Chris Duffin: The Mad Scientist of Strength | Lex Fridman Podcast #207
the following is a conversation with chris duffin the mad scientist of strength he's one of the strongest people in the world but is also an engineer of some of the most innovative strength equipment i've ever seen check out his company kabuki strength he is the only person who squatted and deadlifted 1 000 pounds for multiple reps and achieved many other amazing feats of strength he has lived one hell of a life of hardship and triumph as he writes about in his book called the ego and the dragon quick mention of our sponsors headspace magic spoon sun basket and ladder check them out in the description to support this podcast as a side note let me say that i was always a fan of strength both power lifting and olympic weightlifting both as a fan and practitioner mostly i'm a fan of people who are willing to put in years of hard work towards finding out what the limits of their body is and then smashing past those limits people like chris duffin or on the olympic weightlifting side people like dmitry klokov that guy's great this is why i love watching the olympics both the heartbreaks and the triumphs they all reveal the incredible heights that the human mind and the human body can reach this is the lex friedman podcast and here is my conversation with chris duffin you've been a part of several incredible feats of strength which was the hardest or maybe one you're most proud of definitely the one i'm most proud of is that journey for the the grand goals it was like a five-year scope that i chased this and so when you think about training it took more than five years obviously by that point i've been training for over 25 years but it makes me proud i mean there was three distinct things that i wanted to accomplish out of this so it was really thought out um and this was kind of my exit from being a a competitive lifter and basically saying hey i'm gonna be you know an instagram lift or an uh exhibition lift or a whatever i've done this for 16 years i was number one in the world for like eight years straight all-time world records and i'm like i'm not going to do that anymore what i want to do is just something deep down to me that is really important and there's three things that were driving this and this is a five year journey that i that i went through to do this i really wanted to showcase that you could do something that is well beyond the scope of what people think is humanly possible so just this inspiration thing this grand over the top like if you set your mind to a single-minded goal you can go so much further and i didn't even say what the goal was up front because it was so far out there i would have been laughed at and that's i i think big goals should be kept pretty damn close uh to start with for that reason too um but and then the second piece was to to to walk the walk to show like the principles of what i believed in around human movement um the ability to manage and control the spinal mechanics and the output that can have on the body and so i wanted to take the two most basic movements that every able-bodied person should be able to do so fundamental movement patterns the squat which is like in the developmental approach is around nine months as a baby from a developmental kinesiology standpoint and a really basic pattern that every able-bodied person should be able to master the other one being the hip hinge being able to pick something up off the ground a deadlift and i wanted to do those two not just one because i wanted to show the principles that i wasn't uh built for one i wasn't a specialist because of my lever links torso links all that any outliers because nobody had ever done a thousand pound squat so this is it is and a thousand pound deadlift it was outside of the scope of what anybody's there's like half a dozen people that have done one or the other but nobody's ever done both and i wanted to do something unique i wanted to do them not only do it but do them for reps to leave literally no question out there and there's no competition for that so it was this is what i'm gonna go do and to pull it off i had some past issues with my elbows and stuff that i couldn't work around so i had to wear straps which was another reason i couldn't do it in the competition setting so the first year i worked up and i did a thousand and two pound deadlift we plates were weight afterwards it was a couple a little bit over and i did it for almost three reps and that still stands as a guinness world record the just the one rep does is the most weight ever sumo deadlifted and one other person has deadlifted a thousand for reps at this point and that was uh thor bjornsson uh from game of thrones he's done a thousand for a double as well so then the next four years and i did a bunch of feats of strength on the way but it was all about building that axial loading capacity the strength of because now i'm moving the weight from my hands up to my shoulders and so to do it for reps is like so much harder than a single like 5 to 10 seconds versus 30 plus seconds to be able to buffer and manage all that with that kind of load is just crazy so it's literally about the duration that your body is carrying the load yeah that's a big part of it yeah because you have to you're using the resource of the diaphragm for stabilization and so it it's also responsible for respiration and all this other stuff so even when you're not squatting you've got to be handling those loads just holding that weight is fascinating it's like it's fascinating that the human body can do that can can maintain that structure just everything working together that the biology the skeletal structure the the musculature on top of that can hold the weight it's fascinating to watch everything is very intentful about positioning and how you're creating pressure and all this sort of stuff especially for me so when i mentioned that half a dozen people have squatted it and half a dozen people have deadlifted it you understand those people all weigh 380 to 440 pounds i weighed 265 to 285 depending on the where i was between the two so there's that as well right so big big difference and uh over the course of that i did a lot of other feats of strength that fit in that capacity and we can skip over those but that was hugely invested as far as you know what i put into being able to accomplish that because it's it's over the top which means the other stuff had to shift and i had to learn something there's so many things that came into place to pull that off and so yeah last march two days before the world shutdown i did it it was supposed to be at the largest equipment exhibition in the world down in san diego as an event and that got shut down a week beforehand obviously so we moved to let's do it in my gym and invite people and that was on a saturday and thursday or friday they limited it to 25 people for gatherings i did it on saturday and then monday everything shut down so wow it was kind of surreal for timing-wise right and so if i hadn't done it it would have never got done like because i i'd pushed to the limit i couldn't come back and do it it was at the total limitation of my capabilities so i'm pretty i'm pretty proud of it and the last piece was uh every one of these feats along the way i collaborated with a charity that i believed in and there was a lot of those tied to my life story uh which we probably will get into um so it was threefold so that inspiration piece inspiration motivation walking the walk and showing like just the these methodologies that a guy that had to learn to walk again can do something like this with no back pain if you if you there is a way and the third one is is to provide awareness and recognition around a lot of um key charities so so your heart was in this journey but also your mind is just you're like a scholar of strength a scientist of strength an engineer of strength for reps do a thousand pounds squat and deadlift let's first talk through the actual day you did it what does it take to lift that much for reps the day of is really easy the really the lift itself other than a few seconds is really easy and not challenging people always ask me what was it like how beat up were you after that and the deadlift and the simple fact is it was easy the work to get there was horrendous so so even the psychology of the day you weren't there was not a fear there was not a nervousness there was not a doubt in your mind uh there were certainly doubts on that day um from some training history so there was some major breaks to my confidence in the couple months leading up where i had issues with passing out under the bar so completely losing consciousness and this was on weight less than a thousand pounds even so that was like all this build up in me going what if what if it i think i have this resolved but what if i get up there and i can't even do a rep how embarrassing will this be that i've been talking about this and planning for this for so long but outside of that i knew i could do it in fact i wanted to do even more even up to the the second rep training is about you know working into a fatigue state so you're building uh an amount of fatigue in your system and then when you let off of it that's when you get a compensation and that's how you stair-step training this is periodization but leading into a big event you're accumulating this massive amount of fatigue and so i was performing at a level that i could do it and so i knew i was going to be able to on meet because then you then you give yourself that window to be able to recover and super compensate and be able to do a little bit more so like that first rep when i did it strength wise i went i could do this for five reps like it went through my head i'm like dealing i mean it was easy and it was fast and it felt like amazing and i'm like i'm gonna crush this and then set rep two uh the realization kicked in is like oh this is for reps with a thousand pounds on your back and you're fatiguing just like and then the third one was every last thing i could muster to just finish that i mean i just barely got it done because it's the strength is like there but like that capacity to be able to manage all those resources for that amount of time because not just leg strength when we're talking about this stuff so what does it take to go from the from i don't know what like from 500 to a thousand that feels like a journey that's like exponential it's it is exponentially harder it does in the early 2000s like i said i started lift in 1988 um but my first meet in the early 2000s my my max deadlift was 523 and my first squat was 550. so uh friends that's a heck of a journey it is a journey for people that like to lift what should they understand about the difference between doing 500 and a thousand in terms of the actual lift that you were experiencing that day in terms of the mechanics in terms of all the things you have to be like the neurological adaptation you mentioned the breathing the core strength what like techniques like little tricks psychological tricks anything that kind of stands out to you the level of intent and the opportunity for error are at a different level so just the minutes changes of position by quarter inch half inch can be make or break at that level so these things everything gets amplified so the ability to start with having the pelvis just in the right orientation to the diaphragm before we start initiating what we call the the eccentric loading of the abdominal cavity to create this intra-abdominal pressure of working against this outward expansion working against the outer sheath of abdominal thoracic lumbar musculature obliques causing the co-contraction at the pelvic floor all this stuff and how you cue that because you can't think about all this stuff you need to break it down and distill and practice to like it's one simple cue that we now lock down and control this torso stability because this is what these fundamental movements are about is being able to control our spinal mechanics and then now be able to maintain that while articulating the joints around that through a range of motion uh and then using the main power drivers so in this instance both instances it's the you know the hip complex to generate that power and transfer it from how we're rooted and connected to the floor through to the distal end you know which would be the barbell on the shoulder you know there's a couple key concepts so one is that what we just talked through is how to actually maintain that stability so if you have either the diaphragm so which is connected at the rib cage so out of alignment in any position it needs to be in alignment with the pelvic of the pelvis so those two in opposition so this is simple engineering here because what we're going to do is eccentrically load this we're going to use the diaphragm just like you would in a diaphragm pump where it's going to press down on all the tissue in there so we're not using breath so our breath was actually a lot of times a default pattern when people do that because they'll bring it into their chest and raise their rib cage so what we want to do is just initiate the diaphragm air can be used as well over the top at the final to create just a little bit more downward pressure but if we have out of alignment there we have a pressure get leak where it's going to be push out the front or the rear if you're either in flexion or extension all right and then that causes this co-contraction and all this pressure of of uh the organs essentially against outward against all those tissue for the co-contraction as well as surrounding the spine to be able to stabilize that and then it puts all the muscles on both sides of the body in what we call the the best length tension relationship so if you think about a curl and we reach our arm out at the extended length our bicep is not as strong and then all the way in the curl position it's not in strong there's somewhere in here that this control of both and so when you're sitting there arched or bent over we have muscles that are past either one of those ranges so they've got a lot of tension which then will create relaxation on the other side right so we want to have and all of that needs to be working and now the next important thing is the foot so it's actually this connection to the ground and how we're actually using the foot and ankle complex to grab and grip this connection to the ground and elicit uh an effect and because of this and then the everything between will naturally kind of do what it needs to do so people like to focus on knee knee position or how far out their hips are or all this other stuff which is outputs of this so if we control the torso and the knee the only thing that can happen from that point is for the squat to happen all right um so this allows us to use this massive you know the hip complex for all the muscles around that that are built to drive through hip extension to complete the squat i did actually miss one thing in there so this torso people often miss the lat is a spinal stabilizer as well so that's key in controlling function at the the tl junction which is um just above the the lumbar spine so kind of right opposite where your sternum is and you'll see people kind of roll over sometimes like an olympic squad or something like that where they lose position and that's often because they're close grip because you can't engage the lats very well that way and they're pushing up in the bar but you want to be able to drive and pull the bar to your center and that's going to create and use the lats now to drive and connect the shoulder into this we're kind of compressing and tightening all this stuff towards that center to create that entire torso stability that's why i was using torso stability not just core stability uh in my conversation earlier okay so there's all these like modules yeah with the body then connected to the grounding with like your feet on the ground everything you're speaking to how do you work each of those modules is this over time you kind of develop the feel that ultimately boils down to this one simple cue that you mentioned or do you can you like literally study each particular module and yourself and see how it affects the lift so the best way and i believe it's because i hate just like people getting out and just doing just movement stuff and not actually adding load because we only adapt when there's load maybe we can get some you know some proprioception or awareness of position and other stuff doing some some corrective patterns and other stuff but this is basic physiology is that there must be an imposed demand for us to have adaptation and this is mental this is emotional this is all these areas um but and people miss that so i prefer to be able to look at a person and this is our methodology and do the assessment in any basic loaded movement so with developing an eye for that you can actually see and go okay we've got a fault pattern right here in the foot and use a queue or a set of cues doesn't really matter until we find the one that works and bring that and now we know we want to simplify this stuff i just walk through that sounds really complicated and it it is if we try to break down and distill it all but like let's just find the basic stuff that gets us in the range start working and then find the next as we add load now we find where's our next area that we're starting to fault at and then go there again next so this is what we do what we teach in our educational platform so we are the only i believe everybody wants to do a lot of these like assessments you know on a bench on the table body and and it's like no let's let's go squat let's go deadlift if you do strongmen in a ceo carry let's go carry because these are basic human fundamentals it's not powerlifting like this is how we function this is why we we work with 29 of the 30 major league baseball teams and 90 of all professional sports out there in north america sorry although we do some work with tour de france and other stuff as well um and uh north america i do mean hockey too but uh these principles like you know if if the dodgers won't bring us in they're not learning how to power lift you know we're gonna obviously we'll probably do we do a little bit more uh shoulder focus than hip focus with their athletes or their coaches we're usually working with coaches not the athletes and so you help them and then the same thing on yourself and to understand the role that these different muscle groups have yes on the holistic yeah so it's all about getting the joints in the appropriate position so that we can that we can manage loads so that we're not putting undue stress in the joint we're getting the proper length tension we're getting these basic fundamental things with the body and so the the largest global impact that you will have is through spinal mechanics i can't look at a shoulder if i'm not managing this because it's your spine so for those that are just listening like i'm arching and then and then flexing um that's going to affect shoulder extension flexion all these sorts of things so it could even affect things down what's looking at dorsiflexion issues on the foot like and then that's why i go to the foot next because it has the second largest global impact and then from there now i'm going to look at the big energy drivers which is the hip complex shoulder complex and then we can start looking at kind of the peripheral things but usually that's some sort of output of the other but the knees the elbows the things like that so it's all about getting the stack which affects neurology so let's talk engineering terms you get in a car modern car today and a lot of them will have this traction control button in there and there's a big misconception that you know i'm i'm out and it's it's snowier here in austin only rainy well probably doesn't rain much but you're going around a corner starts slipping it's like oh it's going to send the powers from the wheels that are slipping through the ones that are gripping and keep me from crashing and dying a fiery death well that's not how it works it's the exact same we've got we've got the we've got the tires which are our foot you know the connection to the ground right we've got the power driver which is you know the the engine the transmission delivering you know the power through it and we've got the stability our suspension and then we have the neurology and what the neurology is doing it's sensing that we don't have good stability or loss of connection somewhere and so i need to save you from crashing and hurting yourself and so it goes to the engine and says let's retard the timing let's reduce the shift patterns and we're just reducing the power output and that's straight how the human body works so when i do this stuff it's actually affecting that i mean i can take somebody and do some minute changes with the neck position at the thoracic outlet okay and immediately see an enhancement in power output and i can measure it we measure this stuff with uh velocity uh devices and see like a 10 boom jump and so if you think about that what about all your training through the years where you actually had additional capacity but you weren't using it because your traction control was on now you figure this out stuff and now you start stacking it now you can see so much greater so it's not just injury prevention this is performance and additive performance over time this is huge and people don't really think about this stuff but we can turn that stuff off which is actually going to also again make us make us safer but what we want to do is the performance tuned race car do they have a traction control button no they got some amazing tires to grip the ground a performance tuned suspension and that driver is going to put what his foot to the metal he's going to put it to the floor okay that's a performance vehicle that's what we want to be i want to continue on that line but first i have to ask like how did it feel to accomplish the grand goal oh my god okay when you just stand back oh my thousand pounds for reps what it feel like anybody can go watch the video online um 12 film by the way got me all like excited oh well the the movies so we actually have the final footage of that the good footage not posted yet so it's literally just an instagram video or a phone video right now the only one online yeah it's on your youtube channel but it's dramatic yes it is yeah it came out just time to the music perfectly too which is i listened to some odd music uh which there's some reason behind that okay um but um fooling footage there's a documentary that's it's got a little slowed because of kovit because it's also a backstory of the eagle and the dragon my book about why i do kind of the things that i've done in my life or that's what i'm assuming the director is working on i don't really have the control of the movie right but okay but the videos okay incredible how did it feel how'd it feel i started crying it was overwhelming to have worked so intensely and so long and hard at something that pushed every ounce of me to the limit that and and i did it i'm getting a little emotional i did exactly what i said i was going to fucking do like and it was it was overpowering i mean i was just crying uncontrollably um just with a mixture of i i don't know what th the mixture of emotions is hard to explain um because it was the completion of something it was a new phase of my i i mean there's so many things here so one you set an impossible goal and you accomplished it one two is like on the broader humanity aspect like how many humans in this world accomplish perfection in a particular direction required to do this so like you're basically representing like uh one little like like little glimmer of excellence of the human spirit there's always more so understand this this is a basic fundamental you can always do better there is no such thing as perfection you could always there is always more so any time you reach something any amazing workout or accomplishment in life could you have put more into it could even yes but here's the thing i left on my terms i said this is it i'm going to work towards i've been training for 30 years i'm gonna do this thing that is un like i couldn't even say that i was gonna do it years before i'm gonna do it and then i'm done and i didn't leave from an injury i wasn't forced to i wasn't i left on i did exactly what i said i i went to a level that i i left on my terms and that's unique because that's usually not the case usually you kind of either taper out or it doesn't matter i'm talking like anything in life in general right like um you taper out you fail you hurt like you look you lose it like something you know you roll into retirement like you accomplished something truly great and you walked away in your own terms is there a sadness completing something like that because it's it's in one perspective the greatest thing you'll ever do and like when you accomplish such a great height in some sense you have to face your mortality at that point so good question but it is certainly not the greatest thing that i'll ever do it's the greatest physical there's always dude the greatest yes but that was an expression of some of my values and the way that i want to live it was a way of expressing it so understanding that is hugely fundamental because we do see so many athletes get to the end of a career and then they fall into a depressive state and struggle with drugs alcohol depression so on because they lost how they identified themself and trying to figure out where to turn what to do but a big central component of their identity is lost so i knew that this was one way to express that and my grand goals have shifted they're shifted to other outlets that allow me to express that like my companies kabuki strength i'm going to change the face of fitness as well as all the way through with its integration with clinical medicine and telemedicine and you know i got another five years before even people see what i'm working on five years in right now because i had to invent equipment i have to develop methodologies that were talking i had to do this stuff that ground layer wasn't done to create a cohesive ecosystem of training methodology tied to the tools that we're using today to the environment tied to the clinical practice assessment tied to the the interaction between all those and how that actually needs to be reframed because so much of this is broken okay so but there is sadness i won't deny that and the sadness comes in the singularity of focus that i had at that time the being in the process not necessarily doing but like having being in this place that the rest of the world kind of fell away for me in those final faces to have something so intense to have a team around me so focused on supporting and like it took me a couple months after that squad i finally one day i woke up and i was like oh welcome back to the world like i was in such a mental fog like i was it took me a while to climb out of that but that that space that level of intensity and driving and living and being in that space i i do miss that but i also i can't continue that i couldn't contin like there's a point of like you push it so hard the level to try to go from there is not acceptable for what you the impacts that will have on your life for how you want to live and it was taking away those final like i had to do extreme things and live in an extreme way to to get there you're just a genius in this whole space of strength and health and by almost like biology that uh this strength feat is just one representation of that but this particular strength required that kind of singular focus which i think i don't know there's something beautiful about that singular focus there is often only truly perfected athletics i see it with the greatest olympic athletes as well the kind of singular focus required there is incredible it's somehow some of the most beautiful things that humans can do and achieve just that thing so that's the thing it's like oh that must be it when we say singularity focus it's not like here's it because it it covers a vast array of stuff like i was working with people you know all well yeah all around north america i wouldn't say anybody around the globe but professionals coming in working on different aspects of rehab and and recovery and like i mean i'm tapping all sorts of stuff in so many platforms from nutrition to drugs to uh again like you know various uh chinese medicine you know as far as you know but also humans in your life just love and and uh positivity and just inspiration all those kinds of aspects i mean you probably would have done much more if you uh went outside north america and talked to some russians just between you and i some russians possibly they give you some uh i don't know those there's some incredible strength athletes in eastern europe uh absolutely um i've got the best one uh coming in september uh to get fixed so what do you mean by fixed so i'm not sure what his particular issues are but uh he has held the all-time world record repeatedly for a long time and uh he hasn't competed for some time and he just reached out saying he would like to come and have me take a look and see if i can get him fixed because the return yes okay so it's more injury centric versus like form and uh fundamental essential combination of everything everybody always wants to focus on the output how do you how do you give me the fix for that but it ties right back into all those other things right so uh but yeah the eastern the eastern bloc continued to be a dominant force uh in regards to uh athletics and strength athletes without a doubt some of my big rivals in my competitive days were who it was rivalry brings out the best in us can you tell me the story of your childhood it's definitely outside the scope of the norm well today maybe not 150 or 200 years ago but uh my parents highly intelligent you know people coming out of the bay area my mom was you know going to school to be a chemical engineer she was a top top student athlete graduated of her school my father was a member of mensah my stepfather was just a genius but not able to really function in society but my mom was you know she had some demons and some other stuff and just she just said one day she's like i just don't want to be part of society she still isn't uh lives out in the desert but uh has her minds but she wanted to figure out a way to make a life outside of that and so that's where we ended up is up in the mountains in northern california and a lot of that was you know them trying to get into successfully growing marijuana which back in that you know wasn't legal back then highly illegal and in fact those areas where some of the areas where lived were quite dangerous so there's a documentary murder mountain that came out recently if you watch that you'll tie into my book uh just the understanding of the stuff that i was talking about dealing with serial killers human trafficking police corruption uh murderers like just how real that stuff is if it doesn't capture you from the book okay the book by the way is the eagle and the dragon yeah thank you yeah it's a great i'm a terrible sales person like i told you so but a good uh it's a good title i don't know if you came up with it but uh i did yeah so yeah we'll talk about that anyway we're living by a stream you know alpha meadow there's no roads into where you have to hike in and we've got beams lashed into the trees up above us because that's where our bedding is because there's rattlesnake dens all around and six years old i'm being taught how to capture and handle live rattlesnakes because that's what i need to do to be safe and you can imagine six years old sitting there with a live rattlesnake in your hand grabbing it you know by the side of the head controlling so it can't can't bite you and it's just wrapping itself around your arm and you're staring like it's only intent is right then is to kill you like that's it right um you want to take a bath it's filling up the jug in the stream and setting it out on the rockster and uh during the sun so you dump it over your head and you know not all the living was that way you know good part was similar to that tent living living in a 16 foot trailer with a family of six which is not much bigger than the space that we're sitting here so we're talking hard winters with feet of snow on the ground nowhere to go i'm living in the back of the pickup truck in a just a standard sleeping bag that we get from the salvation army not the not the blow zero so i'm uh i'm i'm not sleeping well there's living in homes that were maybe uh condemned there's no no doors even on them no electricity or running water or one or the other or both and sometimes a little bit better by the time we got to high school we had a mobile home so my stepfather had won a disability payment because he had a broken arm that whole time from an accident a long time ago and finally got an award and got a down payment on this mobile home that didn't have again doors on the inside it did have running water did have electricity didn't have a kitchen you know the windows would crank close and open but they wouldn't close all the way so the trim them in with uh plastic to be able to try to protect from the elements that was my environment like learning how to forage for mushrooms i mean there's summers i would send and my parents would be out they were in the drug trade earlier we got taken by the by the police and put into foster care for for a while which ties into some of the stories with human trafficking and honestly it's in my book but it's really hard for me to talk about that stuff um and obviously not all that's in the book so but they got us back we moved to oregon and they stayed out of the drug trade from that time to ensure that they didn't lose us again but quickly we kind of fell back into the same thing so at that point it was learning about geology and starting to do mining and firewood cutting but mostly mining because pat's broken arm chainsaw made a little tough if you remember just the sequence of moments do you um are you haunted by the the darker moments of your childhood do you remember moments of simple joy and happiness outside of the living around dangerous people and the interactions that came from that we were a family like we were a cohesive unit battling against the world together we spent all our time together work play i was there i was helping raise my my siblings where i was working with them and you know it was a constant like i said we were very physically active so you know i had that in my upbringing plugged for my shoe company barefoot b-e-a-r i ran around the wilderness and bare feet all the time you know but it was i had a lot of great moments and i'm thankful for a lot of that childhood once we take out the trauma and the other stuff associated with it right and so the connection that i have with my sisters um is is is huge um that goes a bit further to because i am kind of like a little bit of a father figure because i was home raising them and then later i took custody of them while i was going to school because the environment at home deteriorated further their stepfather like i said was he wasn't capable of managing life and my mom had a mental breakdown and took off to montana and he descended into madness even worse actually took my 13 year old sister and kicked her out in the middle of winter a couple feet of snow on the ground because he thought she stole his favorite cereal bowl um type so that's when i took in and i was going to college putting myself through college and i started taking custody of my sisters and raising them so anyway but we're still like very very tight family um it took there was a few years later in life like that the connection with my mother was kind of broken um i didn't speak to her for years because of her basically abandoning my sisters and me having to come in but that we've worked through that as best we can so you anger on your part it wasn't there might have been some anger um did you always love her yes and i still do and i'm so she's taught me basically everything i know about strength and perseverance and living life on your terms and being able to to create that and so much of what i am is from that right we've all had to learn to be okay with the way she is because she is just blunt but you know she's the one that figured out that the human trafficking situation and got uh got the da involved and got all the she's the one that i've learned a lot from her and uh did you inherit some of the demons almost certainly and i it's something i've continued like and my father's side of has been really tough on that because some of it is just based genetic as well so my my stepfather made i think six or seven attempts on his life during his lifetime one of those in front of me uh his mother blew her head off with a shotgun uh her brother jumped out a window in l.a their father did something similar and i don't know how far back it goes because there is no family except for me and my my children you spoke about going to depression yourself yeah can you um talk about some of the darker moments of that have you ever like many in your family have you ever considered suicide yes i have yes i have you've achieved a lot of exceptional things in your life can you talk about those early days of depression and how you overcame it yeah so the things that i did that people give me accolades for are the things that i did selfishly to save myself the things like taking custody of my sisters being the person that everybody around you know the the important people relied on the fact that i had to step to the plate and be present and be that person because if i failed they failed they would be like the people that i grew up with that are dead or in prison or on drugs and they're either way to to one of those right that's where everybody ended and i wasn't gonna let that happen what about saving yourself and so that's how in those early days that's how i did it not saying it's the best approach but it was survivor mentality it was i can't selfishly do that because i have them to take care of right and then that continued where i would keep putting myself in these leadership roles or other things and this always being this person that was at the center at the hub that forced me to be there and so it's only in the more recent you know last decade or so that i have had to really learn how to come and start confronting some of those demons and you think man why is the guy so successful like i mean and we haven't talked about all the stuff that i've done but like i've seen a lot of success in both business leadership athletics academics uh entrepreneurship all these sorts of things right but if it wasn't for you know having kids and the same being in the position i wouldn't be here if it and that's just that's the reality of it and i'm learning to to come and manage those as best i can learning to meditate into those things and really feel what the driver is so i can get to those those root understanding um and and having some guidance doing so like if you've got mental health issues this isn't something that you need to tackle on your own like having a professional that can help guide you on that introspective journey is is something like it's not like hey i'm big tough guy i can handle everything you know that's fascinating that um you saved yourself that's quite powerful to save yourself by uh having others depend on you and so you can't fail you can't fuck it up and that's a reason to keep moving forward but on the flip side that's not addressing the darkness it's not and it's probably not a sustainable strategy either right so i i recognize these things i don't know and uh perhaps it is sustainable perhaps that's i mean there's something beautiful about giving yourself basically in service of others and thereby creating purpose and then like it's almost like fake it till you make it and then you make it eventually that is purpose though that is purpose i mean you have to to me life is about taking your cup and how you choose to pour it out how you choose to give what is your purpose what is that connection with everybody around you this is that's that's the intent that's the life that's that's what life is about how are you going to help those around you how are you going to help the world you know your purposes is right here figuring out what this is and then how to do that but at the same time you can't let that run dry so you have to make sure right that you're filling that's the other side that's the other side right that's the other side yeah we'll return to your engineering degree which you're obviously scientifically engineering-minded which is fascinating your book is titled the eagle and the dragon uh what do the eagle and the dragon symbolize they're pretty big symbols for me in fact that covers my entire body as a tattoo so the first one i had done is around 19 years old and so this is or started at 19. uh it's an uh an eagle that covers my entire front you know my stomach rib cage and and one that was on my back that covered most of my back and there's chained at the well at the claw i guess and the chain wraps down around and attaches to to my ankle and there's a shackle there and so this was something that i had done at that age because it was to me it was a representation of your potential your strengths your abilities that you can fly to whatever height that you want in this world the only thing holding you back at the end of the day is yourself and this was that's i hadn't necessarily accomplished a whole lot that time i mean i was valedictorian for high school small high school does that even count uh as a state level wrestler this was my belief and you sensed that there was a potential in you and the only thing that could stop you from realizing that potential was yourself that's right that's a heck of a tattoo to get by the way at 19 but 40 hours went into that thing it shows you got some guts and then the next tattoo so i only have two uh i had done in 2015 2016 uh when i so at this point in my life so i had done that i had flown to whatever heights right so i had i had proven to myself and and maybe done what i thought i needed to do to show the world that this poor kid from the sticks this this kid growing up in the mountains with nothing could achieve the american dream i was a corporate executive sought after that i'd come in i'd fix companies i'd turn around and prep them for sale i'd take a company and grow it from a regional to a national to a global presence i did this in the automotive manufacturing aerospace manufacturing high tech heavy industry and i had a house with a white picket fence i was a successful athlete with all-time world records i owned a gym on the side where i coached people and uh had a comfortable marriage that everything was hunky-dory with no arguments at home and uh i walked away from all of it i left everything behind except for my kids i wanted to chase what i was meant to do and chase what i was capable of doing i wanted to become a better version of myself but very intentfully and that's what i did i sold i had multiple homes sold my homes i cashed in all my retirement that i'd earned for 20 nearly 20 years and i lost all that i leveraged myself millions of dollars of personal debt so that if i failed there was no way out even going back to that old career that i did well i'd be living in an apartment the rest of my life paying it off people questioned people questioned me at the time because i had a comfortable easy marriage and i chose to ask for a divorce and i ended up living in an apartment for a couple years with no income selling off every last thing that i had except for my two vehicles that i built and with my with my kids and i've started my businesses to help people live a better quality of life to get them out of pain to help them live better through strength to realize that stress demand those things that they don't have to be the thing that if you look back made you had the bad back made you have the bad ds but they do the opposite they get you out of pain and then i started work on my book to to to hit on those other things the mental the emotional maybe even spiritual i don't touch on that one too much in there but it's all the same that things that happen around you to you like maybe they're bad i can't take away that but why can't you use what you have of it to become a stronger and better person to become more resilient to be able to take the things that you don't know that are coming in the future and so this is very intentful and that's what the second i'm long-winded to answer in your question here the dragon the dragon the dragon is an aura boris and so yeah it is it circles my entire upper body my shoulders my back my chest everything it's right here there's this big dragon head and its tail is right there in its mouth that's eating itself and that may sound a bit graphic or whatever but it is it's the eating of the old becoming the new it is the purposeful reinvention of oneself it is the deciding not realizing just your potential but deciding specifically who you want to be in this fucking world and becoming that person can you comment on the the value and the power of putting a flame to you know your old life your old self just destroying all of it as you walk into the new life you know did you have to do that i don't recommend this by the way because when you put yourself in no way out there is no way out yeah okay like you gotta really no but i i can be an overconfident individual at times and uh i live i live through extremes i think it's a great way of actually finding your real values and how you want to live honestly to chase the having absolutely perfect squat technique but chase putting every freaking thing that you've got in it which most people would say those are those are opposite those are diametrically opposed i wanted a better home life i wanted to do more in the world through my work and the burning the bridges mentality is not necessarily you know the the best there was some temperament in that though because i i was not i was slow to make the shift for a long time because i'd been thinking about doing it but i was thinking about doing it in a healthcare perspective i'm gonna go back to school to be a surgeon or a physical therapist or cairo because that's where like all my research and stuff was in this this human movement and rehab and recovery this is the mentors that i've been developing were the best in the world in these things in these disciplines those were my friends and and uh but i wasn't able to compromise my family's certain quality of life i wanted to to keep this it was it was slow and hard for me to make that transition but i didn't do it until i had a platform built enough that those first few years i did have an income i was able to make enough from the business until it grew so fast that i needed so much more needed to come in living in the apartment piece and doing all that that was actually a couple years into uh into that process maybe like two years uh i'm with you on that so i'm actually going through that very process now i put everything i quit everything gave away everything and starting new and uh unfortunately or fortunately this podcast somehow became quite um popular so it's getting in in the way of my burning everything to the ground but in that it's a source of joy but the main thing i'm after is the similar project as you as building a business sense of joy so this this is the point i want to drive home right now right now because when i say burn i learned the burning the bridges works because that's how i had to succeed when i was earlier the bridges weren't burnt they didn't exist there was no couch to go home to there was no there was no fallback plan and it forced me and gave me the confidence to know that i can pull it off but i don't encourage people because there's so much out there of this hustle porn and other stuff going just grind just go after it get in and start your like you'll get there and it's all about the output to make money to be somebody to do this and i'll tell you what that is some short-term motivation right there i feel like dropping a few swear words but um you're always welcome we've already done a few so we'll uh all right balance it out that is short term that is not going to keep you going this neat if you're going to go that approach it needs to be because this is your north star there's going to be so much hard work there's going to be years of just pushing through where your quest not only is everybody around you questioning you and your family is questioning you you're questioning yourself going man i don't know if i can pull this off you're going to be stressed you're going to be pulled to the max if somebody comes up to me and says should i start a business i'm going to say no and they'll be like oh you're supposed to motivate me if you need me to motivate you this is the wrong damn approach for you this is gonna be hard this is gonna be harder than you expect even with me telling you this and so it better damn well be worth it this better be your north fucking star this better live and be a way for you to be able to articulate or realize those values that you want to live this isn't something to make money this is a way for you to live the life and be able to share the values that you have with the world and that's what it is and if you don't have that which is going to give you joy then we can walk away yeah this is not some way to make some money and be known i mean this this includes both like simple day-to-day joy and also deep meaning exactly the whole thing and that allows you to overcome all the all the pain along the way but i gotta say i mean it's a difficult thing because you run a business i'm this podcast and a lot of things i do research-wise is full of joy but it's simple running a business is hard so it's something that i'm very hesitant about in that so to almost push back a little bit i think if i do get the guts to start the business it will not be because i'm not choosing a more joyful life because i'm already truly happy the reason i'll choose is because i just can't help it there's this i've always had this dream and i know it's gonna lead to suffering and i know it's gonna be a life that has less happiness in it as sad as this to say but it won't be it won't be less happiness because we talk about this cup and where you choose to pour it and what you choose to do with it and when you look back on things the things that are going to give you the most joy the most proud the things that are going to stand out in your life that you really remember are going to be those days and your those years you struggle you're going to look back on 10 years later and go fuck those were the glory days those were the glory days yeah and it won't feel like it at the time yeah so that's what life's made of and so this is your this is your opportunity you feel that so right now you got this when you think about it you got this little thing twisting up in your gut right it's like it's a mixture of anxiety and fear as well as excitement and that is that's your signal that this is your opportunity for that personal growth to challenge yourself this is your going for a run or working out in the heat it's it's those things it is your opportunity to go that maybe it even fails maybe it even fails but by turning into that you're gonna learn so much and it's going to make you so much better and it's the path that you should take when you have this stuff rolling around in there and i don't it could just be a hard conversation with your partner or your boss it could be taking on a project that you know you know that your boss is thrown out to the team and you're like i'm gonna hide in the back i don't want that one and i was like maybe maybe you do maybe it's going back to school yeah maybe it's making that career move that you always wanted but you're just you're just afraid of all these things are your opportunity for you to turn into that it is your workout it is your practice because if you don't you'll get soft and who knows what's coming and you're not going to be ready for it and it's going to run right over the top of you because you're going to be weak you're going to be soft there's some aspect in which choosing that hard path is actually the the way to arrive at the richest kind of happiness like the the greatest fulfillment that's the funny thing about just the human just make sure you're filling the cup as you're going through it all out so yeah that's the part to figure out right sure well life is short anyway um eventually eventually the cup will be empty uh this will maybe time the refilling of the cup correctly so you maximize the little time you got let me talk to you about strength a little bit first high level what are the differences in the different disciplines of strength so powerlifting we talked about maybe just to clarify for people power lifting olympic lifting just regular gym fitness bodybuilding doing curls in front of the mirror for hours like i do what's what's the difference between all these oh and also strong man every one of those as far as the athletic uh disciplines are different qualities so we want to think about things as terms of quality so there's strength there's power there's endurance there's the ability to um be coordinated and athletic there's all these things and they're different they're different qualities so your training as it relates to that is how you cycle in the development of those qualities what we want to think about is there's a lot of different frames of thought some very uh classical maybe not classical russian approach because there's a lot of different approach from the eastern bloc but one of the ones is developing all the qualities at once you know focusing on building those more of a periodization effect would be focusing on one quality at a time or one quality wall maintaining other qualities and then shifting that around so it's just going to be a little different based on what the output is and what the desired so like powerlifting is actually power is the wrong word there's actually no power in it it's just brute it's it's strength um application of force uh so olympic lifting would actually be a better for powerlifting because that is more explosive uh development there's strongman is again now we're getting a little bit more athletic it's equipment based on the implements and stuff that are used how fast you can move your feet and run mixed with more endurance but still very strength focused and there's some things with strong man that is straight like each one of these is very also focused on different genetic dispositions so actually if you look at the history of sports you'll find that they're a lot of times based on different populations that sounds like it's very on pc but like highland games they've got deep deeper hip sockets that are shallow so you're going to see a lot of short hip hinge movements like the the caber toss and things like that muay thai wrestling they've got a completely different hip joint and so strongman itself is going to be for very large framed individuals if you're not well over six foot and a large person you're probably not going to perform well very few people sub six foot have ever done well at strongman just because it's it's leverage based right um olympic lifting we see consistently in in europe uh the the history tells us a high level of hip uh and back issues because of the depth that that hip socket has to go in to be able to complete that lift and so you're going to see issues with populations that don't have the ability to do that so so we've talked a little bit about training as well as disposition yeah so and also crossfit instance of that that's more like strong man but for a wider variety of bodies i suppose yep and definitely more metabolic conditioning focus than the than the strength aspect of it um and and conditioning is an interesting thing too so that quality in my opinion can be developed a lot faster but kind of peaks much faster as well so you where strength we can continue to add and add an add over time so it's for me like for conditioning with any strength athlete i don't like to spend as much time on that so i'll cycle the conditioning work for our strength athletes and then taper that off leading into meat so the more metabolic work that means the more capacity in strength training that you can accomplish which is the goal and recover from but then as we lead to a competition we want to spend more time on recovering from that so we have to pull things out so we'd pull out less so like a typical approach would be like taking a six-week cycle for conditioning and ramping ramping up over three weeks periods time then dropping back down again and ramping up and being slightly offset by like a week or two from your strength peaks so that you've actually tapered the week prior in your conditioning work to your strength work right and but that way we're not hitting conditioning hard all the time which is a common common uh misstep that people make is going well i need conditioning so they just hammer that at a base level over the top instead of cycling that if we talk about power lifting in terms of regimen in terms of exercise yeah in terms of the process the wood consistent with what is there something to be said about general qualities of the consistency of the regimen required to get strong yes so let's talk about some training principles as a whole and this will i think this will break the down what you're what you're one the more work that we can fit into a given time the more progress we're going to make but that doesn't mean doing the max amount of work possible at any given time so we know that we're always to to accomplish more we're always going to have more and there's a certain ceiling that you're going to hit that you're not going to be able to add more so you want to start and get the most amount of results that you can with the least amount of work because you're going to have to do it again like this stair step over and over year decades so on so when people is a big miss people got they look at uh a chico program from russia or so on and they go i'm gonna follow this and it's like that was specifically written for somebody with 20 years of experience that's already built the capacities to be at that level so it's all about building that work capacity so how much work can you give in a given time so now we want to look at some research as it relates to injuries because injuries are going to be a big driver over time of what holds you back so when we talk consistency training hard for three years five years it's gonna be really good but what we find is a lot of people train really hard for nine months have to slow back for a month get back into it and miss another week because and so on they're always like this little nagging that little nagging and so it's pretty clear in the research we wanna we're looking at when we're stair stepping this stuff we're looking at acute and chronic loading so some fancy words for average and like what's happening right now so this given week would be our acute chronic would be what is our average loading let's say over the last six months okay so the more that we can move the chronic loading up the more work we're getting done on as a whole over time we're going to get stronger the way that we build the capacity to do that is having spikes in acute loading okay now as we do this the the acute loading if it spikes more than 10 maybe 15 percent from what the chronic loading has been that accounts for eighty percent of injuries out there so it's not actually the movement quality or this misstep or the other it usually happens about four five six weeks later it's like oh this nagging and then it gets worse and then now you gotta you gotta do some rehab your training sessions aren't as good and so on so now we're starting to look at this okay it's like i wanna do the i wanna do the least amount of work where i can still progress i want to be able to have spikes in my weekly demand that don't go above 10 to 15 percent of what i've been averaging for the last month but every time i do a spike my average goes up right boom boom boom and then that becomes very particular also when you take when you do take plantain time off so a lot of people uh training session maybe they're doing a five-week block with a a deload week or you go on vacation for a week or any of those things that were a downward what does that do to your average in chronic loading it brings it down and then what does the person want to do when they come back make up for it now they have a huge spike above five weeks later we're dealing with ah this elbow this wrist whatever's kind of bothering me and now you're not performing as much so these are some really fundamental pieces of of of training and then now we can start overlaying the qualities that we're trying to develop that we were talked about earlier so now it's let's talk about my deadlift my thousand pound deadlift we'll talk about the training cycles for both the thousand uh deadlift and squat so backing up a year out from the deadlift knowing i was training at the time heavy deadlifts once a week and usually it was two of those sessions a month were really heavy and the others weren't it's like okay how can we get this up to where i'm deadlifting twice a week because that's where i want to be uh to be able to accomplish this i need to be loading about that much with frequency with a certain volume to be able to accomplish this goal we're not going to go through all the math and stuff like that and how that's arrived but there is there is math behind this and so instead of just like oh let's start dead lifting twice a week no so we start and we take the one session that we've got and we split it part of it take part of it away and put it in the second half of the week so the total volume is still the same and then we start adding some volume but i'm doing it at a off of block so that the actual load is the cumulative load is less because i have less range of motion okay and then we start building that closer to the ground closer to the ground and so on and now we start getting to where i'm almost doing two sessions full sessions a week and then we start adding a little bit of load and so at my level this isn't talking about adding another set or another day a week we're talking like in my squat it might be one rep instead of doing three sets of three at one week i do two doubles or two triples then two doubles to give me one more rep that's it and so we're doing that from one week to the next and that's a cycle training cycle it might be five six weeks and then so on the next one and slowly bringing that average load up so the last phases of the squat for example we took the average loading every week so my of my heavy sets so once we developed all this stuff over the last year to get to this point now it is taking and going okay my average load this week is eight reps at 955 pounds and then the next week let's get it to nine nine fifty seven nine sixty three and this was pretty aggressive working up to where my average loading the final that fit the final was 985 pounds average load for eight to nine reps and that's what i said this is the intense part that was why it was the day of was much easier that week over week is pretty brutal may not sound oh you're just squatting and now let's back up let's look at the quality development so a year out from the squat obviously i've been working on developing axial load capacity my capacity to withstand load from top to bottom so i like thinking about things in movement vectors so this vector is an axial loaded vector is the hardest to recover from uh so what's actual so like is deadlift are they both they're both yep so a horizontal a front to back would be like a row or a press why is the axial uh hard to recover from because this entire body the entire entire body just anything that is that that uh taxes the the the spinal mechanics i i don't i could tell you my beliefs it's studied it is okay um we can just keep the discussion on that but short like that so um so we start looking at those different vectors that we're training in so this is why this is important to understand so i'm not just getting into nuance here so hey squatting is going to make me make me jump further because it's legs well squatting is an axial load vector and jumping is a vector this way so actually hip thrust would help with urine your and this is proven in science with your forward jumping ability uh they're both working similar muscles the glute extension but they're working it in those different platforms so it's really important to understand because people don't understand i'm building my work capacity by doing sled pushes you're not developing your work capacity for squatting most movements even ones as holistic as a as a squat require specialization yeah you can't get strong at the squat by doing you're going to have some carryover right obviously but because taking an untrained person that hasn't done it it's not still not going to do as good as somebody that's done non-specific work but done work so but yes for the most part to get truly strong you need to specialize so but not all the time so now we talk about quality so and if we specialize in the same thing too long we stagnate because the body adapts to a certain point and just can't make progress so we wanted to save the actual squatting in the pattern with the bar that i was doing for the very end so starting a year out i started doing work front squatting like a squat axial loaded pattern and worked on maximizing that up then i started shifting to doing transformer bar squat it's this bar i developed that actually changed and manipulates spinal mechanics so i started loading in these more forward positions and being able again so now i'm getting closer than a front squat but not quite squatting and then i would start adjusting that bar every training cycle to closer to a squat toaster to a squat till it finally was right so what's the difference between a front squat and a regular like a back squat like in terms of the the stress on the body the mechanics was there something interesting to be said about like how fundamentally different are they so what's interesting people think about the weight in imposition to them like oh the bar's in front of me the bar's behind me which is not the case the bar is above your midfoot the load is above your midfoot so we're actually manipulating the spine behind the bar so we're causing spinal uprighting behind the bar getting in a more erect position which is going to change the relationship of the hip angle it's going to change our ability to maintain the spine it's going to change the uh how much the the core comes in how hard it is to maintain that sternum to diaphragm relationship that we talked about all this stuff starts changing so the bar stays in the same place the bar's still behind you but the load moves around so but we're actually manipulating the spine around the load yeah it's incredible we can tailor it to an athlete which is great when you've got a seven foot plus tall baseball player or basketball player that's why we work with all these teams anyway so it's like you're taking something and getting closer and closer to it at the same time we're looking at the quality so like i needed to be able to really hold this torso position with the weight moving up here now unlike the deadlift the ability to manage this tl position becomes much more challenging so that was also why i was choosing the transformer bar because it actually challenges that more in those big forward positions i was also working on my back strength tremendously to be able to hold a maintained position so there was a lot of like i chose a bent over rows so bent over row is a mixed vector so it's a forward to back so it wouldn't have as much carrier but it's also um got some axial loading components in it as well so we're working on that and then as it as we get closer and closer to competition i'm developing those strengths but now i need to start tapering those out so all of my recovery needs can now go into the more specific that i'm actually ramping the load up so as i'm ramping the load on the weight i'm able to ramp it a lot faster because i'm tapering out the other stuff so i can still keep my total load high but now get it very very specific wow so everything i've done has always been kind of an annual training cycle and then again this was like a this was a five-year training cycle but we just kind of walked through the last year of each and you can see how these concepts play out in reality so in the cycling so this is both for you but also for more recreational strength athletes let's say there's variety injected into the system you need variety yeah yeah because you will basically stagnate at some level right so you should should always be kind of shifting a little bit so um three to four month blocks in general for an average you know just a gen pop fitness is pretty good um where you're going to spend more time maybe in a higher rep range or lower rep range a little bit more uh work on uh endurance capacity or maybe some more time hey i'm playing around with boxing or jiu jitsu or something like that bring that a little bit more to the front forefront for a while and bring the other out but like mixing mixing those variables up but trying to keep the total load the same and always kind of like no do we add a little more again it doesn't have to be major and it shouldn't be major you don't want these big jumps you don't go oh my god let's move uh let's jump into squatting every day um you've got to build the capacity to do that it's simple what role would you say strength has in sports that combine skill and strength so for me personally maybe i'll just ask it selfishly which is uh grappling wrestling mma yeah how about i start with baseball please uh no i wouldn't okay i know the sport okay like baseball and golf for the two of my favorite sports uh no i don't you don't have to be in shape at all to excel at those sports well here's the thing there so you're gonna get this argument well i've got a perfect example because this is this is why i sell so many transformer bars into the the major league baseball so they get these people uh that come in these athletes that have been baseball their whole life it is part of the culture and so they're great athletes they've got all this skill the only thing they have to do is develop a little bit more resilience so that they don't have the injury they can push their training a little bit more that we can add a little bit more force output and be able to recover from it so the only thing they've got to do is add some training but there's no training culture there so they don't have any experience which is why they love the transformer bar because they don't have to worry about teaching the technique we can actually set the bar on a setting that makes their squats perfect by queuing all the stuff with actually not having to coach it because when you're coaching a room full of athletes it's really hard to teach the nuance of all this and not sure that all that but that's all that they have to do with these players with a huge level of skill so once you reach a certain level of skill adding strength is the the only real forward path so so that's the the basic simple answer to that um so one of the benefits there being like injury prevention actually injury resilience because especially uh fighting sports you're going to be challenged and thrown and other things happen to you and the more resilient you can make your structures the better you're gonna be even a cyclist mountain biking why would they need it why would they need to do upper body training take a crash your shoulder's gone you're done your career is over unless you've done a little training right so so there's value in all this stuff but uh the resilience is like that's that's huge and then we can overlay strength the people where we miss is this focus on strength when we haven't developed quality motor patterns first so this is a huge thing with uh children because people want to know what's the appropriate training age i'd had my daughter training before my son because she developed movement patterns at a better quality earlier there's no age because it's going to be very dependent on the individual there's no point in having adaptation if we don't have the right thing to adapt to yet and that applies to general movement but also the sport you see you're saying the skills should be developed first and the strength applied on top of that yep maybe you can educate me but i actually quit lifting and powerlifting for a long time after i started um judo jiu jitsu grappling all this sort of combat sports because i found that it was preventing me from relaxing my body enough to uh load in the skill so this isn't a problem with the uh training this is a problem with you yeah so this is actually really really important the first product i ever released was a loadable mace a swinging mace and because every power lifter and body well not every but most serious power lifters and bodybuilders like shoulders mobility is pretty limited and most of them really really struggle with this the problem is they've been taught to have tension all the time and that's not good so when we talk about like the joint positions that we were talking about earlier and having those and the muscles in the right length and tension relationship athleticism is the speed to relaxation because the counter is speed to to speed to contraction float like a butterfly sting like a bee right and so what a mace can do is use that because this is a ties back into a developmental kinesiology because a lot of like reset patterns are getting back into these basic movements but it's as much about relaxation as it is contraction okay so a mace we have this weight on a big long lever so i if i grab a kettlebell and be like let's say movement is a kettlebell halo it is the same movement but here in the halo i'm on the whole time with the mace at the proper length with the right distribution you cannot do the movement you could not move force your way through it the only way that you can accomplish that is by relaxing and then now we now we can contract all the muscles related around that shoulder girdle all at once we're working on off on off on off with moving and contracting and now so what happens a lot of times as we you know this stiffness and tightness happens if we're in poor positions we start using stabilizer muscles to do the movement and then that's where this stiffness come from so it means that in some of whatever training that you're doing there's a deficit in the movement quality okay or there's a deficit in the training program and you're not recovering from and 80 of the time that's the right answer right but yeah that's where the where the gap is and learning how to relax and the way a lot of the exercises are taught and have been taught for a long time which is why there's a big gap and this is why both clinical rehab and all these other components are mixed in my philosophy and what i'm trying to do with kabuki strength because i'm looking at holistic movement i'm not looking at powerlifting bass movements are what i want to load and be able to assess on but this affects all sports all activities and strength doesn't have to be that i mean i i'm i'm freaking a thousand pound squatter and dead lifter if you watch any of my videos where i do like complete quad fallbacks i don't stretch at all i can usually get close to a full split like if i want to um what no i did not see those videos okay that's uh it's hard to believe wow okay well actually i do i just did one recently a quad fallback with my with my mace loaded way out to the end tortioning on both ends of the other and like i do a lot of i do a lot of weird stuff um that's awesome okay squatting doesn't make your hips tight squatting like shit makes your hips tight and so but there is no perfect world we're always our training program isn't quite perfect our movement isn't necessarily perfect like so you're going to have the needs for this stuff but if you're always have to do some soft tissue work to loosen up the same one for that exercise to be able to get a joint in position there is a problem and i'm not saying don't do it do it because i don't want you to have a joint like if i can't get my shoulders in a position i can't do overhead presses because i'm going to compromise my spine position then i'm going to end up with some other problems right so go ahead and clean that up so you can get in position but go figure out why it is and fix it and then maybe next you know three four months from now they're gonna get a little something else going on fix it but understand the deeper root reason of why so i'm i believe i am the only company manufacturing and selling you know fascial soft tissue tools and i'll tell you i don't want you to use them because it's not helping you get to the why why it was caused in the first place yeah the goal the goal the perfect state is not having to use them reality is you're going to have to use them from time to time because the world's not perfect yeah so your discovery is 100 on point well there's another side to combat sports when you're beginning a particular combat sport strength can be a negative because human psychology because you can get away with a lot when you're strong uh-huh yes you can so if your mind is strong enough to where you can just turn off that advantage and be a beginner truly in a particular art that's probably the best way to do it but you can get away and then you don't learn yeah yeah it's hard uh it's hard not to use the little advantages you have because like jiu jitsu is a big hit on on the ego for you know especially guys you know when like a smaller person just destroys you dominates you when you can i don't know deadlift whatever number of pounds and uh it's hard not to use that strength to then resist the slow the ultimate destruction by like 120 pound but that and that's why i recommend developing the skill quality first but it doesn't it doesn't mean that you can't i can't you can still do it so that don't take it as like oh i can't go that direction that's fine but understand those things and then also understand the jiu jitsu is additional load on the body yeah so you have to you can't just add it on top yeah you've got to taper back the other you're going to have to make a i'm sorry you may not want to hear it but you're not going to be able to do as much and add that here yeah it's a compromise because your total volume still has to be there and there's not unfortunately not really a way to measure what the jiu-jitsu volume is with this so you've got to take a look at that and that's where like measuring like heart rate variability or other stuff can be useful so you can see what is happening from me from a sympathetic versus parasympathetic nerve nervous system standpoint yeah making sure your body recovers sufficiently and trying to put numbers to it you mentioned kabuki strength you run the kabuki strength lab previously called the elite performance center in oregon you called it the perfect gym what makes uh for the perfect strength training gym where i called it the program in the video somewhere i watched oh man i mean that's where my testing grounds for developing all this stuff was through the years and and so this is like i said i started developing relationships with the best developmental kinesiologist in the in the us the best arguably the best or most well-known physical therapist in the world the best spine biomechanist in the world i started doing continuing education with these clinical courses and learning this stuff and going but how does it work in my world right and then i started lecturing with them and all this other stuff but the lab was like where do we test this stuff right and so let me get to a point there's three things there's always three things so um to be a success to achieve success i believe there's three things that really really come into place and it's the right methodology the right tools and the right environment and so it was all about building that and so the methodologies came from a lot of that different that gray area interaction of clinical with sports science right and then the tools i had to start creating and designing and then the environment is having this you know focused environment of people that want to do better and push each other and having community and culture right i end up building these connections this network everything that i'm doing with my businesses is trying to create that into a scalable fashion and so i'm building the groundwork because to have a system that like yeah i had clinicals on site that knew exactly what we were doing and when it's me and a few people in a small team and all this stuff we're all just like easy to manage and you can see these there's other models around this so i've been other areas since maybe whenever it was i filmed that video that said that that they have that same same model and it's taken probably about a decade usually to develop that you know and having the right people in this community they can create this this network and the tool and all this stuff right except they still don't have the best tools because kabuki strength didn't exist um but uh but and so out of that was is essentially started building this business and people like when did you know how all this stuff was connected and i'm like i don't know i didn't i just started creating on the outset the things that worked until finally i'm like oh i'm recreating a scalable version of this stuff here's the methodologies and a coaching platform that we can manage clients around the globe and see what's working and not based on the scientific principles of training right how do we create that into a database that now we can train new coaches and they can use those same metrics and tools to create programs that are tailored to fit a person's individual needs right now how do we integrate that with um assessment and clinical care assessment and and all these other pieces so there's a lot of work in that and so that's where kabuki strength is the genesis but we have we call our gym the kabuki strength lab literally people find about our gym in the neighborhood like how long have you been here why why do i not know about this we don't advertise our gym at all i feel like that makes no sense well it's because the only reason is to have a testing environment for the tools and methodology and having enough people to have the culture and fit and to be able to be part of the experiment what about the environment of the the feel of it the actual gym there's a i don't know a grunginess to it i recently became a member of planet fitness for for reasons that have to do more with the heat in austin that sometimes i need to put in time on the treadmill uh i don't like i don't have any judgment honestly i don't the best gyms i've been in are kind of dirty you walk in and you know that work is to be done yes there's not another reason to do there it is the the environment is tight there's a big piece of that um i know it's studied sociologically i believe i just i just pictured that word too but the intensity when you start growing a space the intensity drops and so i i had that experience when we grew we went from a 4 000 foot to a 9 000 square foot gym at one time and everybody's like it doesn't feel the same like people are complaining for years we've shrunk it back down when we're down to 3 500 square feet and it creates that intensity it creates the closest the connection with the people around you and then like i said the the grunginess like you go in you know the intention when you walk in that environment creates that tension but when i speak environment it's not just the it's not the physical it's the people but you know when the gym is a little bit beat up yes it also tells a story like there's a history to it you could tell that not only is there work to be done that work has been done here yes like battles have been fought there's something to that where you're just in a long line of people you know that uh fought and won and we could get into a whole other space so this would be a whole other topic but that existing energy of a space i mean uh we mentioned offline joe rogan he talks about the same with comedy clubs there's certain there's certain clubs that just have a history there's an energy there you can get all woo but you know there is it's there it's a real thing i think you walk in and you can feel it and you feel you feel it yeah that makes me feel that somehow all of us humans are connected in ways that's hard to describe even the ones who are no longer here just the greatness that once was is still in the walls in the space present there yeah and we somehow can plug into that energy yeah it's we can go down and go down a path there there's something really powerful there you've also mentioned a bunch of cool equipment that you've developed as part of kabuki strength probably a little bit of that has to do with your engineering education but also just generally with the spirit of the uh innovator that you are what are some cool maybe uh revolutionary pieces of equipment that you're particularly proud of or just uh you've been obsessed with recently yeah developing love to talk about that so we've got some wild crazy stuff that just came out and is coming out too so everything that we create and release a kabuki strength the industry hasn't seen before there's stuff that's basic foundational that's been around forever because it works but there's always more it could be better and why are we not looking at these things these foundational things so when people are coming up with novel things they end up being way different outside the perspective and i'm coming up with things that are way different that are plays on what we already know works so we talked about the transform bar the only bar in the world we can manipulate spinal mechanics we can so everything everything for me from a design concept that we develop is all about creating products that can rapidly accommodate to the variability of an individual's leverages mobility and training needs okay and that's going to also create and distill down the size and scope of space that we need which is going to be continue to be an ongoing thing check out my instagram after this and you'll see i put an entire gym on the bed of my truck and went on vacation uh last week we drove to the desert oh no and by entire gym i mean uh squat rack full complement of our specialty bars a horizontal and vertical pulley system handheld weights shoulder like a complete an entire gym in product that took up the space the size of this bed right here that's incredible because of the design scope of what we have so the cool things that there's two other bars that fit our biomechanically sound barbell lines we talked about the transformer bar the other two are built on this thing i call playground physics so we have these bars with handles that are off um off parallel with the axis so they've been around the market for a long time one is a hex bar or a trap bar another one is a it's a pressing bar with uh the handles turned as well and both of them suck they're horrible any time any lifter knows if you pick it up it's going to break your wrist and crush into your face and it just it just doesn't feel good pressing but it alleviates the strain on the wrist so people use it for that reason and the the the trap bar same thing it's always diving forward in your hand so it's kind of limited it's also limited in use because you can't you could do a lot more with it so these bars are really cool playground physics so as soon as the center of rotation is on the same axis as the center of mass and the handle is off center you have you have a teeter-totter so and a teeter-totter has a balance point but it's infinitely perfect so technically you can never find it it's always going to be sitting on one side or the other in a playground and that's what these bars are designed so you got in instability right here you can't find the center the bar is always trying to tip in your hands on the trap bar so you can't do carries with it because you're doing forward momentum and it wants to it wants to dip on you right um the swiss bar wants to crush your face well what do we do we just make a swing put center of mass below center of rotation and what does it do oh it always finds center so so the handles on the our pressing bar it's arced so the handles are above center of rotation and then and then every angle instead of just being a certain fixed angles each angle is based on the width the average width of an individual so the internal and external rotational bias is based of the shoulder is based on the width leaving just a little bit left because we talked about the lat being a stabilizer you still need to have a little bit of q of external rotation to engage that as a stabilizer boom now all of a sudden you have a bar and i kid you not this is a great story major league baseball when i presented it every head strength coach for a major league baseball team maybe not every but damn near most of them have bad shoulders they can't press they've got shoulder surgeries so on and so we're showing they love all our stuff and i'm like hey i've got this cool prototype i want to show you it's a pressing bar and they're like oh you know major league baseball's a little hesitant on pressing because the dangers for the shoulder and i i can't i haven't been able to take a bar to my chest i mean i'd really love to it's been five years since i've i've been able to uh to xx train and i'm like just try it like i can't even get a bar to my chest without pain like just try it that feels good now the arc makes it actually three inches deeper so people are automatically scared i can't do that because that's an extra range of motion right like oh put a plate on there they're doing it by the time the staff's like they're all standing around you see like what's going on put two plates on you see the just like it gets up how do you feel like i feel fine no pain at all yeah i did this with five teams with five of the it happening repeatedly five times and that they and every one of them worked up the two plates and did the reps varied with zero pain to a three inch range of greater range of mass because what did we do we stacked all the joints and we provided stability at the end we balanced the internal and external rotation i mean just basic playground physics and it changed the game now we get a greater range of motion with a greater training effect with the negative stresses removed our trap bar opened up one side which there was already something like that out there created um it pops up so you can pick up take the weights on and off it's got a built-in jack and then created the high handle position which already did everybody uses the high handle on a trap bar they just don't know why they like it the handle that's on center we offset just a little bit not enough to make a difference on the range of motion lift or even notice visibly but it still has the same effect so both handles now have that we added the option of different handle sizes based on whatever your needs are even the one that rolls to develop a grip and then different widths that you could choose from based on whether you're training a teen athlete or a seven foot six nba player or a nfl lineman um so that we can accommodate for all these uh differences and so and then now it becomes the most functional all-around bar around because now you can do carries with it you can do split squats with it you could do curls with it because it goes around the body you can do overhead presses because you don't have a thing that gets in your way and you can flip it up into position you can do bent over rows and not run into your shins you can do seal rows off of a bench you can do ab roll outs you could should i go on yeah so you could use it as like the main the best multi-purpose bar around you got a home gym one bar like how do you develop totally new equipment like this i uh scratch it on paper maybe maybe weld some cut up and weld up a prototype but usually i just hand the scratched up paper to my uh engineering manager and that's what he says his job is to distill my chicken scratch into something real and then that team picks it up uh but in the old days starting out i just walk out i just walk out and do it i you talk about engineering i'm actually more i work more of an artist fashion it's in my head and i just go create with no plans and so they have to pick that up and actually do the engineering and testing and all that and then we got two other products came out this year freaking wild are you familiar with uh training with a flywheel no no it's a flywheel maybe a flywheel is a spinning object that uh creates an inertial mass yeah and then it reverses direction so whatever you put into it and there's one's out there um but ours is the first patent pending that's all everything all in one unit so it's a floor based as well as a horizontal so you can basically do any pulley movement in the world and now everything that you put into it on a concentric force it whips right back is is centric load gosh sure so there's an accelerating whipping motion it just yeah basically yeah i mean okay i have to have trouble imagining exactly many of the things you're describing i i suppose have to be experienced right yes so it's imaginable and there's a lot of research they've been around they're adopted more heavily in europe quite heavily in europe but not as much in the us because they sell them as a be-all end-all tool which they're not they're crazy for what they do but it's not the it's another tool and so we have um a very high quality unit now that is half the cost of everybody else's because the innovation of a movable mount point that you for them you have to have two pieces of equipment we have one so um and then a few other things better platform to be able to do things and that we can do what we call off platform work which allows us to do movements like uh punches and stand-ups things like that and then i've got a handheld weight coming out next month that we can actually play with so varying the load with it never leaving your hand by changing the leverage point we're talking about here anything that would be a a dumbbell or a kettlebell movement so it functions it does the function of a kettlebell a dumbbell and what we call a center mass bell as well as provides variable loading within a range so how can you change like how can you change the load because the load well we don't actually change the load we change the torque on the on the joint that we're working which is the same that's actually what is creating the force right so if i'm doing a front raise it's where this this downward force is times the distance away right which also then makes it no force when i've got at the bottom of the front ways which is why it's so easy with this it's like a kettlebell it's offset except it has three different handles but it's offset just a kettlebell you can't do it because the offset so far it becomes a wrist movement so ours has three different sizes in the offset just enough so that you can pick if i put it in the front raised position or curl position i could put it in outward position and the force is almost what it is at the at the top but then i get the top and it's the same exact or the curl so i can actually change the force curve in the movement and then i can just release the pressure a little bit and let it swing into position and keep doing a drop set with never letting it down yeah yeah so it's got a really nice textured grip that allows you to hold it in different positions and then the load offset is just enough that it doesn't overpower the wrist and then you got different hand sizes so that you can maximize this relationship and hit whatever joint that you're applying that sounds incredible it's really freaking well it's awesome because you can because the variable load now i could go straight from front raises to side raises or rear or curl because without like because i don't have to put it down so now my time under tension goes through the roof and by the way the same effect with a flywheel trainer because the variable res whatever you put into it is what it kicks back so you have an constant time under tension because there's no rest points either so all this stuff is working on maximizing time under tension um which anyway it it's that's cool stuff anyway i get i get excited uh well let me ask you about another thing you've already mentioned but i find this really interesting which is barefoot running and your sort of uh company barefoot athletics yeah b-e-a-r and the tagline is optimizing the human to ground interface we've talked about this a little bit with uh the power lifting how do you think about the the foot ground interface it's interesting that we know that we should train all these parts of our body to be able to be stronger be more resilient like but we think that the foot is different that we need to package it and modify it and somehow that that's the science of making you know it healthy where i challenge people think about that like first thing you do in the morning is roll out of bed and put your weightlifting belt on and wrap it on tight and wear it till you go to bed at night do it with your shoulders your knees wake up and put some knee wraps on okay and elbow wraps and see what happens one you'll get weaker you'll lose movement capacity and you'll start affecting other areas of the body very negatively because they will start picking up the compensation for those joints that are not moving properly this is it what shoes are for is to protect you from the environment from cuts and abrasions and heat and things like that but the foot let me the mind blowing is like every other area of the body you need to use it and you need to strengthen it and you need to learn to control it that's it that's all i have to say about the subject okay it's that simple but somehow we have been sold entire industries like the orthotics industry it's completely false meta-analysis of the data shows that orthotics do nothing beyond temporary relief from pain over a six eight week period of time and provide no long-term benefit and i can't tell you how many people i've eliminated back or knee or hip pain from getting from working on strengthening and controlling the foot and ankle complex we believe we've villainized and said a low arch is a condition that needs fixed like when it really is just controlling the foot and ankle complex and how they relate to each other and how we use that is it like go put on boxing gloves in the morning and do that for the next 20 years and see what happens it's not about finding the right shoe that fits because your foot has been deformed and so i'm not like some wacky goo like oh you got to be barefoot forever do this like no i'm just saying go spend some time using it strengthen it learn to control it and you'll work better in a shoe but the whole running shoe movement with the raised heel that was the person that that suggested that that in to nike way back when they were trying to figure out what to do the reason and he says it's it's the worst thing that he ever did um because we were coming from an era of people wearing heeled shoes which by the way came from um stirrups way back in the day that's where the whole heel came from is to go into stirrup but then it went into fashion and then the running craze started coming around in the they're 70s they're starting to push this the general mass population and they realize that they were causing injuries and like what are we gonna do well that's because everybody was in this position and had a shortened uh shortened calf muscle it's like well the work around let's just put a heel on it so we don't injure them that's it and now because the raised heel you got to raise the toe and then now with that if you go stand on something and pull your inner toe in and in a squat position just reach down and do it you'll see that you have no control over the internal and external rotation of your of of your leg you don't and or your foot and you actually have to put a support in for the arch to be able to passively control those structures it's just band-aid on top of band-aid on top of band-aid use it strengthen it if you want to wear some shoes because they look good or fancy i'm like i have no problem i mean i got a wife my wife will put on some high heels every now and again like but all i'm saying is use your foot my thousand pound squat my thousand pound deadlift we're done barefoot i'm not trying to sell you shoes go do it with no shoe that's what i've been promoting i did that for six years and i promoted it but people ask me like what do i do because my gym requires shoes okay where do i go and uh and then i go well you know you could pick up these uh other finger shoes or whatever and they go man my wife won't have sex with me and i go i know mine either like trust me i'm not making this up everybody in that market markets to one segment and they're still missing some gaps because they they still have a little bit too narrow of a toe box and with your lifting you have the opportunity to really get that splay and start working on this stuff better so i just wanted to create a shoe these ones are odd colored because it's a partnership with kabuki normally we've got a black or a gray low top high top sticks to the ground for lifting so we can do that and very pliable it's a moccasin it's a modern-day moccasin but looks okay that you can wear it around in other areas if you if you so choose like you know what the number one healthcare cost in america is what's that diabetes uh heart disease cancer low back pain now what do you attribute low back pain to well it's attributed to a lot of things um but inability to control spinal position um which starts happening from uh some breathing issues uh it also happens from the foot um so there's a lot of stuff but everything that i do actually focus on improving this yeah so that and it all starts with this is one thing like this doesn't affect breathing but um so it does actually affect breathing to some elections and spinal stabilization so the raised heel and toe will make you stride further because of just how it operates but that over stride is a result of opening this so we opened the pelvis and diaphragm did we talk about that and the impact that that has for controlling in spine yeah i think we touched on that yeah um but it it's all this stuff plays together so the gate affects that and so the shoe affects the gate and then so it's all connected all connected let me be very purposeful with some conversation here though we've talked about periodization this was a big gap so people go yeah well when people started running with those they started having injuries back when the finger company produced those and didn't do the education around this very simple concept you do not walk into the gym if you haven't squatted and start squatting 225 from for max rex every week day or every day over day yeah and that's what people did because they did weren't told that you need to build the capacity to do this you go wear these and walk around in your office or wherever all day long your feet are gonna hurt they're gonna be sore do it for 10 of your time yeah do that for a month then add some that will build the capacity to do this and then that's going to start having the ability to strengthen manage the foot there's a whole lot of other stuff i've got videos on things that you can do buy whatever you want or just just spend some time out of them like that's all that i want people to do because it is so simple and it has such a profound impact yeah it does i what i did uh i noticed when you walked uh when i walked in i was like oh hey you're spending some time without the last shoes on uh well what i did um i think it's already now two years ago when i was doing a lot of running i do like a 10 mile run i would take my shoes off for the last like half mile and i run like that and that was for me really helpful to ensure that i have proper form form that minimizes pain on the way i run i still like shoes i benefit a lot from shoes the protection they provide but it's for running um we're referring to especially trail lining and so on and in the city when there's glass and all those kinds of things but it's really important to have minimal sort of protection on your feet for me at least it was to figure out the ways that my form basic movement and like the positioning in the foot the impact of the foot and everything you know the the the lower leg the entirety of the torso really how it's improperly positioned in terms for the objective of minimizing pain and the barefoot running really help uh fix that for me because i figured out that i need to take shorter steps uh more frequent you know all those kinds of things and that really helps you figure that out like let's be realist about stuff like um spend some time using it strengthen it and i've got some great ways to to do that and learn how to do that so yeah what is a good diet for strength development i've uh just to give you some context i've been eating mostly meat not for strength mostly for mental performance i just enjoy it yes you need to have a base level of protein building blocks for tissue right we need to have enough fats to be able to have hormones work and key processes in the body we need to have well you don't need to have from a performance aspect carbohydrates necessarily because the other ones can convert into injury sources but for a performance athlete carbohydrates can be very beneficial as well so so i look at it as you want you need a base level fats you need a base level of proteins and then you adjust the carbohydrate intake based on the needs i'm not anti-carbohydrate by any means because a lot of people will they look at me now when they see like how lean i am and they are they jump to a conclusion you must be keto you must be carnivore you must be whatever and it's like so losing and gaining weight is simply eating less or eating more i mean it ah and we get so complicated oh that my fat they're like what's your fasting window if i'm if i'm doing fasting it's just because it works with my my environment sometimes i do it sometimes i don't all that does is control how much calories that you take big success with keto and carnivore diets it's hard to eat a lot uh and and put on weight with those with those diets um you know protein actually has a thermogenic effect and so you have to have a massive amount of fats if you have a only meat diet because you can literally starve to death there's a there's a show where they put people out in the wilderness and this guy the one that won one of the ones i looked in they threw him away like up in the uh past a lot you know out the way out there there was nothing but he somehow got a caribou and killed it and he still lost a pound a day for 30 days with a caribou because his fat was stolen by a uh uh and and he could eat all the meat he wanted yeah and they he almost got pulled because his weight lost right um but that isn't actually a performance so those type keto and carnivore are not performance diets so they're not going to be as effective at supplying the energy needs for high capacity training so don't get me wrong you can do training but like you can be a successful like elite athlete with a with a vegan diet but it's not as easy to do it with other diets so and you're missing some base nutrients so many nutrients in meat i believe uh having greens in your diet is really beneficial lots of research but there's people in the other worlds that argue that you don't need them but they help clear organs provide micronutrients all this sort of stuff so i eat simply a whole well-rounded diet and i've gone from i can go from 285 pounds squatting a ton of weight to eating less and dropping all the way down to you know seven eight percent body fat with veins standing out everywhere without a tissue on me just with amazing great tasting food to lose weight or be healthy does not mean that you need to eat flavorless bland food so that's the main thing portions it's eat less to lose weight eat more to gain weight yep make sure that you've got enough protein make sure that you've got your micronutrients covered which is going to cover by eating real food don't go low fat no fat if you want a performance don't go no carb but if it works any of those things so diet approach when you look at diets understand that they're how aggressive they are so like keto can make you lose a lot of weight carnivore can make you lose a lot of weight a lot of that up front is actually dropping glycogen stores so you're actually just reducing water in your muscle and fat tissue um so which is why it doesn't isn't as great for a performance diet but understand that every diet also has a level of discipline and does it fit your lifestyle so i suggest people don't find a diet you need to find a lifestyle because that's what's sustainable i hate the word diet to begin with what behaviors are sustainable and then do that and then over time the things you'll get to where you need to get diet itself just by the name of it is not sustainable because it it is a short-term thing to get somewhere yeah i tend to try to measure it because i definitely have a love-hate relationship with food i tend to look back and say like by following this particular protocol lifestyle whatever what was the level of happiness yes so not like weight loss or weight gain or all those kinds of things it's the entirety of the picture productivity just feeling good throughout the day socially also like yeah interacting with people because so much of uh human connection like i mentioned before is over food and if you're going to limit yourself well in that regard you're limiting a certain fundamental aspect of life a number of years ago um i did uh like 20 to 22-hour fasts every day and i'm like well this doesn't work i'm i can't do business lunches and stuff like that so when i was in my fasting thing i went to a 16 so i could have a light lunch just for the social aspect of it and perform a little perform that like and then that's why and that's why like the typical bodybuilding like the eight meal a day diet um has never worked for me because i've always been a very bit like trying to fit that between meetings and other stuff what that diet provides is it just you get less bloat and distension of a larger meal but at the end of the day you get the same exact results pick a lifestyle live that you can have really great tasting food and that to me is the same thing and this is why i'm like really hitting this point because also with the dieting and like the approach like oh i'm gonna do this and people pick these chicken and broccoli recipes and guess what you're going to break if you do not in if you do not enjoy it you will break so that's it is a very important point well i also slightly push back or maybe to elaborate if you don't enjoy moderation for me particularly um i have trouble moderating certain things most foods i would say so my source of happiness comes with foods even if they're bland the ones that can enjoy but enjoy moderation so there's i mean i enjoy every piece of food so it's like it's uh if you can enjoy the the full lifestyle it's not just the particular experience but like the full journey yep does it fit your lifestyle yeah yeah so let me ask about uh a complicated uh topic that's sometimes a bit controversial which is steroids it may be a trt testosterone replacement therapy what role does that play in strength training all right we're gonna uh we're gonna go there let's go uh yeah but it's an important discussion to have um i think that uh it's something that i can be more transparent on um in my past i wasn't able to do to the career that i had so just like covering that stuff in a you know one on a public forum when you're highly looked at being an executive for recruiting and other stuff like it was an area i had to just kind of pass on right now i've used steroids i've used them since i was 33 and i basically just used trt now after my big squat so for 10 years i used them and there's some interesting uh components to this so um one is just the the gray area of what we call performance enhancing supplements so uh performance was it peds um that the line of what defines a ped is ever shifting and it's shifting based on society norms cultural norms government bonding agencies all these sorts of stuff so i'm not making excuses here so i just want to elaborate before i actually start digging into the details here because performance enhancing i could take sodium bicarbonate and enhance my ability to perform deadlifts for reps guess what i did that for my guinness world record for deadlifts in a minute okay people do it for rowing or other they use high capacity uh type stuff it is performance enhancing it is a chemical it is baking soda all right um they're not able to make it illegal because they everybody eats bread well not everyone and so it's a little hard to test for no matter what you do at any level so that's an extreme example but other examples um you're drinking a an energy drink in that cup there a little while ago and in america you can get an energy drink with 240 milligrams of caffeine in it in canada that's too dangerous you can only get 140 but you can go buy ephedra and ephedra is illegal in america and so these things bounce back and forth all the time i could take yohimbi and in europe or australia it is a drug and classified and america it's it is not it's a it's an herbal root uh in a lot i actually haven't won one of my supplements except for the overseas version anyway the point i'm getting is no matter what you do at some point there's by someone's standards you are cheating and because it is you're taking something that but you could work around these things with nutritional ways or other ways versus taking a chemical structure and there's a whole lot of ways to do this but it's like oh no it's steroids it's not it's injectable it's not well somewhere there's a culture or a person that will say you're cheating no matter what so it's a self-defined you need to define it for yourself unless you're competing in an organization that has testing then it's a straight ethical uh thing and it's either right or wrong in my opinion that's that's kind of the the overall dilemma of it is if you want to see what you're totally capable of you have to decide decide yourself what's okay or not to to that level there is no there is no body that can say something yes or no yeah when there's an event like the olympics maybe then you have a standard that you're all trying to adhere to and then it makes sense to keep a certain like to be within there's an ethical there's no so yeah i'm not talking about that i'm agreeing to compete in this by these by these rules yeah but when you're trying to maximize your own performance whatever that journey is whatever that goal is that's a different story and it's not it's not easy to figure that out you go up you're just like dancing around the subject whatever well guess what i've got a i've got a prescription for growth hormone and testosterone it's legal for me to take and you know what a lot of the people that are in front of the camera in the media politicians and news people and the people that are there saying the the no drug stuff they're going to anti-aging clinics to look better and they have a prescription for growth hormone and testosterone themselves but in their eyes it's okay it is a prescription from their doctor because they have the money to do it so it's legal and it's fine if i it's interesting in oregon anybody and i don't know what other states over the age of 16 can without parents permission by the way walk into a gender clinic and as a female and get a prescription for testosterone but as an athlete if i've got low testosterone i am so low i've got depression i can't have sex with my wife it's affecting my quality of life i will have to fight tooth and nail to get testosterone just as a prescription and then i will get kicked out of my organization for competing like so you understand how gray this stuff gets do you think the stigma on testosterone is the reason we're not having like a healthy conversation about when it's proper like what are the proper uses of testosterone in an athlete's life in just a regular human life yeah absolutely i mean and it's just it's like anything it's like i said it is lines that we pick and draw anytime you put that out there people are going to have different opinions where those lines are so now when it comes to strength here's an interesting thing in powerlifting there's tested federations and non-tested federations so we can literally look at the statistical data and actually find out what do steroids do and so it's pretty clear that steroids provide about a ten percent increase in strength on average over not now that does take out the fact that steroids will put you in uh allow you to put on more mass so you'll go up a weight class a lot of times so as a whole you could definitely lift more probably than the 10 over time right and then we think about steroids as the ability to just put on muscle and here's where things get a little interesting even with people that use steroids is not understanding the neurological impacts that steroids have because you could take some steroids right now and be stronger in 10 minutes that's clearly not done anything you know from a physiology standpoint to make you stronger but we have a tapped in neurologically to to elicit those gains and there's a whole lot that happens neurologically like how much science is there in terms of all the different ways you could take steroids which kinds of steroids the timing the the dose the all of those things to develop the the neurological the physical the skeleton like all all the you know you've talked with such depth about the science of strength building in terms of form uh in terms of the equipment that you use it seems like a component you know the use of steroids should be an equal level of scientific rigor when applying them it is now the research is harder to to get because of what it is um but there is a lot of research that was done when they were legal so they were legal up in through the uh through i think the mid 80s and so a lot of the classical um high high benefit to low risk steroids were studied and then since then there's a lot of like designer steroids or new steroids that have come up that don't have a lot of research around safety and risk and things of that nature and we can't do that because it's you know because of the legality around these things but some of the stuff on the neurological function is really just understanding how that chemical structure uh works and what it's doing to the neurotransmitters what it's doing and so some of it is is really talking to people that have experience with it um and the other is understanding those structures and what they do the neurological component i think is more interesting than than most because the most steroids act through increasing muscle protein synthesis that's how you add more muscle is they have an anti-catabolic effect and they have a muscle protein synthesis enhancing effect so it reduces the amount of muscle that you waste and increases the amount of muscle that you put on but the neurological component is is tremendously valuable for what it can do for your training workout like if i handle more load over time i'm going to make more progress if i can actually just stimulate more neurological effects for a specific event it's going to have an impact right but there's other ways that you can tap into this too things that you can tap into mentally with great practice with meditation and other stuff that will have the same effect people probably think i'm over speaking especially steroid users that are listening to this at least i'm talking out my ass but i'm not because i i i have experience with this stuff on both ends and some of those areas a lot of people don't have the experience with that what i've kind of heard from people is the the confidence that comes with steroids it feels like not to call it placebo but it seems like the psychological benefits of steroids is huge and that you feel like uh there's a confidence that seems to be uh coupled with the actual biological and chemical effects i have a actually a neurological condition um so i actually don't feel a lot of that stuff that people because there's certain steroids that like people will like you're like very extreme ones um like that would make somebody bite someone's ear off in a fight for example yeah um aggression that and they'll literally do nothing i'm like always just chilling and they don't like effect but but neurologically they're still having those effects but i don't get those feels that other people uh have from those but yes there's that immediate boost in aggression and the confidence and stuff that come with a lot of those ones that deal on the neurological overall a good sense of well-being just like from being on testosterone like it's going to affect your mood and it's interesting so testosterone replacement therapy if we walk down that path now and kind of switch gears you know we find that men today have declining testosterone over what has historically been in the past so right now i think a 35 year old testosterone is shown to be about half what it was just 50 years ago so i don't know if we could argue the point we don't really have the science to validate any of it but it could be uh society as far as the impact that it's having on the mental uh health uh for men it could be the the estrogens floating around in the water from all the chemicals and birth control and all this sort of stuff could be a lot of things but it is a fact that average testosterone is significantly lower and that is going to end up affecting life quality of life as well as your longevity because it will affect those things but on the other end steroids and trt particularly steroids come with a lot of negative health benefits not benefits a lot of negative health ramifications and so you know if i knew what i know now i don't know that i would have gone that path i didn't i didn't tell i was 33 which is kind of an outlier for a strength athlete um i was i was a four times body weight deadlifter 800 plus pounds at 198 and it's pretty dang strong uh before i went down that path uh and that's because i wanted to see what i was capable of but i was reaching a point that it was either i need to do that or not my testosterone my natural testosterone levels were actually um i think below 300 is actually the threshold so i was being told to go on trt for the last couple years probably just because i was pushing so hard and the stress level was driving my test down so it was self-imposed more than likely but i put it off because i wanted to set all the drug-free records and i set the ones that i wanted and then it was 33 i'm you know entering the age category and i'm like i'm going to go on trt i did not feel like i should be with trt personally my ethical standard was i shouldn't be competing in tested events anymore um there are federations that will allow you with your you show up with your script and you do your test and you're below a certain level but you're still on which but for me i'm like that's not over you won't come so i'm like i may as well at this point use steroids um but since then you know understanding all those ramifications uh you know i might not have gone down that route quite so fast and easily but i continued because i also have a lot of resources that other people don't in being able to assess and understand and put things in place to mitigate that so you need to be and the other thing is once you go on it's literally a decision for life not neces but realistically is because your your quality of life your feeling is going to be enhanced quite a bit and you're not going to want to go back and if you go back it's going to be less than it was before that's how the endocrine system works there are ways to try to recover and bring that up but it might be a while and if you've been on for a while it definitely is not an option so those are big things that people need to understand that you're going to have some things in there and even trt has some potential especially with at higher levels that it's going to you know increase the risk for prostate cancer it's going to potentially cause some hypertrophy of the left ventricle of the heart and some potential plaque buildup of the some of those key arteries around there that's going to have an impact on your cardiovascular health there's things that you can do again but everything is like the shoe story right where i'm anti-anti-shu but i'm going well we can put band-aids on this yeah um so it's there's a quality of life that comes with it the increase in quality of life and if you do it correctly i think and i think for me for me i definitely would not live without trt even with knowing what i know now um it this age and the quality of life and being able to be there have the energy the recovery that's a big thing where all this so i talked about muscle protein synthesis and anti-catabolism as being big drivers but recovery is the other big aspect that they that they offer probably as a result of those but um that's gonna those are gonna be the big enhancements so just doing steroids steroids is going to increase all the other stuff that you do so if you've if you have good training you have good diet good quality of sleep like all this other stuff then you can take advantage of that but you could shoot steroids and nobody would know and honestly you go down to 24-hour fitness and you'll see a bunch of you know late you know 19 to 21 year old kids that are all kind of red and 150 pounds that look like that don't look like anything yeah and there a bunch of them will be using steroids because yeah they're not like so it's it's not the it's not going to make a champion like you said it's not going to at most guess what i was already at an elite level i was one of the best in the world before i started using it doesn't it doesn't do that it does a 10 increase at best yeah and that's proven in the statistics which is interesting because most people don't know this like it the data is right there yeah yeah and that's why i i'm often saddened by maybe um the negative view of somebody like lance armstrong who's one of the greatest athletes in history and everybody else that he was competing against i'm sorry yeah i hate to blow anybody's bubble but regardless if i told you my ethical uh pieces with saying that you're going to be at something at an elite level you look at most a lot of those big figures out there when the their income and your life relies on it yeah you're going to push those limits so maybe maybe my ethical would change if if if i was in that position too because here's the thing what i believe like someone is i think people should avoid steroids um trt probably something worth taking a look at what your levels are when you're in the 35 to 45 range and see what decision you decide to make from there and that's a decision that you make for the rest of your life the only times that you should be taking a look at steroids is if it's it's funding your life it's creating that it is your job and it's doing like and honestly it was for me like i so was it the only thing no no if you want to get into neurology uh neurotransmitters and alcohol there's a really interesting discussion on performance enhancement um so when i lift heavy um and so i always promote it like not more than a drink or two like once or twice a month is what all i'm talking about when i'm when i'm saying this so like what's the timing of the drink over talking it's about three to five minutes before yes and we're talking about beer it doesn't matter the uh the source so um i shots are the easiest you want something that is not going to have some sort of regurgitatory effect or bloating effect or anything like that but you want to have the quick hit of energy so it's a preferential energy source moves above ketones carbs everything it's seven calories per gram but then there's some really interesting things that happen spikes blood pressure which is going to make weights feel lighter so when you're in your early 20s and you're trying to hit up you know some attractive person at the bar and you're with your buddies and you're like ah you know and you got second guess oh should i and they go have a shot of liquid courage and you have one and all of a sudden the the second thoughts the second guessing all that drops away like you're focused in the moment uh and you walk over and you actually perform a little better like conversation wise than you normally would now if you have five or six and then go over you're gonna make a fool of yourself so it's all about timing an amount but there is a reason that that happens so anyway i'm known for promoting this whiskey and deadlift concept um i love this but but it works like the eastern block bloc that's where that's where i stole it from because i was watching all these russian lifters would have a shot of vodka or something before they go lyft and i'm like there's something here so i started experimenting with it and i'm like that works and then i started researching nobody talks about this stuff so it takes a while to start piecing together all the stuff that actually happens to make that happen but it moves away the things that you're going to the concerns about the ramifications in the future and the other stuff so the um but brings you into the moment and then the the dopamine hit in the other and then it uh enhances whatever mood that you're in but all of a sudden you get in the state much easier and so it's really really interesting but it's very it's a very small amount needed and very time sensitive but it can be so much more powerful than like drugs people use for this stuff it ties really together with meditative state and other pieces to to to get you into that flow state those thoughts about failure what if whatever like all that you you get into that zone that moment that time um anyway so interesting and alcoholic is promoting out you know uh no but there's an important point here it's not often talked about i think it is fascinating that because you can get into so much trouble with alcohol when used in excess people don't often talk about the the positive aspects of alcohol even in your college years it had it had a lasting effect on who i am as a person i don't think people can give enough credit to the positive aspect see you could have accomplished a lot of those same things with a little more moderation which i think people should talk about more which is like the the way to open up a personality like the flowering of the full character and the weirdness and the the like the beauty of who you are as a human being could be opened up with alcohol and that's really interesting to think about you should try some podcasts with a with a shot and and these yeah you know actually with myself and guests and it will change the conversation lubricates this the conversation definitely not the excess and which is what i learned because i went all the way in because i do everything at extremes yeah so it was a really hard lesson that took me a lot of time to unwind but it is interesting and people don't discuss those things because it's it's either this or this you're one of the greatest strength athletes of all time so it's worthwhile to consider how you optimize the the feast of strength that you reach for uh with things like steroids it makes perfect sense and i think that was a from my perspective i think it was probably the right decision you've achieved something incredible that inspires a huge number of people that's it and you've shown to yourself into the world but what the human body can accomplish yep that's incredible and no matter if i push to a less weight and if i disclosed everything that i did and i didn't when i wasn't using steroids in my opinion if we went through everything there would people that would say you're using performance enhancing yeah no matter what like it is it's straight up so you just need to be okay with it yourself and so i had to make the call i want to see what the true potential is of ever let's throw everything out the window that i feel unless i feel it's a risk from a from a health standpoint that i'm not willing to take on and because that's how do i like it's just picking and choosing yeah and it's just picking and choosing i here's what i want to know this is what i want to be able to try to achieve and so yeah yeah that's what i did and and what you did is incredible like it's it's just awe inspiring and it was pretty strong did was incredible yeah and uh and that aced me up and what's funny is the people that basham are like on the media or politicians or maybe some actors and guess what a ton of them are doing the same thing it's hypocrisy at its finest trust me but how many how many of those figures you're watching in movies that love to talk you know people you know be political and do this and the news and all this i'm telling you there there's anti-aging clinics like all over california and everywhere else who do you think just keeps them in business well it's not the competitive lifter i'll tell you that well that's yes and they're using peptides and also in psalms and all sorts of like you're speaking to the hypocrisy i also want to speak to the the fact you know somebody's a friend of mine david goggins i don't know if you know that is ultra marathon runner um navy seal he gets pretty incredible person yeah incredible human being and he gets criticism like you know what you're doing is um is bad for the body you know you're you're pushing yourself too far i find that the people that criticize are often people that haven't truly pushed themselves to the limit they haven't actually worked hard in their life when you work hard you realize how incredible it is that a human being can dedicate themselves so fully to an effort the way you did the way david goggins does the way the way the greatest athletes do and there's nothing that should be said beyond just sitting back in awe that humans can achieve that and that inspires me to do the best whatever the hell i do to be the the best version of that there's something about like athletic feats especially like strength that just en inspire us to do the best uh to be the best version of ourselves i don't know and that's the only thing you should be saying as opposed to uh criticizing some little detail of this and that it's just an awe inspiring that you push yourself anybody that is at that level and this is funny like in competitive sports like you go online and people is just bash bash bash bash back back you go talk to anybody anybody anybody that's a high-level athlete within that field and nobody has a single bad thing to say about each other but all this chitter chatter down there i mean i know exactly what you're saying so if you i i would say because i have love for all those folks especially when you're younger you have a little bit of that desire to criticize others like i think that should be channeled in improving your own life any time that you feel that way that is when you need to turn inward yeah and it's hard to do but there is a reason that you have those emotions around someone else and what they're doing that you have an opportunity to look at yourself and know why you feel that way and that guess what that's going to be the hard thing to do that's going to be the thing again that's stirring you a little bit because it's so much easier to sit there and uh or talk to your confidante or whatever instead of go why does that bother me yeah why does what that person doing or what that person's achieving bother me it's like a difficult question that i often ask others whether it's better to work hard or work smart i like to ask that question because it helps me get a sense of the human being and i think i let me just say like i often i often like people that answer that would work hard even though the quote unquote right answers work smart meaning like finding the optimal efficient way to achieve a certain goal i find that people that answer work smart don't actually find the optimal efficient way to achieve a goal it seems like the people that at least certainly early in life strive to work their ass off even that means doing the inefficient the dumb thing just to learn the mistake the spirit behind the human spirit behind the person that says or a card is is the one that i connect with but i'm i'm torn especially in the in the war culture in the tech sector where people answer work smart what would you um what would you say about that technician this definitely encompasses like i i'm the intellectual and i'm the meat head i'm the work around the clock yeah and go fix the processes and make it so much better type person right that's that's that's me and all that's everything that's my life story right busting your ass to find the easiest way possible to both so like i will i will build a custom hydraulic cart that will lift my plates up to the height of my my squat so that i can minimize they roll it over next to it and then minimize the effort of it going on and off yeah to be able to lift the most amount of weight as possible yeah so so that i can save the energy from here from lifting those up and the fatigue of my back being in bad position so i can nearly kill myself over here yes right i [Laughter] my wife anybody will say i'm a workaholic yeah and the the first thing that i would do when it would be uh doing a company a company turnaround they'd hire me come in and i would be taking over for someone that wasn't successful but it was usually hardly ever for lack of want or trying so a lot of times they knew they were unsuccessful and they were running around working six seven days a week 12 hour days doing so much and be like well you need to do this and they train me on like all the reports and this and all the things and like good luck good luck i couldn't do it and the first thing i would do is nothing i would do nothing because then i would find what actually keeps coming back the things that i need to do and how much of it was filling the space because so much of human nature when you're failing is to make yourself feel like you're accomplishing things this is when things go on your list on your checklist and you start like rolling up so are you running around just getting shit done yeah yeah being busy right and so yeah so but at the same time like find somewhere in my career something i've done where i haven't outworked everybody just so much on distilling things down to what's important yeah and you've got to make time to sit back and assess and think and be introspective you have to make time for this because if not you're going to waste so much time sitting there walking sideways when all you got to do is move just one step in front of the other each day just one that's all i say because it's gonna add up but you could spend six months knocking shit out doing your routine busting your ass and not take that one step so you've got to distill stuff down you've got to really understand like what's important to you in life and where you're going and when you're looking at anything in your life the first thing that you need to do is figure out do i need to do it and just quit doing it just quit doing things in your life and you'll see that a lot of stuff that you think has to be done doesn't have to be done you'd be surprised and then from there this is the tech okay then of that what can i what can i automate what can i not have to do in a repeated fashion and then the last one yeah wherever possible if it's not something that i'm adding tremendous value to like my uniqueness people like oh you must like do the auto work on your vehicles because you love working like fuck that i don't they're like what that doesn't make any sense you and i'm like no i love creating things yeah but i don't want to do that stuff so you could use delegating if you're a manager position but it's outsourcing whatev what uh whatever it is but there are also so many things this and this this ties back to your point uh around just doing it there's a point to like experiencing all levels to really understand things you need to spend time at the same time doing all those things because there could be good huge massive gaps in there that you're not aware of that are key for you or key to be having done different or so on so um like in my company days i was one of the few executives that came in that could do anything on the floor from code to machine run a lathe a mill weld do all step into engineering like and and that added tremendous value to me to having had spent time being a doer and not enough people want to be you've got to just go do shit yeah you need to spend time in your life chopping wood yeah get a lot of shit doesn't matter you gotta have experience trying and doing and doing all these things that you would never like my skill set is massive because i want to know like you need to have those touch points my job my title is chief visionary but i've spent time doing everything it's not about just like creating this amazing strategy or vision and i'm just going to be there and this person that directs and like like you can't be effective you cannot connect the dots unless you've been in the moment with everything yeah low-level stuff sometimes it's doing stupid shit that you're not uniquely qualified to do that anybody could do but you did it anyway just the training environment people hit me up at a school or wherever like hey how do i get into i want to grow my grow my brand online i want to do this like where do i where do i start i'm like go get a job at planet fitness or 24 hour fitness they're like but i wanna you know where how do i get you know recognize them write articles and be an online coach i'm like you need to go spend a few years one-on-one training people yeah to learn like the interaction how people there's base levels you have to do you've got to go work your way up from the ground yeah i truly believe it well i think that's the hard work piece that i'm speaking to that i like it when people have been humbled by the hardness of life like how difficult it is to do stuff and it does to me i went and got my mba i went to mit i don't need to do that stuff i'm above that yeah yeah that that's once you've been humble by doing those things i feel like you can truly explore the the optimization that you're talking to finding the ways where you're uniquely capable to add value to the world and then and then again work your ass off to be the best in the world at that thing yes uh so it's always then don't waste your time on don't shit that's not a line yeah that's the only so that's i guess there's a lot of context i put around that um but yeah that was like a long answer to uh a long beautiful answer to a unanswerable question do you have advice outside of all this discussion to young people today about career about life since you've done so many things you've overcome a lot of things i think high school college student thinking about what to do in their life do you have advice for those guys and girls yeah yeah first is you don't have it figured out so don't worry just jump in yeah um we talked uh you know a lot about understanding your values and aligning all that stuff but you got to have a base level of start exploring and learning and uh just spending the time doing like pick something let me elaborate a little bit no you know what a lot of people struggle with that aspect now because the choice there's so much choice it's difficult to pick something but i think it does boil down to you should pick something and don't worry about it and then but within that you can start discovering the things that are there for you like i i talked about i made this huge shift i threw away a whole life but i don't regret anything about that i wouldn't be where i was if i didn't walk through and learn those things and in fact in the course of that i learned just how much that inspiring people and helping them realize the potential far beyond what they thought was capable and guess what that was leadership 101 in managing people base level floor level right and i got a lot out it was perfectly aligned with what and that's what i realized it didn't matter um what industry i was in or any of those other things but i was able you can see so many things there's so many paths that you can go down to help you realize what those things are and you're going to be able to find a lot of those nuggets and develop those do you think that i could have just gone to school and got out and started a globally recognized brand within a few years without having been schooled in business while getting paid for it by others for years and in fact that entire time i knew that that's what i wanted to do but i didn't go out on it i mentored some of my friends along the same path to go no they're like i'm ready i'm ready to go do this and i'm like no now you need to go get a job you yeah you know engineering management design all that stuff go get a job as a as a manager now like oh that's a step down i can't do that i'm like go try it a couple years ago oh my god that was such a good move i didn't know what i didn't know and now they're an executive for freaking a fortune 500 company and the same thing like i sat there knowing that i was getting a free education don't stress yourself out as my that's my advice don't stress yourself out that you've got to have this perfect thing because this process of understanding your values and the interest but that takes time you can get a job where you're getting paid to learn exactly that's a good deal before you launch on your own you mentioned um going back to darkness i'm russian so like going back to darkness you suffered from depression you considered suicide do you ponder your own death these days do you think about your mortality are you afraid of death i definitely think about mortality and am i afraid of my own death it depends on the moment if i'm in the middle of a project i definitely want to finish that project man but i don't fear it so much i fear leaving my kids or my wife um and not being able to be there for them that bothers me outside of that i know that i put everything into what i at the life that i've lived like he said there's always more but like i've lived hard i've loved hard yeah i've every moment in my life i've made connections and impacted people around me for the better and this tracks back which is crazy when we're doing the documentary and they're interviewing people through my whole life and the consistency of the themes of anyone like anything for duffin like just sure i'll fly in from boston all the like these people like all the like it was crazy like everybody had a story about me giving like just over and over and i didn't even really it's just the way you were but i've been all in i don't have like i have a lot more i want to do but i don't have things that regret have not done in like i don't fear it i don't fear it yeah it's like the i don't know if you know the bukowski poem go all the way otherwise don't even try uh it seems like you embody that poem and you've accomplished some incredible things and serve as an inspiration to a huge number of people chris you're an amazing human being i'm really honored that you would spend your valuable time with me thank you so much for talking with me today it was incredible i can't wait to check out all the cool stuff you've engineered with kabuki strength so i'm uh obviously i love the i love strength i love strength training i love the idea of strength i love the um the equipment and the engineering approach you take the strength you're an incredible human both on the things you've accomplished in terms of your own strength feats and uh the kind of science and engineering you bring to the field uh that many others could use so thank you so much for talking today thanks for having me on that was that's quite the final thank you thanks for listening to this conversation with chris duffin and thank you to headspace magic spoon sun basket and ladder check them out in the description to support this podcast and now let me leave you with some words from arnold schwarzenegger strength does not come from winning your struggles develop your strengths when you go through hardship and decide not to surrender that is strength thank you for listening and hope to see you next time you