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 Eagle and the Dragon. Quick mention of our sponsors, Headspace,

Magic Spoon, Sunbasket, and Ladder. Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

As a side note, let me say that I was always a fan of strength,

both powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting, both as a fan and practitioner.

Mostly, I'm a fan of people who are willing to put in years of hard work towards finding out what

the limits of their body is, and then smashing past those limits. People like Chris Duffin,

or on the Olympic weightlifting side, people like Dmitri 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 grand goals. It was like a five year scope that I chased this. When you think about

training, it took more than five years, obviously. By that point, I'd been training for over 25 years.

It makes me proud. There were three distinct things that I wanted to accomplish out of this.

It was really thought out. This was my exit from being a competitive lifter. Basically saying,

hey, I'm going to be an Instagram lifter, an exhibition lifter, or whatever. I've done this

for 16 years. That's number one in the world for eight years straight, all time world records.

I'm not going to do that anymore. What I want to do is just something deep down to me

that is really important. There's three things that we're driving this. This is a five year

journey that I went through to do this. I really wanted to showcase that you could do something

that is well beyond the scope of what people think is humanly possible.

So just this inspiration thing, this grand over the top. If you set your mind to a single minded

goal, you can go so much further. I didn't even say what the goal was up front because it was so

far out there I would have been laughed at. I think big goals should be kept pretty damn close

to start with for that reason too. Then the second piece was to walk the walk, to show

the principles of what I believed in around human movement, the ability to manage and control the

spinal mechanics and the output that can have on the body. 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 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 going to 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 didn'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 weighed afterwards, it was a couple little bit over. And I did it for almost

three reps. And that still stands as Guinness World Record, 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 Thor Bjornsson from Game of Thrones, he's done a thousand for a double as

well. So then the next four years, and I did a bunch of feats of strength on the way, but it was

all about building that axial loading capacity, the strength that because now I'm moving the weight

from my hands up to my shoulders. And so to do it for reps is like so much harder than a single,

like five to 10 seconds versus 30 plus seconds to be able to buffer and manage all that with that

kind of load is just crazy. So 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'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 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 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 what I put into being able to accomplish that because it's over the top, which means the

other stuff had to shift and I had to learn. There's so many things that came into place to

pull that off. And so yeah, last March, two days before the world shut down, I did it. It was supposed

to be at the largest equipment exhibition in the world down in 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 it was kind of surreal for timing

wise, right? And so if I hadn't done it, it wouldn't never got done. Because I'd pushed to the limit.

I couldn't come back and do it. It was at the total limitation of my capabilities. So I'm pretty

proud of it. And the last piece was 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, which we probably

will get into. So it was threefold. So that inspiration piece, inspiration, motivation,

walk in the walk and showing like, just these methodologies that a guy that had to learn to

walk again can do something like this with no back pain. There is a way. And the third one is

to provide awareness and recognition around a lot of key charities. 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 1000 pounds of 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 lift itself, other than a few seconds, is really easy and not

challenging. People always ask me, what was it like? How beat up were you after that and the

deadlift? And the simple fact is, it was easy. The work to get there was horrendous. So even

the psychology of the day, there was not a fear. There was not a nervousness. There was not a doubt

in your mind. There was certainly doubts on that day from some training history. So there was some

major breaks to my confidence in the couple months leading up where I had issues with passing out

under the bar. So completely losing consciousness. And this was on weight less than 1000 pounds even.

So that was all this build up in me going, what if? What if I think I have this resolved?

But what if I get up there and I can't even do a rep? How embarrassing will this be that I've

been talking about this and planning for this for so long? But outside of that, I knew I could do it.

In fact, I wanted to do even more even up to the second rep. Training is about working into a

fatigue state. So you're building an amount of fatigue in your system. And then when you let off

of it, that's when you get a compensation. And that's how you stair 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 meat because then you give yourself that window to be able to recover and supercompensate

and be able to do a little bit more. So like that first rep when I did it, strengthwise,

I went, I could do this for five reps. It went through my head. I'm like, I mean, it was easy

and it was fast. And it felt like amazing. And I'm like, I'm going to crush this. And then set

rep to the realization kicked in is like, Oh, this is for reps with 1000 pounds on your back.

And you're fatiguing just like, and then the third one was every last thing I could muster to just

finish. I mean, I just barely got it done because it's the strength is like there, but like that

capacity to be able to manage all those resources for that amount of time. Because not just leg

strength when we're talking about this stuff. So what does it take to go from the, from, I don't

know what, no, like from 500 to 1000. That feels like a journey that's like exponential. It's

it gets exponentially harder. It does. In the early 2000s, like I said, I started lifting 1988.

But my first meet in the early 2000s, my, my max deadlift was 523 and my first squat was 550.

So breath the heck of a journey. That is a journey for people that are like to lift,

what should they understand about the difference between doing 500 and 1000

in terms of the actual lift that you were experiencing that day in terms of the mechanics,

in terms of all the things you have to be like the neurological adaptation you mentioned,

the breathing, the core strength, 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 minutest 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 thoracolumbar musculature obliques, causing the co contraction at the pelvic floor,

all this stuff and how you cue that because you can't think about all this stuff. You need to

break it down and distill 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 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, 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 leak where it's going to be pushed out the front or the rear if you're either inflection

or extension. All right. And then that causes this co contraction and all this pressure of

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 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's

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 an all of that needs to be working.

And now the next important thing is the foot. So it's actually this connection to the ground

and how we're actually using the foot and ankle complex to grab and grip this connection to the

ground and elicit an effect. 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.

So this allows us to use this massive foot, 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 just above the lumbar spine. So kind of

right opposite where your sternum is, and you'll see people kind of roll over sometimes like in

an Olympic squad or something like that where they lose position. And that's often because

they're close grip because you can 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 in my conversation earlier.

Torso stability. Okay, so there's all these like modules of 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 onto this one simple

cue that you mentioned? Or do you can you like literally study each particular module in yourself

and see how it affects the lift? 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. 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 cue or a set of cues doesn't really matter till 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 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

that and then go there again next. So this is what we do what we teach in our educational

platform. So we are the only I believe everybody wants to do a lot of these like assessments,

you know, on a bench on a table body. And it's like, no, let's let's go squat, let's go deadlift.

If you do strongman 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. And North America,

I do mean hockey too. But these principles like, you know, if if the Dodgers won't bring us in,

they're not learning how to powerlift, you know, we're gonna, obviously we'll probably be do,

we do a little bit more shoulder focus than hip focus with their athletes or their coaches.

We're usually working with coaches, not the athletes. And so you help them and then the

same thing on yourself to understand the role that these different muscle groups have on the

holistic. Yeah. So it's all about getting the joints in the appropriate position

so that we can, that we can manage load so that we're not putting undue stress in the joint,

we're getting the proper link tension, we're getting these basic fundamental things with the

body. 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, that's going to affect shoulder

extension, flexion, all these sorts of things. So it could even affect things down on 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 of 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 I'm out and it's snowy or

here in Austin only rainy, well, it probably doesn't rain much, but you're going around a corner,

start slipping, it's like, oh, it's going to send the powers from the wheels that are slipping to

the ones that are gripping and keep me from crashing and dying a fiery death. Well, that's

not how it works. It's the exact same. We've got the tires, which are our foot, the connection

to the ground, right? We've got the power driver, which is, you know, the engine, the transmission

delivering, you know, the power through it. And we've got the stability or 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 velocity devices.

And see like a 10%, boom, jump. And so if you think about that, what about all your training

through the years, where you actually had additional capacity, but you weren't using it because

your traction control was on. 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 tune race car, do they have a traction control button? No, they got

some amazing tires to grip the ground performance tune 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 the line. But first I have to ask,

how did it feel to accomplish the grand goal? Oh my God. Okay, when you just

stand back 1000 pounds for reps, what do you feel like? Anybody can go watch the video online.

12 film, by the way, got me all excited. Oh, well, the movies. So we actually have the final

footage of that, the good footage not posted yet. So it's literally just an Instagram video or a

phone video right now. They're the only one online. Yeah, it's on your YouTube channel,

but it's dramatic. Yes, it is. Yeah, came out just time to the music perfectly too, which is,

I listened to some odd music, which there's some reason behind that. But

I liked it though. It was great. You're saying there's full length footage.

There's a documentary that's it's got a little slowed because of COVID because it's also a

backstory of the eagle and the dragon in my book about why I do kind of the things that I've done

in my life. Or that's what I'm assuming the director is working on. I don't really have

the control of the movie, right? But okay, the video is okay. How did it feel? How did 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. And I did it. I'm getting a little emotional.

I did exactly what I said I was going to fucking do. And it was overpowering. I mean,

I was just crying uncontrollably just with a mixture of I don't know what the mixture of

emotions is hard to explain. Because it was the completion of something. It was a new phase of

middle eight. 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 one little glimmer of excellence of the human spirit.

There's always more to understand this. This is a basic fundamental. You can always do better.

There is no such thing as perfection. There is always more. So anytime you reach something,

any amazing workout or accomplishment in life, could you have put more into it? Could you?

Yes. But here's the thing. 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 going to do this thing that is like I couldn't even say that

I was going to do it years before. I'm going to do it. And then I'm done. I didn't leave from an

injury. I left on, I did exactly what I said. I went to a level that 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? You taper out, you fail,

you hurt, you lose. You roll into retirement. You accomplish something truly great and you

walked away in your own terms. Is there a sadness completing something like that? Because it's

in one perspective, the greatest thing you'll ever do. And 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. The greatest physical strength I'll ever do. The

greatest physical strength. Yes. But that was an expression of some of my values and the way that

I want to live. It was a way of expressing it. So understanding that is hugely fundamental.

Because we do see so many athletes get to the end of a career and then they fall into

a depressive state and struggle with drugs, alcohol, depression, and so on. Because they

lost how they identified themselves and trying to figure out where to turn what to do. But a big

central component of their identity is lost. So I knew that this was one way to express that and my

grand goals have shifted. They're shifted to other outlets that allow me to express that. Like my

companies, Kabuki Strength, I'm going to change the face of fitness as well as all the way through

with its integration with clinical medicine and telemedicine. And I got another five years before

even people see what I'm working on five years in right now because I had to invent equipment.

I have to develop methodologies that we're 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 to the environment tied to the clinical practice assessment tied to 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 do it, but having

being in this place that the rest of the world kind of fell away from me in those final faces to

have something so intense, to have a team around me so focused on supporting. And 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. I was in such a mental fog. It took me a while to climb out of that, but that space,

that level of intensity and drive and living and being in that space, I do miss that. But I also,

I can't continue that. I couldn't continue. Like, there's a point of like, you push it so hard.

The level to try to go from there is not acceptable for what you, the impacts that

will have on your life or how you want to live. And it was taking away those final, like,

I had to do extreme things and live in an extreme way to get there.

You're just a genius in this whole space of strength and health and body, almost like biology,

that this strength feat is just one representation of that. But this particular strength feat

required that kind of singular focus, which I think, I don't know, there's something beautiful

about that singular focus that is often only truly perfect in 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 it's not just that thing. So that's the thing. It's like, oh, that must be,

when we say singular to focus, it's not like, here's it, because it covers a vast array of stuff.

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

recovery. And like, I mean, I'm tapping all sorts of stuff in so many platforms, from nutrition

to drugs to, again, like, you know, various Chinese medicine, you know, as far as, you know.

But also the humans in your life just love and positivity and just inspiration, all those kinds

of aspects. I mean, you probably would have done much more if you went outside North America and

talked to some Russians, just between you and I. Possibly. They give you some, I don't know,

those, there's some incredible strength athletes in Eastern Europe. Absolutely. I've got the best

one coming in September to get fixed. So what do you mean by fixed? So I'm not sure what his

particular issues are, but he has held the all time world record repeatedly for a long time,

and he hasn't competed for some time, and he just reached out saying he would like to come and have

me take a look and see if I can get him fixed because he needs to return. Okay. So it's more

injury centric versus like form and fundamental centric 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, but yeah, the Eastern,

the Eastern Bloc continued to be a dominant force in regards to athletics and strength

athletics without a doubt. Some of my big rivals in my competitive days were, that's who it was.

Rivalry brings out the best in us. Can you tell me the story of your childhood?

It's definitely outside the scope of the norm. Well, today, maybe not 150 or 200 years ago,

but my parents, highly intelligent people coming out of the Bay Area,

my mom was going to school to be a chemical engineer. She was a top student athlete,

graduating out of her school. My father was a member of Mensa. My stepfather was just a genius,

but not able to really function in society. But my mom was, she had some demons and some other

stuff and just, she just said one day, she's like, I just don't want to be part of society. She still

isn't, lives out in the desert, but has her minds, but she wanted to figure out a way to make a life

outside of that. And so that's where we ended up is up in the mountains in Northern California.

And a lot of that was, you know, them trying to get into successfully growing marijuana, which

back in that, you know, wasn't legal back then, highly illegal. And in fact, those areas were,

some of the areas where it 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, just the understanding

of the stuff that I was talking about dealing with serial killers, human trafficking, police

corruption, 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, yeah. I'm a

terrible salesperson, like I told you. But a good, it's a good title. I don't know if you came up with

it, but I did. Yeah. So yeah, we'll talk about that anyway. We're living by a stream, you know,

off a 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 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? You want to take a bath. It's

filling up the jug in the stream and setting it out on the rocks during the sun. So you 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 and just a standard sleeping bag

that we get from the Salvation Army, not the not the blow zero. So I'm, I'm not sleeping well.

There's living in homes that were maybe condemned. There's no, no doors even on them. No electricity

or running water or one or the other 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 accidents 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. It did have electricity. It didn't have a kitchen. You know, the windows would crank

clothes and open, but they wouldn't close all the way. So the trim them in with a plastic to be able

to try to protect from the elements. That was my environment, like learning how to forge for

mushrooms. I mean, there were 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. And obviously not all that's in the book.

But they got us back, 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 the mining because Pat's broken arm chainsaw made a little tough.

If you remember just the sequence of moments,

do you, 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 or 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. Pat plugged for my shoe company, Barefoot,

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,

the other stuff associated with it, right? And so the connection that I have with my sisters

is, is, is huge. That goes a bit further to, because I am kind of like a little bit of a

father figure because I was at home raising them and then later I took custody of them

while I was going to school because the environment at home deteriorated further.

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,

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 type. So yeah, that's when I took

in and I was going to college, put myself through college and I started taking custody of my

sisters and raising them. So anyway, we're still like very, very tight family. It took,

there was a few years later in life, like that the connection with my mother was

kind of broken. I didn't speak to her for years because of her basically abandoning

my sisters and me having to come in, but we've worked through that as best we can.

So you anger on your part?

It wasn't, there might have been some anger.

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 the DA involved and got all the, she's the one that I've learned a lot from her.

Did you inherit some of the demons?

Almost certainly. And it's something I've continued like in my father's side has been

really tough on that because some of it is just based genetic as well. So my stepfather made,

I think six or seven attempts on his life during his lifetime, one of those in front of me,

his mother blew her head off with a shotgun. Her brother jumped out a window in LA, 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 children. You spoke about going through depression yourself.

Yeah. Can you 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 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 one of those, right? That's where

everybody ended and I wasn't going to 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 there's 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, 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.

And that's just, that's the reality of it. And I'm learning to come and manage those

as best I can, learning to meditate into those things and really feel what the driver is so I

can get to those, those root understanding 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 you saved yourself. That's quite powerful to save yourself

by 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

probably not a sustainable strategy either, right? So I recognize these things. I don't know. And

perhaps it is sustainable. Perhaps, 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.

Yeah, that is purpose, though. That is purpose. 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 purpose is, is right here, figuring

out what this is. And then how to do that. But at the same time, you can't let that run dry. So

you have to make sure that you're filling that cup. 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.

What do the eagle and the dragon symbolize? There are pretty big symbols for me, in fact,

that covers my entire body as a tattoo. So the first one I had done at around 19 years old,

man. So this is, or started at 19. It's an eagle that covers my entire front, you know,

my stomach, rib cage, and, 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 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,

obviously, I hadn't necessarily accomplished a whole lot at that time. I mean, I was valedictorian

for high school, small high school. Does that even count? I was a state level wrestler.

This was my belief. And you sense that there was a potential in you and the only thing they

could stop you from realizing that potential was yourself. That's right. That's a heck of a tattoo

to get, by the way, at 19, but. Yeah. About 40 hours went into that thing.

It shows you got some guts. And then the next tattoo. So I only have two. I had done in 2015,

2016, when I, so at this point in my life. So I had done that. I had flown to whatever heights.

Right. So I had, I had proven to myself and maybe done what I thought I needed to do to

show the world that this poor kid from the sticks, this kid growing up in the mountains with nothing

could achieve the American dream. I was a corporate executive sought after that I'd come in,

I'd fix companies, I'd turn around and prep them for sale. I'd take a company and grow it from a

regional to a national to a global presence. I did this in the automotive manufacturing,

aerospace manufacturing, high tech, heavy industry. And I had a house with a white picket fence.

I was a successful athlete with all time world records. I owned a gym on the side where I coached

people and I had a comfortable marriage that everything was hunky dory with no arguments at

home. And I walked away from all of it. I left everything behind except for my kids.

I wanted to chase what I was meant to do and chase what I was capable of doing.

And 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 question, people question 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 kids. And I started my businesses to help people live a better quality of life,

to get them out of pain, to help them live better through strength, to realize that stress,

demand, those things that they don't have to be the thing that, if you look back,

made you had the bad back, made you have the bad days, but they do the opposite. They get you

out of pain. And then I started working on my book to hit on those other things, the mental,

the emotional, maybe even spiritual. I don't touch on that one too much in there, but it's all the

same. That things that happen around you 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 long winded answer

in your question here, the dragon, the dragon, the dragon is an Auroboros. And so it is, it circles

my entire upper body, my shoulders, my back, my chest, everything is right here. There's this big

dragon head and its tail is right there in its mouth that's eating itself.

And it may sound a bit graphic or whatever, but it is, it's the eating of the old becoming

the new. It is the purposeful reinvention of oneself. It is the deciding,

not realizing just your potential, but deciding specifically who you want to be in this fucking

world and becoming that person. Can you comment on the value and the power of

putting a flame to your old life, your old self, just destroying all of it

as you walk into the new life? 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. You got to really, but I can be an overconfident individual at times. And I live through

extremes. I think it's a great way of actually finding your real values and how you want to live,

honestly, to chase the having absolutely perfect squat technique, but chase putting every freaking

thing that you've got in it, which most people would say, 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 the best. There was some temperament

in that though, because I was slow to make the shift for a long time, because I'd been thinking

about doing it, but I was thinking about doing it in a healthcare perspective. I'm going to go back

to school to be a surgeon or a physical therapist or Cairo, because that's where all my research and

stuff was in this human movement and rehab and recovery. The mentors that I've been developing

were the best in the world in these things, in these disciplines. Those were my friends.

But I wasn't able to compromise my family's certain quality of life. I wanted to keep this.

So it was slow and hard for me to make that transition, but I didn't do it until

I had a platform built enough that those first few years, I did have an income. I was able to

make enough from the business until it grew so fast that I needed so much more needed to come in.

The living in the apartment piece and doing all that, there was actually a couple years

into that process, maybe like two years. I'm with you on that. So I'm actually going to that very

process now. I put everything, I quit everything, gave away everything and starting a new one.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, this podcast somehow became quite popular. So it's getting

in the way of my burning everything to the ground. But in that, it's a source of joy.

But the main thing I'm after is the similar project as you is building a business.

This sense of joy. So this, this is the point I want to drive home right now, right now.

Because when I say burnt, I learned that 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

You're always welcome.

We've already done a few. So we'll, we'll bounce 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's 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 oh, you're supposed to motivate me. If you need me to motivate you,

this is the wrong damn approach for you. This is going to be hard. This is going to 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 freaking walk away. This is not some way to make some money and be known.

I mean, this includes both like simple day to day joy and also deep meaning,

the whole thing. And then that allows you to overcome all the pain along the way.

But I got to say, I mean, it's a difficult thing because you run a business.

This podcast and a lot of things I do research wise is full of joy, but it's simple.

Running a business is hard. So it's something that I'm very hesitant about

in that almost push back a little bit. I think if I do get the guts to start the business,

it will not be because I'm not choosing a more joyful life because I'm already truly happy.

The reason I'll choose is because I just can't help it. I've always had this dream

and I know it's going to lead to suffering and I know it's going to be a life that has less

happiness 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 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. It's so weird. 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 going to learn

so much and it's going to make you so much better. And it's the path that you should take when you

have this stuff rolling around in there. And I don't, it could just be a hard conversation with

your partner or your boss. It could be taking on a project that, you know, the, you know, the,

your bosses thrown out to the team and you're like, I'm going to hide in the back. I don't want that

one. And it's like, maybe, maybe you do. Maybe it's going back to school. Maybe it's making that

career move that you always wanted, but you're just a, 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 way to arrive at

the richest kind of happiness. Like the, the, the greatest fulfillment. That's the funny thing about

just the, but just make sure you're filling the cup as you're going through it. So that's,

that's the part to figure out, right? Sure. Well, life is short anyway. Eventually,

eventually the cup will be empty. So 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, powerlifting, 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 of these? Oh, and also strongman. Everyone of those as far as the athletic disciplines

are different qualities. So we want to think about things as terms of quality. So there's strength,

there's power, there's endurance, there's the ability to be coordinated and athletic. There's

all these things and they're different, they're different qualities. So your training as it relates

to that is how you cycle in the development of those qualities. What we want to think about is

there's a lot of different frames of thought, some very classical, maybe not classical Russian

approach, because there's a lot of different approach from the Eastern block. But one of the

ones is developing all the qualities 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 while maintaining

other qualities and then shifting that around. So it's just going to be a little different based

on what the output is and 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 strength, application of force.

So Olympic lifting would actually be a better name for powerlifting,

because that is more explosive 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 strongman 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. And 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 frame individuals. If you're not well over six foot

and a large person, you're probably not going to perform well. Very few people at sub six foot

have ever done well at strongman just because it's, it's leverage based, right? Olympic lifting.

We see consistently in Europe, the, the history tells us a high level of hip

and back issues because of the depth that that hip socket has to go in to be able to

complete that lift. 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 cross head to that, that's more like strongman, but for a wider variety of

bodies, I suppose. Yep. And definitely more metabolic conditioning focus than the, than

the strength aspect of it. 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

where strength, we can continue to add and add and 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 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. But that way we're not hitting conditioning hard

all the time, which is a common misstep that people make is going, well, I need conditioning. So

they just hammer that at a base level over the top instead of cycling that.

If we talk about powerlifting in terms of regimen,

in terms of exercise, 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 wanting. The more work

that we can fit into a given time, the more progress we're going to make. But that doesn't

mean doing the max amount of work possible at any given time. So we know that we're always to,

to accomplish more, we're always going to have more. And there's a certain seemingly 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, decade, so on. So when people, this is a big

miss, people got they look at a Chico program from Russia or so on, and they go, I'm going to follow

this. 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,

is it relates to injuries, because injuries are going to be a big driver over time of what

holds you back. So when we talk consistency, training hard for three years, five years,

it's going to be really good. But what we find is a lot of people train really hard for nine months,

have to slow back for a month, get back into it, then miss another week, because and so on,

they're always like this little nagging, that little nagging. And so it's pretty clear in the

research, we want to, 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, the, as we do this, the,

the acute loading, if it spikes more than 10, maybe 15% from what the chronic loading has been,

that accounts for 80% of injuries out there. So it's not actually the movement quality or this

misstep or the other. It usually happens about four or five, six weeks later. It's like, oh,

this nagging, and then it gets worse. And then now you got to, you got to do some rehab, your

training sessions aren't as good and so on. So now we're starting to look at this. Okay. It's like,

I want to do the, I want to do the least amount of work where I can still progress. I want to be

able to have spikes in my weekly demand that don't go above 10 to 15% of what I've been averaging

for the last month. But every time I do a spike, my, my average goes up, right? Boom, boom, boom.

And then that becomes very particular also when you take, when you do take plan time off. So a lot

of people, uh, training session, maybe they're doing a five week block with a, a, a D load week,

or you go on vacation for a week, or any of those things that were a downward, what does that do

to your average and chronic loading? 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, oh, his 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 talking about earlier. So

now it's, let's talk about my deadlift, my 1000 pound deadlift. We'll talk about the training

cycles for both the 1000, 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. And 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 math, there is math behind this. And so instead of just like,

oh, let's start deadlifting twice a week. No. So we start and we take the one session that we've

got and we split it part of it, 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, um, we start adding some volume, but I'm doing it

at a off a block so that the actual load is accumulative load is less because I have less

range of motion. Okay. And then we start building that closer to the ground, closer to the ground

and so on. And now we start getting to where I'm almost doing two sessions, full sessions a week.

And then we start adding a little bit of load. And so at my level, this isn't talking about

adding another set or another day a week. We're talking like in my squat, it might be one rep

instead of doing three sets of three at one week, I do two doubles or two triples, then two doubles

to give me one more rep. That's it. And so we're doing that from one week to the next. And that's

a cycle training cycle. It might be five, six weeks and then so on. And the next one and slowly

bringing that average load up. 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 957. 963. And this was pretty

aggressive. Working up to where my average loading the final that the final was 985 pounds,

average load for eight to nine reps. And that's why 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, they'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.

So what's axial? So like, is deadlift? Are they both?

They're both. Yep. So a horizontal front to back would be like a row or a press.

Why is the axial hardest to recover? Because it's the entire body, the entire body, just anything

that is that taxes the spinal mechanics, I don't, I could tell you my beliefs. It studied, it is.

Okay. We can just keep the discussion on that the short like that. 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 your, your, and this is proven in science,

with your forward jumping ability. They're both working similar muscles, the glute extension,

but they're working it in those different platforms. 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 is still not going to do as good as somebody that's

done nonspecific 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

qualities. 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 back squat? Like in terms of 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 position 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 upriding 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 how much the core comes in, how hard it is to maintain that sternum to diaphragm

relationship that we talked about. All this stuff starts changing. So the bar stays in the same

place. Bar's still behind you, but the load moves around. So, but we're actually manipulating the

spine around the load. It's incredible. We can tailor it to an athlete, which is great when

you got a seven foot plus tall baseball player or basketball player. That's why we work with all

these teams. Anyway, so it's like you're taking something and getting closer and closer to it.

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 the 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 got some axial loading component 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 always be kind of shifting a little bit. So three to four month

blocks in general for an average, you know, just a gen pop fitness is pretty good where you're going

to spend more time maybe in a higher rep range or lower rep range, a little bit more work on

endurance capacity or 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, yeah, do we add a little more? Again, it doesn't have to be major and it

shouldn't be major. You don't want these big jumps. You don't go, oh my God, let's move. Let's jump

into squatting every day. You've got to build the capacity to do that. It's simple. What role would

you say strength has in sports that combines skill and strength? So for me personally, maybe

I'll just ask it selfishly, which is grappling, wrestling, MMA. Yeah. How about I start with

baseball? Please. No, I would. Okay. The sport. Okay. Like baseball and golf are two of my favorite

sports. 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 we go. We're going to get this argument. Well, I've got a perfect example

because this is why I sell so many transformer bars into the Major League Baseball. So they get

these people that come in, these athletes that have been baseball their whole life. It is part

of the culture. And so they're great athletes. They've got all the skill. The only thing they

have to do is develop a little bit more resilience so that they don't have the injury. They can push

their training a little bit more that they can add a little bit more force output and be able to

recover from it. So the only thing they've got to do is add some training, but there's no training

culture there. So they don't have any experience, which is why they love the transformer bar 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 only real

forward path. So that's the basic simple answer to that. So one of the benefits there being like

injury prevention, actually. Injury prevention, resilience. Because especially fighting sports,

you're going to be challenged and thrown and other things happen to you. And the more resilient you

can make your structures, the better you're going to be. Even a cyclist, mountain biking,

why would they need it? Why would they need to do upper body training? Take a crash, your shoulders

gone. You're done. Your career is over unless you've done a little training. Right? So there's

value in all this stuff. But the resilience is like, that's huge. And then we can overlay strength.

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 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 that have 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're

saying the skills should be developed first and the strength applied on top of that.

Maybe you can educate me, but I actually quit lifting and powerlifting for a long time

after I started judo, jiu jitsu, grappling, all this sort of combat sports. Because I found

that it was preventing me from relaxing my body enough to load in the skill.

So this isn't a problem with the training. This is a problem with you. So this is actually

really, really important. The first product I ever released was a loadable mace, a swinging mace.

And because every powerlifter in body, well, not every, but most serious powerlifters and body

builders 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 the joint positions that we were talking about earlier and having those and the

muscles and 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 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 if I grab a kettlebell and it's the same movement as a kettlebell halo,

it is the same movement as a kettlebell halo. 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 an 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 power

lifting. Base movements are what I want to load and be able to assess on. But this affects all

sports, all activities, and strength doesn't have to be that. I mean, I, I'm, I'm freaking a

thousand pound squatter and deadlifter. If you, 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. What? No, I did not see those videos. Okay. That's, it's hard to believe. Wow, okay.

Well, actually, I do. I just did one recently, a quad fallback with my, with my mace loaded way

out to the end, torsioning on both end of the other. And I do a lot of, I do a lot of weird stuff.

That's awesome. Okay. Squatting doesn't make your hips tight. Squatting like shit makes your hips

tight. And so, but there is no perfect world where always our training program isn't quite

perfect. Our movements 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 going to get a little something else going on, fix it,

but go understand the deeper root reason of why. So I'm, I believe I'm 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.

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 stronger.

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. It's hard not to use the little

advantages you have because the jujitsu is a big hit 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 it's hard not to use that strength to then

resist the slow, the ultimate destruction by like 120 pound.

And that's why I recommend developing the skill quality first. But it doesn't mean that you can't.

I can't. That's right.

You can still do it. So that don't take it as a like, oh, I can't go that direction.

That's fine. But understand those things. And then also understand the jujitsu is

additional load on the body. So you have to, you can't just add it on top.

Yeah.

You've got to taper back the other, you're going to have to make a, I'm sorry, you may not want

to hear it, but you're not going to be able to do as much and add that here. Yeah.

It's a compromise because your total volume still has to be there. And there's not,

unfortunately, not really a way to measure what the jujitsu volume is with this. So you've got to

take a look at that. And that's where like measuring like heart rate variability or other

stuff can be useful. So you can see what is happening from me from a sympathetic versus

parasympathetic nervous system standpoint.

Yeah. Making sure your body recovers efficiently 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 for the perfect

strength training gym?

Where I called it the perfect.

In a video somewhere I watched.

Oh man. I mean, that's where my testing grounds for developing all this stuff was through the

years. And so this is like I said, I started developing relationships with the best developmental

kinesiologist in the US. The best arguably the best or most well known physical therapist in

the world. 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 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 kawaki strength didn't exist. But, 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 person's individual needs, right? Now, how do we integrate

that with assessment and clinical care assessment and, 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. So like, that makes no sense. Well, that's because the only reason is to have

a testing environment for the tools and methodology and having enough people to have

the culture and fit and to be able to be part of the experiment.

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 they need to put in time in the treadmill.

I don't like that. I don't have any judgment, honestly. The best gyms I've been in

are kind of dirty. You walk in and you know that work is to be done. There's not another reason

to do there. It is the, the environment is tight. There's a big piece of that. I know it's

studied sociologically, I believe. I just, I just pictured that word too. But, 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 if people are complaining for years, we've shrunk it back

down whenever 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 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 fought and won. And we could get into a whole nother space. So there's

to be a whole nother topic, but that existing energy of a space. I mean, 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, it's there. It's a real thing, I think. You walk in and you can feel it.

And you feel it. 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 go down a, go down a path there. There's something really powerful there.

You've also mentioned a bunch of cool equipment that you've developed as part of Kabuki Strength.

Probably a little bit of that has to do with your engineering education, but also just

generally with the spirit of the innovator that you are. What are some cool, maybe revolutionary

pieces of equipment that you're particularly proud of or just you've been obsessed with

recently that you're developing? Yeah. 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

at Kabuki Strength, the industry hasn't seen before. There's stuff that's basic foundational,

it'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 Transformer Bar, the only bar in the world, we can manipulate spinal mechanics.

Everything for me from a design concept that we develop is all about creating

products that can rapidly accommodate to the variability of an individual's

leverages, mobility, and training needs. And that's going to also create and distill down the size

and scope of space that we need, which is going to 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 last week, drove to the desert. And by entire gym, I mean

squat rack, full complement of our specialty bars, a horizontal and vertical pulley system,

hand held 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 bar

bell lines, we talked about the Transformer Bar. The other two are built on this thing I

called playground physics. So we have these bars with handles that are off,

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 the handles turned as well.

And both of them suck. They're horrible. Anytime 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 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 an a teeter totter has

a balance point, but it's infinitely perfect. So technically you can never find it. So always

going to be sitting on one side of the other in a playground. And that's what these bars are designed.

So you got instability right here. 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? 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 arched so that the handles are above center of rotation. And then, and then every angle instead

of just being a certain fixed angles, each angle is based on the width, 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 gotten shoulder surgeries,

so on. And so we're showing, they love all our stuff and I'm like, hey, I've got this cool prototype

I want to show you, it's a pressing bar. And they're like, oh, you know, Major League Baseball is a

little hesitant on pressing because of the dangers for the shoulder. And I can't, I haven't been able

to take a bar to my chest. I mean, I really love to, it's been five years since I've been able 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. Oh, 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 staffs like they're all standing around. You

see, like, what's going on? Put two plates on. You can see the, just like, it gets up. How do you

feel? Like, I feel fine. No pain at all. I did this with five teams with five of the happening

repeatedly five times that they and everyone of them worked up the two plates and did reps

varied with zero pain to a three inch range or greater range of motion because what did we do?

We stacked all the joints and we provided stability at the end that we balanced 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 some like that out there created. 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 a one that rolls to develop grip and then different widths that you could

choose from based on whether you're training a teen athlete or a seven foot six NBA player or a

NFL lineman so that we can accommodate for all these differences. And so and then now it becomes

the most functional all around bar around because now you can do carries with it. You can do split

squats with it. You 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 rollouts. You could, should I go on? Yeah, so you can use it as like the main bar.

The best multi purpose bar around. You got a home gym, one bar. Like how do you develop

totally new equipment like this? I scratch it on paper, maybe weld some cut up and weld up a

prototype, but usually I just hand the scratched up paper to my engineering manager and that's

what he says his job is to distill my chicken scratch into something real. And then that team

picks it up. But in the old days starting out, I just walk out and do it. 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

training with a flywheel? No, no, it's a flywheel. Maybe. A flywheel is a spinning object

that creates an inertial mass. Yeah. And then it reverses direction. So whatever you put into it,

there's ones out there. But ours is the first patent pending that's 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 as peak centric load. Gotcha. So there's an accelerating whipping motion.

Yeah, basically. Yeah. I mean, okay, I have trouble imagining exactly. Many of the things

you're describing, I suppose have to be experienced, right? Yes. Because there's a magic to it.

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 U.S. Because they sell them as a be all end all

tool, which they're not. They're crazy for what they do. But it's not the, it's another tool. And

so we have a very high quality unit now that is half the cost of everybody else's because

the innovation of a movable mount point that you, for them, you have to have

two pieces of equipment. We have one. So, and then a few other things, better platform to be able

to do things and that we can do what we call off platform work, which allows us to do movements,

like punches and standups, things like that. And then I've got a handheld weight coming out next

month that we can actually play with. So varying the load with it never leaving your hand by changing

the leverage point. And so what are we, what exercise that we're talking about here?

Anything that would be a dumbbell or a kettlebell movement. So it functions, it does the function

of a kettlebell, a dumbbell 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 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 forces times the distance away, right? Which also then makes

it no force when I've got at the bottom of the front raise, 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 that 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 a front raise 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. So it's got a really nice texture grip that allows you to hold it in

different positions. And then the load offset is just enough that it doesn't overpower the wrist.

And then you got different hand sizes so that you can maximize this relationship and hit

whatever joint that you're applying. So sounds incredible. It's really freaking 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 putting it down, 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, whatever you put into it is what it kicks back. So you have an constant

time under tension because there's no rest points either. So all this stuff is working on

maximizing time under tension, which anyway, it's cool stuff. Anyway, I get excited.

Well, let me ask you about another thing you've already mentioned, but I find this really

interesting, which is barefoot running and your sort of company, Barefoot Athletics,

BEAR. And the tagline is optimizing the human to ground interface. We've talked about this a

little bit with the powerlifting. How do you think about the foot ground interface?

It's interesting that we know that we should train all these parts of our body to be able

to be stronger, be more resilient. But we think that the foot is different, that we need to package

it and somehow that that's the science of making it healthy. Where I challenge people,

think about that. First thing you do in the morning is roll out a bed and put your weight

lifting 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 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, the mind blowing is like every

other area of the body. You need to use it and you need to strengthen it and you need to learn

to control it. That's it. That's all I have to say about the subject. It's that simple,

but somehow we have been sold entire industries like the orthotics industry.

It's completely false. 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 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. 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

go like, oh, you got to be barefoot forever or do this. Like, no, I'm just saying, go spend some

time using it, strengthen it, learn to control it, and it will work better in a shoe. But the whole

running shoe movement with the raised heel, that was the person that suggested that to Nike way

back when they were trying to figure out what to do. The reason and he says it's the worst thing

that he ever did. Because we were coming from an era of people wearing heel shoes, which by the way

came from 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 70s.

They're, they're starting to push this the general mass population and they realized that they were

causing injuries and like, what are we going to do? Well, that's because everybody was in this position

and had a shortened, shortened calf muscle. And it's like, well, to 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 internal and

external rotation of your, of your leg, you don't, and or your foot and you actually have to put a

support in for the arch to be able to passively control those structures. It's just bandaid on

top of bandaid on top of bandaid. Use it, strengthen it. If you want to wear some shoes,

because they look good or fancy, I'm like, I have no problem. I mean, I go out on a wife,

my wife will put on some high heels every now and again. But all I'm saying is use your foot.

My thousand pound squat, my thousand pound deadlift were done barefoot. I'm not trying to

sell you shoes. Go do it with no shoe. That's what I've been promoting. I did that for six years,

and I promoted it. But people ask me like, well, what do I do because my gym requires shoes?

Okay, where do I go? And, and then I go, well, you know, you could pick up these other finger

shoes or whatever. And they go, man, my wife won't have sex with me. 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 if you're 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, do you know what the number one healthcare cost in America is?

What's that? Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, low back pain.

What do you attribute a low back pain to? Well, it's attributed to a lot of things,

but inability to control spinal position, which starts happening from some breathing issues.

It also happens from the foot. So there's a lot of stuff, but everything that I do actually

focus on improving this. Yeah. So that, and it all starts with the foot.

This is one thing, like this doesn't affect breathing, but so it does actually affect

breathing to some actions and spinal stabilization. So the raised heel and toe will make you stride

further because of just how it operates, but that over stride is a result of opening this. So

we open the pelvis and diaphragm. Did we talk about that and the impact that that has for

controlling and spine? Yeah. I think we touched on that. But it's all this stuff plays together.

So the gait affects that. And so the shoe affects the gait 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, from Max Rex every week day or every day over day. And that's what people

did because they 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 going to hurt.

They're going to 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. And 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, I noticed when you walked, when I walked in,

was like, Oh, hey, you're spending some time without the, without shoes on.

Well, what I did, I think it's already now two years ago and 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 we're referring to, especially trail running and so on.

And in the city, when there's glass and all those kinds of things, but it's really important to have

minimal sort of protection on your feet. For me, at least it was to figure out the ways that my form,

basic movement and like the positioning in the foot, the impact of the foot and everything,

you know, the lower leg, the entirety of the torso really, how it's improperly positioned

in terms for the objective of minimizing pain. And the barefoot running really helped fix that

for me, because I figured out that I need to take shorter steps, more frequent, you know,

all those kinds of things. And that really helps you figure that out.

Like, let's be realists about stuff. Like, spend some time using it, strengthen it. And I've got

some great ways to do that and learn how to do that. So, yeah.

What is a good diet for strength development? I've just to give you some context, I've been

eating mostly meat, not for strength, mostly for mental performance. I just enjoy it.

Yes, you need to have a base level of protein building blocks for tissue, right? We need to

have enough fats to be able to have hormones work and key processes in the body. We need to have,

well, you don't need to have, from a performance aspect, carbohydrates necessarily,

because the other ones can convert into injury sources. But for a performance athlete,

carbohydrates can be very beneficial as well. So, I look at 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, well,

they look at me now when they see like how lean I am, and they jump to a conclusion,

you must be keto, you must be carnivore, you must be whatever. And it's like,

so losing and gaining weight is simply eating less or eating more. I mean, it,

and we get so complicated. Oh, that my fat, they're like, what's your fasting window? If I'm,

if I'm doing fasting, it's just because it works with 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 and put on weight with those diets. Protein

actually has a thermogenic effect. And so you have to have a massive amount of fats if you have a

only meat diet, because you can literally starve to death. There's a, there's a show where they

put people out in the wilderness. And this guy, the one that won one of the ones I looked at,

they threw him weight like up in the 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 the caribou, because his fat was stolen by a, and he could eat all the meat he

wanted. And then he almost got pulled because his weight loss, right? 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 on your missing some base nutrients,

so many nutrients and meat, I believe having greens in your diet is really beneficial,

lots of research, but there's people in the other worlds that argue that 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 vein

standing out everywhere without a tissue on me, just with amazing, great tasting food.

To lose weight or be healthy does not mean that you need to eat flavorless, bland food.

So that's the main point I try to get across.

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 upfront is actually dropping glycogen stores. So you're

actually just reducing water in your muscle and fat tissue, which is why it isn't as great for a

performance diet. 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 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, by following this particular protocol, lifestyle,

whatever, what was the level of happiness? Yes. So not 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 interacting with people because so much of human connection, like I

mentioned before, is over food. And if you're going to limit yourself in that regard, you're

limiting a certain fundamental aspect of life. A number of years ago, I did like 20 to 22 hour

fasts every day. And I'm like, well, this doesn't work. 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. And then that's why the typical bodybuilding,

like the eight meal a day diet 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,

do you get less bloat and distention 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 going to do this and people pick

these chicken and broccoli recipes and guess what, you're going to break. If you do not enjoy it,

you will break. So it is a very important point. Well, I also slightly push back or maybe to

elaborate. If you don't enjoy moderation, for me, particularly, I have trouble moderating

certain things, most foods, I would say. So my source of happiness comes with foods,

even if they're bland, the ones that can enjoy but enjoy moderation. So there's,

I mean, I enjoy every piece of food. So it's like, if you can enjoy the full lifestyle,

it's not just the particular experience, but like the full journey.

Does it fit your lifestyle? Yeah.

So let me ask about a complicated topic that's sometimes a bit controversial,

which is steroids and maybe TRT, testosterone replacement therapy. What role does that play

in strength training? All right, we're going to go there.

Yeah, but it's an important discussion to have. I think that it's something that I can be more

transparent on. In my past, I wasn't able to do to the career that I had. So just covering that

stuff in 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 components to this. So one is just the gray area

of what we call performance enhancing supplements. So performance was a PEDs. That the line of what

defines a PED is ever shifting. And it's shifting based on society norms, cultural norms, government

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. People do it for rowing

or other, they use high capacity type stuff. It is performance enhancing. It is a chemical.

It is baking soda. All right? They're not able to make it illegal because everybody eats bread,

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, you're drinking an energy drink in that cup there

a little while ago. And in America, you can get an energy drink with 240 milligrams of caffeine

in it. In Canada, that's too dangerous. You can only get 140. But you can go buy a Fedra.

And a Fedra is illegal in America. And so these things bounce back and forth all the time.

I could take Yohembi. And in Europe or Australia, it is a drug and classified in America. It is not.

It's an herbal root and a lot high actually, 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 strip. And there's a whole lots of ways to do this. But it's like, oh, no,

it's steroids. It's not, it's injectable. It's not. 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 thing. And it's either right or wrong, in my opinion. That's kind of the

overall dilemma of it is if you want to see what you're totally capable of, you have to decide

yourself what's okay or not to 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 not. 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, 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 agent 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 is 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 and just the regular human life?

Yeah, absolutely. 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

of 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 10% increase in strength on average over not. Now that does take

out the fact that steroids will put you in, allow you to put on more mass, so you'll go up a weight

class a lot of times. 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 from a physiology standpoint

to make you stronger. But we have tapped in neurologically to elicit those gains. And

there's a whole lot that happens neurologically. How much science is there in terms of all the

different ways you could take steroids, which kinds of steroids, the timing, the dose, all of

those things to develop the neurological, the physical, the skeletal. You've talked with

such depth about the science of strength building in terms of form, in terms of the equipment that

you use. It seems like a component, the use of steroids should be an equal level of scientific

rigor when applying them. It is. Now, the research is harder to get because of what it is. But there

is a lot of research that was done when they were legal. So they were legal up and through the,

through I think the mid 80s. And so a lot of the classical high benefit to low risk steroids were

studied. And then since then, there's a lot of 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 of the legality around these things. But some of the stuff on the neurological

function is really just understanding how that chemical structure works and what it's doing to

the neurotransmitters, what it's doing. And so some of it is really talking to people that have

experience with it. And the other is understanding those structures and what they do. The neurological

component, I think, is more interesting than most because the most steroids act through increasing

muscle protein synthesis. That's how you add more muscle is they have an anti catabolic effect.

And they have a muscle protein synthesis enhancing effect. So it reduces the amount of muscle that

you waste and increases the amount of muscle that you put on. But the neurological component

is tremendously valuable for what it can do for your training workout. Like if I handle more load

over time, I'm going to make more progress. If I can actually just stimulate 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, okay, I'm talking out my ass, but I'm not.

Because I have experience with this stuff on both ends. And some of those areas, a lot of people

don't have the experience with that. What I've kind of heard from people is the confidence that

comes with steroids. It feels like, not to call it placebo, but it seems like the psychological

benefits of steroids is huge. And that you feel like there's a confidence that seems to be coupled

with the actual biological and chemical effects. I have actually a neurological condition. So I

actually don't feel a lot of that stuff that people, because there are certain steroids that

people will like, your very extreme ones that would make somebody bite someone's ear off in a

fight, for example. Yeah. Almost like aggression. And they'll literally do nothing. I'm always just

chilling. They don't like that effect. But neurologically, they're still having those

effects, but I don't get those feels that other people have from those. But yes, there's that

immediate boost in aggression and a confidence and stuff that come with a lot of those ones that deal

on the neurological. Overall, a good sense of well being just like from being on testosterone,

like it's going to affect your mood. And it's interesting. So testosterone replacement therapy,

if we walk down that path now and kind of switch gears, we find that men today have declining

testosterone over what has historically been in the past. So right now, I think a 35 year old

testosterone is shown to be about half what it was just 50 years ago. So I don't know if we could

argue the point, we don't really have the science to validate any of it. But it could be society as

far as the impact that it's having on the mental health. For men, it could be the the estrogens

floating around the water from all the chemicals and birth control and all this sort of stuff could

be a lot of things. But it is the 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.

I was I was a four times body weight deadlifter 800 plus pounds at 198. It's pretty dang strong

before I went down that path. And that's because I wanted to see what I was capable of. But I was

reaching a point that it was either I need to do that or not. My testosterone, my natural

testosterone levels were actually, I think below 300 is actually the threshold. So I was being told

to go on TRT for the last couple years, probably just because I was pushing so hard and the stress

level was driving my test down. So it was self imposed, more than likely. But I put it off because

I wanted to set all the drug free records. 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. 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. But for me, I'm like,

that's not okay. So I'm like, I may as well at this point use steroids. But since then, you know,

understanding all those ramifications, you know, I might not have gone down that route quite so

fast and easily. But I continued 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 in this,

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 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 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 shoe, but I'm going, well, we could put band aids on this. Yeah. So it's

there, but there's a quality of life that comes with it, the increase in quality of life. And

if you do it correctly, I think for me, for me, I definitely would not live without TRT,

even with knowing what I know now at this age and the quality of life and being able to be there,

have the energy, the recovery. That's a big thing. We're all this though. I talked about

muscle protein synthesis and anti catabolism as being big drivers, but recovery is the other big

aspect that they offer, probably as a result of those, but those are going to be the big

enhancement. So just doing steroids, steroids is going to increase all the other stuff that you

do. So if you have good training, you have good diet, good quality of sleep, like all this other

stuff, then you can take advantage of that, but you could choose steroids and nobody would know.

And honestly, you go down to 24 hour fitness and you'll see a bunch of late 19 to 21 year old

kids that are all kind of red and 150 pounds that don't look like anything. And a bunch of them

will be using steroids because they're not like, so it's not going to make a champion.

Like you said, 10% 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 do that. It does a 10% increase at best. And that's proven

in the statistics, which is interesting because most people don't know this. The data is right

there. Yeah. And that's why I'm often saddened by maybe the negative view of somebody like

Lance Armstrong, who was one of the greatest athletes in history.

And everybody else that he was competing against, I'm sorry. I hate to blow anybody's

bubble, but regardless of I told you my ethical pieces with saying that you're going to be at

something at an elite level, you look at a lot of those big figures out there.

When their income in your life relies on it, you're going to push those limits.

So maybe my ethical would change if I was in that position too, because here's the thing

what I believe. Someone is, I think people should avoid steroids. TRT,

probably something worth taking a look at what your levels are when you're in the 35 to 45 range

and see what decision you decide to make from there. And that's a decision that you make for

the rest of your life. The only times that you should be taking a look at steroids is if it's

funding your life, it's creating that it is your job and it's doing, honestly, it was for me.

So was it the only thing? No. No. If you want to get into neurology, neurotransmitters and alcohol,

there's a really interesting discussion on performance enhancement. So when I lift heavy,

and so I always promote it, not more than a drink or two once or twice a month is what

all I'm talking about when I'm saying this. What's the timing of the drink that we're talking about?

It's about three to five minutes before. Yes. And then we're talking about beer.

It doesn't matter the source. So shots are the easiest. You want something that is not going

to have some sort of regurgitory 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 at seven calories per gram. But then there's some really interesting things

that happen. Spike's 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 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 second thoughts,

the second guessing, all that drops away. Like you're focused in the moment. And you walk over

and you actually perform a little better, like conversation wise than you normally would. Now,

if you have five or six and then go over, you're going to make a fool of yourself. So it's all

about timing and amount. But there is a reason that that happens. So anyway, I'm known for

promoting this whiskey and deadlift concept. I love this. But it works like the Eastern Block.

That's where I stole it from because I was watching all these Russian lifters would have

a shot of vodka or something before they go lift. And I'm like, there's something here.

So I started experimenting with it. And I'm like, that works. And then I started researching,

nobody talks about this stuff. So it takes a while to start piecing together all the stuff that

actually happens to make 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,

but brings you into the moment. And then the dopamine hit and the other and then it

enhances whatever mood that you're in. But all of a sudden you get in the state much easier.

And so it's really, really interesting, but it's very, it's a very small amount needed

and very time sensitive, but it can be so much more powerful than like drugs people use

for this stuff. It ties really together with meditative state and other pieces to,

to get you into that flow state. Those thoughts about failure, what if, what if, like all that you,

you get into that zone, that moment, that time. So anyway, so interesting and alcoholic is promoting

out, you know, but there's an important point here, which not often talked about. I think it is

fascinating that because you can get into so much trouble with alcohol when you use an excess,

people don't often talk about the positive aspects of alcohol, even in your college years.

It had a, it had a lasting effect on who I am as a person.

I don't think people 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 way to open up a personality, like the flowering of the full

character and the weirdness and the, 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 podcast with a, with a shot and, and these, you know, actually,

I do this sometimes with myself and guests, and it will change the conversation and lubricates

this, the conversation. Definitely not the excess, which is what I learned because I went all the

way in because I do everything at extremes. So it was a really hard lesson that took me a lot

of time to unwind, but it is interesting and people don't discuss those things because it's

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 feats of strength that you reach for

with things like steroids. It makes perfect sense. And I think that was a, from my perspective,

I think it was probably the right decision. You've achieved something incredible that inspires

a huge number of people. That's it. And you've shown to yourself and to the world,

but what the human body can accomplish. Yep. That's incredible.

And no matter if I pushed to a less weight and if I disclosed everything that I did,

and I didn't, you know, I wasn't using steroids in my opinion, if we went through everything,

there were people that would say, you're using performance enhancing. No matter, 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 all inspired. And what Sean did was incredible. Yeah. And that, and that aids 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, be, you know, be political and do this and the news and all this, I'm telling you,

they're, they're anti aging clinics, like all over California and everywhere else. Who do you

think is keeps them in business? Well, it's not a competitive lifter. I'll tell you that. Well,

that's you'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 what that is,

ultramarathon runner, 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 best

version of that. There's something about like athletic feats, especially like strength, that

just inspire us to do the best, to be the best version of ourselves. I don't know. And that's

the only thing you should be saying as opposed to criticizing some little detail of this and that.

It's just awe inspiring that you push yourself to the limit. That's been talked to anybody that

is at that level. And this is funny, like in competitive sports, like you go online and people

it's just bash, bash, bash, bash, bash, bash, bash. You go talk to anybody, anybody, anybody

that's a high level athlete within that field. And nobody has a single bad thing to say about

each other. But all this chitter chatter down there. I mean, I know exactly what you're saying.

Yeah. So if you, I would say, because I have love for all those folks, especially when you're

younger, you have a little bit of that desire to criticize others. Like, I think that should be

channeled in improving your own life. Anytime that you feel that way, that is when you need to

turn inward. And it's hard to do. But there is a reason that you have those emotions around someone

else and what they're doing, that you have an opportunity to look at yourself and know why you

feel that way. 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

or talk to your confidant 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 a good 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, I often,

I often like people that answer that would work hard.

Even though the quote unquote right answer is work smart, meaning like finding the optimal,

efficient way to achieve a certain goal. I find that people that answer work smart,

don't actually find the optimal, efficient way to achieve a goal. It seems like the people that,

at least as 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 work hard is the one I connect with. But I'm torn, especially in the

war culture in the tech sector where people answer work smart. What would you say about

that tension? This definitely encompasses like, I'm the intellectual and I'm the meathead.

I'm the work around the clock and go fix the processes and make it so much better

in there, type person, right? That's me in a whole, that's everything, that's my life story,

right? Busting your ass to find the easiest way possible.

To both.

So like, I will build a custom hydraulic cart that will lift my plates up to the height of my

squat so that I can minimize, I roll it over next to it and then minimize the effort of it going

on and off to be able to lift the most amount of weight as possible so that I can save the energy

from here, from lifting those up in the fatigue of my back being in bad position so I can nearly

kill myself over here, right? My wife, anybody will say, I'm a workaholic. And the first thing

that I would do when I would be doing 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 it'd be like, well, you need to do

this and they train me on like, all the reports and this and all the things and like, good luck.

Good luck. I couldn't do it. And the first thing I would do is nothing. 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 checklist

and you start rolling up. So you're running around, just getting shit done. Yeah, yeah,

being busy. Right? And so, but at the same time, 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 going to 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 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 is the tech, okay.

And then of that, 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 are like, oh, you must do the auto work on your vehicles

because you love working. I'm like, fuck that. I don't. They're like, what? That doesn't make

any sense. And I'm like, no, I love creating things. But I don't want to do that stuff.

So you could use delegating if you're a manager position, but it's outsourcing whatever it is.

But there are also so many things, and this ties back to your point around just doing it.

There's a point to 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 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 lay the mill, weld, do all step into engineering. 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. You need to spend time in your life chopping wood.

Yeah, get a lot of shit done doesn't matter. You got to have experience trying 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 touchpoints. 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,

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 anywhere you 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 want to, you know, how do I get, you know, recognized and write articles and

be an online coach. I'm like, you need to go spend a few years one on one training people

to learn like the interaction, how people were, there's base levels you have to do.

You've got to go work your way up from the ground. I truly believe it.

Well, I think that's the hard work piece that I'm speaking to that I like it when people have been

humbled by the hardness of life. Like how difficult it is to do stuff. 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's once you've been

humbled by doing those things, I feel like you can truly explore the optimization that you're

talking to finding the ways where you're uniquely capable to add value to the world.

And then, and then again, work your ass off to be the best in the world at that thing.

Yes. But then don't waste your time on shit that's not a line. Yeah. That's the only,

so that's, I guess there's a lot of context I put around that. But yeah, that was like a long

answer to a long, beautiful answer to an unanswerable question. Do you have advice

outside of all this discussion to young people today about career, about life? Since you've done

so many things, you've overcome a lot of things. Think high school, college student. Think 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. We talked a lot about

understanding your values and aligning all that stuff, but you got to have a base level of

start exploring and learning and just spending the time doing like pick something. Let me elaborate