克里斯·達芬：力量訓練的瘋狂科學家

Lex Fridman Podcast #207 – Chris Duffin: The Mad Scientist of Strength Machine transcription by Qwen3-ASR 0.6B (MLX, local, Apache-2.0). May contain recognition errors. 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 one thousand 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, Sun Basket, and Ladder. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that I was always a fan of strength, both 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. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now. I try to make these interesting, but I give you time stamps so if you skip, please still check out the sponsors by clicking the links in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. I'm fortunate to be able to be very selective with the sponsors we take on, so hopefully if you buy their stuff, you find value in it just as I have. This show is sponsored by Headspace, a meditation app. I've used it off and on for many years. I've looked into this. It's since 2014. 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They are now offering ninety dollars off for your first four deliveries, including free shipping on the first box when you go to sunbasket dot com slash lex and enter code lex. That's sunbasket dot com slash lex with code lex. This show is also sponsored by Ladder. I often talk about Ernest Becker's work Denial of Death. I often meditate on death together with the Stoics. I think meditating on your own mortality is both honest and clarifying for who you are as a human being and for who you want to be and how you want to spend your remaining days. The fact that life can end at any moment is is one hell of a motivator to live an amazing life. At least it is for me. If you are the same and you also have people in your life you love, you should consider getting life insurance. Ladder can help you out with that. Pay a little every month in case something happens to you and the ones you love will be protected. Anyway, go to ladderlife dot com slash lex to see if you're instantly approved. That's ladderlife dot com slash lex once again for the seats in the back ladderlife dot com slash lex. This is the lex Friedman podcast and here is my conversation with Chris Duffin. You've been a part of several incredible feats of strength. Which was the hardest, or maybe one you're most proud of? Definitely the one I'm most proud of is that journey for the the grand goals. It was like a five year scope that I chased this and so when you think about training, it took more than five years obviously by that point I've been training for over 25 years. But it makes me proud. I mean there were three distinct things that I wanted to accomplish out of this. So it was really thought out. And this was kind of my exit from being a competitive lifter. And basically saying, "Hey, I'm going to be you know an Instagram lifter an exhibition lifter a whatever. I've done this for 16 years. I was number one in the world for like eight years straight all time world records and I'm like I'm not going to do that anymore. What I want to do is just something deep down to me that is really important and there's three things that were driving this and this is a five year journey that I that I went through to do this. I really wanted to showcase that you could do something that is well beyond the scope of what people think is humanly possible. So just this inspiration thing this. Grand over the top like if you set your mind to a single minded goal you can go so much further and I didn't even say what the goal was up front because it was so far out there I would have been laughed at and that's I I think big goals should be kept pretty damn close to start with for that reason too. But and then the second piece was to to walk the walk to show like 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 and so I wanted to take the two most basic movements that every able bodied person should be able to do so fundamental. Movement patterns the squat which is like in the developmental approach is around nine months as a baby from a developmental kinesiology standpoint and a really basic pattern that every able bodied person should be able to master the other one being the hip hinge being able to pick something up off the ground a deadlift. And I wanted to do those two, not just one, because I wanted to show the principles that I wasn't 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 couldn't do it in the competition setting. So the first year I worked up and I did a thousand and two pound deadlift. 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 Bjornson 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 ten seconds versus thirty 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 the resource of the diaphragm for stabilization and so it it's also responsible for respiration and all this other stuff so even when you're not squatting you got to be handling those loads. Just holding that weight is fascinating. It's like it's fascinating that the human body can do that can can maintain that structure just everything working together that the biology the skeletal structure the the musculature on top of that can hold the weight. It's fascinating to watch. Everything is very intentful about positioning and how you're creating pressure and all this sort of stuff especially for me so when I mentioned that half a dozen people have squatted it and half a dozen people have deadlifted it. Understand those people all weigh 380 to 440 pounds. I weigh 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 you know what I put into being able to accomplish that because it's it's over the top which means the other stuff had to to shift and I had to learn so 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 would have never got done like because I I'd push to the limit I couldn't come back and do it it was at the total limitation of my capabilities so I'm pretty I'm pretty proud of it and the last piece was a. 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 if you if you there is a way and the third one is is to provide awareness and recognition around a lot of key charity so. So your heart was in this journey but also your mind which is you're like a scholar of strength a scientist of strength an engineer of strength for reps do a thousand pounds squat and deadlift. Let's first talk through the actual day you did it. What does it take to lift that much for reps? The day of is really easy. The really the lift itself, other than a few seconds, is really easy and not challenging. People always ask me, "What was it like? How beat up were you after that in the deadlift? " And the simple fact is it was easy. The work to get there was horrendous. So, so even the psychology of the day you weren't there was not a fear there was not a nervousness there was not a doubt in your mind. There were 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 a thousand pounds even. So that was like all this buildup in me going, what if what if it I think I have this resolved, but what if I get up there and I can't even do a rep? How embarrassing will this be that I've been talking about this and planning for this for so long. But outside of that, I knew I could do it. In fact, I wanted to do even more, even up to the the second rep. Training is about you know working into a fatigue state so you're building 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 then you give yourself that window to be able to recover and super compensate and be able to do a little bit more so like that first rep when I did it strength wise I went. I could do this for five reps. Like it went through my, I'm like feeling. 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 two. The realization kicked in is like oh this is for reps with a thousand pounds on your back and you're fatiguing just like. And then the third one was every last thing I could muster to just finish. I mean I just barely got it done because it's the strength is like there but like that capacity to be able to manage all those resources for that amount of time because not just leg strength when we're talking about this stuff. So what does it take to go from? The from I don't know what like from 500 to a thousand, that feels like a journey that's like exponential. It is and 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 guys, that's a heck of a journey. That is a journey for people that like the lift. What should they understand about the difference between doing 500 and a thousand? In terms of the actual lift that you were experiencing that day, in terms of the mechanics, in terms of all the things you have to be like the neurological adaptation you mentioned. The breathing, the core strength, what like techniques like little tricks, psychological tricks, anything that kind of stands out to you. The level of intent and the opportunity for air 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 to start with having the the pelvis just in the right orientation to the diaphragm before we start initiating what we call the the eccentric loading of the abdominal cavity to create this intra abdominal pressure of working against this outward expansion working against the outer sheath of abdominal thoracic lumbar musculature obliques. Causing the co contraction at the pelvic floor all this stuff and how you cue that because you can't think about all this stuff you need to break it down into still in practice to like it's one simple cue that we now lock down and control this torso stability because this is what these fundamental movements are about is being able to control our spinal mechanics and then now 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. 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 pelvis, 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. A pressure, leak where it's going to be push out the front or the rear if you are either inflection or extension. All right, and then that causes this co contraction and all this pressure of 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 the best length tension relationship, so if you think about a curl and we reach our arm out at the extended length, our bicep is not as strong and then all the way in the curl position it's not as strong there is somewhere in here that this control of both and so when you are sitting there. Arched or bent over, we have muscles that are past either one of those ranges, so they've got a lot of tension which then will create relaxation on the other side, right? So we want to have and all of that needs to be working. And now the next important thing is the foot. So it's actually this connection to the ground and how we're actually using the foot and ankle complex to grab and grip this connection to the ground and elicit an effect 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, 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 the lumbar spine. So kind of right opposite where your sternum is and you'll see people kind of roll over sometimes like in an Olympic squat or something like that where they lose position. And that's often because they're close grip because you can't engage the lats very well that way and they're pushing up in the bar but you want to be able to drive and pull the bar to your center and that's going to create and use the lats now to drive and connect the shoulder. Into this, we're kind of compressing and tightening all this stuff towards that center to create that entire torso stability. That's why I was using torso stability not just core stability in my conversation earlier. Torso stability, okay. So there is all these like modules, yeah, of the body then connected to the grounding, with like your feet on the ground. Everything you are 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 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 is 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 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 it is if we try to break down and distill it all but like let's just find the basic stuff that gets us in the range start working and then find the next as we add load. Now we find where's our next area that we're starting to fault at and then go there again next so this is what we do what we teach in our educational platform so we are the only I believe everybody wants to do a lot of these like assessments you know on a bench on a table body and and it's like no let's let's go squat let's go deadlift if you do strongman and 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 twenty nine of the thirty major league baseball teams and ninety percent 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. Great but these principles like you know if if the Dodgers won't bring us in they're not learning how to power lift. You know we're gonna obviously we'll probably be do we do a little bit more shoulder focus than hip focus with their athletes 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. Yes on the holistic. Yeah so it's all about getting the joints in the appropriate position so that we can that we can manage load so that we're not putting undue stress on the joint we're getting the proper length tension we're getting these basic fundamental things with the body and so the the largest global impact that you will have is through spinal mechanics. I can't look at a shoulder if I am not managing this because it's your spine so for those that are just listening like I am 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 of 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 am going to look at the big energy drivers which is be 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 in 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 is a big misconception that you know I am out and it's it's snowy or here in Austin only rainy well probably doesn't rain much but you are 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 we've got the we've got the tires which are our foot you know the connection to the ground right. We've got the power driver which is you know the the engine the transmission delivering you know the power through it and we've got the stability our suspension and then. We have the neurology and what the neurology is doing it's sensing that we don't have good stability or loss of connection somewhere and so I need to save you from crashing and hurting yourself and so it goes to the engine and says let's retard the timing let's reduce the shift patterns and we're just reducing the power output. And that's straight how the human body works so when I do this stuff it's actually affecting that I mean I can take somebody and do some minute changes with the neck position at the thoracic outlet okay and immediately see an enhancement in power output and I can measure it we measure this stuff with a velocity devices. And see like a ten percent 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 and now you can see so much greater so it's not just. Injury prevention, this is performance and additive performance over time. This is huge and people don't really think about this stuff but we can turn that stuff off which is actually going to also again make us make us safer but what we want to do is the performance tuned race car do they have a traction control button. No they got some amazing tires to grip the ground a performance tuned suspension and that driver is going to put what his foot to the metal he's going to put it to the floor. Okay that's a performance vehicle that's what we want to be I want to continue on that line but first I have to ask like how did it feel to accomplish the grand goal oh my god okay when you just. Stand back, oh my thousand pounds for reps. What did feel like? Anybody can go watch the video online. It's well filmed by the way, got me all like excited. Oh well the the movie is so we actually have the final footage of that the good footage not posted yet so it's literally just an Instagram video or a phone video right now the only one online. Yeah, it's on your YouTube channel but it's dramatic. Yes it is. Yeah came out just time to the music perfectly too which is I listen to some odd music which there is some reason behind that. Okay, but I liked it though it's great it does it does full length footage. There is a documentary that's it's got a little slowed because of COVID because it's also a backstory of the eagle and the dragon my book about why I do kind of the things that I've done in my life or that's what I am assuming the director is working on I don't really have the control of the movie right but. But okay, but the videos incredible. 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, but and and I did it. I am getting a little emotional. I did exactly what I said I was going to fucking do like. And it was it was overpowering. I mean I was just crying uncontrollably, just with a mixture of I. 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 mental it. I mean there is 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 are basically representing like one little like like little glimmer of excellence of the human spirit. There is always more, so understand this. This is a basic fundamental you can always do better there is no such thing as perfection you could always. There is always more so anytime you read something any amazing workout or accomplishment in life. Could you have put more into it? Could even yes but here is the thing. I left on my terms. I said this is it. I am going to work towards I've been training for thirty years. I am going to do this thing that is like I couldn't even say that I was going to do it years before. I am going to do it and then I am done. I didn't leave from an injury. I wasn't forced. I wasn't. I left on. I did exactly what I said. I I went to a level that I. I left on my terms and that's unique because that's usually not the case. Usually you kind of either taper out or it doesn't matter I am talking like anything in life in general right like. You taper out you fail you hurt like you you lose a like something you know you roll into retirement like. You accomplished something truly great and you walked away in your own terms. Is there a sadness? Completing something like that because it's it's in one perspective the greatest thing you'll ever do and like when you accomplish such a great height. In some sense, you have to face your mortality at that point. So good question but it is certainly not the greatest thing that I'll ever do. The greatest physical there is always more do the greatest yes, but that was an expression. Of some of my values in the way that I want to live, it was a way of expressing it so understanding that is hugely fundamental. Because we do see so many athletes. Get to the end of a career and then they fall into a depressive state and struggle with drugs, alcohol, depression, so on because. They lost how they identified 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 am going to change the face of fitness as well as all the way through with its integration with clinical medicine and telemedicine and. You know I got another five years before even people see what I am working. I am 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 today to the environment tied to the clinical practice assessment tied to the. The interaction between all those and how that actually needs to be reframed because so much of this is broken okay so. But there is sadness, I won't deny that, and the sadness comes in the singularity. Of focus that I had at that time, the being in the process not necessarily doing but like. Having being in this place that the rest of the world kind of fell away from me in those final phases to have something so intense to have a team around me so focused on supporting and like. It took me a couple months after that squat. I finally one day I woke up and I was like, "Oh, welcome back to the world." Like I was in such a mental fog. Like I was, it took me a while to climb out of that. But that that space that level of intensity and drive and 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 is 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 to get there. You are just a genius in this whole space of strength and health and almost like biology. That the 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 is something beautiful about that singular focus. There is often only truly perfected athletics I see it with the greatest Olympic athletes as well the kind of singular focus required there is incredible it's somehow. Some of the most beautiful things that humans can do and achieved in that thing so that's the thing it's like oh that must be it when we say singular to focus it's not like here is it because it it covers a vast array of stuff like I was working with people you know all well yeah all around North America I wouldn't say anybody around the globe but professionals coming in working on different aspects of rehab and and recovery and like. I mean I am 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 and positivity and just inspiration all those kinds of aspects. I mean you probably would have done much more if you went outside North America and talked to some Russians just between you and I some Russians possibly. They they give you some I don't know those there is 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 am 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. Everyone 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 block continued to be a dominant force in regards to athletics and strength athletes 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 one hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, but my parents highly intelligent you know people coming out of the Bay Area. My mom was you know going to school to be a chemical engineer. She was a top top student athlete graduated 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 you know she had some demons and some other stuff and just. She just said one day she's like I just don't want to be part of society. She still isn't lives out in the desert but has her minds but she wanted to figure out a way to make a life outside of that and so that's where we ended up is up in the mountains in Northern California. And a lot of that was you know them trying to get into successfully growing marijuana which back in that 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 is 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, it's a great. I am a terrible salesperson like I told you so. But a good it's a good title I don't know if you came up with it but I did. Yeah, so yeah we'll talk about that anyway. We're living by a stream, you know off a meadow. There is 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 is rattlesnake dens all around and six years old. I am 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 he can't. Can't bite you and it's just wrapping itself around your arm and. You're staring like it's only intent is. Right then is to kill you, like that's it right. Um, you want to take a bath. It's filling up the jug in the stream and setting it out on the rock during the. During the sun, so you can 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. Um, so we're talking hard winters with feet of snow on the ground, nowhere to go. Um, I'm living in the back of the the pickup truck in a. Just a standard sleeping bag that we get from the