Lex Fridman Podcast - #207 – Chris Duffin: The Mad Scientist of Strength

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Chris Duffin, the mad scientist of strength. He's one of the strongest people in the world, but is also an engineer of some of the most innovative strength equipment I've ever seen. Check out his company Kabuki Strength. He is the only person who squatted and deadlifted 1,000 pounds for multiple reps, and achieved many other amazing feasts of strength. 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.

Starting point is 00:00:33 Quick mention of our sponsors, Headspace, Magic Spoon, Sunbasket, and Ladder. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that I was always a fan of strength, both powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting, both as a fan and practitioner. Mostly I'm a fan of people who are willing to put in years of hard work towards finding out what the limits of their body is, and then smashing past those limits. People like Chris Duffin or on the Olympic weightlifting side, people like Demetri Cloakov. That guy is great. This is why I love watching the

Starting point is 00:01:12 Olympics, both the heart breaks and the triumphs. They all reveal the incredible heights that the human mind and the human body can reach. As usual, I do a few minutes of ads now, I try to make these interesting, but I give you time stamps, so if you skip, please still check out the sponsors by clicking the links in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. 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 net just as I have.

Starting point is 00:01:42 This show is sponsored by Headspace, a meditation app. I've used it often on for many years. I've looked into this since 2014. I've used it both for more and less structured meditation sessions. Friends have told me that they love using it for, quote, emergency meditation sessions, like if there's drama, work, or a fight with a significant other I find it fascinating How much of a roller coaster the human mind can be like one moment? I can just be full of temper and passion and kind of intensity and the whole world seems like Like it's in turmoil and then the next my mind could be calm and all it takes is just to breathe

Starting point is 00:02:28 Bringing the mind back to a calm place letting thoughts of Douth or even just like thoughts. They're just polluting your mind slip away The whole thing is a really important powerful process that headspace can guide you through It's meditation made simple go to headspace can guide you through. It's meditation made simple. Go to headspace.com slashlex. That's headspace.com slashlex for a free one month trial with access to headspace's full library of meditations for every situation. Again, that's headspace.com slashlex.

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Starting point is 00:03:43 You just enjoy sweet things. And happiness of adulthood is sort of having everything together, just being healthy and not going off the rails in any kind of way. So it's the best way to be a kid and an adult at the same time. Anyway, magic spoon have a 100% happiness guarantee. So if you don't like it, they'll refund it. Go to MagicSpoon.com slash Lex and use Code Lex. Check out say $5 off your order. That's MagicSpoon.com slash Lex and use Code Lex.

Starting point is 00:04:19 This show is also sponsored by Sun Basket. Sun Basket delivers fresh, healthy, delicious meals straight to your door. They have prepared meals, meal kits, raw ingredients like just a nice New York strip steak, but also trout, sea bass, salmon, and much more. I've been trying to find a way the reason to go out fishing every week in Austin. I love fishing. I used to fish a lot. It's just such a meditative experience, but I also love eating the fish I catch. I cook and eating it. It's just a whole process. It's a celebration of life. It's a celebration of just nature. It's a celebration of just nature. It's probably also connected to childhood roots of fishing with my family.

Starting point is 00:05:10 I just love it. Just me alone with nature. Anyway, like I said, some basket has both the raw ingredients, but I also really just love their prepared meal kits and they're very affordable too, which is great. They are now offering $90 off for your first four deliveries including free shipping on the first box when you go to sunbasket.com slash Lex and enter code Lex. That's sunbasket.com slash Lex with code Lex. This show is also sponsored by Ladder. I often talk about Ernest Becker's work to not love death. I often meditate on death together with the Stoics.

Starting point is 00:05:51 I think meditating on your own mortality is both honest and clarifying for who you are as a human being and for who you want to be and how you want to spend your remaining days. The fact that life can end at any moment is one hell of a motivator to live an amazing life. At least it is for me. If you are the same and you also have people in your life you love, you should consider getting life insurance. Ladder can help you out with that. Pay a little every month in case something

Starting point is 00:06:25 happens to you and the ones you love will be protected. Anyway, go to ladderlife.com slashlex to see if you're instantly approved. That's L-A-D-D-E-R. Ladderlife.com slashlex. Once again, for the seats in the back. Ladderlife.com slashlex. This is Alex Friedman podcast, and here is my conversation with Chris Duffin. You've been a part of several incredible feats of strength, which was the hardest or maybe one you're most proud of. Definitely the one I'm most proud of is that journey for the grand goals. It was like a five year scope that I chased this. And so when you think about training,

Starting point is 00:07:29 it took more than five years, obviously, by that point, I've been training for over 25 years. But it makes me proud. I mean, there were three distinct things that I wanted to accomplish out of this. So it was really thought out. And this was kind of my exit from being a competitive lifter. And basically saying, Hey, I'm going to be, you know, an Instagram lifter, an exhibition lifter,

Starting point is 00:07:53 or whatever, I've done this for 16 years. As number one in the world for like eight years straight, all time world records. And I'm like, I'm not going to do that anymore. What I want to do is just something deep down to me that is really important. And there's three things that we're driving this. And this is a five year journey that I went through to do this. I really wanted to showcase that you could do something that is well beyond the scope of what people think is humanly possible. So just this inspiration thing,

Starting point is 00:08:25 this grand over the top, like if you set your mind to a single-minded goal, you can go so much further. And I didn't even say what the goal was up front because it was so far out there I would have been laughed at. And that's, I think big goals should be kept pretty damn close to start with for that reason too. And then the second piece was to to to walk the walk to show like the principles of what

Starting point is 00:08:49 I believed in around human movement. The ability to manage and control the spinal mechanics and the output that can have on the body. And so I wanted to take the two most basic movements that every able body person should be able to do. So fundamental movement patterns, the squat, which is like in the developmental approach, is around nine months as a baby from a developmental kinesiology, standpoint, and a really basic pattern that every able-bodied person should be able to master. The

Starting point is 00:09:16 other one being the hip hinge, being able to pick something up off the ground, a deadlift. And I wanted to do those two, not just one, because I wanted to show the principle that I wasn't built for one. I wasn't a specialist because of my lever links, torso links, all that, any outliers, because nobody had ever done a thousand pound squat. So this is it, and a thousand pound deadlift. It was outside of the scope of what anybody's, there's like half a dozen people that have done one or the other, but nobody's ever done both. And I wanted to do something unique.

Starting point is 00:09:57 I wanted to do them, not only do it, but do them for reps to leave literally no question out there. And there's no competition for that. So it was, this is what I'm gonna go do. And to pull it off, I had some past issues with my elbows and stuff that I couldn't work around. So I had to wear straps, which was another reason I couldn't do it in the competition setting.

Starting point is 00:10:21 So the first year I worked up and I did a thousand and two pound deadlift. We plates were weighed afterwards. It was a couple a little bit over. And I did it for almost three reps. And that still stands as again as world record. Just the one rep does is the most weight ever sumo deadlifted. And one other person is deadlifted a thousand for reps at this point.

Starting point is 00:10:41 And that was Thor Bjornsson from Game of Thrones. He's done a thousand for a double as well. So then the next four years, and I did a bunch of feats of strength on the way, but it was all about building that axial loading capacity, the strength that, because now I'm moving the weight from my hands up to my shoulders. And so to do it for reps is like so much harder than a single. Like 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. So literally about the duration that your body is carrying the load. Yeah, that's a big part of it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:19 Because you have to, you're using the, the resource of the diaphragm for stabilization. And so it, it's also responsible for respiration and all this other stuff. So even when you're not squatting, you've got to be handling those loads. Just holding that weight is fascinating. It's like, it's fascinating that the human body can do that, can maintain that structure. Just everything working together, that the biology, the skeletal structure,

Starting point is 00:11:43 the musculature on top of that can hold the weight, espassing to watch. Everything is very intentful about positioning and how you're creating pressure and all this sort of stuff, especially for me. So when I mention 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. I weighed 265 to 285, depending on where I was between the two.

Starting point is 00:12:08 So there's that as well, right? So big, big difference. And over the course of that, I did a lot of other feats of strength that fit in that capacity. And we can skip over those, but that was hugely invested as far as, you know, what I put into being able to accomplish that.

Starting point is 00:12:25 Because it's over the top, which means the other stuff had to shift and I had to learn so many things that came into place to pull that off. So yeah, last March, two days before the world shut down, I did it. It was supposed to be at the largest equipment exhibition in the world down in Satin Diego as an event. That got shut down a week beforehand, obviously. So we moved to, let's do it in my gym and invite people. And that was on a Saturday and Thursday or Friday, they limited it to 25 people for gatherings.

Starting point is 00:12:55 I did it on Saturday and then Monday, everything shut down. So it was kind of surreal for timing-wise, right? And so if I hadn't done it, it would have never got done. Like, because I'd pushed to the limit, I couldn't come back and do it. It was at the total limitation of my capabilities. So I'm pretty proud of it.

Starting point is 00:13:14 And the last piece was every one of these feets along the way, I collaborated with a charity that I believed in. And there was a lot of those tied in my life story, which I would probably will get into. So it was threefold. the charity that I believed in and those, a lot of those tied in my life's story, which I would probably will get into. So it was threefold. So that inspiration piece, inspiration, motivation, walk in the walk and show in, like, just these

Starting point is 00:13:37 methodologies that a guy that had to learn to walk again can do something like this with no back pain. If you, there is a way. And the third one is, is to provide awareness recognition around a lot of key charity. So. So your heart was in this journey, but also your mind, which is, you're like a scholar of strength, a scientist of strength, an engineer of strength for reps, do a thousand pounds, squat and deadlift. Let's first talk through the actual day you did it.

Starting point is 00:14:12 What does it take to lift that much? For reps. The day of is really easy. The lift itself, other than a few seconds, is really easy and not challenging. People always ask me, what was it like? How beat up were you after that and the deadlift and the simple fact is it was easy. The work to get there was horrendous. So even the psychology of the day, you weren't, there was not a fear, there was not a nervousness, there was not a doubt. Can you mind? There was certainly doubts on that day from some training history. So there was some major breaks to my confidence in the couple months leading up where I had issues with passing

Starting point is 00:14:57 out under the bar. So completely losing consciousness. And this was on weight less than a thousand pounds even. So that was like all this build up in me going, what if? What if it I think I have this resolved? But what if I get up there and I can't even do a rep? How embarrassing will this be that I've been talking about this and planning for this for so long? But outside of that, I knew I could do it. In fact, I wanted to do even more, even up to the second rep. Training is about working into a fatigue state. So you're building an amount of fatigue in your system, and then when you let off of it, that's when you get a compensation, and that's how you stair-stop training. This is periodization, but leading into a big event, you're accumulating this massive amount of fatigue. And so I was performing at a level that I could do it.

Starting point is 00:15:53 And so I knew I was going to be able to on meat because then you, then you give yourself that window to be able to recover and super compensate and be able to do a little bit more. So like that first rep when I did it, strength wise, I went, I could do this for five reps. I get went through my head, I'm like, feeling, I mean, it was easy and it was fast and it felt like amazing and I'm like, I'm gonna crush this and then set rep to

Starting point is 00:16:18 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 every last thing I could muster to just finish. I mean, I just barely got it done because it's the strength is like there, but like that capacity to be able to manage all those resources for that amount of time, because not just leg strength when we're talking about this stuff. So what does it take to go from,

Starting point is 00:16:46 the, from, I don't know what, like, from 500 to 1000, that feels like a journey that's like exponential. It's, it gets exponentially harder. It does. In the early 2000s, like I said, I started lifting 1988, but my first meet in the early 2000s, my max deadlift was 523 and my first squat was 500 and 50. So, uh, for instance. You guys breath the heck of a journey.

Starting point is 00:17:13 Okay. That is a journey. For people that are like the lift, which they understand about the difference between doing 500 and 1000. In terms of the actual lift that you were experiencing that day, in terms of the mechanics, in terms of all the things you have to be, like the neurological adaptation you mentioned, the breathing, the core strength, like techniques, like little tricks, psychological tricks, anything that kind of stands out to you. The level of intent and the opportunity for error are The level of intent and the opportunity for error are at a different level. Just the minutest changes of position by 1.25 inch can be make or break at that level.

Starting point is 00:17:55 These things, everything gets amplified. 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-addominal pressure of working against this outward expansion, working against the outer sheath of abdominal thoracilumbar musculature obliques, causing the co-contraction at the pelvic floor,

Starting point is 00:18:23 all this stuff and how you cue that, because you can't think about all this stuff. You need to break it down into still and practice to like it's one simple cue that we now lock down and control this torso stability, because this is what these fundamental movements are about as being able to control our spinal mechanics. And then now be able to maintain that while articulating the joints

Starting point is 00:18:46 around that through a range of motion, and then using the main power drivers. So in this instance, both instances, it's the, you know, the hip complex to generate that power and transfer it from how we're rooted and connected to the floor through to the distal end, which would be the barbell on the shoulder. There's a couple key concepts. So one is that what we just talked through is how to actually maintain that stability.

Starting point is 00:19:14 So if you have either the diaphragm, so which is connected at the rib cage, so out of alignment in any position, it needs to be in alignment with the pelvis, so those two in opposition. This is simple engineering here because what we're going to do is eccentricly load this. We're going to use the diaphragm, just like you would in a diaphragm pump, where it's going to press down on all the tissue in there.

Starting point is 00:19:39 We're not using breath. 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. So what we want to do is just initiate the diaphragm. Air can be used as well over the top at the final to create just a little bit more downward pressure. But if we have out of alignment there, we have a pressure, the leak, where it's going to be pushed out the front or the rear if you're either inflection or extension. And then that causes this co-contraction and all this pressure of the organs, essentially

Starting point is 00:20:14 against outward, against all those tissue for the co-contraction, as well as surrounding the spine to be able to stabilize that. And then it puts all the muscles on both sides of the body in what we call the best length tension relationship. So if you think about a curl and we reach our arm out, at the extended length, our bicep is not as strong. And then all the way in the curl position, it's not as strong. There's somewhere in here, this control of both.

Starting point is 00:20:40 And so when you're sitting there, arched or bent over, we have muscles that are past either one of those ranges. So they've got a lot of tension, which then will create relaxation on the other side, right? So we want to have, and all of that needs to be working. And now the next important thing is the foot. So it's actually this connection to the ground and how we're actually using the foot and ankle complex to grab and grip this connection to the ground and elicit an effect. Because of this and then everything between will naturally kind of do what it needs to do.

Starting point is 00:21:17 People like to focus on it, knee position or how far out there, hips are or all this other stuff, which is outputs of this. So if we control the torso and the knee, the only thing that can happen from that point is for the squat to happen. All right, so this allows us to use this massive, you know, the hip complex for all the muscles around that that are built to drive through

Starting point is 00:21:45 hypethics, and it's actually to complete the squat. I did actually miss one thing in there. So this torso, people often miss the lat is a spinal stabilizer as well. So that's key in controlling function at the TL junction, which is just above the lumbar spine. 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. That's often because they're close grip because you can't engage the lats very well that way and they're pushing up in the bar. But you want to be able to drive and pull the bar to your center and that's going to create and use the lats now to drive and connect the shoulder into this

Starting point is 00:22:22 and we're kind of compressing and tightening all this stuff towards that center to create that entire torso stability. That's why I was using torso stability, not just core stability, in my conversation earlier. Torses stability. Okay, so there's all these like modules with the body, then connected to the grounding, like your feet on the ground, everything you're speaking to, how do you work each of those modules? Is this over time you kind of develop the feel that ultimately boils on to this one simple cue that you mentioned or do you, can you like literally study each particular module in yourself and see how it affects the lift?

Starting point is 00:23:02 So the best way and I believe in it is because I hate just like people getting out and just doing just movement stuff and not actually adding load, because we only adapt when there's load. Maybe we can get some, you know, some proprioception or awareness of position and other stuff doing some, some corrective patterns and other stuff,

Starting point is 00:23:20 but this is basic physiology, is that there must be an imposed man for us to have adaptation. And this is mental, this is emotional, this is all these areas. But and people miss that. So I prefer to be able to look at a person, and this is our methodology, and do the assessment in any basic loaded movement. So with developing an eye for that, you can actually see and go,

Starting point is 00:23:47 okay, we've got a fault pattern right here in the foot and use a queue or a set of queues, it doesn't really matter till we find the one that works and bring that and now we know we want to simplify this. So if I just walk through, that sounds really complicated and it is if we try to break down and distill it all,

Starting point is 00:24:00 but like let's just find the basic stuff that gets us in the range, start working and then find the next as we add load. Now we find where's our next area that we're starting to fault that and then go there again next. So, this is what we do, what we teach in our educational platform. So we are the only, I believe, everybody wants to do a lot of these like assessments, you know, on a bench, on the table, body, and it's like, no, let's go squat.

Starting point is 00:24:24 Let's go deadlift. If you do straw it's like, no, let's go squat. Let's go deadlift. If you do straw men in a CEO carry, let's go carry. Because these are basic human fundamentals. It's not powerlifting. Like this is how we function. This is why we work with 29 of the 30 major league baseball teams and 90% of all professional sports out there in North America. Sorry, although we do some work with Tour de France and other stuff as well.

Starting point is 00:24:52 And North America, I do mean hockey too. But these principles, like, you know, if the Dodgers won't bring us in, they're not learning how to power lift. You know, we're going to, obviously, we'll probably do, we do a little bit more shoulder focus than hip focus with their athletes, or their coaches. We're usually working with coaches, not the athletes. And so you help them and then the same thing on yourself to understand the role that these different muscle groups have on the holistic. Yeah. So it's all about getting the joints in the appropriate position so that we can that we can manage loads so that we're not putting undue stress in the joint. We're getting the proper length tension.

Starting point is 00:25:24 We're getting these basic fundamental things with the body. And so the largest global impact that you will have is through spinal mechanics. I can't look at a shoulder if I'm not managing this because it's your spine. So for those who are just listening, like arching and then flexing, that's going to affect shoulder extension flexion, all these sorts of things. So it could even affect things down at what's looking at door-sefelection issues on the foot. And then that's why I go to the footnacks because it has the second largest global impact. And then from there, now I'm going to look at the big energy drivers, which is B-hip complex, shoulder complex. And then we can start looking at kind of the peripheral things, but usually that's

Starting point is 00:26:03 some sort of output of the other, but the knees, the elbows, the things like that. So it's all about getting the stack, which affects neurology. So let's talk about engineering terms. You get in a car, modern car today, and a lot of them will have this traction control button in there. And there's a big misconception that, you know, I'm out and it's snowy or here in Austin only rainy. Well, it probably doesn't rain much, it's snowy or here in Austin only rainy. Well, it probably doesn't rain much, but you're going around a corner, start slipping.

Starting point is 00:26:28 It's like, oh, it's going to send the powers from the wheels that are slipping to the ones that are gripping. And keep me from crashing and dionify our e-death. Well, that's not how it works. It's the exact same. We've got the tires, which are our foot, you foot, the connection to the ground. We've got the power driver, which is the engine, the transmission, delivering the power through it. We've got the stability, our suspension, and then we have the neurology. And what the neurology is doing, it's sensing that we don't have good stability

Starting point is 00:27:04 or loss of connection somewhere. So I need to save you from crashing and hurting yourself. 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. That's straight how the human body works. When I do this stuff, it's actually affecting that. I can take somebody and do some minute changes with the neck position at the thoracic outlet, okay?

Starting point is 00:27:29 And immediately see an enhancement in power output. And I can measure it. We measure this stuff with velocity devices. And see, like a 10% boom, jump. And so if you think about that, what about all your training through the years where you actually had additional capacity? But you weren't using it because your traction control was on.

Starting point is 00:27:51 Now you figure this out stuff and now you start stacking it and now you can see so much greater. So it's not just injury prevention. This is performance and additive performance over time. This is huge and people don't really think about this stuff, but we can turn that stuff off, which is actually going to also, again, make us, make us safer. But what we want to do is the performance tune race car. Do they

Starting point is 00:28:15 have a traction control button? No. They got some amazing tires to grip the ground, a performance tune suspension, and that driver is going to put what his foot to the metal, he's gonna put it to the floor. Okay, that's a performance vehicle. That's what we want to be. I want to continue on that line, but first I have to ask, like, how did it feel to accomplish a grand goal? Oh my god, okay, we need to just stand back. Oh my god.

Starting point is 00:28:42 Thousand pounds for reps. What do I feel like? Anybody can go watch the video online. Twelve film, by the way. Got me all excited. Oh, well, the movies, so we actually have the final footage of that, the good footage not posted yet. So it's literally just an Instagram video or a phone video right now. The only one online. It's on your YouTube channel. What's dramatic?

Starting point is 00:29:06 Yes, it is. Yeah. It came out just time to the music perfectly too, which is, I listened to some odd music, which there's some reason behind that. Okay. But it does full-length footage. There's a documentary that's,

Starting point is 00:29:21 it's got a little slowed because of COVID, because it's also a backstory of the eagle and the dragon in 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. I don't really have the control of the movie, right? But, but okay, but the videos, okay, how do you feel? How do you feel? I started crying. It was overwhelming to have worked so intensely and so long and hard at something that pushed every ounce of me to the limit. And I did it. I'm getting a little emotional.

Starting point is 00:29:58 I did exactly what I said. I was going to fucking do. And it was overpowering. I mean, I was just crying uncontrollably, just with a mixture of, I don't know what, the mixture of emotions is hard to explain because it was the completion of something, it was a new phase of my,

Starting point is 00:30:23 eight, I mean, there's so many things here. So one, you said an impossible goal and you accomplished it. One, two is like on the broader humanity aspect, like how many humans in this world accomplish perfection in a particular direction required to do this. So like, so you're basically representing like one little like, little glimmer of excellence of the human spirit. There's always more to understand this. This is a basic fundamental.

Starting point is 00:30:58 You can always do better. There is no such thing as perfection. You could always, there is always more. So anytime you reach something, any amazing workout or accomplishment in life, could you have put more into it? Could you? Yes, but here's the thing.

Starting point is 00:31:15 I left on my terms. 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, 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. I'm gonna do it and then I'm done. I didn't leave from an injury. I wasn't forced, I wasn't.

Starting point is 00:31:37 I left on, I did exactly what I said. I went to a level that I left on my terms and that's unique. Cause that's usually not the case. Usually you're kind of either taper out or it doesn't matter. I'm talking like anything in life in general, right? You taper out, you fail, you hurt, you lose a jerk. Something, you know, you roll into retirement.

Starting point is 00:32:02 Like, you look up as something truly great and you walked away in your own terms. Is there a sadness completing something like that? Because it's in one perspective, the greatest thing you'll ever do. And like, when you accomplish such a great height, in some sense, you have to face your mortality at that point. So, good question, but it is certainly not the greatest thing that I'll ever do. It's the greatest physical state I'll ever do. There's always more to do.

Starting point is 00:32:34 The greatest physical state, yes. But that was an expression of some of my values and the way that I want to live. It was a way of expressing it. So understanding that is hugely fundamental because we do see so many athletes get to the end of a career and then they fall into a depressive state and struggle with drugs, alcohol, depression, and so on because they lost

Starting point is 00:33:03 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. So, I knew that this was one way to express that, and my grand goals have shifted. They're shifted to other outlets that allow me to express that. Like my companies, Kabuki Strength, I'm going to change the face of fitness as well as all the way through with its integration with clinical medicine and telemedicine. And I got another five years before even people see what I'm working on five years in right now because I had to invent equipment, have to develop methodologies that were talking. I had to do this stuff that ground layer wasn't done to create a cohesive ecosystem of training methodology tied to the tools that we're using today, to the environment tied to the clinical practice assessment tied to the

Starting point is 00:33:55 interaction between all those and how that actually needs to be reframed because so much of this is broken, okay? So, but there is sadness. I won't deny that. And the sadness comes in the singularity of focus that I had at that time, the being in the process. I'm necessarily doing it, but like having being in this place that the rest of the world kind of fell away for me in those final faces to have something so intense, to have a team around me so focused on supporting. And like, it took me a couple months after that squad. I finally one day I woke up and I was like, oh, welcome back to the world. Like I was in such a mental fog. Like I was, Welcome back to the world. Like I was in such a mental fog. Like I was, it took me a while to climb out of that,

Starting point is 00:34:47 but that space, that level of intensity and drive and living and being in that space, I do miss that, but I also, I can't continue that. I couldn't, 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'll have on your life or how you want to live. And it was taking away those final, like, I had to do extreme things and live in an extreme way to get there.

Starting point is 00:35:16 You're just a genius in this whole space of strength and health and, but almost like biology, that this strength fee is just one representation of that. But this particular strength fee required that kind of singular focus, which I think, I don't know, there's something beautiful about that singular focus. There is. Often only truly perfected in athletics. I see it with the greatest Olympic athletes as well. The kind of singular focus required there is incredible.

Starting point is 00:35:47 Somehow some of the most beautiful things a humans can do. And it's not just that thing. So that's the thing. It's like, oh, that must be it. When we say singularative focus, it's not like, here's it because it covers a vast array of stuff. Like, I was working with people, you know, all, well, with people all around North America. I wouldn't say anybody around the globe, but professionals coming in working on different

Starting point is 00:36:11 aspects of rehab and recovery and I'm tapping all sorts of stuff in so many platforms from nutrition to drugs to again again, like, you know, various Chinese medicine, you know, as far as, you know, like humans in your life just love and positivity and just inspiration all those kinds of aspects. 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 possibly. They give you some, I don't know, those, there's some incredible strength athletes in Eastern Europe. Absolutely. I've got the best one coming in September to get fixed. So what do you mean by

Starting point is 00:36:58 fixed? 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 he would like to come and have me take a look and see if I can get him fixed because he's the return. So it's more injury-centric versus like form and fundamental-centric combination of everything. Everyone 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? But yeah, the Eastern block continued to be a dominant force in regards to athletics

Starting point is 00:37:35 and strength athletics without a doubt. Some of my big rivals in my competitive days were, that's who it was. Rivalry brings out the best in us. Can you tell me the story of your childhood? It's definitely outside the scope of the norm. Well, today, maybe not 150 or 200 years ago, but my parents, highly intelligent, you know, people coming out of the Bay Area. My mom was, you know, going to school to be a chemical engineer. She was a top student athlete, graduating over at school. My father was a member of MENSA. My stepfather was just a genius, but not able to really function in society.

Starting point is 00:38:14 But my mom was, you know, she had some demons and some other stuff. And just, she just said one day, she's like, I just don't want to be part of society. She still isn't. Lives out in the desert, but has her minds, but she wanted to figure out a way to make a life outside of that. And so that's where we ended up is up in the mountains in Northern California. And a lot of that was, you know, them trying to get into successfully growing marijuana, which back in that wasn't legal back then, highly illegal. And in fact, those areas were, some of the areas where lived were quite dangerous. So there's a documentary murder mountain that came out recently.

Starting point is 00:38:58 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, just how real that stuff is if it doesn't capture you from the book, okay? The book, by the way, is the Egon Dragon. Yeah, thank you. I'm a terrible salesperson, like I told you. Yeah, yeah. It's a great one. I'm a terrible salesperson, like I told you. So, but a good, it's a good title. I don't know if you came up with it, but.

Starting point is 00:39:29 I did, yeah. So yeah, we'll talk about that anyway. We're living by a stream in an alfametto. There's no roads into where you have to hike in. And we've got beams lashed into the trees up above us because that's where our bedding is because there's rattlesnake dens all around. And six years old, I'm being taught into the trees up above us because that's where our bedding is because there's rattlesnake dens all around.

Starting point is 00:39:45 And six years old, I'm being taught how to capture and handle live rattlesnakes because that's what I need to do to be safe. And you can imagine six years old sitting there with a live rattlesnake in your hand, grabbing it, you know, by the side of the head controlling so it can't bite you and it's just wrapping itself around your arm and you're staring at it. And like it's only intent is, right then, is to kill you. Like that's it, right? You want to take a bath.

Starting point is 00:40:14 It's filling up the jug in the stream and setting it out on the rocks during the sun. So you'd dump it over your head. And you know, not all the living was that way. You know, good part was similar to that tent living, living in a 16 foot trailer with a family of six, which is not much bigger than the space that we're sitting here. So, we're talking hard winters with feet, a snow on the ground, nowhere to go.

Starting point is 00:40:37 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. There's living in homes that were maybe condemned. There's no doors even on them, no electricity or running water or one or the other. Both. And sometimes a little bit better.

Starting point is 00:41:00 By the time we got to high school, we had a mobile home. So my stepfather had won a disability payment because he had a broken arm that whole time from accidents a long time ago. And finally got an award. And we got a down payment on this mobile home that didn't have, again, doors on the inside. It did have running water.

Starting point is 00:41:18 It did have electricity. Didn't have a kitchen. The windows would crank clothes and open, but they wouldn't close all the way. So the trim them in with plastic to be able to try to protect from the elements. That was my environment. I learned in how to forge for mushrooms. I mean, there were summers I would send, and my parents would be out.

Starting point is 00:41:36 They were in the drug trade earlier. We got taken by the police and put into foster care for a while, which ties into some of the stories with human trafficking and honestly, it's in my book, but it's really hard for me to talk about that stuff and obviously not all that's in the book. So, but they got us back, moved to Oregon and they stayed out of the drug trade from that time to ensure that

Starting point is 00:42:07 They didn't lose us again, but quickly we kind of fell back into the same thing. So at that point it was learning about geology and starting to do mining and Firewood cutting but mostly the mining cuz Pat's broken arm chains all made a little tough If you remember just the sequence of moments Do you are you haunted by the darker moments of your childhood? Do you remember moments of simple joy and happiness? Outside of the living around dangerous people and the interactions that came from that, we were a family. Like, we were a cohesive unit battling against the world together.

Starting point is 00:42:46 We spent all our time together, work, play, I was there. I was helping raise my siblings, so where I was working with them. And, you know, it was a constant. Like I said, we were very physically active. So, you know, I had that in my upbringing. I had a plug for my SU company, Barefoot, B-E-A-R. I ran around the wilderness and bare feet all the time, you know, but it was, I had a lot of great moments and I'm thankful for a

Starting point is 00:43:15 lot of that childhood once we take out the trauma. The other stuff associated with it, right? And so, the connection that I have with my sisters is huge. 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 while I was going to school because the environment at home deteriorated further. There's that stepfather like I said was he wasn't capable of managing life and my mom had a mental breakdown and took off to Montana and he descended into madness, even worse. Actually, took my 13-year-old sister and kicked her out in the middle of the winter, a couple

Starting point is 00:43:56 feet of snow on the ground because he thought she stole his favorite cereal bowl. Type. So that's when I took in and was going to college, put myself through college, and I started taking custody of my sisters and raising them. So anyway, we're still like very, very tight family. It took, there was a few years later in life

Starting point is 00:44:19 like that, the connection with my mother was kind of broken. I didn't speak to her for years because of her basically abandoning my sisters and me having to come in, but that we've worked through that as best we can. So you angered? I'm your part. It wasn't, there might have been some anger. Did you always love her?

Starting point is 00:44:40 Yes, and I still do, and I'm so, she's taught me Basically everything I know about strength and perseverance and living life on your terms and being able to to create that and so much of what I am Is from that right? We've all had to learn to Be okay with the way she is because she is just blunt, but you know, she's the one that figured out that the human trafficking situation and got the DA involved and got all the, she's the one that I've learned a lot from her.

Starting point is 00:45:23 And did you inherit some of the demons? Almost certainly. And I, it's something I've continued like in my father's side has been really tough on that because some of it is just based on genetic as well. So my step-father made, I think six or seven attempts on his life during his lifetime. One of those in front of me, his mother blew her head off with a shotgun. Her brother jumped out of window in LA.

Starting point is 00:45:52 Their father did something similar. And I don't know how far back it goes because there is no family except for me, my children. You spoke about going through depression yourself. Yeah. Can you talk about some of the darker moments of that? Have you ever Like menu in your family. Have you ever considered suicide? Yes, I have Yes, I have You've achieved a lot of exceptional things in your life. Can you talk about those early days of depression and how you overcame

Starting point is 00:46:25 it? Yeah. So the things that I did that people give me accolades for are the things that I did selfishly to save myself. The things like taking custody of my sisters, being the person that everybody around, you know, the important people relied on, the fact that I had to step to the plate and be present and be that person, because if I failed, they failed. They would be like the people that I grew up with that are dead or in prison or on drugs and they're either way to to one of those right that's where everybody ended and I wasn't going to let

Starting point is 00:47:14 that happen. What about saving yourself? And so that's how in those early days that's how I did it and I'm not saying it's the best approach but but it was survivor mentality. It was, I can't selfishly do that because I have them to take care of. Right? And then that continued where I would keep putting myself in these leadership roles or other things and is always being this person that was at the center, at the hub that forced me to be there.

Starting point is 00:47:45 And so it's only in the more recent, you know, last decade or so that I have had to really learn how to come and start confronting some of those demons. And you think, man, why is the guy so successful? Like, I mean, and we haven't talked about all the stuff that I've done, but like I've seen a lot of success in both business leadership, athletics, academics, entrepreneurship, all these sorts of things, right? But if it wasn't for, you know, having kids and the same being in the position I wouldn't be here. If it, and that's just, that's the reality of it.

Starting point is 00:48:27 And I'm learning 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 root understanding. And having some guidance doing so. If you've got mental health issues This isn't something that you need to tackle on your own like having a professional that can help guide you on that introspective journey is is something like

Starting point is 00:48:55 It's not like hey, I'm big tough guy. I can handle everything You know that's fascinating that You saved yourself That's fascinating that you saved yourself. That's quite powerful to save yourself by having others depend on you. So you can't fail. You can't fuck it up. And that's a reason to keep moving forward. But on the flip side, that's not addressing the darkness.

Starting point is 00:49:22 It's not. And it probably not a sustainable strategy either. Right. So I recognize these. I don't know. And perhaps it is sustainable. Perhaps that, I mean, there's something beautiful about giving yourself basically in service of others. And thereby creating purpose. And then like it's almost like fake it till you make it. And then you make it eventually. That is purpose though. That is purpose.

Starting point is 00:49:51 That is purpose. I mean, you have to, to me, life is about taking your cup and how you choose to pour it out. How you choose to give. What is your purpose? What is that connection with everybody around you? This is, that's the intent. choose to give, what is your purpose? What is that connection with everybody around you? This is, that's the intent. That's the life, that's what life is about. How are you going

Starting point is 00:50:11 to help those around you? How are you going to help the world? You know, your purpose is is right here, figuring out what this is, and then how to do that. But at the same time, you can't let that run dry. So you have to make sure that you're filling that up. That's the other side, right? That's the other side. Yeah. Well, return to your engineering degree, which you're obviously scientifically engineering minded, which is fascinating. Your book is titled the Eagle and the Dragon. What do the eagle and the dragon symbolize? They're pretty big symbols for me. In fact, that covers my entire body as a tattoo.

Starting point is 00:50:48 So, the first one I had done is around 19 years old. Man, so this is or started at 19. It's an eagle that covers my entire front, you know, my stomach rib cage and one that was on my back, the cover most of my back and there's chained it that Well at the claw I guess And the chain wraps down around and attaches to to my ankle and there's a shackle there

Starting point is 00:51:15 And so this was something that I had done at that age because it was to me. It was a representation of Your potential your strengths your abilities that you can fly to whatever height that you want in this world. The only thing holding you back at the end of the day is yourself. This was, I hadn't necessarily accomplished a whole lot at that time. I mean, I was valedictorian for high school, small high school. Does that even count? It was a state level wrestler.

Starting point is 00:51:49 This was my belief. And you sense that there was a potential in you and the only thing that could stop you from realizing that potential was yourself. That's right. That's a heck of a tattoo to get, by the way, at 19, but yeah, that's 40 hours went into that thing. It shows you got some guts 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 so I had done that. I had flown to whatever heights right so I had I had proven to myself and maybe done what I thought I needed to do to show the world

Starting point is 00:52:32 that this poor kid from the sticks, this kid growing up in the mountains with nothing could achieve the American dream. I was a corporate executive sought after that I'd come in, I'd fix companies, I'd turn around and prep them for sale, I'd take a company and grow it from a regional to a national to a global presence. I did this in the automotive manufacturing, aerospace manufacturing, high tech, heavy industry, and I had a house with a white picket fence. I was a successful athlete with all-time world records. I owned a gym on the side where I coached people and I had a comfortable marriage

Starting point is 00:53:14 that everything was hunky-dory with no arguments at home. And I walked away from all of it. I left everything behind, except for my kids. I wanted to Chase what I was meant to do and Chase what I was capable of doing I wanted to become a better version of myself, but very intently And that's what I did.

Starting point is 00:53:48 I sold, I had multiple homes, sold my homes. I cashed in all my retirement that I'd earned for 20 nearly 20 years. And I lost all that. I leveraged myself millions of dollars of personal debt so that if I failed, there was no way out. Even going back to that old career that I did well, I'd be living in an apartment the rest of my life paying it off. People questioned, people questioned me at the time because I had a comfortable, easy

Starting point is 00:54:18 marriage. And I chose to ask for a divorce. And I ended up living in an apartment for a couple years with no income, selling off every last thing that I had except for my two vehicles that I built. And with my kids. And I started my businesses to help people live a better quality of life, to get them out of pain, to help them live better through strength, to realize that stress, demand, those things that they don't have to be the thing that, if you look back, made you have the bad back, made you

Starting point is 00:54:58 have the bad deeds, but they do the opposite. They get you out of pain. And then I started working on my book to hit on those other things, the mental, the emotional, maybe even spiritual. I don't touch on that one too much in there, but it's all the same. That things that happen around you too, 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, better person, to become more resilient, to be able to take the things that you don't know that are coming in the future. And so this is very intentful, and that's what the second long-winded answer in your question

Starting point is 00:55:34 here. The dragon. The dragon. The dragon is an aura boris. And so it is, it circles my entire upper body, my shoulders, my back, my chest, everything. It's right here. There's this big dragon head and its tail is right there and its mouth.

Starting point is 00:55:48 It's eating itself. And it may sound a bit graphic or whatever, but it is, it's the eating of the old becoming the new. It is the purposeful reinvention of oneself. It is the deciding, not realizing just your potential, but deciding specifically who you want to be in this fucking world and becoming that person. Can you comment on the value and the power of putting a flame

Starting point is 00:56:17 to your old life, your old self, just destroying all of it as you walk into the new life, you know? Did you have to do that? I don't recommend this by the way, because when you put yourself in no way out, there is no way out. Yeah. Okay.

Starting point is 00:56:37 Like, you got to really, no, but I can be an overconfident individual at times. And I live through extremes. I think it's a great way of actually finding your real values and how you want to live, honestly, to chase the having absolutely perfect squat technique, but chase putting every freaking thing that you got in it, which most people would say, those are opposite.

Starting point is 00:57:06 Those are diametrically opposed. I wanted a better home life. I wanted to do more in the world through my work. And the burning, the bridges mentality is not necessarily the best. There was some temperament in that though, because I was not, I was slow to make the shift for a long time because I'd been thinking about doing it, but I was thinking about doing it in a healthcare perspective.

Starting point is 00:57:34 I'm gonna go back to school to be a surgeon or a physical therapist or a chiro because that's where, like all my research and stuff was in this human movement and rehab and recovery. This is the mentors that I've been developing were the best in the world in these things in these disciplines. Those were my own friends. But I wasn't able to compromise my family's certain quality of life I wanted to keep

Starting point is 00:57:58 this. It was slow and hard for me to make that transition, but I didn't do it until I had a platform built enough that those first few years, I did have an income, I was able to make enough from the business until it grew so fast that I needed so much more needed to come in, the living in the apartment piece and doing all that, there was actually a couple years into that process, maybe like two years. I'm with you on that, so I'm actually going to that very process now. I put I put everything I quit everything gave away everything and starting in you and unfortunately or fortunately this podcast somehow became

Starting point is 00:58:35 quite popular. So it's getting in the way of my burning everything to the ground. But in that it's a source of joy. But the main thing I'm after is the similar project as you is building a business. Sense of joy. So this is the point I want to drive home right now, right now. Because when I say, I learned the burning in the bridge as works because that's how I had to succeed

Starting point is 00:59:04 when I was earlier. The bridges weren't burnt, they didn't exist. There was no couch to go home to. There was no fallback plan. And it forced me and gave me the confidence to know that I can pull it off. But I don't encourage people because there's so much out there of this hustle porn and other stuff going just grind, just go after it, get in, and start your, like, you'll get there, and it's all about the output to make money, to be somebody, to do this. And I'll tell you what, that is some short term motivation right

Starting point is 00:59:34 there. I feel like dropping a few swear words, but, you're already done a few, so we'll balance it out. That is short term. That is not going to keep you going. This need, if you're going to go that approach, it needs to be because this is your north star. There's going to be so much hard work. There's going to be years of just pushing through where your question, not only is everybody around you questioning you and your family's questioning you your question yourself going man I don't know if I can pull this off. You're gonna be stressed. You're gonna be pulled to the max If somebody comes up to me and says should I start a business? I'm gonna say no

Starting point is 01:00:15 And oh you're supposed to motivate me if you need me to motivate you This is the wrong damn approach for you. This is gonna be hard. This is gonna be harder than you expect, even with me telling you this. And so it better damn well be worth it. This better be your North fucking star. This better live and be a way for you to be able to articulate or realize those values that you want to live. This isn't something to make money.

Starting point is 01:00:45 This is a way for you to live the life and be able to share the values that you have with the world. And that's what it is. And if you don't have that, which is gonna give you joy, then freaking walk away. This is not some way to make some money and be known. I mean, this includes both like simple day to day joy and also deep meaning, the whole thing. And

Starting point is 01:01:12 then that allows you to overcome all the pain along the way. But I gotta say, I mean, it's a difficult thing because you run a business. This podcast and a lot of things I do research wise is full of joy, but it's simple. Running a business is hard. So it's something that I'm very hesitant about in that. So to almost push back a little bit, I think if I do get the guts to start the business, it will not be because I'm not choosing a more joyful life because I'm already truly happy. The reason I'll choose is because I just can't help it. I've always had this dream and I know it's going to lead to suffering and I know it's going to be a life that has less happiness and it is sad as this to say.

Starting point is 01:02:08 But it won't be. It won't be less happiness. Because we talk about this cup and where you choose to pour it and what you choose to do with it. And when you look back on things, the things that are going to give you the most joy, the most proud, the things that are going to stand you the most joy, the most proud, the things that are going to stand out in your life that you really remember are going to be those days.

Starting point is 01:02:29 And you're those years you struggle, you're going to look back on 10 years later and go, fuck, those were the glory days. Those were the glory days. And it won't feel like it at the time. So that's what life's made of. And so this is your, this is your opportunity. You feel that.

Starting point is 01:02:50 So right now you got this when you think about it, you got this little thing twisting up in your gut, right? It's like it's a mixture of anxiety and fear as well as excitement. And that is, that's your signal that this is your opportunity for that personal growth, to challenge yourself. This is your going for a runner working out in the heat. It's those things. It is your opportunity to go, maybe it even fails. Maybe it even fails.

Starting point is 01:03:17 But by turning into that, you're going to learn so much and it's going to make you so much better. And it's the path that you should take when you have this stuff rolling around in there. And I don't, it could just be a hard conversation with your partner or your boss. It could be taking on a project that, you know, the, you know, the, your boss is throwing out to the team and you're like, I'm going to hide in the back. I don't want that one. I was like, maybe, maybe you do.

Starting point is 01:03:47 Maybe it's going back to school. Maybe it's making that career move that you'll always want but you're just afraid of. All these things are your opportunity for you to turn into that. It is your workout, it is your practice. because if you don't, you'll get soft. And who knows what's coming and you're not going to be ready for it. And it's going to run right over the top of you because you're going to be weak.

Starting point is 01:04:17 You're going to be soft. 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. That's the funny thing about just the human... But just make sure you're filling the cup as you're going through it, you're going out all out. So that's the part to figure out, right? Well, life is short anyway.

Starting point is 01:04:41 Eventually, eventually the cup will be empty. Missile may be time, the refilling of the cup will be empty. Missile may be time, the refilling of the cup correctly. So you maximize the little time you got. Let me talk to you about strength a little bit. First, high level. What are the differences in the different disciplines of strength?

Starting point is 01:04:59 So powerlifting we talked about, maybe just to clarify for people, powerlifting, Olympic lifting, just regular gym fitness bodybuilding, doing curls and fire the mirror for hours like I do. What's the difference between all these? Oh, and also strong man. Every one of those as far as the athletic disciplines are different qualities. So we want to think about things as terms of quality. So there's strength, there's power, there's endurance, there's the ability to be coordinated and athletic, there's all these things and they're different, they're

Starting point is 01:05:39 different qualities. So your training as it relates to that is how you cycle in the development of those qualities. What we want to think about is there's a lot of different frames of thought, some very classical, maybe not classical Russian approach, because there's a lot of different approach from the Eastern block. But one of the ones is developing all the qualities it wants, you know, focusing on building those. More of a periodization effect would be it wants, you know, focusing on building those more of a periodization effect would be focusing on one quality at a time or one quality while maintaining other qualities and then shifting that around. So it's just going to be a little different based on what the output is and

Starting point is 01:06:18 what the desired. So like powerlifting is actually power is the wrong word. There's actually no power in it. It's just brute. It's it's strength Application of force Olympic lifting would actually be a better power power lifting Because that is more explosive development. There's Strong man is again now. We're getting a little bit more athletic. It's equipment based on the implements and stuff that are used, how fast you can move your feet and run, mixed with more endurance, but still very strength focused. And there's some things with strong man that is straight.

Starting point is 01:06:53 Like each one of these is very also focused on different genetic dispositions. So actually, if you look at the history of sports, you'll find that there are a lot of times based on different populations, and that sounds like it's very un-PC, but like Highland Games, they've got deeper hip sockets that are shallow.

Starting point is 01:07:13 So you're gonna see a lot of short hip hinge movements, like the cable toss and things like that, Moitai wrestling, they've got a completely different hip joint. And so strong man, itself is gonna be for very large frame individuals. If you're not well over six foot, and a large person, you're probably not going to perform well.

Starting point is 01:07:29 Very few people at sub six foot have ever done well at strong men just because it's leveraged based, right? Olympic lifting. We see consistently in Europe, 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. So you're going to see issues with populations that don't have the ability to do that. So we've talked a little bit about training as well as disposition.

Starting point is 01:08:02 Yeah. And also cross-hated things into that. That's more like strong man, but for a wider variety of bodies, I suppose. Yep, and definitely more metabolic conditioning focused than the strength aspect of it. And conditioning is an interesting thing too. So that quality, in my opinion,

Starting point is 01:08:20 can be developed a lot faster, but kind of peaks much faster as well. So, where strength we can continue to add and add and add over time. So it's, for me, for conditioning with any strength athlete, I don't like to spend it as much time on that. So I'll cycle the conditioning work for our strength athletes and then taper that off leading into meat. So the more metabolic work, the means the more capacity in strength training

Starting point is 01:08:49 that you can accomplish, which is the goal, and recover from. But then as we lead to a competition, we want to spend more time on recovering from that. So we have to pull things out so we'd pull out less. So like a typical approach would be like taking a six week cycle for conditioning and ramping up over three weeks periods time, then dropping back down again and ramping up

Starting point is 01:09:12 and being slightly offset by like a week or two from your strength peaks so that you've actually tapered the weak prior and your conditioning work to your strength work. Right? And but that way we're not hitting conditioning hard all the time, which is a common, common misstep that people make is going, well,, I need conditioning so they just hammer that at a base level over the top instead of cycling that If we talk about powerlifting In terms of regimen In terms of exercise. Yeah in terms of the, the wood consistent with what, is there something to be said about general qualities of the consistency of the regimen required to get strong?

Starting point is 01:09:52 Yes. So let's talk about some training principles as a whole. And this will, I think this will break down what you're, what you're wanting. The more work that we can fit into a given time, the more progress we're going to make. But that doesn't mean doing the max amount of work possible at any given time. So we know that we're always to accomplish more,

Starting point is 01:10:20 we're always gonna have more. And there's a certain seemingly that you're gonna hit that you're not gonna be able to add more. So you want to start and get the most amount of results that you can with the least amount of work, because you're going to have to do it again, like this stair step over and over year, decades, so on. So when people is a big mess people got they look at a shiko program from Russia or so on, and they go, I'm going to mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean,

Starting point is 01:10:47 I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean is it relates to injuries because injuries are going to be a big driver over time of what holds you back. So when we talk consistency, training hard for three years, five years, it's going to be really good. But what we find is a lot of people train really hard for nine months, have to slow back for a month, get back into it, then miss another week because and so on. They're always like this little nagging, that little nagging. And so, it's pretty clear in the research, we're looking at when we're stair stepping this stuff,

Starting point is 01:11:32 we're looking at acute and chronic loading. So, some fancy words for average and like what's happening right now. So, this given week would be our acute, chronic would be what is our average loading, let's say, over the last six months. Okay. So the more that we can move the chronic loading up, the more work we're getting done on as a whole over time, we're going to get stronger. The way that we build the capacity to do that is having spikes in acute loading.

Starting point is 01:12:01 Okay. 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. So it's not actually the movement quality or this misstep or the other. It usually happens about four or five, six weeks later. It's like, oh, this nagging and then it gets worse. And then now you got to do some rehab. Your training sessions aren't as good and so on. So now we're starting to look at this.

Starting point is 01:12:36 Okay, it's like, I want to do the least amount of work where I can still progress. I want to be able to have spikes in my weekly demand that don't go above 10 to 15% of what I've been averaging for the last month, but every time I do a spike, my average goes up, right? Boom, boom, boom. And then that becomes very particular also when you take, when you do take plant time off.. So a lot of people, uh, training session, maybe they're doing a five week block with a, uh, a, a, a deload week, or you go on vacation for a week or any of those things that are where a downward, what does that do to your average and chronic loading? It brings it down. And then what does the person want to do when they come back? Make up for

Starting point is 01:13:20 it. Now they have a huge spike above. Five weeks later, we're dealing with Ahis, Elbow, this wrist, whatever's kind of bothering me, and now you're not performing as much. So these are some really fundamental pieces of training. And then now we can start overlaying the qualities that we're trying to develop that we were talked about earlier. So now it's, let's talk about my deadlift, my thousand pound deadlift. We'll talk about the training cycles for both the thousand Deadlift and squat So backing up a year out from the deadlift knowing I was training at the time heavy deadlift Once a week and usually it was two of those sessions a month were really heavy and the others weren't and it's like

Starting point is 01:13:59 Okay, how can we get this up to where I'm deadlifting twice a week? Because that's where I'm deadlifting twice a week? Because that's where I want to be. To be able to accomplish this, I need to be loading about that much with frequency with a certain volume to be able to accomplish this goal. We're not going to go through all the math and stuff like that and how that's arrived, but there is math behind this. And so instead of just like, oh, well, let's start deadlifting twice a week. No. Instead of just like, oh, well, let's start deadlifting twice a week. No. So we start and we take the one session that we've got. And we split it part of it.

Starting point is 01:14:30 Take part of it away and put it in the second half of the week. So the total volume's still the same. And then we start adding some volume, but I'm doing it at off of blocks so that the actual load is accumulative load is less because I have less range of motion. Okay. And then we start building that closer to the ground, closer to the ground, and so on. And now we start getting to where I'm almost doing two sessions, full sessions a week. And then we start adding a little bit of load. And so at my level, this isn't talking about adding another set or another day a week. We're talking like in my squat.

Starting point is 01:15:05 It might be one rep. Instead of doing three sets of three, at one week I do two doubles or two triples, then two doubles to give me one more rep. That's it. And so we're doing that from one week to the next, and that's a cycle, training cycle. It might be five, six weeks, and then so on, and the next one, and slowly bringing that average load up.

Starting point is 01:15:29 So the last phases of the squat, for example, we took the average loading every week, so my heavy sets, so once we developed all this stuff over the last year to get to this point, now it is taking and going, okay, my average load this week is 8 reps at 955 pounds. And then the next week, let's get it to 957, 963. And this was pretty aggressive.

Starting point is 01:15:57 Working up to where my average loading the final, that the final was 985 pounds, average load for 8 to 9 reps. And that's what I said, this is the intense part. That was why it was the day of was much easier. That week over week is pretty brutal. They not sound, oh, you're just squatting. And now let's back it up. Let's look at the quality development.

Starting point is 01:16:16 So a year out from the squat, obviously I've been working on developing axial load capacity. My capacity to withstand load from top to bottom. So I like thinking about things in movement vectors. So this vector as an axial loaded vector is the hardest to recover from. So what's axial, so like, is deadlifts, are they both?

Starting point is 01:16:36 They're both. Yep. So a horizontal, a front to back would be like a row or a press. Why is the axial hardest hardster car for, because it's entire body, the entire body. Just anything that is, that taxes the spinal mechanics, I don't, I could tell you my beliefs, it studied, it is. Okay.

Starting point is 01:16:59 We can just keep the discussion on that, but short like that. So, so we start looking at those different vectors that we're training in. So this is why this is important to understand. So I'm not just getting into nuance here. So hey, squatting is gonna make me, make me jump further because it's legs.

Starting point is 01:17:16 Well squatting is an axial load vector and jumping is a vector this way. So actually hip thrust would help with your, and this is proven in science, with your forward jumping ability. They're both working similar muscles, the glute extension, but they're working it in those different platforms.

Starting point is 01:17:36 So it's really important to understand because people don't understand, I'm building my work capacity by doing sled presses. You're not developing your work capacity for squatting. Most movements, even ones as holistic as a squat require specialization. You can't get strong at the squat by doing... You're going to have some carryover, right? Obviously, but because taking an untrained person that hasn't done it is still not going to do as good

Starting point is 01:18:05 as somebody that's done non-specific work, but done work. But yes, for the most part. To get truly strong and you specialize. But not all the time. So now we talk about quality. And if we specialize in the same thing too long, we stagnate because the body adapts to a certain point and just can't make progress. So we wanted to save the actual squatting

Starting point is 01:18:26 in the pattern with the bar that I was doing for the very end. So starting a year out, I started doing work front squatting. Like a squat, axial loaded pattern and worked on maximizing that up. Then I started shifting to doing transformer bar squat. It's this bar I developed that actually changed and manipulates spinal mechanics.

Starting point is 01:18:48 So I started loading in these more forward positions and being able, again, so now I'm getting closer than a front squat but not quite squatting. And then I would start adjusting that bar every training cycle to closer to a squat, to closer to a squat till it finally was. So what's the difference in a front squat and a regular, like a back squat, like in terms

Starting point is 01:19:07 of the stress on the body, the mechanics, was there something interesting to be said about, like how fundamentally different are they? So it's interesting, people think about the weight in position to them, like, oh, the bars in front of me, the bars behind me, which is not the case. The bar is above your midfoot. The load is above your midfoot. So we're actually manipulating the spine behind the bar. So we're causing spinal uprighting,

Starting point is 01:19:36 behind the bar, getting in a more erect position, which is gonna change the relationship of the hip angle. It's gonna change our ability to maintain the spine. It's going to change the, to maintain the spine. It's going to change the how much the core comes in, how hard it is to maintain that sternum to diaphragm relationship that we talked about. All this stuff starts changing. So the bar stays in the same place. Bar's still behind you, but the load moves around.

Starting point is 01:19:59 But we're actually manipulating the spine around the load. Yeah. It's incredible. We can tailor it to an athlete, which is great when you got a seven foot plus tall baseball player or basketball player. That's why we work with all these teams. Anyway, so it's like you're taking something and getting closer and closer to it.

Starting point is 01:20:15 At the same time, we're looking at the quality. So like I needed to be able to really hold this torso position with the weight moving up here. Now unlike the deadlift, the ability to manage this TL position becomes much more challenging. So that was also why I was choosing the transformer bar because it actually challenges that more in those big forward positions. I was also working on my back strength tremendously to be able to hold a maintained position. So there was a lot of like I chose a bent over rows. So a bent over row is a mixed vector. So it's a forward to back.

Starting point is 01:20:45 So it wouldn't have as much carrier, but it's also got some axial loading component in it as well. So we're working on that. And then as we get closer and closer to competition, I'm developing those strengths, but now I need to start tapering those out. So all of my recovery needs can now go into the more specific that I'm actually ramping the load up. So as I'm ramping the load on the weight, I'm able to ramp it a lot faster because I'm tapering out the other stuff so I can still keep my total load high, but now get it very, very specific. So everything that I've done has always been kind of an annual training cycle. I've done has always been kind of an annual training cycle. And then again, this was like a, this was a five year training cycle, but we just kind of walked through the last year of each and you can see how these concepts play out in

Starting point is 01:21:30 reality. So in the cycling, so this is both for you, but also for more recreational strength athletes. Let's say there's variety injected into this. You need variety. Yeah. Yeah. Let's say there's a variety injected into this. You need variety, yeah. Yeah, because you will basically stagnate at some level, right? So you should always be kind of shifting a little bit. So three to four month blocks in general for an average,

Starting point is 01:21:56 you know, just a GenPOP fitness is pretty good. Where you're going to spend more time, maybe in a higher rep range or lower rep range, a little bit more work on endurance capacity or to spend more time, maybe in a higher range or lower range, a little bit more work on endurance capacity, or maybe some more time, hey, I'm playing around with boxing or jujitsu or something like that, bring that a little bit more to the front,

Starting point is 01:22:13 forefront for a while and bring the other out, but mixing those variables up, but trying to keep the total load the same and always kind of like, no, do we add a little more? Again, it doesn't have to be major and it shouldn't be major. You don't want these big jumps. You don't go, oh my God, let's move. Let's jump into squatting every day. You've got to build the capacity to do that.

Starting point is 01:22:35 This simple. What role would you say strength has in sports that combine skill and strength. So for me personally, maybe I'll just ask itself officially, which is grappling, wrestling MMA. Yeah. How about I start with baseball? Please. No, I was okay. I know the sport. Okay. No, baseball and golf are the two of my favorite sports. No, I don't you don't have to be in shape at all to excel those sports. Well, here's the thing. So it's going to get this argument. Well, I've got a perfect example because this is this is why I sell so many transformer bars in the the major league baseball. So they get these people that come in these athletes that have been baseball their whole life. It is part of the culture. And so they're great athletes. They've got all the skill.

Starting point is 01:23:29 The only thing they have to do is develop a little bit more resilience so that they don't have the injury. They can push their training a little bit more. That they can add a little bit more force output and be able to recover from it. So the only thing they've got to do is add some training, but there's no training culture there, so they don't have any experience, which is why they love the transformer bar

Starting point is 01:23:52 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. Like queuing all the stuff with actually, not having the coach it, because when you're coaching a room full of athletes, it's really hard to teach the nuance of all this and not sure that all that,

Starting point is 01:24:04 but that's all that they have to do with these players with a huge level of skill. So once you reach a certain level of skill, adding strength is the only real forward path. So that's the basic simple answer to that. So one of the benefits there being like injury prevention actually. Injury prevention. 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 going to be. Even a cyclist, mountain biking, why would they need it? Why would they need to do upper body training? Take a crash, your shoulder's gone. You're done,

Starting point is 01:24:44 your career's over. Unless you've done a little training. Take a crash, your shoulder's gone. You're done, your career's over, unless you've done a little training. Right? So there's value in all this stuff, but the resilience is like that's huge, and then we can overlay strength. Where we miss is this focus on strength when we haven't developed quality motor patterns first. So this is a huge thing with children, because people want to know what's the appropriate training age. I'd have had my daughter training before my son because she developed movement patterns that had better quality earlier. There's no age because it's going to be very dependent on the

Starting point is 01:25:18 individual. There's no point in having adaptation if we don't have the right thing to adapt to yet. And that applies to general movement, but also to sport. So you're saying the skills should be developed first and the strength applied on top of that. Yep. Maybe you can educate me, but I actually quit lifting and powerlifting for a long time after I started 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. So this isn't a problem with the training.

Starting point is 01:26:02 This is a problem with you. So this is actually really, really important. The first product I ever released was a loadable mace, a swinging mace. And because every powerlifter and body, well, not every, but most serious powerlifters and bodybuilders like shoulders mobility is pretty limited. And most of them really, really struggle with this. The problem is they've been taught to have tension all the time. And that's not good. So when we talk about like the joint positions that we were talking about earlier and having those and the muscles and the right length and answer relationship, athleticism is the speed to relaxation because the counter is speed to, to speed to contraction, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, right? And so what a mace can do is use that because this is a ties back into a developmental

Starting point is 01:27:01 kinesiology because a lot of like reset patterns are getting back into these basic movements, but it's as much about relaxation as it is contraction. Okay, so a mace, we have this weight on a big long lever. So if I grab a kettlebell, this would be like the same movement as a kettlebell halo. It is the same movement as a, but here in the halo, I'm on the whole time. With the mace at the proper length,

Starting point is 01:27:26 with the right distribution, you cannot do the movement. You could not move, force your way through it. The only way that you can accomplish that is by relaxing. And then, now we can contract all the muscles related around that shoulder girdle. All at once, we're working on off, on off, on off, with moving and contracting.

Starting point is 01:27:48 And now, so what happens a lot of times as we, you know, this stiffness and tightness happens, if we're in poor positions, we start using stabilizer muscles to do the movement. And then that's where this stiffness comes from. So it means that in some of whatever training that you're doing, there's a deficit in the movement quality.

Starting point is 01:28:07 Okay. Or there's a deficit in the training program and you're not recovering from. And 80% of the time, that's the right answer, right? But yeah, that's where the gap is and learning how to relax. And the way a lot of the exercises are taught and have been taught for a long time, which is why there's a big gap. And this is why both clinical rehab and all these other components are mixed in my philosophy and what I'm trying to do with Kabuki strength. Because I'm looking at holistic movement, I'm not looking at powerlifting.

Starting point is 01:28:37 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. I mean, I'm freaking the 1,000 pound squatter and deadlifter. If you watch any of my videos where I do like complete quad fallbacks, I don't stretch it all. I can usually get close to a full split like if I want to.

Starting point is 01:29:00 What? No, I did not see those videos. Okay, that's hard to believe. Well, okay. Well, No, I did not see those videos. Okay. It's hard to believe. Wow, okay. Well, actually, I do. I just did one recently. A quad fallback with my, with my mace loaded way out to the end, torsioning on both end of the other.

Starting point is 01:29:13 And I do a lot of, I do a lot of weird stuff. That's awesome. Okay. Squatting doesn't make your hips tight. Squatting like shit makes your hips tight. And so, but there is no perfect world. We're always our training program isn't quite perfect. Our movement isn't necessarily perfect. So you're going to have the needs for this stuff. But if you're always

Starting point is 01:29:36 have to do some soft tissue work to loosen up the same one for that exercise to be able to get a joint in position, there is a problem. and I'm not saying don't do it, do it because I don't want you to have a joint, like if I can't get my shoulders in a position, I can't do overhead presses because I'm gonna compromise my spine position, then I'm gonna end up with some other problems, right? So go ahead and clean that up so you can get in position.

Starting point is 01:29:58 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 gonna understand the deeper root reason of why. So I don't, I believe I have the only company, manufacturing and selling, you know, fashion soft tissue tools, and I'll tell you, I don't want you to use them.

Starting point is 01:30:21 Because it's not helping you get to the why, why it was caused in the first place. Yeah. The goal, the goal, the perfect state is not having to use them. Reality is you're going to have to use them from time to time because the world's not perfect. Yeah. So your discovery is 100% on point.

Starting point is 01:30:38 Well, there's another side to combat sports. When you're beginning a particular combat sport, strength can be a negative because human psychology because you can get away with a lot when you're stronger. Yes, you can. So if your mind is strong enough to where you can just turn off that advantage and be a beginner truly in a particular art, that's probably the best way to do it. But you can get away and then you don't learn. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard not to use the little advantages you have because like

Starting point is 01:31:14 Dujitsu is a big hit on the ego for, you know, especially guys go with like a smaller person, just destroys you, dominates you, when you can, I don't know, deadlift, whatever number of pounds. And it's hard not to use that strength to then resist the slow the ultimate destruction by like 120 pound. But that, and that's why I recommend developing the skill quality first,

Starting point is 01:31:44 but it doesn't, it doesn't mean that you can't. I can't, that's correct. You can still do it. So that don't I recommend developing the skill quality first, but it doesn't, it doesn't mean that you can't. I can't. That's correct. You can still do it. So that don't take it as a like, oh, I can't go that direction. That's fine, but understand those things. And then also understand that you just who is additional load on the body. So you have to, you can't just add it on top. Yeah. You've got to taper back the other, you're going to have to make a, I'm sorry, you may not want to hear it, but you're not going to be able to do as much and add that here. Yeah. It's a compromise because your total volume

Starting point is 01:32:15 still has to be there and there's not unfortunately not really a way to measure what the jujitsu volume is with this so you've got to take a look at that and that's where like measuring like heart rate variability or other stuff can be useful. So you can see what is happening from me from a sympathetic versus parasympathetic nervous system standpoint. Yeah, making sure you buy the recovery sufficiently and trying to put numbers to it. You mentioned Kabuki's strength. You run the Kabuki Strength Lab, previously called the Elite Performance Center in Oregon. You called it the Perfect Gym. What makes for the perfect Strength training gym where I called it the perfect.

Starting point is 01:32:53 In a video somewhere I watched. Oh, man. I mean, that's where my testing grounds for developing all this stuff was through the years. 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,

Starting point is 01:33:13 the best spine biomechanist in the world. I started doing continuing education with these clinical courses and learning this stuff and going, but how does it work in my world, right? And then I started lecturing with them and all this other stuff. But the lab was like, where do we test this stuff? Right? And so let me get to a point. There's three things.

Starting point is 01:33:32 It's always three things. So to be a success to achieve success, I believe there's three things that really, really come into place. And it's the right methodology, the right tools, and the right environment. And so it was all about building that. And so the methodologies came from a lot of that, different, that gray area, interaction of clinical

Starting point is 01:34:02 with sports science, right? And then the tools I had to start creating and designing and then the environment is having this, you know, focused environment of people that want to do better and push each other and having community and culture, right? I end up building these connections, this network. Everything that I'm doing with my businesses is trying to create that into a scalable fashion.

Starting point is 01:34:26 And so I'm building the groundwork because to have a system that like, yeah, I had clinicals on site that knew exactly what we were doing. And when it's me and a few people in a small team and all this stuff, we're all just like easy to manage. And you can see these. There's other models around this.

Starting point is 01:34:41 So I've been other areas since maybe whenever it was, I filmed that video that said that, that they have that same model and it's taken probably about a decade usually to develop that, you know, and having the right people in this community, they can create this network and the tool and all this stuff, right? Except they still don't have the best tools because Kewuki strength didn't exist. But, and so out of that is essentially started building this business and people, like when did you know how all this stuff was connected?

Starting point is 01:35:12 And I'm like, I don't know, I just started creating on the outset the things that worked until finally, I'm like, oh, I'm recreating a scalable version of this stuff. Here's the methodologies and a coaching platform that we can manage clients around the globe and see what's working and not based on the scientific principles of training. 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

Starting point is 01:35:41 needs. Now, how do we integrate that with assessment and clinical care assessment and all these other pieces? So there's a lot of work in that. And so that's where Kabuki strength is the genesis, but we call our gym the Kabuki strength lab. Literally, people find about our gym and the neighborhood. I'm like, how long have you been here?

Starting point is 01:36:02 Why do I not know about this? We don't advertise our gym at all. I feel like that makes no sense. Well, because the only reason is to have a testing environment for the tools and methodology and having enough people to have the culture and fit and to be able to be part of the experiment. What about the environment of the feel of it, the actual gym? There's a, I don't know, a grunge-ness to it. I've recently became a member of Planet Fitness.

Starting point is 01:36:33 For reasons that have to do more with a heat in Austin that sometimes I need to put in time in the treadmill. I don't like that. I don't have any judgment on this. The best gyms I've been in are kind of dirty. You walk in and you know that work is to be done. Yes. There's not another reason to do that.

Starting point is 01:36:52 It is, the environment is tight. There's a big piece of that. I know it's studied sociologically, I believe. And just, I just bitchered that word too. But the intensity, when you start growing a space, the intensity drops. 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. And it was like, it doesn't feel the same. Like people are complaining for years, we've shrunk it back down when we're down to 3,500 square feet.

Starting point is 01:37:24 And it creates that intensity. It creates the closest, the connection with the people around you. And then like I said, the grunginess, like you go in, you know the intention. When you walk in, that environment creates that tension. But when I speak environment, it's not just the physical, it's the people.

Starting point is 01:37:40 But you know when the gym is a little bit beat up, yes. It also tells a story like There's a history to it. You could tell that not only is there work to be done that work has been done here Yes, like battles have been fought. There's something to that where you're just in a long line of people, you know, they've fought and won and we could get into a whole other space. There's the whole motor topic, but that existing energy of a space. I mean, we mentioned I'll find Joe Rogan. He talks about the same with comedy clubs.

Starting point is 01:38:14 There's certain there's certain clubs that just have a history. The there's an energy there. You can get all woo woo, but you know, they're it's there. It's a real thing. I think you walk in and you can feel it. You feel it. You feel it. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:38:28 That makes me feel that somehow all of us humans are connected in a way that's hard to describe, even the ones who are no longer here. Just the greatness that once was is still in the walls in the space present there. Yeah. And we somehow can plug into that energy. Yeah, it's...

Starting point is 01:38:51 We can go down a path there. There's something really powerful there. You've also mentioned a bunch of cool equipment that you've developed as part of Kabuki Strength. Probably a little bit of that has to do with your engineering education, but also just generally with the spirit of the innovator that you are. What are some cool, maybe revolutionary pieces of equipment that you're particularly proud of or just you've been obsessed with recently. Yeah. We love to talk about that. So we've got some wild crazy stuff that just came out and is coming out too.

Starting point is 01:39:28 So everything that we create and release at Kabuki Strength, the industry hasn't seen before. There's stuff that's basic foundational that's been around forever because it works. But there's always more. It could be better. And why are we not looking at these things, these foundational things? So when people are coming up with novel things, they end up being way different outside the perspective. And I'm coming up with things that are way different, that are plays on what we already know work. So we talked about the transform

Starting point is 01:40:00 bar, the only bar in the world. We can manipulate spinal mechanics. So everything, for me, from a design concept that we develop is all about creating products that can rapidly accommodate to the variability of an individual's leverages, mobility, and training needs. And that's going to also create and distill down the size and scope of space that we need, which is gonna be, continue to be an ongoing thing. Check out my Instagram after this and you'll see, I put an entire gem on the bed of my truck and went on vacation. Last week, drove to the desert.

Starting point is 01:40:38 No, that's a lot of fun. And by entire gem, I mean, squat rack, full complement of our specialty bars, a horizontal and vertical pulley system, handheld weights, like a complete and entire gym in product that took up the space, the size of this bed right here. That's incredible. Like the design scope of what we have. So the cool things that there's two other bars that fit our biomechanically sound barbell lines. We talked about the transformer bar. The other two are built on this thing I call playground physics. So we have these bars

Starting point is 01:41:12 with handles that are off parallel with the axis. So they've been around the market for a long time. One is a hex bar or a trap bar. Another one is a pressing bar with the handles turned as well. And both of them suck. They're horrible. Anytime any blifter knows if you pick it up, it's going to break your wrist and crush into your face. And it just doesn't feel good pressing. But it alleviates the strain on the wrist so people use it for that reason. And the trap bar, same thing, it's always diving forward in your hand. So it's kind of limited, it's also limited in use, because you could do a lot more with it. So these bars are really cool playground physics. So as soon as the center of rotation is on the same axis as the center of mass.

Starting point is 01:42:07 And the handle is off center, you have a teeter totter. So, an a teeter totter has a balance point, but it's infinitely perfect. So technically, you can never find it. So, always gonna be sitting on one side of the other in a playground. And that's what these bars are designed. So, you got instability right here.

Starting point is 01:42:24 You can't find the center. The bar is always trying to tip in your hands on the trap bar. So you can't do carries with it because you're doing four momentum and it wants the dip on you, right? The Swiss bar wants to crush your face. Well, what do we do? We just make a swing, put center of mass below center

Starting point is 01:42:38 of rotation. And what does it do? Oh, it always finds center. So the handles on the our pressing bar, it's arced so that the handles are above center of rotation. And then, and then every angle, instead of just being a certain fixed angles, each angle is based on the width,

Starting point is 01:42:58 the average width of an individual. So the internal and external rotational bias is based of the shoulder is based on the width, leaving just a little bit left because we talked about the lat being a stabilizer. You still need to have a little bit of queue of external rotation to engage. That is a stabilizer. Boom. Now all of a sudden you have a bar and I kid you not.

Starting point is 01:43:15 This is a great story. Major League Baseball, when I presented it, every head strength coach for a Major League Baseball team, maybe not every but damn near most of them, have bad shoulders. They can't press, they've got shoulder surgeries, so on. And so we're showing, they love all our stuff. And I'm like, hey, I've got this cool prototype I want to show you, it's a pressing bar. And they're like, oh, you know, major league baseball is a little hesitant. I'm pressing because the danger is for the shoulder.

Starting point is 01:43:38 And I can't, I haven't been able to take a bar to my chest. I mean, I really love to. It's been five years since I've, I've been able to, to XX train my chest. I mean, I really love to. It's been five years since I've been able to, to XX train. And I'm like, just try it. Like, I can't even get a bar to my chest without pain. Like, just try it. Put in there.

Starting point is 01:43:53 Ooh, that feels good. Now, the arc makes it actually three inches deeper. So people are automatically scared. I can't do that because that's an extra range of motion, right? I'm like, ooh, put a plate on there. They're doing it by the time the staffs, like, they're all standing around. You see, like, what's going on? Put two plates on. You see the, just like, it gets up. How do you feel? Like, I feel fine. No pain at all. I did

Starting point is 01:44:17 this with five teams, with five of the, it happening repeatedly five times. And everyone of them worked up to two plates and did reps varied with zero pain to a three inch range or greater range of major. Because what do we do? We stacked all the joints and we provided stability at the end. We balanced internal and external orientation. I mean, just basic playground physics

Starting point is 01:44:38 and it changed the game. Now we get a greater range of motion with a greater training effect with the negative stresses removed. Our trap bar opened up one side, which there was already something like that out there. It pops up so you can pick up, take the weights on and off, it's got a built-in jack. And then created the high handle position, which already uses the high handle on a trap bar. They just don't know why they like it.

Starting point is 01:45:02 The handle that's on center, we offset just a little bit, not enough to make a difference on the range of motion lift, or even notice visibly, but it still has the same effect, so both handles now have that. We added the option of different handle sizes, based on whatever your needs are, even a one that rolls to develop grip, and then different widths that you could choose from, based on whether you're training a teen athlete or a seven foot six MBA player or an NFL lineman so that we can accommodate for all these differences. And so, and then now it becomes the most functional all around bar around because now you can do carries with it. You can do split squats with it. You can do curls with it because it goes around the body. You can do overhead presses because you don't have a thing that gets in your way and you can flip it up into position. You can do bent over rows and not run into your shins. You can do seal rows off of a bench. You can

Starting point is 01:45:48 do ab roll outs. You could, should I go on? Yeah, so you could use it as like the main bar. The best multi-purpose bar around. You got a home gym one bar. Like how do you develop totally new equipment like this? I scratch it on paper, maybe, maybe weld something cut up and weld up a prototype, but usually I just hand the scratched up paper to my engineering manager. And that's what he says his job is to distill my chicken scratch into something real. And then that team picks it up. But in the old days starting out, I just walk out, I just walk out and do it. I talk about engineering. I'm actually more, I work more of an artist's fashion. It's in my head and I just go create with no plans. And so they have to pick that up and actually do the engineering

Starting point is 01:46:30 and testing and all that. And then we got two other products came out this year, freaking wild. Are you familiar with training with a flywheel? No, it's a flywheel. Maybe. A flywheel is a spinning object that creates a inertial mass.

Starting point is 01:46:44 Yeah, I understand. And then it reverses direction. So inertial mass. Yeah, that's insane. And then it reverses direction. So whatever you put into it, there's ones out there. But ours is the first patent pending that's everything all in one unit. So it's a floor based as well as a horizontal. So you can basically do any pulley movement in the world. And now everything that you put into it on a concentric force, it whips right back as is a centric load.

Starting point is 01:47:05 Guys, sure. And then it's accelerating whipping motion. It just, yeah, basically. Yeah. I have trouble imagining exactly. Many of the things you're describing, I suppose, have to be experienced, right? Yes.

Starting point is 01:47:19 Because there's a magic too. And there's a lot of research they've been around. They're adopted more heavily in Europe, quite heavily in Europe, but not as much in the US because they sell them as a be all-end all tool, which they're not. They're crazy for what they do, but it's not the, it's another tool. And so we have a very high quality unit now that is half the cost of everybody else's because the innovation of a movable mount point that for them you have to have two pieces of equipment. We have one.

Starting point is 01:47:46 So, and then a few other things, better platform to be able to do things and that we can do what we call off platform work, which allows us to do movements like punches and stand-ups things like that. And then I've got a handheld weight coming out next month that we can actually play with so varying the load, with it never leaving your hand by changing the leverage point. And so what we're talking about here. Anything that would be a dumbbell or a kettlebell movement. So it functions, it does the function of a kettlebell, a dumbbell,

Starting point is 01:48:19 and what we call a center mass bell, as well as provides variable loading within a range. So how can you change, like how can you change the load? Because the load, well, we don't actually change the load. We change the torque on the joint that we're working, which is the same. That's actually what is creating the force, right? So if I'm doing a front raise, it's where this downward force is times the distance away, which also then makes it no force when I've got at the bottom of the frontways, which is why it's so easy with this It's like a kettlebell. It's offset except it has three different handles

Starting point is 01:48:54 But it's offset just that a kettlebell you can't do it because the offset so far it becomes a wrist movement So ours has three different sizes than the offset just enough so that you can pick if I put it in a front-race position or curl position I could put it in outward position and the force is almost what it is at the top but then I get the top and it's the same exact or the curl so I can actually change the force curve in the movement and then I can just release the pressure a little bit and let it swing into position and keep doing a drop set with never letting it down Yeah, so it's got a really nice texture grip that allows you to hold it in different positions. And then the load offset is just enough that it doesn't overpower the wrist.

Starting point is 01:49:30 And then you got different hand sizes so that you can maximize this relationship and hit whatever joint that you're applying. So sounds incredible. It's really freaking, well it's awesome because the variable load, now I could go straight from front raises to side raises or rear or curl because without like putting down.

Starting point is 01:49:46 Because I don't have to put it down. So now my time under tension goes through the roof. And by the way, the same effect with the flywheel trainer because the variable, whatever you put into it, is what it kicks back. So you have an constant time under tension because there's no rest points either. So all this stuff is working on maximizing time under tension. Which, anyway, it's cool. Cool. Anyway, I get excited.

Starting point is 01:50:09 Well, let me ask you about another thing. You've already mentioned, but I find this really interesting, which is barefoot running. And your company, barefoot athletics, B-E-A-R, and the tagline is optimizing the human to ground interface. We talked about this a little bit with the power lifting. How do you think about the foot ground interface? It's interesting that we know that we should train all these parts of our body to be able to be stronger, be more resilient, like, but we think that the foot is

Starting point is 01:50:55 different, that we need to package it and modify it and somehow that that's the science of making, you know, it healthy. Where a challenge people, think about that. First thing you do in the morning is roll out of bed and put your weightlifting belt on them, wrap it on tight and wear it till you go to bed at night. Do it with your shoulders, your knees, put it wake up and put some knee wraps on, okay? And elbow wraps.

Starting point is 01:51:18 And see what happens. One, you'll get weaker, you'll lose movement capacity and you'll start affecting other areas of the body very negatively because they will start picking up the compensation for those joints that are not moving properly. This is it. What shoes are for is to protect you from the environment, from cuts and abrasions and heat and things like that.

Starting point is 01:51:41 But the foot, let me, the mind blowing, is like every other area of the body, you need to use it and you need to strengthen it and you need to learn to control it. That's it. That's all I have to say about the subject. It's that simple, but somehow we have been sold entire industries, like the orthotics industry. It's completely false. Mata 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.

Starting point is 01:52:15 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. We believe we've villainized it said, a low arch is a condition that needs fixed. Like when it really is just controlling the foot and ankle complex and how they relate to each other and how we use that, is it like,

Starting point is 01:52:39 go put on boxing gloves in the morning and do that for the next 20 years and see what happens. It's not about finding the right shoe that fits because your foot has been deformed. And so I'm not like some wacky, you're like, oh, you got to be barefoot forever or do this. No, I'm just saying go spend some time using it, strengthen it, learn to control it and you'll work better in a shoe.

Starting point is 01:53:01 But the whole running shoe movement with the raised heel. That was the person that suggested that in Tennikey way back when they were trying to figure out what to do the reason. And he says it's, it's the worst thing that he ever did. Because we were coming from an era of people wearing heel shoes, which is why the way came from stirrups way back in the day. That's where the whole heel came from, it's going to stir up, then it went into fashion. And then the running craze started coming around in the 70s. They're starting to push this to the general mass population and they realize that they were

Starting point is 01:53:35 causing injuries and like, what are we going to do? Well, that's because everybody was in this position and had a shortened calf muscle and it's like, well, the work around, let's just put a heel on it so we don't injure them. That's it. And now, because the raised heel, you 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,

Starting point is 01:53:59 you'll see that you have no control over internal and external rotation of your leg. You don't. And, or your foot, and you actually have to put a support in. For the arch, to be able to passively control those structures, it's just bandaid on top of bandaid on top of bandaid. Use it, strengthen it. If you want to wear some shoes because they look good or fancy,

Starting point is 01:54:21 I'm like, I have no problem. I mean, I go out on a wife. My wife will put on some high heels every now and again. Like, but all I'm saying is use your foot. My thousand pound squat, my thousand pound deadlift were done barefoot. I'm not trying to sell you shoes. Go do it with no shoe.

Starting point is 01:54:38 That's what I've been promoting. I did that for six years and I promoted it. But people ask me like, well, what do I do because my gym requires shoes. well, what do I do? Because my GM requires shoes. Okay, what do I go? And then I go, well, you know, you could pick up these other finger shoes or whatever and they go, man, my wife won't have sex with me if I could.

Starting point is 01:54:57 And I go, I know, mine either, like trust me, I'm not making this up. Everybody in that market markets to one segment and they're still missing some gaps because they Still have a little bit too narrow of a toe box and with your lifting you have the opportunity to really get that Play and start working on this stuff better. So I just wanted to create a shoe These ones are odd colored because it's a partnership with Kabuki. Normally we've got a black or a gray low-top high-top

Starting point is 01:55:21 Sticks to the ground for lifting so we can do that. And very pliable. It's a moccasin. It's a modern day boccasin. But looks okay that you can wear it around in other areas if you so choose. Like, you know what? The number one healthcare cost in America is diabetes, heart disease, cancer, low back pain. What do you attribute a little bit, pain too? Well, it's attributed to a lot of things,

Starting point is 01:55:53 but inability to control spinal position, which starts happening from some breathing issues. It also happens from the foot. So there's a lot of stuff, but everything that I do actually focus on improving this. Yeah. And it all starts with the foot. So there's a lot of stuff, but did everything that I do actually focus on improving this? Yeah. And it all starts with this. This is one thing, like this doesn't affect breathing,

Starting point is 01:56:11 but so it does actually affect breathing to some of the actions and spinal stabilization. So the raised heel and toe will make you stride further because of just how it operates, but that over stride is a result of opening this. So we open the pelvis and diaphragm. Did we talk about that and the impact that that has for controlling and spine? how it operates, but that overstried is a result of opening this. So we opened the pelvis and diaphragm. Did we talk about that and the impact that that has for controlling and spine?

Starting point is 01:56:29 Yeah, I think we touched on that. But all this stuff plays together. So the gate affects that, and so the shoe affects the gate, and so it's all connected. All connected. Let me be very purposeful with some conversation here, though. We talked about periodization. This was a big gap. So people go, yeah, well, when people started running with those, they started having injuries back when the finger company produced those and didn't do the education

Starting point is 01:56:55 around this very simple concept. You do not walk into the gym if you haven't squatted and start squatting 225 from MaxRex every week or every day day over day. And that's what people did because they didn't weren't told that you need to build the capacity to do this. You go wear these and walk around in your office or wherever all day long your feet are gonna hurt. They're gonna be sore. Do it for 10% of your time. Do that for a month, then add some.

Starting point is 01:57:24 That will build the capacity to do this. And then that's going to start having the ability to strengthen, manage the foot. And there's a whole lot of other stuff I've got videos on, things that you can do by whatever you want, or just spend some time out of them. Like that's all that I want people to do because it is so simple and it has such a profound impact. Yeah, it does. What I did, I noticed when I walked in, I was like, oh, hey, you're spending some time without the shoes on. Well, what I did, I think it's already now, two years ago when I was doing a lot of running,

Starting point is 01:57:58 I do like a 10 mile run, I would take my shoes off for the last half mile and I run like that. And that was for me really helpful to ensure that I have proper form, form that minimizes pain on the way I run. I still like shoes. I benefit a lot from shoes of the protection they provide, but it's for running, we're referring to, especially trail running and so on. And in the city when there's glass and all those kinds of things, but it's really important to have minimal sort of protection on your feet.

Starting point is 01:58:35 For me, at least it was to figure out the ways that my form basic movement and like the positioning and 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 in terms for the objective of minimizing pain. And the barefoot running really helped fix that for me, because I figured out that I need to take shorter steps, more frequent, you know, all those kinds of things. And that really helps you figure that out. Like, let's be realist about stuff.

Starting point is 01:59:06 Like, spend some time using it, strengthen it, and I've got some great ways to do that and learn how to do that. So, yeah. What is a good diet for strength development? I've just to give you some context. I've been eating mostly meat, not for strength, mostly for mental performance. I just enjoy it. Yes, you need to have a base level of protein building blocks for tissue, right?

Starting point is 01:59:32 We need to have enough fats to be able to have hormones work and key processes in the body. We need to have, well, you don't need to have from a performance aspect carbohydrates necessarily because the other ones can convert into injury sources, but for a performance athlete, carbohydrates can be very beneficial as well. So I look at is you need a base level fats, you need a base level of proteins,

Starting point is 01:59:58 and then you adjust the carbohydrate intake based on the needs. I'm not anti-carbohydrate by any means, because a lot of people, well, they look at me now when they see like how lean I am and they jump to a conclusion. You must be keto, you must be carnivore, you must be whatever, and it's like, so losing and gaining weight is simply eating less or eating more. I mean it. And we get so complicated. Oh, that my fat, like, what's your fasting window? If I'm, if I'm doing fasting, it's just because it works with my, my environment. Sometimes

Starting point is 02:00:32 I do it. Sometimes I don't. All that does is control how much calories that you take. Big success with keto and carnivore diets. It's hard to eat a lot and put on weight with those diets. Protein actually has a thermogenic effect. And so you have to have a massive amount of fats if you have a only meat diet because you can literally starve to death. There's a show where they put people out in the wilderness and this guy, the one that won one of the ones I looked at,

Starting point is 02:01:01 and they threw them weight up in the, a past a lot out the way out there. There was nothing, but he somehow got a caribou and killed it. And he still lost a pound a day for 30 days with a caribou, because his fat was stolen by a, and he could eat all the meat he wanted, and he almost got pulled because his weight lost, right? But that isn't actually a performance.

Starting point is 02:01:24 So those type of keto and carnivore are not performance diets. So they're not going to be as effective at supplying the energy needs for high capacity training. So don't get me wrong, you can do training, but like you can be a successful, like a lead athlete with a with a vegan diet, but it's not as easy to do it with other diets. So on your missing some base nutrients, so many nutrients in meat, I believe having greens in your diet is really beneficial. Lots of research, but there's people in the other worlds that argue that they don't need them, but they help clear organs, provide micronutrients, all this sort of stuff. So I eat simply a whole well-rounded diet and I've gone from, I can go from 285 pounds, squat in a ton of weight to eating less and dropping all the way down to, you know, 7,

Starting point is 02:02:16 8% body fat with vein standing out everywhere without a tissue on me, just with amazing great tasting food. To lose weight or be healthy does not mean that you need to eat flavorless bland food. So that's the main thing I try to portion. It's eat less to lose weight, eat more to gain weight. Yep, make sure that you've got enough protein, make sure that you've got your micronutrients covered which is gonna cover by eating real food.

Starting point is 02:02:43 Don't go low fat, no fat. If you want a performance, don't go no carb, but if it works, any of those things, so diet approach, when you look at diets, understand that they're, how aggressive they are. So like keto can make you lose a lot of weight. Carnivore can make you lose a lot of weight. A lot of that upfront is actually dropping glycogen stores.

Starting point is 02:03:03 So you're actually just reducing water and your muscle and fat tissue, which is why it isn't as great for a performance diet. But understand that every diet also has a level of discipline and does it fit your lifestyle. So I suggest people don't find a diet. You need to find a lifestyle because that's what's sustainable. I hate the word diet to begin with. What behaviors are sustainable and then do that and then over time the things you'll get to where you need to get. Diet itself, just by the name of it, is not sustainable

Starting point is 02:03:41 because it is a short-term thing to get somewhere. Yeah, I tend to try to measure it because I definitely have a love heat relationship with food. I tend to look back and say like by following this particular protocol lifestyle, whatever, what was the level of happiness? Yes. So not like weight loss or weight gain or all those kinds of things. It's the entirety of the picture. Productivity, just feeling good throughout the day,

Starting point is 02:04:11 socially also, like interacting with people because so much of human connection, like I mentioned before, is over food. And if you're gonna limit yourself in that regard, you're limiting a certain fundamental aspect of life. Number of years ago, I did like 20 to 22 hour fasts every day. And I'm like, well, this doesn't work.

Starting point is 02:04:32 I can't do business lunches and stuff like that. So when I was in my fasting thing, I went to a 16, so I could have a light lunch, just for the social aspect of it and perform a little performance. That's funny. And then that's why, and that's why like the typical bodybuilding, like the eight meal a day diet has never worked for me because I've always been a very, like trying to fit

Starting point is 02:04:52 that between meetings and other stuff. What that diet provides is it just, do you get less bloat and distension of a larger meal. But at the end of the day, you get the same exact results. Pick a lifestyle, live that you can have really great tasting food. And that, to me, is the same. And this way, I'm really hitting this point, because also with the dieting and the approach, I'm going to do this.

Starting point is 02:05:16 And people pick these chicken and broccoli recipes. And guess what? You're going to break. If you do not enjoy it, you will break. So it is a very important point. Well, I also slightly push back or maybe to elaborate, if you don't enjoy moderation, for me particularly, I have trouble moderating certain things, most foods, I would say. So my source of happiness comes with foods, even if they're bland, the ones that

Starting point is 02:05:53 can enjoy, but enjoy moderation. So there's, I mean, I enjoy every piece of food. So it's like, it's, if you can enjoy the full lifestyle, it's not just the particular experience, but like the full journey. Yep. Does it fit your lifestyle? Yeah. Yep. So let me ask about a complicated topic that's sometimes a bit controversial, which is steroids. It may be a TRT testosterone replacement therapy. What role does that play in strength training? All right, we're gonna go there. It's cool. Yeah, but it's an important discussion to have.

Starting point is 02:06:34 I think that it's something that I can be more transparent on. In my past, I wasn't able to do to the career that I had. So just like covering that stuff in a public forum when you're highly looked at being a executive for recruiting and other stuff. It was an area I had to just kind of pass on. Right. Now I've used steroids. I've used them since I was 33.

Starting point is 02:07:06 And I basically just used TRT now after my big squat. So for 10 years, I used them. And there's some interesting components to this. So one is just the gray area of what we call performance enhancing supplements. So performance was a PEDs. That the line of what defines a PED is ever shifting and it's shifting based on society norms, cultural norms, government-bottling agencies,

Starting point is 02:07:42 all these sorts of stuff. So I'm not making excuses here. So I just want to elaborate before I actually start digging into the details here. Because performance enhancing, I could take sodium bicarbonate and enhance my ability to perform deadlifts for reps. Guess what? I did that for my Guinness World Record for deadlifts in a minute, okay? People do it for rowing or other, they use high capacity type stuff. It is performance enhancing, it is a chemical,

Starting point is 02:08:12 it is baking soda. All right. They're not able to make it illegal because everybody eats bread on that everyone. And so it's a little hard to test for. No matter what you do at any level, so that's an extreme example. But other examples, you're drinking an energy drink in that cup there a little while ago. And in America, you can get an energy drink with 240 milligrams of caffeine in it.

Starting point is 02:08:39 In Canada, it's too dangerous. You can only get 140, but you can go buy a Fedra. And a Fedra is illegal in America. And so these things bounce back and forth all the time. I could take Yohimmi and in Europe or Australia, it is a drug and classified in America. It's not. It's an herbal route and a lot, I actually put one of my supplements

Starting point is 02:09:07 except for the overseas version. Anyway, the point I'm getting is no matter what you do at some point, there's, by someone's standards, you are cheating. And because it is, you're taking something that, but you could work around these things with nutritional ways or other ways versus taking a chemical stroke. There's a whole lots of ways to do this, but it's like, oh no, it steroids, it's not, it's injectable, it's not.

Starting point is 02:09:34 Well, somewhere there is a culture or a person that will say you're cheating no matter what. So it's a self-defined, you need to define it for yourself unless you're competing in an organization that has testing. Then it's a 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, and it's either right or wrong, in my opinion. 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 to that level. There is no there is no body that can say

Starting point is 02:10:09 something yes or no. Yeah, when there's an event like the Olympics, maybe then you have a standard that you're all trying to adhere to and then it makes sense to keep a certain like to be with then there's an ethical. There's an narrative. Yeah, I'm not talking about that. I'm agreeing to compete in this by these by these rules. Yeah, but when you're trying to maximize your own performance, whatever that journey is whatever that goal is, that's a different story. And it's not it's not easy to figure that out. You go up, you're just like dancing around the subject, whatever. Well, guess what? I've

Starting point is 02:10:44 got a I've got a prescription for growth hormone and testosterone. It's legal for me to take. And you know what? A lot of the people that are in front of the camera in the media, politicians and newspeople, and the people that are there saying the no drug stuff, they're going to anti-aging clinics to look better

Starting point is 02:11:03 and they have a prescription for growth hormone and testosterone themselves. But in their eyes, it's okay. It is a prescription from their doctor because they have the money to do it. So it's legal and it's fine. If I, it's interesting in Oregon, anybody, not only would other states, over the age of 16, can without parents permission, by the way, walk into a gender clinic and as a female and get a prescription for testosterone.

Starting point is 02:11:36 But as an athlete, if I've got low testosterone, I am so low, I've got depression, I can't have sex with my wife, it's affecting my quality of life. I will have to fight tooth and nail to get testosterone, just as a prescription, and then I will get kicked out of my organization for competing. Like, so you understand how gray this stuff gets. Do you think the stigma on testosterone is the reason we're not having a healthy conversation about when it's proper? What are the proper uses of testosterone in an athlete's life and just the regular human

Starting point is 02:12:13 life? Yeah, absolutely. It's like anything. It's like I said, it is lines that we pick and draw. Anytime you put that out there, people are going to have different opinions where those lines are. So now when it comes to strength, here's an interesting thing. In powerlifting, there's tested federations and non-tested federations, so we can literally look at the statistical data and actually find out what do steroids do. And so it's

Starting point is 02:12:39 pretty clear that steroids provide about a 10% increase in strength on average over not. Now, that does take out the fact that steroids will put you in, allow you put on more mass, so you'll go up a weight class a lot of times. So as a whole, you could definitely lift more probably than the 10% over time, right? And then we think about steroids' ability to just put on muscle. And here's where things get a little interesting, even with people that use steroids is not understanding the neurological impacts that steroids have. Because you could take some steroids right now and be stronger in 10 minutes.

Starting point is 02:13:18 That's clearly not done anything, you know, from physiology standpoint to make you stronger, but we have a tapped in neurologically to elicit those games. And there's a whole lot that happens neurologically. Like, how much science is there in terms of all the different ways you could take steroids, which kinds of steroids, the timing, the dose, all of those things to develop, the neurological,

Starting point is 02:13:44 the physical, the skeletal. You've talked with such depth about the science of strength building in terms of form, in terms of the equipment that you use. It seems like a component, the uses steroids should be an equal level of scientific rigor when applying them. It is. Now, the research is harder to get because of what it is. But there is a lot of research that was done when they were legal. So they were legal up and through the, I think the mid 80s. And so a lot of the classical high, high benefit to low risk steroids were studied. And then since then, there's a lot of like designer steroids or new steroids that have come up that don't have a lot of research around safety and risk and things

Starting point is 02:14:39 of that nature. And we can't do that because it's, you it's because of the legality around these things. 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. And so some of it is really talking to people that have experience with it. The other is understanding those structures and what they do. The neurological component, I think, is more interesting than most because the most steroids act through increasing muscle protein synthesis. That's how you add more muscle is they have an anti-catabolic effect and they have a muscle

Starting point is 02:15:24 protein synthesis enhancing effect. So it reduces the amount of muscle that you waste and increases the amount of muscle that you put on. But the neurological component is tremendously valuable for what it can do for your training workout. Like if I handle more load over time, I'm going to make more progress. If I can actually just stimulate

Starting point is 02:15:48 more neurological effects for a specific event, it's gonna have an impact, right? But there's other ways that you can tap into this too. Things that you can tap into mentally with great practice, with meditation and other stuff that will have the same effect. People probably think I'm over speaking, especially steroid users that are listening to this.

Starting point is 02:16:07 Well, Galee's, I'm talking out my ass, but I'm not. Because I have experience with this stuff on both ends and some of those areas, a lot of people don't have the experience with that. What I've kind of heard from people is the confidence that comes with steroids. It feels like not to call it placebo, but it seems like the psychological benefits of steroids is huge and that you feel like there's a confidence that seems to be coupled with the actual biological and chemical effects. I have actually a neurological condition, so I actually don't feel a lot of that stuff

Starting point is 02:16:47 that people, because there are certain steroids that like people will like, you're like very extreme ones, like that would make somebody bite someone's ear off in a fight, for example. Yeah. Almost that aggression. That, and they literally do nothing. I'm like always just chilling. They don't like that, but that's great. It's great.

Starting point is 02:17:08 But neurologically, they're still having those effects. I don't get those feels that other people have from those. 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. Overall, a good sense of well-being, just like from being on testosterone. Like, it's going to affect your mood. And it's interesting. So testosterone replacement therapy, if we walk down that path now,

Starting point is 02:17:35 and I'm going to switch gears, we find that men today have declining testosterone over what has historically been in the past. So right now, I think a 35-year-old testosterone is shown to be about half what it was just 50 years ago. So I don't know if we could argue the point. We don't really have the science to validate any of it, but it could be society as far as the impact that it's having on the mental health. For men, it could be the the estrogens floating around in the water from all the chemicals and birth control and all this sort of stuff

Starting point is 02:18:15 could be a lot of things. But it is a fact that average testosterone is significantly lower and that is going to end up affecting life, quality of life as well as your longevity, because it will affect those things. But on the other end, steroids and TRT, particularly steroids, come with a lot of negative health benefits, not benefits, a lot of negative health ramifications. And so, you know, if I knew what I know now, I don't know that I would have gone that path. I didn't, I didn't tell that was 33,

Starting point is 02:18:46 which is kind of an outlier for a strength athlete. I was, I was a four times bodyweight deadlift or 800 plus pounds at 198. It's pretty dang strong. Before I went down that path, and that's, because I wanted to see what I was capable of, but I was reaching a point that it was either,

Starting point is 02:19:05 I need to do that or not. My test-offs from my natural test-ostroend levels were actually, I think below 300 is actually the threshold. So I was being told to go on TRT for the last couple years, probably just because I was pushing so hard and the stress level was driving my test down. So it was self-imposed more than likely. But I put it off because I wanted to set all the drug-free records.

Starting point is 02:19:26 And I set the ones that I wanted and then it was 33, I'm, you know, inferring the age category and I'm like, I'm going to go on TRT. I did not feel like I should be with TRT. Personally, my ethical standard was I shouldn't be competing in tested events anymore. There are federations that will allow you with your show up with your script and you do your test in your below a certain level, but you're still on. But for me, I'm like, that's not a good thing. So I'm like, I may as well at this point use steroids. But since then, you know, understanding all those ramifications, you know, I might not have gone down that route quite so fast and easily, but I continued

Starting point is 02:20:07 because I also have a lot of resources that other people don't and being able to assess and understand and put things in place to mitigate that. So you need to be, and the other thing is, once you go on, it's literally a decision for life. Not in this, but realistically is, because your quality of life, your feeling, is going to be enhanced quite a bit. And you're not going to want to go back. And if you go back, it's going to be less than it was before.

Starting point is 02:20:35 That's how the endocrine system works. There are ways to try to recover and bring that up, but it might be a while. And if you've been on for a while, it definitely is not an option. So those are big things that people need to understand that you're going to have some things in there. And even TRT has some potential, especially at higher levels, that it's going to increase the risk for prostate cancer. It's going to potentially cause some hypertrophy of the left ventricle of the heart and some potential plaque build up of some of those key arteries around there that's going to potentially cause some hypertrophy of the left ventricle of the heart

Starting point is 02:21:05 and some potential plaque buildup of some of those key arteries are on there that's going to have an impact on your cardiovascular health. There's things that you can do again, but everything is like the shoe story, right? Where I'm anti-shoe, but I'm going, well, we can put band-aids on this. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:21:22 So it's... There's a quality of life that comes with it, the increase in quality of life. And if you do it correctly, I think. And 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 be there,

Starting point is 02:21:39 have the energy, the recovery, that's a big thing where all this, though I talked about muscle protein synthesis and anti-catabolism is being big drivers, but recovery is the other big aspect that they offer, probably as a result of those, but those are gonna be the big enhancement. So just doing steroids,

Starting point is 02:22:02 steroids is going to increase all the other stuff that you do. 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. But you could choose steroids and nobody would know. And honestly, you go down to 24-hour fistiness and you'll see a bunch of late 19 to 21-year-old kids

Starting point is 02:22:23 that are all kind of red and 150 pounds that look like that don't look like anything Yeah, and there a bunch of them will be using steroids because Yeah, they're not like so it's it's not the it's not going to make a champion Like you said 10 it's not going to most guess what I was already at an elite level. I was one of the best in the world before I started using It doesn't it doesn't do that. It does a 10% increase at best. And that's proven in the statistics, which is interesting because most people don't know this. Like it's the data is right there. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I'm often saddened by maybe the negative view of somebody like Lance Armstrong, who is one of the greatest athletes in history.

Starting point is 02:23:13 And everybody else that he was competing against, I'm sorry. Yeah. I hate to blow anybody's bubble. But regardless of I told you my ethical pieces with saying that you're going to be at something at an elite level. You look at a lot of those big figures out there when they're income and your life relies on it. You're going to push those limits. Maybe my ethical would change if I was in that position too, because here's the thing

Starting point is 02:23:41 what I believe. Someone is, I think people should avoid steroids. TRT probably something worth taking a look at what your levels are when you're in the 35 to 45 range and see what decision you decide to make from there and that's a decision that you make for the rest of your life. The only times that you should be taking a look at steroids is if it's funding your life, it's creating that it is your job and it's doing like, and honestly, it was for me. Okay, so was it the only thing?

Starting point is 02:24:12 No. No. You want to get into neurology, neuro transmitters and alcohol is a really interesting discussion on performance enhancement. So when I left heavy, and so I always promote it, like not more than a drink or two, like once or twice a month is what I'm all I'm talking about when I'm saying this.

Starting point is 02:24:30 So like getting out of it. What's the timing of the drink, go we're talking? It's about three to five minutes before. Yes. And I'm talking about beer. It doesn't matter the source. So I shots are the easiest.

Starting point is 02:24:43 You want something that is not going to have some sort of regurgatory effect or bloating effect or anything like that, but you want to have the quick hit of energy. So it's a preferential energy source moves above ketones, carbs, everything. It's seven calories per gram, but then there's some really interesting things that happen. Spikes blood pressure, which is going to make weights feel lighter. So when you're in your early 20s and you're trying to hit up, you know, some attractive person at the bar, you're with your buddies and you're like, you know, and you got second guess,

Starting point is 02:25:13 oh, should I, should I, and they go, how does it look with courage? And you have one and all of a sudden, the second thoughts, the second guessing, all that drops away, 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. Now if you have five or six and then go over,

Starting point is 02:25:32 you're gonna make it fool yourself. So it's all about timing and amount. But there is a reason that that happens. So anyway, I'm known for promoting this whiskey and deadlift concept. I love this. But it works. Like the Eastern block.

Starting point is 02:25:43 So 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. And I'm like, there's something here. So I started experimenting with it. And I'm like, that works. And then I started researching. Nobody talks about this stuff. So it takes a while to start piecing together all the stuff that actually happens to make

Starting point is 02:26:03 that happen, but it moves away the things that you're going to, the concerns about the ramifications in the future and the other stuff, but brings you into the moment. And then the dopamine hit in the other and then it enhances whatever mood that you're in, but all of a sudden you get in the state much easier. And so it's really, really interesting. But it's very, it's a very small amount needed and very time sensitive. But it can be so much more powerful than like drugs people use for this stuff. It ties really together with meditative state and other pieces to to get you into that flow state.

Starting point is 02:26:45 Those thoughts about failure, what if, all that you get into that zone that moment, that time. Anyway, so interesting and alcoholic is promoting out, you know, out. But there's an important point here, which not often talked about, I think it is fascinating that because you can get into so much trouble with alcohol when you use an Access, people don't often talk about the positive aspects of alcohol, even in your college years. It had a lasting effect on who I am as a person. I don't think people in that.

Starting point is 02:27:20 Given of credit to the positive aspect, 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 open up with alcohol. And that's really interesting to think about.

Starting point is 02:27:43 You should try some podcast with a shot and these. I do this sometimes with myself and guests and it will change the conversation, lubricates the conversation. Definitely not the excess, which is what I learned because I went all the way in because I do everything at extremes. So it was a really hard lesson that took me a lot of time to unwind, but it is interesting and people don't discuss those things because it's either this or this. You're one of the greatest strength athletes of all time. So it's worthwhile to consider how you optimize the feats of strength that you reach for with things like steroids. It makes perfect sense. And I think that was a from my perspective, I think it was probably the right

Starting point is 02:28:34 decision. You've achieved something incredible that inspires a huge number of people. That's it. And you've shown to yourself into the world, but what the human body can accomplish. Yep, that's incredible. And no matter if I pushed to a less weight and if I disclosed everything that I did and I didn't, I wasn't using steroids in my opinion, if we went through everything, there would people that would say you're using performance enhancing. Yeah. No matter what, like it is straight up, so you just need to be okay with it yourself. And so I had to make the call.

Starting point is 02:29:05 I wanna see what the true potential is of ever, let's throw everything out the window that I feel, unless I feel it's a risk from a health standpoint that I'm not willing to take on. And because that's, how do I, like it's just picking and choosing. Yeah. And it's just picking and choosing. I, here's what I want to know.

Starting point is 02:29:25 This is what I want to be able to try to achieve. And so, yeah, yeah, that's what I did. And what you did is incredible. Like, it's just awe inspired. And it was, like, Blanche, drunk, drunk, dead, was incredible. Yeah, and that, and that, and that aids me up. And what's funny is the people that Basham are like on the media

Starting point is 02:29:41 or politicians or maybe some actors and guess what? A ton of them are doing the same thing. It's hypocrisy at its finest. Trust me. But how many of those figures you're watching in movies that love to talk, you know, be political and do this and the news and all this, I'm telling you, they're anti-aging clinics like all over California and everywhere else. Who do you think keeps them in business? Well, it's not a competitive lifter. I'll tell you that. Well, that's your experience in peptides and also in storms and all sorts of like.

Starting point is 02:30:19 Wait, you're speaking to the hypocrisy. I also want to speak to the fact, you know, somebody's a friend of mine, David Goggins. I don't know if you know who that is. I'll trim marathon on her, Navy Seal. He gets pretty incredible person. Yeah. He's incredible human being. And he gets criticism like,

Starting point is 02:30:35 what you're doing is bad for the body. You're pushing yourself too far. I find that the people that criticize are often people that haven't truly pushed themselves to the limit. They haven't actually worked hard in their life. When you work hard, you realize how incredible it is that a human being can dedicate themselves so fully to an effort. The way you did, the way David Goggins does, the way the greatest athletes do. And there's nothing that should be said

Starting point is 02:31:12 beyond just sitting back in awe. The humans can achieve that. And that inspires me to do the best, whatever the hell I do, to be the best version of that. There's something about like athletic feats, especially like strength that just are inspired us to do the best, to be the best version of ourselves. I don't know. That's the only thing you should be saying as opposed to criticizing some little detail of this

Starting point is 02:31:41 and that. It's just awe-inspiring that you push yourself to. 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. You go talk to anybody, anybody, anybody that's a high-level athlete within that field, and nobody has a single bad thing to say about each other. But all this chitter chatter down there. I mean, I know exactly what you're saying. So if you, I 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. I think that should be channeled in improving your own life. Any time that you feel that way,

Starting point is 02:32:22 in improving your own life. Any time that you feel that way, that is when you need to turn inward. And it's hard to do. But there is a reason that you have those emotions around someone else and what they're doing that you have an opportunity to look at yourself and know why you feel that way.

Starting point is 02:32:42 And that, guess what, that's gonna be the hard thing to do. That's gonna be the thing. Again, that's going to be the hard thing to do. That's going to be the thing. Again, that's stirring you a little bit because it's so much easier to sit there and or talk to your confidante or whatever instead of go, why does that bother me? Why does what that person doing or what that person's achieving bother me. It's a good difficult question that I often ask others whether it's better to work hard or smart. I like to ask that question because it helps me get a sense of the human being. And I think I let me just say, I often like people that answer that with work hard. Even though the quote unquote right answer is work smart, meaning finding the optimal

Starting point is 02:33:38 efficient way to achieve a certain goal, I find that people that answer work smart don't actually find the optimal efficient way to achieve a goal. It seems like the people that at least certainly early in life strive to work their ass off, even that means doing the inefficient, the dumb thing, just to learn the mistake. The spirit behind the human spirit behind the person that says, or a card is the one I connect with. But I'm torn, especially in the in the war culture and the tech sector where people answer work smart. What would you, what would you say about that tension?

Starting point is 02:34:20 This definitely encompasses like, I'm the intellectual and I'm the meathead. I'm the work around the clock and go fix the processes and make it so much better. Type person, right? That's me and that's everything that's my life story, right? Busting your ass to find the easiest way possible. So both. So like, I will build a custom hydraulic cart that will lift my plates up to the

Starting point is 02:34:52 height of my squat so that I can minimize a roll it over next to it and then minimize the effort of it going on and off. To be able to lift the most amount of weight as possible. going on and off, to be able to lift the most amount of weight as possible. So, so that I can save the energy from here, from lifting those up in the fatigue of my back being in bad position, so I can nearly kill myself over here. Right. I, my wife, anybody will say, I'm a workaholic. And the, the first thing that I would do when it would be doing a company, a company turnaround, they'd hire me, come in. And I would be taking over for someone that wasn't successful. But it was usually hardly ever for lack of want to trying.

Starting point is 02:35:37 So a lot of times they knew they were unsuccessful and they were running around working six, seven days, a week, 12 hour days, doing so much. And it'd be like, well, you need to do this. And they train me on like, all the reports and this and all the things and like, good luck. Good luck, I couldn't do it. And the first thing I would do is nothing.

Starting point is 02:35:59 I would do nothing. Because then I would find what actually keeps coming back. The things that I need to do and how much of it was filling the space. Because so much of human nature when you're failing is to make yourself feel like you're accomplishing thing. This is when things go on your list, on your checklist, and you start like really, so you're running around just getting shit done. Yeah, I'd be busy. Right. Yeah. So Yeah, so but at the same time like Find somewhere in my career something I've done

Starting point is 02:36:39 We're having outworked everybody just so much on distilling things down to what's important Yeah, and You've got to make time to sit back and assess and think and be introspective. You have to make time for this. Because if not, you're going to waste so much time sitting there walk inside ways when All you got to do is move just one step in front of the other each day. Just one. That's all I say Because it's gonna add up, but you could spend six months knocking shit out doing your routine bust in your ass and not to take that one step doing your routine, busting your ass and not to take that one step.

Starting point is 02:37:31 So you've got to distill stuff down, you've got to really understand like what's important to you in life and where you're going and when you're looking at anything in your life, the first thing that you need to do is figure out, do I need to do it and just quit doing it? Just quit doing things in your life. And you'll see that a lot of stuff that you think has to be done doesn't have to be done. You'd be surprised. And then from there, it's the tech, okay. And then of that, what can I automate? What can I not have to do in a repeated fashion?

Starting point is 02:38:05 And then the last one, yeah, wherever possible, 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, I'm like, fuck that. I don't, they're like, what, that doesn't make any sense. And I'm like, no, I love creating things. But I don't to do that stuff.

Starting point is 02:38:26 So you could use delegating if you're a manager position, but it's outsourcing whatever it is. But there are also so many things. And this ties back to your point around just doing it. There's a point to like experiencing all levels to really understand things. You need to spend time at the same time doing all those things because there could be good, huge massive gaps in there that you're not aware of, that are key for you or key to be having done different or so on.

Starting point is 02:38:59 So, again, 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 lay, the mill, weld, do all step into engineering like, and that added tremendous value to me to having had spent time being a doer. And not enough people want to be, you've got to just a doer. And not enough people who want to be, you've got to just go do shit. You need to spend time in your life chopping wood. Yeah, get a lot of shit done. You've got to have experience trying and doing

Starting point is 02:39:34 all these things that you would never, like my skill set is massive because I want to know, like you need to have those touch points. My job, my title is Chief Visionary. But I've spent time doing everything. It's not about just like creating this amazing strategy or vision and I'm just gonna be there in this person that directs and like,

Starting point is 02:40:02 you can't be effective, you cannot connect the dots unless you've been in the moment with everything. Yeah, low level stuff. Sometimes it's doing stupid shit that you're not uniquely qualified to do that anyway you could do, but you did it anyway. Just the training environment. People hit me up at a school or wherever, like,

Starting point is 02:40:23 hey, how do I get into, I want to grow my brand online. I want to do this. Like, where do I start? I'm like, go get a job at Planet Fitness, or 24-hour fitness. They're like, but I want to, you know, how do I get, you know, recognized them, right articles and be an online coach.

Starting point is 02:40:39 I'm like, you need to go spend a few years, one-on-one training people to learn like the interaction, how people were, like there's base levels you have to do. You've got to go work your way up from the ground. I truly believe it. Well, I think that's the hard work piece that I'm speaking to that I like it when people have been humbled by the hardness of life. Like, how difficult it is to do stuff.

Starting point is 02:41:09 And to me, I went and got my MBA, I went to MIT, I don't need to do that stuff, I'm above that. Yeah, that's 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. And then again, work your ass off to be the best in the world at that thing. Yes.

Starting point is 02:41:36 It's always, don't waste your time on shit that's not a line. Yeah, that's the only. So that's, I guess there's a lot of context I put around that. But yeah, there was like a long answer to a long beautiful answer to an unanswerable question Do you have advice outside of all this discussion to young people today about career about life since you've done so many things you've

Starting point is 02:42:00 overcome a lot of things Think high school college student thinking about what to do in their life. Do you have advice for those guys and girls? Yeah First is you don't have it figured out. Don't worry. Just jump in. Yeah We talked you know a lot about understanding your values and the line and all that stuff, but you got to have a base level of start exploring and learning and just spend in the time doing it like pick something.

Starting point is 02:42:33 Let me elaborate a little bit. No, you know what? A lot of people struggle with that aspect now because the choice, there's so much choice is difficult to pick something, but I think it does blow down to, you should pick something and don't worry about it. And then, but within that, you can start discovering the things that are there for you. Like, I, I, I talked about,

Starting point is 02:42:54 I made this huge shift, I threw away all my life, but I don't regret anything about that. I wouldn't be where I was if I didn't walk through and learn those things. And in fact, in the course of that, I wouldn't be where I was if I didn't walk through and learn those things. And in fact, in the course of that, I learned just how much that inspiring people and helping them realize the potential far beyond what they thought was capable. And guess what? That was leadership 101 in managing people base level, floor level, right?

Starting point is 02:43:24 And I got a lot out that it was perfectly aligned with what, and that's what I realized. It didn't matter what industry I was in or any of those other things. But I was able, you can see so many things, there's so many paths that you can go down to help you realize what those things are. And you're gonna be able to find a lot of those nuggets and develop

Starting point is 02:43:46 those. Do you think that I could have just gone to school and got out and started a globally recognized brand within a few years without having been schooled in business while getting paid for it By others for years and in fact that entire time I knew that that's what I wanted to do But I didn't go out on it. I mentored some of my friends along the same path To go no, they're like I'm ready. I'm ready to go do this and I'm like no now you need to go get a job Yeah, you yeah, you know engineering management design all that all that stuff. Go get a job as a manager. And I'm like, oh, that's a step down. I can't do that. I'm like, go try it.

Starting point is 02:44:29 A couple years later, oh my God, that was such a good move. I didn't know what I didn't know. And now they're an executive for freaking a Fortune 500 company. And the same thing, like I sat there knowing that I was getting a free education. Don't stress yourself out as my, that's my advice. Don't stress yourself out that you've got to have this perfect thing because this process of understanding your values and the introspect that takes time. You can get a job where you're getting paid to learn. Exactly. That's a good deal before you launch on your own. you mentioned going back to darkness. I'm Russian, so I'll

Starting point is 02:45:07 go back to darkness. You suffer from depression, you consider suicide. Do you ponder your own death these days? Do you think about your mortality? Are you afraid of death? I definitely think about mortality. Am I afraid of my own death? It depends on the moment. If I'm in the middle of a project, I definitely wanna finish that project, man. That's not it. But I don't fear it so much.

Starting point is 02:45:39 I fear leaving my kids or my wife leaving my kids or my wife and not being able to be there for them. That bothers me. Outside of that, I know that I put everything into what I, the life that I've lived. Like you said, there's always more, but like, I've lived hard. I've loved hard. I've, every moment in my life, I've made connections and impacted people around me for the better. And this tracks back, which is crazy when we're doing the documentary and they're interviewing people through my whole life and the consistency of the themes of anyone like anything for Duffin.

Starting point is 02:46:28 Just sure, I'll fly in from Boston all of them. These people all look like, it's crazy. Everybody had a story about me giving, just over and over and I didn't even really, it's the way you were. But I've been all in. I don't have like I have a lot more I want to do. But I don't have things that regret have not done in like I don't fear it. I don't fear it. Yeah it's like the I don't know if you know that Bukowski poem go all the way. Otherwise don't even try. the Bikowski poem go all the way. Otherwise, don't even try.

Starting point is 02:47:05 It seems like you're invited to that poem and you've accomplished some incredible things and serve as an inspiration to a huge number of people. Chris, you're an amazing human being. I'm really honored that you have spent your valuable time with me. Thank you so much for talking with me today. It was incredible.

Starting point is 02:47:22 I can't wait to check out all the cool stuff in the engineer with the wiki strength. So I'm obviously I love the, I love strength. I love strength training. I love the idea of strength. I love the, the equipment and the engineering approach that you take to strength. You're an incredible human, both on the things you've accomplished in terms of your own strength feats and the kind of science and engineering you bring to the field that many others could use. So thank you so much for talking today. Thanks for having me on. That was quite the final thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Chris Duffin, and thank you to Headspace,

Starting point is 02:48:05 Magic Spoon, Sun Basket, and Ladder. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. And now let me leave you with some words from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardship and decide not to surrender, that is strength. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time. Thank you.

Lex Fridman Podcast - #207 – Chris Duffin: The Mad Scientist of Strength

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