statistics, which is interesting, because most people don t know this.
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SPEAKER_01
Like, the data is right there.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and that s why I m often saddened by maybe the negative view of somebody like Lance Armstrong, who was one of the greatest athletes in history.
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SPEAKER_01
And everybody else that he was competing against, I m sorry.
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I hate to blow anybody s bubble, but regardless, if I told you my ethical pieces with saying that you re gonna be at something at an elite level,
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SPEAKER_01
And you look at a lot of those big figures out there, when their income and your life relies on it, you re going to push those limits.
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SPEAKER_01
So maybe my ethical would change if I was in that position too.
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SPEAKER_01
Because here s the thing where I believe, someone is – I think people should avoid steroids.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
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SPEAKER_01
And that s a decision that you make for the rest of your life.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
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SPEAKER_01
Like I, so was it the only thing?
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SPEAKER_00
No, no.
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SPEAKER_01
If you wanna get into neurology, neurotransmitters and alcohol, there s a really interesting discussion on performance enhancement.
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SPEAKER_01
So when I lift heavy, 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 saying this.
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SPEAKER_01
So like getting drunk.
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SPEAKER_01
What s the timing of the drink that we re talking about?
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SPEAKER_01
It s about three to five minutes.
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SPEAKER_01
Before?
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SPEAKER_01
Yes.
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SPEAKER_01
And then we re talking about beer.
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SPEAKER_01
It doesn t matter the source.
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SPEAKER_01
So shots are the easiest.
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SPEAKER_01
You want something that is not going to have some sort of regurgitory effect or bloating effect or anything like that.
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SPEAKER_01
But you want to have the quick hit of energy.
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SPEAKER_01
So it s a preferential energy source, moves above ketones, carbs, everything.
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SPEAKER_01
It s seven calories per gram.
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SPEAKER_01
But then there s some really interesting things that happen.
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SPEAKER_01
Spikes blood pressure, which is going to make weights feel lighter.
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SPEAKER_01
So when you re in your early 20s and you re trying to hit up, you know, some attractive person at the bar, you re with your buddies and you re like, ah, you know, and you got second guess, right?
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SPEAKER_01
Oh, should I, should I?
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SPEAKER_01
And they go, have a shot of liquid courage.
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SPEAKER_01
and you have one and all of a sudden the second thoughts, the second guessing, all that drops away.
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SPEAKER_01
Like you re focused in the moment and you walk over and you actually perform a little better like conversation-wise than you normally would.
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SPEAKER_01
Now, if you have five or six and then go over, you re gonna make a fool of yourself.
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SPEAKER_01
So it s all about timing and amount.
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SPEAKER_01
But there is a reason that that happens.
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SPEAKER_01
So anyway, I m known for promoting this whiskey and deadlift concept.
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SPEAKER_01
I love this.
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SPEAKER_00
But it works.
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SPEAKER_01
You re talking like the Eastern Bloc.
7
SPEAKER_01
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 lift.
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SPEAKER_01
And I m like, there s something here.
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SPEAKER_01
So I started experimenting with it.
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SPEAKER_01
And I m like, that works.
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SPEAKER_01
And then I started researching, nobody talks about this stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
So it takes a while to start piecing together all the stuff that actually happens to make that happen.
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SPEAKER_01
But it moves away the things that you re going to, the concerns about the ramifications in the future and the other stuff.
7
SPEAKER_01
So the, but brings you into the moment and then the dopamine hit and the other, and then it enhances whatever mood that you re in.
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SPEAKER_01
But all of a sudden you get in
7
SPEAKER_01
the state.
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SPEAKER_01
Much easier.
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SPEAKER_01
And so it s really, really interesting, but it s a very small amount needed and very time-sensitive, but it can be so much more powerful than drugs people use for this stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
It ties really together with meditative state and other pieces to get you into that flow state.
7
SPEAKER_01
Those thoughts about failure, what if, all that, you get into that zone, that moment, that time.
7
SPEAKER_01
Anyway, so interesting an alcoholic is promoting alcohol.
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SPEAKER_00
No, but there s an important point here, which is not often talked about.
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SPEAKER_00
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 positive aspects of alcohol.
7
SPEAKER_00
Even in your college years,
7
SPEAKER_01
It had a lasting effect on who I am as a person.
7
SPEAKER_00
I don t think people give enough credit to the positive aspect.
7
SPEAKER_00
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 way to open up a personality, like the flowering of the full character and the weirdness and the beauty of who you are as a human being could be opened up with alcohol.
7
SPEAKER_00
And that s really interesting to think about.
7
SPEAKER_00
You should try some podcasts.
7
SPEAKER_01
with a shot in these.
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SPEAKER_01
I do this sometimes with myself and guests, and it will change the conversation, lubricates the conversation.
7
SPEAKER_01
Definitely not the excess, which is what I learned, because I went all the way in because I do everything at extremes.
7
SPEAKER_01
So it was a really hard lesson that took me a lot of time to unwind.
7
SPEAKER_01
But it is interesting, and people don t discuss those things, because it s either this or this.
7
SPEAKER_00
You re one of the greatest strength athletes of all time, so it s worthwhile to consider how you optimize the feats of strength that you reach for with things like steroids.
7
SPEAKER_00
It makes perfect sense, and I think that was a,
7
SPEAKER_00
From my perspective, I think it was probably the right decision.
7
SPEAKER_00
You ve achieved something incredible that inspires a huge number of people.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s it, and you ve shown to yourself and to the world what the human body can accomplish.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s incredible.
7
SPEAKER_01
And no matter if I push to a less weight and if I disclosed everything that I did and I wasn t using steroids in my opinion, if we went through everything, there were people that would say, you re using performance enhancing.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s straight up, so you just need to be okay with it yourself.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so I had to make the call, I want to see what,
7
SPEAKER_01
The true potential is of let s throw everything out the window unless I feel it s a risk from a health standpoint that I m not willing to take on.
7
SPEAKER_01
And because that s, how do I, like, it s just picking and choosing.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s just picking and choosing.
7
SPEAKER_01
Here s what I want to know.
7
SPEAKER_01
This is what I want to be able to try to achieve.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so, yeah, yeah, that s what I did.
7
SPEAKER_00
And what you did is incredible.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like, it s just awe-inspiring.
7
SPEAKER_01
And what Lance Armstrong did was incredible.
7
SPEAKER_01
And that eats me up.
7
SPEAKER_01
And what s funny is the people that bash him are, like, on the media or politicians or maybe some actors, and guess what?
7
SPEAKER_01
a ton of them are doing the same thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s hypocrisy at its finest, trust me.
7
SPEAKER_01
How many of those figures you re watching in movies that love to talk, be political and do this and the news and all this, I m telling you, there s anti-aging clinics all over California and everywhere else.
7
SPEAKER_01
Who do you think keeps them in business?
7
SPEAKER_01
It s not the competitive lifter, I ll tell you that.
7
SPEAKER_01
And they re using peptides and SARMs and all sorts of like.
7
SPEAKER_00
You re speaking to the hypocrisy.
7
SPEAKER_00
I also want to speak to the fact, you know, somebody who s a friend of mine, David Goggins.
7
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if you know who that is.
7
SPEAKER_00
Ultramarathon runner, Navy SEAL.
7
SPEAKER_00
Pretty incredible person, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
Incredible human being.
7
SPEAKER_00
And he gets criticism like, you know, what you re doing is bad for the body.
7
SPEAKER_00
You know, you re pushing yourself too far.
7
SPEAKER_00
I find that the people that criticize are often people that haven t truly pushed themselves to the limit.
7
SPEAKER_00
They haven t actually worked hard in their life.
7
SPEAKER_00
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 greatest athletes do.
7
SPEAKER_00
And there s nothing that should be said
8
SPEAKER_00
beyond just sitting back in awe that humans can achieve that.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that inspires me to do the best, whatever the hell I do, to be the best version of that.
8
SPEAKER_00
There s something about like athletic feats, especially like strength, that just inspire us to do the best, to be the best version of ourselves.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s the only thing you should be saying as opposed to criticizing some little detail of this and that.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s just awe-inspiring that you push yourself to do that.
8
SPEAKER_02
Anybody that is at that level, and this is funny, like in competitive sports, like you go online and people, it s just bash, bash, bash, bash, bash, bash, bash.
8
SPEAKER_02
You go talk to anybody, anybody.
8
SPEAKER_02
anybody that s a high-level athlete within that field, and nobody has a single bad thing to say about each other.
8
SPEAKER_02
But all this chitter-chatter down there, I mean, I know exactly what you re saying.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, it s- So if you, 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.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, I think that should be channeled in improving your own life.
8
SPEAKER_02
Anytime that you feel that way,
8
SPEAKER_02
that is when you need to turn inward.
8
SPEAKER_02
And it s hard to do, but there is a reason.
8
SPEAKER_02
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.
8
SPEAKER_02
And that, guess what, that s gonna be the hard thing to do.
8
SPEAKER_02
That s gonna be the thing, again, that s stirring you a little bit, because it s so much easier to sit there or talk to your confidant or whatever instead of go, why does that bother me?
8
SPEAKER_02
Why does what that person doing or what that person s achieving
8
SPEAKER_02
bother me?
8
SPEAKER_00
It s a difficult question that I often ask others, whether it s better to work hard or work smart.
8
SPEAKER_00
I like to ask that question because it helps me get a sense of the human being.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I think I, let me just say, like, I often, I often like people that answer that with work hard.
8
SPEAKER_00
Even though the quote-unquote right answer is 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.
8
SPEAKER_00
It seems like the people that, certainly early in life, strive to work their ass off, even that means doing the inefficient, the dumb thing, just to learn the mistake.
8
SPEAKER_00
The spirit behind, the human spirit behind the person that says, or a card, is the one that I connect with.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I m torn, especially in the war culture, in the tech sector, where people answer work smart.
8
SPEAKER_00
What would you...
8
SPEAKER_00
What would you say about that tension?
8
SPEAKER_02
This definitely encompasses like, I m the intellectual and I m the meathead.
8
SPEAKER_02
I m the work around the clock and go fix the processes and make it so much better type person, right?
8
SPEAKER_02
That s me in a whole, that s everything, that s my life story, right?
8
SPEAKER_02
Busting your ass to find the easiest way possible.
8
SPEAKER_00
To both.
8
SPEAKER_02
So like, I will build
8
SPEAKER_02
A custom hydraulic cart that will lift my plates up to the height of my squat so that I can roll it over next to it and then minimize the effort of it going on and off.
8
SPEAKER_02
To be able to lift the most amount of weight as possible.
8
SPEAKER_02
So that I can save the energy from here, from lifting those up and the fatigue of my back being in a bad position, so I can nearly kill myself over here.
8
SPEAKER_02
My wife, anybody will say, I m a workaholic.
8
SPEAKER_02
And the first thing that I would do when it would be doing a company turnaround, they d hire me, come in, and I would be taking over for someone that wasn t successful.
8
SPEAKER_02
But it was usually hardly ever for lack of want or trying.
8
SPEAKER_02
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.
8
SPEAKER_02
And it d be like, well, you need to do this.
8
SPEAKER_02
And they d train me on like all the reports and this and all the things and like, good luck.
8
SPEAKER_02
Good luck, I couldn t do it.
8
SPEAKER_02
And the first thing I would do is nothing.
8
SPEAKER_02
I would do nothing.
8
SPEAKER_02
Because then I would find what actually keeps coming back.
8
SPEAKER_02
the things that I need to do, and how much of it was filling the space.
8
SPEAKER_02
Because so much of human nature, when you re failing, is to make yourself feel like you re accomplishing things.
8
SPEAKER_02
This is when things go on your list, on your checklist, and you start like rolling up, so you re running around just getting shit done.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, being busy.
8
SPEAKER_02
But at the same time, find somewhere in my career something I ve done where I haven t outworked everybody.
8
SPEAKER_02
Just so much on distilling things down to what s important.
8
SPEAKER_02
And you ve got to make time.
8
SPEAKER_02
to sit back and assess and think and be introspective.
8
SPEAKER_02
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.
8
SPEAKER_02
Just one.
8
SPEAKER_02
That s all I say.
8
SPEAKER_02
because it s gonna add up.
8
SPEAKER_02
But you could spend six months knocking shit out, doing your routine, busting your ass, and not take that one step.
8
SPEAKER_02
So you ve gotta distill stuff down.
8
SPEAKER_02
You ve gotta really understand what s important to you in life and where you re going.
8
SPEAKER_02
And when you re looking at anything in your life, the first thing that you need to do is figure out
8
SPEAKER_02
Do I need to do it? 
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and just quit doing it.
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Just quit doing things in your life.
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And you ll see that a lot of stuff that you think has to be done doesn t have to be done.
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You d be surprised.
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And then from there, this is the tech, okay.
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And then of that, what can I automate?
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What can I not have to do in a repeated fashion?
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And then the last one, yeah, wherever possible.
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If it s not something that I m adding tremendous value to, like my uniqueness, people are like, oh, you must do the auto work on your vehicles, because you love working.
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I m like, fuck that.
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I don t.
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They re like, what?
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That doesn t make any sense.
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And I m like, no, I love creating things.
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But I don t want to do that stuff.
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So you could use delegating if you re a manager position, but it s outsourcing, whatever it is.
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But there are also so many things, and this ties back to your point around just doing it.
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There s a point to experiencing all levels to really understand things.
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You need to spend time, at the same time, doing all those things, because there could be good, huge, massive gaps in there.
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that you re not aware of that are key for you or key to having done different or so on.
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So 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, step into engineering.
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And that added tremendous value to me to having had spent time being a doer and not enough people want to be, you ve gotta just go do shit.
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You need to spend time in your life chopping wood.
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Yeah, get a lot of shit done, doesn t matter what the shit is.
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You gotta have experience trying and doing.
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and do all these things that you would never, like, my skillset is massive because I want to know, like, you need to have those touch points.
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My job, my title is chief visionary.
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But I ve spent time doing everything.
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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, you can t be effective.
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You cannot connect the dots.
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unless you ve been in the moment with everything.
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Yeah, low-level stuff.
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Sometimes it s doing stupid shit that you re not uniquely qualified to do that anybody could do, but you did it anyway.
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Just the training environment.
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People hit me up at a school or wherever.
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hey, how do I get into, I wanna grow my brand online, I wanna do this, where do I start?
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I m like, go get a job at Planet Fitness or 24 Hour Fitness.
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They re like, but I wanna, how do I get recognized and write articles and be an online coach?
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I m like, you need to go spend a few years one-on-one training people.
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to learn like the interaction, how people were, there s base levels you have to do.
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You ve got to go work your way up from the ground.
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I truly believe it.
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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.
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Like how difficult it is to do stuff.
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And to me, I went and got my MBA.
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I went to MIT.
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I don t need to do that stuff.
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I m above that.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Once you ve been humbled by doing those things, I feel like you can truly explore the optimization that you re talking to, finding the ways where you re uniquely capable to add value to the world.
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And then again, work your ass off to be the best in the world at that thing.
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Yes.
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But then don t waste your time on shit that s not a line.
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That s the only, so that s, I guess there s a lot of context I put around that.
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Yeah, that was like a long answer to, a long beautiful answer to an unanswerable question.
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Do you have advice outside of all this discussion to young people today about career, about life?
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Since you ve done so many things, you ve overcome a lot of things.
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Think high school, college student, thinking about what to do in their life.
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Do you have advice for those guys and girls?
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Yeah, yeah.
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First is, you don t have it figured out, so don t worry, just jump in.
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We talked, 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 just spending the time doing, like, pick something.
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Let me elaborate a little bit.
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No, you know what?
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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.
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And then, but within that, you can start discovering the things that are there for you.
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Like I talked about, I made this huge shift.
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I threw away my whole life.
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But I don t regret anything about that.
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I wouldn t be where I was if I didn t walk through and learn those things.
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And in fact, in the course of that, I learned just how much.
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that inspiring people and helping them realize the potential far beyond what they thought was capable.
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And guess what?
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That was leadership 101 in managing people base level, floor level, right?
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And I got a lot out that was perfectly aligned with, and that s what I realized.
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It didn t matter what industry I was in or any of those other things.
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But I was able, you can see so many things.
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There s so many paths that you can go down to help you realize what those things are.
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And you re gonna be able to find a lot of those nuggets and develop those.
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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?
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And in fact, that entire time I knew that that s what I wanted to do, but I didn t go out on it.
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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.
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And I m like, no, now you need to go get a job.
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Yeah, you know engineering, management, design, all that stuff.
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Go get a job as a manager now.
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Like, oh, that s a step down, I can t do that.
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I m like, go try it.
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A couple years later, oh my God, that was such a good move.
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I didn t know what I didn t know.
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And now they re an executive for freaking a Fortune 500 company.
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And the same thing, like, I sat there knowing that I was getting a free education
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Don t stress yourself out, that s my advice.
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Don t stress yourself out that you ve got to have this perfect thing because this process of understanding your values and the introspect, that takes time.
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You can get a job where you re getting paid to learn.
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Exactly.
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That s a good deal before you launch on your own.
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You mentioned going back to darkness.
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I m Russian, so I like going back to darkness.
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You suffered from depression, you considered suicide.
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Do you ponder your own death these days?
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Do you think about your own mortality?
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Are you afraid of death?
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I definitely think about mortality.
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And am I afraid of my own death?
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It depends on the moment.
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If I m in the middle of a project, I definitely want to finish that project, man.
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But I don t fear it so much.
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I fear leaving
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my kids or my wife and not being able to be there for them.
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That bothers me.
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Outside of that, I know that I put everything into the life that I ve lived.
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Like you said, there s always more, but I ve lived hard.
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I ve loved hard.
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Every moment in my life,
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I ve made connections and impacted people around me for the better.
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And this tracks back, which is crazy when we were 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.
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I ll fly in from Boston.
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All of them, like these people, like all like, it was crazy.
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Like everybody had a story.
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about me giving just over and over, and I didn t even really... It s just the way you were.
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But I ve been all in.
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I don t have... I have a lot more I want to do, but I don t have things that regret have not done in... I don t fear it.
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I don t fear it.
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Yeah, it s like the, I don t know if you know, the Bukowski poem, Go All the Way.
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Otherwise, Don t Even Try.
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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.
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Chris, you re an amazing human being.
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I m really honored that you would spend your valuable time with me.
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Thank you so much for talking with me today.
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It was incredible.
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I can t wait to check out all the cool stuff you ve engineered with Kabuki Strength.
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Obviously, I love strength.
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I love strength training.
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I love the idea of strength.
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I love the equipment and the engineering approach that you take to strength.
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You re an incredible human, both on the things you ve accomplished in terms of your own,
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strength feats, and the kind of science and engineering you bring to the field that many others could use.
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So, thank you so much for talking today.
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Thanks for having me on.
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That was quite the final.
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Thank you.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with Chris Duffin, and thank you to Headspace, Magic Spoon, Sun Basket, and Ladder.
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Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
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And now let me leave you with some words from Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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Strength does not come from winning.
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Your struggles develop your strengths.
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When you go through the hardship and decide not to surrender, that is strength.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.