"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 ..."

"you've been a part of several incredible feats of strength which was the hardest or maybe one you're most proud of definitely the one i'm most proud of is that journey for the the grand goals it was l..."

"that you could do something that is well beyond the scope of what people think is humanly possible so just this inspiration thing this grand over the top like if you set your mind to a single-minded g..."

"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 ..."

"bunch of feats of strength on the way but it was all about building that axial loading capacity the strength of because now i'm moving the weight from my hands up to my shoulders and so to do it for r..."

"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 hal..."

"i'm pretty i'm pretty proud of it and the last piece was uh every one of these feats along the way i collaborated with a charity that i believed in and there was a lot of those tied to my life story u..."

"doubt in your mind uh there were certainly doubts on that day um from some training history so there was some major breaks to my confidence in the couple months leading up where i had issues with pass..."

"bit more so like that first rep when i did it strength wise i went i could do this for five reps like it went through my head i'm like dealing i mean it was easy and it was fast and it felt like amazi..."

"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 o..."

"maintain that while articulating the joints around that through a range of motion uh and then using the main power drivers so in this instance both instances it's the you know the hip complex to gener..."

"of uh the organs essentially against outward against all those tissue for the co-contraction as well as surrounding the spine to be able to stabilize that and then it puts all the muscles on both side..."

"all right um so this allows us to use this massive you know the hip complex for all the muscles around that that are built to drive through hip extension to complete the squat i did actually miss one ..."

"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 ju..."

"this is what we do what we teach in our educational platform so we are the only i believe everybody wants to do a lot of these like assessments you know on a bench on the table body and and it's like ..."

"the knees the elbows the things like that so it's all about getting the stack which affects neurology so let's talk engineering terms you get in a car modern car today and a lot of them will have this..."

"the performance tuned race car do they have a traction control button no they got some amazing tires to grip the ground a performance tuned suspension and that driver is going to put what his foot to ..."

"uncontrollably um just with a mixture of i i don't know what th the mixture of emotions is hard to explain um because it was the completion of something it was a new phase of my i i mean there's so ma..."

"usually you kind of either taper out or it doesn't matter i'm talking like anything in life in general right like um you taper out you fail you hurt like you look you lose it like something you know y..."

"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 be..."

"just that thing so that's the thing it's like oh that must be it when we say singularity focus it's not like here's it because it it covers a vast array of stuff like i was working with people you kno..."

"in us can you tell me the story of your childhood it's definitely outside the scope of the norm well today maybe not 150 or 200 years ago but uh my parents highly intelligent you know people coming ou..."

"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 ..."

"trafficking and honestly it's in my book but it's really hard for me to talk about that stuff um and obviously not all that's in the book so but they got us back we moved to oregon and they stayed out..."

"further to because i am kind of like a little bit of a father figure because i was home raising them and then later i took custody of them while i was going to school because the environment at home d..."

"right we've all had to learn to be okay with the way she is because she is just blunt but you know she's the one that figured out that the human trafficking situation and got uh got the da involved an..."

"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 kn..."

"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 ..."

"to make sure right that you're filling that's the other side that's the other side right that's the other side yeah we'll return to your engineering degree which you're obviously scientifically engine..."

"was yourself that's right that's a heck of a tattoo to get by the way at 19 but 40 hours went into that thing it shows you got some guts and then the next tattoo so i only have two uh i had done in 20..."

"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..."

"then i started work on my book to to to hit on those other things the mental the emotional maybe even spiritual i don't touch on that one too much in there but it's all the same that things that happe..."

"did you have to do that i don't recommend this by the way because when you put yourself in no way out there is no way out yeah okay like you gotta really no but i i can be an overconfident individual ..."

"but in that it's a source of joy but the main thing i'm after is the similar project as you as building a business sense of joy so this this is the point i want to drive home right now right now becau..."

"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 ..."

"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 ..."

"your boss is thrown out to the team and you're like i'm gonna hide in the back i don't want that one and i was like maybe maybe you do maybe it's going back to school yeah maybe it's making that caree..."

"uh this will maybe time the refilling of the cup correctly so you maximize the little time you got let me talk to you about strength a little bit first high level what are the differences in the diffe..."

"of those qualities what we want to think about is there's a lot of different frames of thought some very uh classical maybe not classical russian approach because there's a lot of different approach f..."

"strongman just because it's it's leverage based right um olympic lifting we see consistently in in europe uh the the history tells us a high level of hip uh and back issues because of the depth that t..."

"right and but that way we're not hitting conditioning hard all the time which is a common common uh misstep that people make is going well i need conditioning so they just hammer that at a base level ..."

"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 ..."

"may not sound oh you're just squatting and now let's back up let's look at the quality development so a year out from the squat obviously i've been working on developing axial load capacity my capacit..."

"because this entire body the entire entire body just anything that is that that uh taxes the the the spinal mechanics i i don't i could tell you my beliefs it's studied it is okay um we can just keep ..."

"truly strong you need to specialize so but not all the time so now we talk about quality so and if we specialize in the same thing too long we stagnate because the body adapts to a certain point and j..."

"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 uprig..."

"yeah it's incredible we can tailor it to an athlete which is great when you've got a seven foot plus tall baseball player or basketball player that's why we work with all these teams anyway so it's li..."

"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 pla..."

"oh my god let's move uh let's jump into squatting every day um you've got to build the capacity to do that it's simple what role would you say strength has in sports that combine skill and strength so..."

"so so that's the the basic simple answer to that um so one of the benefits there being like injury prevention actually injury resilience because especially uh fighting sports you're going to be challe..."

"and most of them really really struggle with this the problem is they've been taught to have tension all the time and that's not good so when we talk about like the joint positions that we were talkin..."

"strength because i'm looking at holistic movement i'm not looking at powerlifting bass movements are what i want to load and be able to assess on but this affects all sports all activities and strengt..."

"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 ge..."

"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 al..."

"how do we integrate that with um assessment and clinical care assessment and and all these other pieces so there's a lot of work in that and so that's where kabuki strength is the genesis but we have ..."

"it is the the environment is tight there's a big piece of that um i know it's studied sociologically i believe i just i just pictured that word too but the intensity when you start growing a space the..."

"still in the walls in the space present there yeah and we somehow can plug into that energy yeah it's we can go down and go down a path there there's something really powerful there you've also mentio..."

"that we need which is going to be continue to be an ongoing thing check out my instagram after this and you'll see i put an entire gym on the bed of my truck and went on vacation uh last week we drove..."

"center so so the handles on the our pressing bar it's arced so the handles are above center of rotation and then and then every angle instead of just being a certain fixed angles each angle is based o..."

"that we can do what we call off platform work which allows us to do movements like uh punches and stand-ups things like that and then i've got a handheld weight coming out next month that we can actua..."

"um which anyway it it's that's cool stuff anyway i get i get excited uh well let me ask you about another thing you've already mentioned but i find this really interesting which is barefoot running an..."

"the subject okay it's that simple but somehow we have been sold entire industries like the orthotics industry it's completely false meta-analysis of the data shows that orthotics do nothing beyond tem..."

"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'..."

"now what do you attribute low back pain to well it's attributed to a lot of things um but inability to control spinal position um which starts happening from uh some breathing issues uh it also happen..."

"yeah it does i what i did uh i noticed when you walked uh when i walked in i was like oh hey you're spending some time without the last shoes on uh well what i did um i think it's already now two year..."

"because it works with my my environment sometimes i do it sometimes i don't all that does is control how much calories that you take big success with keto and carnivore diets it's hard to eat a lot uh..."

"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 k..."

"a number of years ago um i did uh like 20 to 22-hour fasts every day and i'm like well this doesn't work i'm i can't do business lunches and stuff like that so when i was in my fasting thing i went to..."

"a complicated uh topic that's sometimes a bit controversial which is steroids it may be a trt testosterone replacement therapy what role does that play in strength training all right we're gonna uh we..."

"just like covering that stuff in a you know one on a public forum when you're highly looked at being an executive for recruiting and other stuff like it was an area i had to just kind of pass on right..."

"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 oka..."

"i could take yohimbi and in europe or australia it is a drug and classified and america it's it is not it's a it's an herbal root uh in a lot i actually haven't won one of my supplements except for th..."

"and it's not it's not easy to figure that out you go up you're just like dancing around the subject whatever well guess what i've got a i've got a prescription for growth hormone and testosterone it's..."

"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..."

"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 lit..."

"we can't do that because it's you know because of the legality around these things but some of the stuff on the neurological function is really just understanding how that chemical structure uh works ..."

"confidence that seems to be uh coupled with the actual biological and chemical effects i have a actually a neurological condition um so i actually don't feel a lot of that stuff that people because th..."

"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 ..."

"but recovery is the other big aspect that they that they offer probably as a result of those but um that's gonna those are gonna be the big enhancements so just doing steroids steroids is going to inc..."

"it does a 10 increase at best yeah and that's proven in the statistics which is interesting because most people don't know this like it the data is right there yeah yeah and that's why i i'm often sad..."

"it was for me like i so was it the only thing no no if you want to get into neurology uh neurotransmitters and alcohol there's a really interesting discussion on performance enhancement um so when i l..."

"so anyway i'm known for promoting this whiskey and deadlift concept um i love this but but it works like the eastern block bloc that's where that's where i stole it from because i was watching all the..."

"to to get you into that flow state those thoughts about failure what if whatever like all that you you get into that zone that moment that time um anyway so interesting and alcoholic is promoting out ..."

"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 yo..."

"but how many how many of those figures you're watching in movies that love to talk you know people you know be political and do this and the news and all this i'm telling you there there's anti-aging ..."

"there's something about like athletic feats especially like strength that just en inspire us to do the best uh to be the best version of ourselves i don't know and that's the only thing you should be ..."

"going to be the thing again that's stirring you a little bit because it's so much easier to sit there and uh or talk to your confidante or whatever instead of go why does that bother me yeah why does ..."

"type person right that's that's that's me and all that's everything that's my life story right busting your ass to find the easiest way possible to both so like i will i will build a custom hydraulic ..."

"accomplishing things this is when things go on your list on your checklist and you start like rolling up so are you running around just getting shit done yeah yeah being busy right and so yeah so but ..."

"and and that added tremendous value to me to having had spent time being a doer and not enough people want to be you've got to just go do shit yeah you need to spend time in your life chopping wood ye..."

"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 ..."

"that's the hard work piece that i'm speaking to that i like it when people have been humbled by the hardness of life like how difficult it is to do stuff and it does to me i went and got my mba i went..."

"do you have advice outside of all this discussion to young people today about career about life since you've done so many things you've overcome a lot of things i think high school college student thi..."

"pick something and don't worry about it and then but within that you can start discovering the things that are there for you like i i talked about i made this huge shift i threw away a whole life but ..."

"do you think that i could have just gone to school and got out and started a globally recognized brand within a few years without having been schooled in business while getting paid for it by others f..."

"got to have this perfect thing because this process of understanding your values and the interest but that takes time you can get a job where you're getting paid to learn exactly that's a good deal be..."

"like i've lived hard i've loved hard yeah i've every moment in my life i've made connections and impacted people around me for the better and this tracks back which is crazy when we're doing the docum..."

"number of people chris you're an amazing human being i'm really honored that you would spend your valuable time with me thank you so much for talking with me today it was incredible i can't wait to ch..."