Ep. #504: Chris Duffin on Life Lessons Learned Going From Homeless to World-Class Powerlifter

Mike Matthews: Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I’m doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my best selling health and fitness books, including Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100 percent practical and hands on blueprint for personal transformation.

Inside and outside of the gym, the little black book of workout motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes and Noble stores.

Again, that’s bigger, leaner, stronger for men. Thinner, leaner, stronger for women, the shredded chef and the little black book of workout motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audio books 100 percent free when you sign up for an audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting.

Meal prepping and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, go to www. legionathletics. com slash audible. That’s L E G I O N athletics slash a U D I B L E. And sign up for your account.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews, and many people have had rough childhoods thanks to stuff like oppressive parents, grinding poverty, mental and physical roadblocks, but few have experienced it. What Chris Duffin has. First, this is a dude who grew up in the wilderness.

And I’m saying that literally, not metaphorically. As a child, Chris and his family were vagabonds who were wandering the California countryside, essentially living off the land. As you can imagine, That didn’t exactly put Chris on the fast track to success, academic or otherwise, yet today he’s an MBA with a successful career as a corporate executive as well as a top tier powerlifter who has deadlifted 1, 000 pounds.

Now, Chris has also created a popular coaching and strength education brand called Kabuki Strength, as well as innovative strength training equipment, including the Transformer Bar, Duffalo Bar, Cadillac Bar, and the Trap Bar HD. And as if all that were not enough, Chris has recently released a book called The Eagle and the Dragon, an autobiography of sorts.

In this interview, we’re going to talk about all of the aforementioned, including some of the key lessons that Chris has learned about parenting, leadership, and reinventing yourself for a better life. Here’s the interview. Mr. Duffin, thanks for taking the time to chat with me. Looking forward to it. Yeah, same.

So I was just telling you before we jumped on here, I’ve been familiar with you. And of course I’ve heard your name and heard your brand, but as anybody who has been following me for a bit knows, I generally just sit in my corner, sit in my cave and just drone away at work and don’t really take much time to get out.

And this is probably The most social activity probably generally in my life is having podcast conversations. So it’s fun though. When I get to talk to people like you, because you’re not just a health and fitness guy, and that’s fine. That only goes so far. And so often, I was just telling you, usually with interviews, I’m picking somebody because I want to talk to them about something specific.

And we just get right into it. And I figure that a backstory is not really necessary or even interesting because often times people’s backstories are not that interesting. I went to school and I learned some things and then I did some things and I got good at some things and now I’m here and yeah, we can just skip, we don’t need 10 minutes.

We can just get to I’ll explain in the intro, you have some bona fides. Let’s listen to what you have to say. All right. Now tell us some things. But in your case, your story is. Very unique. And you have a book that just came out, which of course tells that story, but then it ties into, and it leads up to what of course you’ve accomplished with power lifting and business.

And some of the more specific things that people listening would, I’m sure love to hear about. So I thought it’d be a good idea to just start with what is your story? Because it’s pretty wild. 

Chris: Yeah, and it actually is relevant because it touches on all things strength, but definitely goes outside of just the physical aspects and really explains the fundamental philosophy, not only behind how I operate, but the businesses that, that I own.

And I think understanding that really helps people understand what the intent is, and then there’s a better connection that can be made there. But yeah, everybody’s got an interesting story to some level, and my story is not better or worse than anybody else, but I’ve certainly, as I tell it, you’ll realize that there’s a significant scope that I’ve seen in my life and it’s allowed me to really have a different look at things and take the time to, to reflect and really establish a philosophy that can be employed in a lot of ways.

And so I’ll just jump into it, try to give the briefest description possible, but this is covered in my book. The Eagle and the Dragon and the book itself is, it’s not a biography, but it goes much more than that. Every chapter, has themes to it, help you explore and ask some deeper questions of yourself and really, at the end, it starts pulling things together in practical manners that you can put together in your life without telling you how to do anything, but really, from that that internal aspect of understanding your values, how to establish goals and then realizing it.

But, yeah. I grew up homeless. So a lot of people say, Oh, I grew up poor or whatever. And people that are poor today, but it’s just, it’s different. You see they’ve got, they still have their smartphone or their gaming console or whatever it is. Like I grew up in a tent or in a condemned home, no electricity, no running water.

We’re killing animals, foraging for food, learning different mushroom types, running down to the stream with a gallon jug full of. To fill up a gallon jug full of water to sit in the sun through the day so that you can dump over your head to bathe yourself poor. It’s like third world country poor.

Yes. Like when I was six years old, we were, for example, we were living close to, there was a bunch of, this is in Northern California wilderness, and we were living. In an area where there was a bunch of rattlesnake dens around. So we literally took, beams and tied them up in the trees so that we can put our bedding in the trees so that we wouldn’t get bitten by rattlesnakes.

And I was taught how to capture and handle live rattlesnakes, at six years old. How did this come about? My parents, they weren’t dumb people. They were actually highly intelligent, but my mother just never wanted to be a part of. A society and, she had some things happen to her when she was younger.

I kind of touch on those in the book, but there’s some reasons that she would have trouble with, authority and just not wanting, she wanted to create her own life outside the bounds of society and the rules. It was. A choice, she had a full ride scholarship to go to school to be a chemical engineer and she chose this life, but, a lot of it was, I mentioned Northern California.

They were growing drugs for a living. We’re talking living on five, a family of seven living on 5, 000 a year, basically not much in the way it means. But. During the course of that upbringing, I had the experience of in those environments, you run into all sorts of people. I dealt with murderers, obviously lots of drug addicts, drug abuse, drug running, dealt with a serial killer, human trafficking ring, just some really.

Really nasty stuff over the course of that upbringing. And, there are times we’d, during the school year, sometimes we’ve moved closer to town and have a place that may have like electricity or running water or something like that. It was back and forth. So by the time I graduated high school, I had probably lived about half my life being homeless.

We got a little bit stabilized when I was in in high school. So we actually had a mobile home. It was later condemned and burnt down by the fire department when we moved out because it was unlivable. But for us, it was fantastic. Like literally. At least there are no rattlesnakes in there, exactly. There were sheets hung between all the doors and we had to throw up some plywood to mount a sink to, so we could have a kitchen, but yeah. And it had running water, had electricity. So it was like, it was a nice stable place while I went to high school. For me, anyway, I ended up getting a Fulbright scholarship myself, go to engineering school.

I was also an athlete as well. I was supposed to go wrestle at Oregon State, but I ended up turning that down because figured an education for free was a much better ride than going to a school that only offered me some limited scholarships and athletic opportunities. I ended up taking custody of my three sisters while, before I finished my undergraduate degree.

Things at home got way worse when I left. And so I ended up raising my three siblings. Three younger sisters while I finished my engineering degrees while I was working full time over the all through college as well, because there’s no fallback plan in my life. There’s no one to no, no couch to go home and crash on or nobody to call for money or anything like that.

Continue to raise them while I got my MBA and sued my career, which I was pretty successful at. So I worked in the industrial sector manufacturing. And I did that was, it turned out, even though despite my growing up, I was not the most social person, like moving constantly, having dirty clothes and out of style clothes, maybe smelling bad, all these sorts of things.

Let’s just say kids are not very nice to each other. And so I didn’t have a lot of friends, was a little awkward socially and things like that until I started getting older. So ended up, I was actually pretty skilled on the leadership front and ended up advancing down the executive path to the point where I became known in our area for.

Being able to come in and do a lot of cultural change in companies, be able to completely turn around a division or an entire company. I took an aerospace manufacturing company that was failing, turned them into a world class performer and got them sold, saved everybody’s jobs in the company.

So I worked in aerospace, high tech and automotive, manufacturing. And so I was sought after for doing that turnaround type work. Over the course of this, I was I was an athlete. Like I mentioned in, earlier, but I started lifting around 1988 when I was in middle school, I had a pretty physical upbringing anyway.

We were out in the mountains, my dad was a lumberjack and I’d help out with that. And then later we got into mining and I would be hauling rocks up and down the sides of mountains and things like that all summer long. I have been training basically almost continuously since 1988. I took a couple year break during college.

I ended up, I got into power lifting around 2000 and then ended up opening my own home gym, a few years later, because I. Just wanted everything to be perfect, right equipment, right people around me. And then that ended up turning into a, on the side of my executive career. I ended up owning a 9, 000 square foot training facility here in Portland with a partner as we just wanted to have an amazing place to train.

I got to a point where I was reevaluating my life and decided I was really. I said leadership was my talent, but really the piece that made me good about that is I really loved seeing people accomplish things beyond what they thought was possible. And I was getting really frustrated with what I saw out there in the physical culture world.

And so I started just producing content, filming just short pieces in my gym about lectures I’d give to people on movement and training and started posting them on YouTube. About five years ago, I walked away from that high paying career so that I could really do what I feel my life’s work is, which is to help people express their full potential and the physical nature while getting out of pain, not having strength, pursuits of strength, being something that Was negative in somebody’s life until my back was gone until my knees until this or that.

So we’ve developed an incredibly unique line of products to an educational systems to, to do that. And to develop that was a pretty unique experience. One of the things I learned in my executive career was. Making sure that you’re not trying to be the smartest person in the room yourself and trying to find the right people.

So there was a number of years there where I was basically doing continuing education in the clinical space and networking and developing relationships. And that’s really where kind of our philosophies principles around movement and our system, our principle based education system came from.

And you can see this. If you go to Kabuki strength, click on our advisory board, you’ll see people that are. That are my friends that I developed during that period, which is like Dr. Stuart McGill, the leading spine biomechanist in the world. Dr. Kelly Starrett, one of the best physical therapists in the world.

Sue Falzone, the very first female head strength coach in any professional sports, a couple of the. Head strength coaches from top professional teams, gosh, Dr. Philip Snell, Dr. Craig Liebenson, who brought dynamic neuromuscular stabilization to the US. So on pulling and gelling all this stuff together to really create the content and approach that we have here, which was developed a little bit out of my approach to leadership, in some aspects.

So I rambled a whole bunch of different directions there for you. 

Mike Matthews: I’m going to remind you that you forgot to ramble about one thing. It’s also what you’ve achieved yourself in terms of you’re not just talking about, Hey, theoretically this could help you get strong. 

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. So 

Mike Matthews: I always forget this 

Chris: stuff.

Yeah, so I’m pretty known strength athlete. Like I said, we coach with. And work with professional and collegiate sports, like all over the, we wouldn’t believe the number of teams that we actually interact with and work with. But for myself, yeah, that’s interesting is when you take this stuff, because when I started learning it, it was definitely very clinical based and nobody was telling you how to put this in place.

And it took me kind of years to go, okay, what does this really mean when I walk into the gym and what I’m going to do tomorrow? If I’m going to teach a seminar over the weekend, I want people to be able to walk in Monday morning, put this to use with themselves and with their clients and just a very simplified approach that makes sense.

And I test invalidate everything that I do. Every product that we have is been something that we’ve used for years on the side and so on. And so one of the things is, yeah, proven things work. And so I like to walk the path, walk the walk of what I preach. And yeah, my personal performance, I was ranked number 1 in the world.

For eight years straight as a powerlifter, set multiple all time world records. One of those being a 881 pound squat with only knee wraps in the 220 pound class. I currently hold the Guinness World Record for the sumo deadlift at a thousand and one pounds. And I did that at about 265 pound body weight.

So there are five other people that have deadlifted a thousand pounds. They use a different style of deadlifting, which for the really heavyweights counter, the common knowledge is actually harder to do the sumo because I’m the only person that’s ever done it, but they’re all about 380 to 440 pounds.

So I’m also the lightest person who have done it in the world by about 140 plus pounds and the only person that ever done it for reps. And then I do a lot of I retired from powerlifting around the same time I started Kabuki Strength. I switched to doing what I call exhibition lifting. So it’s feats of strength tied with one of our core values for our company.

One of our core tenants is giving back and charity. And so every time I do one of these, it’s tied to a charity that we believe in and promoting that and using our platform for that. I’ve squatted 800 pounds every single day for 30 days straight. What was that like? It can’t be done. I’ll tell you that I know I did it, but there’s no way I could go back.

And it’s just, that’s what we focus on is prehab rehab. Proper movement techniques, all those sorts of things. We’ve got a soft tissue line of tools and we’ve got a website and corrective exercises. I like to call them more skill acquisition than a corrective exercise, honestly. But there’s no way it’s not just being strong.

Like you can’t go down the wrong path. You can’t have some issues start developing and not take care of it instantly. Otherwise the train’s going to come crush you. You got 800 pounds that you’re going to squat in a few hours and then Another 800 pounds that you’re going to squat 24 hours after that and it doesn’t stop.

So it’s a really cool thing to demonstrate putting all that stuff together. I did the same thing about a year and a half later with a 400 kilo, 881 pound deadlift I did for 17 days straight. And let me tell you, there is no one in the world’s ever come close to that. I know the One of the best deadlifters ever KK, it’s whatever he calls him.

He talks about her. He talked about he’s dead now, how his toughest training year ever was insane that he pulled over 400 kilos 20 times over the course of a year. And I’m like, I did that basically in a couple of weeks. So it gives you a little bit of context. It’s close to a world record weight, like just over and over again.

And then just other training lifts, people like love. Like I one time I walked in the gym and did a. A 675 pound deadlift. This is people often consider this like the best single deadlift set ever filmed. 675 pound deadlift for 20 reps in about 30 seconds. So it’s just hilarious when you watch it because how much the bar is bending and how much power output is just, it’s pretty cool to see.

And then I turned right around. I did that sumo. And then I did 10 more reps. Conventional right after it, I think I could have hit 20 conventional, but I had to go puke. So slowed me down a little bit there. So 

Mike Matthews: that’s insane. I don’t even know. I like it. It puts my training in perspective. It’s good.

I’m going to remember that next time I’m like, struggling with low four hundreds or something. 

Chris: And so that’s what I’ve known for it. I want to walk the walk. I get tired of the people that want to talk theory, but I’ve never actually put things in practice themselves. And. At some point, there’s a lot that you learn in the exploration of what the body is capable of.

And every one of those processes, I learned so much over the course of those couple of weeks or those couple of months in the final phases of chasing the thousand pound deadlift. You learn just years, maybe even a decade worth of experience in like how, because everything is so on edge and you can make such vast differences by minor tweaks and changes.

You have visibility of it. And you could feel it. I don’t know how else to explain it, but there’s, it’s a dangerous activity, pushing yourself that hard. And I have to deal with that. But for me, being able to show people. What I’m teaching is that it works at a level that you would never expect.

And then also the learning process for me is absolutely huge. 

Mike Matthews: Hey, before we continue, if you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my best selling. health and fitness books.

My most popular ones are Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100 percent practical hands on blueprint for personal transformation, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped Thousands of people build their best body ever, and you can find them anywhere online where you can buy books like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes Noble stores.

So again, that is Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and one other thing is, you can get any one of those audiobooks 100 percent free when you sign up. for an audible account. And that’s a great way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive.

Now, if you want to take audible up on that offer and get one of my audio books for free, just go to legionathletics. com slash audible and sign up for your account. I’m sure your upbringing primed you for being willing to push yourself further than you ever thought you could. You just were exposed to such extremes at a young age.

It’s just something that just occurs to me that like you’ve done a lot of things that Most people, they might consider in a moment of daydreaming but we never actually try to do, even if it’s just go and camp where there are a bunch of rattlesnakes. I’m like, nah, I’ll just stay home. Thanks.

You’re doing that when you’re six years old. Yeah, 

Chris: it’s certainly had an influence on me. And my tolerance for risk is definitely pretty high, but at the same time, I don’t want people to think that you’ve got to have. Like some crazy life or life experiences to do, phenomenal things. And on the converse, it also means that some horrible experiences or other things don’t necessarily define who you are.

So we must separate environment. From self, and this is a really key thing for people to understand, obviously some Sunday afternoon, if you get hit by a car and your legs broken, it’s affected you, but that’s not who you are. You’re not. I’m the guy that got hit by a car with a broken leg. You’re defined by What actions and responses you have to that, okay, that’s what you have control over and that is who you are.

So just like having, a difficult upbringing or, things like you talk to some people and they’re like, Oh, I’m the person that has the alcoholic parents and that’s affected where I am. And this is who I am going forward. It’s yes, you had that. How do you live your life? The actions that you take as It is actually who you are.

So for me, yes, I had that upbringing and honestly, most of the people outside of my three siblings, who I had an influence on by pretty close, but a lot of people around me are dead that I grew up with my other family members, friends, or they’re in prison. So on, actually, a couple of years ago, I was going through a divorce.

I was seeing a psychologist at the time. And I started talking about my background. He just looks at me. He’s I don’t understand. And I’m like, what don’t you understand? He’s I don’t understand how you’re not dead in jail or a drug addict, let alone how you’ve accomplished all the things that you’ve accomplished.

So for me, it’s, It comes down to that. You have to separate yourself from your environment. They’re 2 separate things. And so what that means is you can take it the other way. I could have been a hero 20 years ago, and then something catastrophic happens in front of me, and I don’t respond the way a hero would respond.

Because I’ve let myself get soft, we oftentimes think about soft is like physically soft. Like I haven’t been to the gym. What happens? The process of atrophy starts, but the same thing happens on a mental or emotional. Side of things. So we need to keep these challenges and things in our life. We need to take action.

We need to continue to pursue being that best version of ourselves. And the only way that we can do that is by adapting to stress and continue to have that in our life to become productive, to stay on top of things. And so there’s no, like I said, tying back to the question, how did those things influence me chasing that?

Yeah. Like I said, if we separate those, you don’t need to have this horrible past experience to rely on, to have confidence in yourself or to cue the emotional, like all you’ve got to do is go, am I today, am I this person that I expect that can pull this stuff off and if I am step up to the plate and do it, but there’s a process to that.

Like we need to, it’s just like training. We know that. Again, we adapt to stress. So we go into the gym, we lift weights, we come out, we rest and guess what? We become a stronger, better version of ourselves with so much in life today. People are chasing comfort to be entertained. It’s on our devices in front of us.

It’s on, connect to the TV, wherever it is and people are not seeking it. Like the challenge, seeking those things that scare you in the other avenues. I know I’m in a little bit of a tangent here, but this is a valuable lesson that I think a lot of people miss is chasing that thing that scares you.

That your boss comes to the, a group of people and says, Hey, here’s this challenge. Who wants to take it on? And you’re like, God, I don’t know if I can pull that off. And you’re, guts turning in a little bit of a wrench and you’re like, ah, that’s a clear sign. You need to go after that.

You scared of going back to school. Go for it. Like anytime that we actually feel that thing in our gut churning and that’s our sign for us to go down the avenue, find that thing and chase it. That’s what it’s telling you to do. It’s telling you that’s the right path to go on because it has to scare you to some level.

Just like stepping up to a thousand pound barbell to squat it. Is going to scare you as well. You can’t just walk up to a thousand pound barbell, just like you can’t walk up to a huge opportunity and not be prepared with all the training that’s gone 

Mike Matthews: on place to build you to that level. And, that’s a key point that whether it is squatting a thousand pounds or pulling a thousand pounds, Or maybe it is a major business undertaking that entails a lot of risk or a lot of commitment.

It’s not that, and I think you would agree, I’ve never, I haven’t done the former I’ve done a bit of the latter, it’s not that you’re not afraid or you don’t have doubts or second thoughts, it’s just how you respond to them. It’s just like what you’re saying, where you just accept that as a natural Whatever it is that you’re about to do, you just go and do it anyway.

There’s no 

Chris: reason to expect that it’s ever going to become comfortable. It does become a little bit easier again. That’s the acclimating to that side of it, but it’s a natural thing. You should expect to feel that way. If you don’t actually feel that way, that means it’s time to move on to something new because it is no longer bringing.

That challenge for you, or there’s no excitement for you and chasing it because there should needs to be in a mixture of excitement 

Mike Matthews: and fear and there is a cost to like you were saying, just chasing entertainment and comfort. It’s a more insidious cost, and the delay can be long enough to where it’s not easy to connect the cause and effect, but eventually you do enough of that, and you just become very dissatisfied with.

Thank you. Whatever it is that we’re talking about, if it’s just in general in life, then you become very dissatisfied in your life, or if it’s maybe if we’re talking about training, I’ve been there, get complacent in my training and not pushing myself as hard as I once was. And then, yeah, it just becomes naturally less satisfying, less rewarding.

And so you can either pay the price up front. Which you do get an immediate reward though. That’s the nice thing. If you do whatever it is that you are afraid of doing, or if you push through, even if it’s just raw effort, it just takes grit. You just have to grind through whatever it is that you need to get through.

Then you come out the other end and there’s an immediate reward, an emotional reward. And then depending on what it is, there might be also that reward might pay dividends for some period of time. If it’s, let’s say in business, if it’s getting out some A new product or, I’ve written a number of books.

If it’s finally finishing a book and getting it out there, there’s the immediate of Hey, I did that. That’s cool. And then who knows that book might go on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. And so the reward keeps paying. Whereas on the other hand, you can choose the instant gratification of comfort, but then that’s the highest it’s going to get because it only goes downhill from there and you just become more and more dissatisfied.

Absolutely. And it’s not just. 

Chris: Again, I can’t tell people how to live and what their, tell you what your values are, but for me and the people that I speak to trying to become a better version of yourself, continuing to challenge yourself is who I’m speaking to and take that in mind because a lot of times we’re talking to athletes and they get those concepts automatically.

If I don’t train, what’s going to happen? I’m going to start the process of atrophy. If I continue, that is going to lead towards death. It’s the opposite of living. The only way to live is to grow and adapt. That’s how we stay vital. And so if we apply those same things to our emotional and mental health, we think about that.

It’s the same thing. Like it’s basically the process of dying. If you’re not challenging yourself, you’re no longer growing and adapting. You’re no longer living. I’m pushing that argument there a little bit, maybe for me, I’m not. And that’s where the book is focused on is all those aspects of strength, where Kabuki strength and the other things I’m involved with are all focused on the physical nature of strength.

And so this is my chance to dive into those other realms and apply that, It goes beyond just philosophy in the book. Obviously there’s a lot of practical stuff in there and how to put that into place and affect it ends up affecting all aspects of your life. If you’re dissatisfied, think about the person that works the job Monday through Friday, just to get through to the weekend.

And oftentimes that same person is disengaged with their significant other, with their kids, their wait until they’re not living anymore. It’s just what can I do to get by? 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. I tend to agree just because that’s how I’m wired, in the book, Principles by Ray Dalio, I think of something he said in there that basically you have some people who want to get out there and change the world and they want to achieve big things.

And you have other people who just want to be in harmony and want to save her life. And neither one maybe is better than the other in a, Philosophic sense, but each person has to look and be honest with themselves on what they value most. And they have to then act accordingly because those you can’t have both.

You can’t have an easy, harmonious life that you can just savor. And have great achievements and make a big difference. It just takes too much fucking work and too much time. And you have to do too many things that you don’t want to do, but you do them anyway. Again, it’s a matter of, I’m sure that’d be a true tangent, but I’m sure you could look at it in a.

More macro sense where society probably needs a balance. If everyone were strong type, a always wanting to remold the world in their own image or according to their will, it would be pretty chaotic. I think it would be like a GI Joe cartoon or something. That’d be, so there’s probably something to be said for that.

It’s not a matter of one type of person being better than the other, but it’s what is really, I don’t know what’s calling you if it is just and we’ve all known people that are totally the harmony and savor type of people. I have good friends that are just that way. Now they’ve, of course they’ve worked and they’ve accomplished things.

They didn’t just sit around and collect welfare checks and like jerk off to porn all day. But they never were all that driven to make much of a difference or make a bunch of money. They wanted to work and do a good job and be proud of their work, but make enough money to just provide for their family and live a nice life, but not so much that they couldn’t live a nice life and they couldn’t have a vibrant social life and have hobbies that they enjoy.

I totally understand the allure of that. It’s just, I know for me, at least right now. I would be bored. I actually just wouldn’t enjoy it. And that’s just how I am. And 

Chris: that’s the thing that I see as the big gap today is a lot of people don’t really come to terms with what their values are, how they want to live.

And that’s people see all the things I do and then they’ll come to me. What’s your time management? Oh my God, it must be amazing. What tools are you using? And I’m like, that’s not where you start. How about goal setting? I’m like, that’s not where you start. You have to start with. What are your values and how you want to live life fundamentally?

You can’t even start the process of establishing goals. And we see this, like people like, Oh, what’s your bucket list? What’s your goal? And it’s that’s three steps into the process. And because if you don’t understand this and you start chasing a path, you could end up having a vastly different life that doesn’t satisfy the goals.

Or doesn’t satisfy the way that you actually really want to live in an illicit joy in life and how you want to impact the world, the people around you, whatever it is, that is, again, your driver within your values and what are your values? What are the things that mean the most to you? The things that mean the most to me, one is my family.

So having the time to spend with them, and this was a, one of the big drivers for me and making the shift. So a lot of entrepreneurs jump in and they’re working massive amount of hours. My goal up front was to create space and time in my life to have the time. To travel, to be with my family and my kids as they’re getting, I’ve got three children, getting older, getting involved with sports, but to also provide an example to them, an example of that they can have the life that they want by me demonstrating it by walking the walk of molding my life and living it exactly the way that I want to live.

A lot of parents have become 100 percent dedicated to just providing for their kids and they take a step back from being themselves. And to me, that’s doing your kids a disservice. You need to show them, 

Mike Matthews: with through example. And a lot of that, really what it results in is, what do they call it, snowplow parenting, where they just end up.

Trying to remove all the obstacles and all the struggle. We 

Chris: could spend hours talking about that. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: To the point of savor versus strive. I think we both agree that one is not necessarily quote unquote better than the other, but, and this kind of ties into everything you’ve been saying, being strong is better than being weak.

No matter what you want to do, what kind of path you want to take in your life, there are going to be obstacles. There are going to be things that are going to require some grit. And so being stronger is always going to, even if it’s going to maybe help you. Be an even better liver of a relaxed life. If you have that strength that you can tap into when you need it.

And the only way to get there is struggle. So if he starts at a young age and you’re trying to make things as easy as possible for your kids, I think you’re doing them a big disservice. Absolutely. 

Chris: A hundred percent on board with that. And that’s exactly what I was trying to say. And that’s why I use actually the terminology quite a bit.

Resilience to stress or resilience instead of strength, because that’s what we’re trying to strength. Sometimes people think is like this overpowering thing where this, very masculine energy where it’s really our resilience against those things that could cause us damage in our life or to against stress, to be able to bounce back, like the anti fragile concept where you come back even stronger.

Just quite honestly, as I want to leave a legacy and a mark in the world that, makes the world better for me having been here. And for me, that’s teaching the aspects are, our principles around strength, creating the tools and things, getting people out of pain and having them realize that their full physical potential, because it has a huge impact on all the other factors.

If you’re not arguably mental and emotional strength are much more powerful than physical, but if we’re not expressing ourselves physically. Or that we’re being held back from, living in that physical life the way that we want because of, pain or struggles, it’s going to affect those other areas.

And so I want to be able to teach and provide the tools to help people and to drive change in that manner. I want to leave, the people that I interact with. The people that have been through the years, actually, I decided I went to an old company I used to manage and went over there yesterday.

It’s been about six years since I’ve been there. And I went with my engineering manager now, and I walk in and everybody’s just running over, shaking my hand, showing me pictures of their, kids or this or that. And we walk out of there and he’s man, he’s either people didn’t know you here because they heard afterwards.

Or they just loved you and I’m like, and it’s not that they love me, but I had an impact. I was pushing them as doing things. And that to me is huge when somebody reaches out to me and says, Hey, I’m just so thankful that you pushed me and I ended up going back to school and I did this and I advanced my career, so having that impact on other people is just a huge.

Huge driver for me that I was able to help them in some fashion or another. They’re the ones that had to execute, but some sort of inspiration tools, pushing them, whatever, that actually had an impact on the course of their life. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I totally agree. It’s always rewarding. That’s one of those. There aren’t very many pleasurable things that you can just keep going back to without them losing their kick.

Sex is one. And stuff like this is one too. Every time I get someone writing me, usually it’s via email or maybe it’s an Instagram DM and saying, Hey, maybe they read a book or read articles or listen to podcasts or whatever. And then went and did whatever it is that usually it’s revolving around just getting in shape, but then there are all the ripple effects of that.

They just say, this was a year ago, for example, when I started this and here’s where I’m at now, and I just want to say, thank you. That’s cool. And I’m not, I’m actually not a sentimental person. I’m not prone to much tenderness. I just never have been, but that always, it always warms my slightly frosty heart whenever I get communications like that.

Because, part of it, just to clarify that is I look out in the world and there’s so much to be cynical about, and there’s so much to be pessimistic about, and there’s so many things that are so fucking clownish, it blows my mind, and so sometimes it’s nice to be reminded that not everyone can Is broken in tearing apart society.

There are lots of people out there who are good people who are making their lives better, who are then making the lives of others better, who are a net positive to society. And it’s nice to be able to meet a lot of those people via my work and know that by sitting at my computer for who knows how many hours and typing away, I was able to make a difference.

It’s pretty cool. 

Chris: It is, it’s a huge thing. And like I said, when you have that. Point where you change the course of someone’s life or with the work that you do. That’s a driver for me, 

Mike Matthews: without a doubt. Talk to me about leadership. What are some of the key lessons you learned as a leader that made you an effective leader?

Chris: Some of the stuff that we’ve talked about so far is we can talk about application of that. So like the chasing fear piece, one thing especially with like cultural change. Getting people engaged. If you walk into an organization, a lot of times people just have a job, they’re doing what they can do to get by, not get fired, especially in an environment that’s not successful, right?

At the end of the day, most everybody wants to win as well. I’ve found a lot of success in pushing people. Into taking on challenges again, that are on the verge of what they think is possible, but it’s, a challenge and having them succeed at that. We’re not even succeed at it, but the process of being in it returns this engagement, right?

So that is great for getting that individual one on one engagement in the business, the process, whatever it is. And also it’s going to lead to a huge reward on the upside for that individual. 

Mike Matthews: Cool. Yeah, that’s a good point. I would add to that and being encouraging and helpful along the way too, and being understanding and letting people make mistakes and not coming down too hard on them.

I’m just speaking personally. I, the only time where I get okay, what the fuck is if mistakes are made due to just negligence or not caring, or then that’s different. But if somebody is really trying and really pushing and we all make mistakes, like it is what it is. 

Chris: If you’ve got them engaged and you’ve got something challenging in front of them, if they’ve screwed up.

You don’t have to go do anything. They’re beating themselves up so bad that anything that you do is just going to make it worse. Like I said, it’s another side of the process there. The other is just like. The huge pieces like creating a vision. So this sounds freaking silly, but like I walk into so many places and this is I used to walk into so many places I was hired because it wasn’t successful.

So there’s usually some outgoing, executive who has been running around with their hair on fire, working 14 hour days, seven days a week. Just wasn’t getting the change that needed. And you go in and it’s here’s all the reports you’ve got to do. Here’s all that. And it’s just like this massive amount of busy work.

Okay. And I literally, the first thing I do is not do anything. I’m going to circle back to this here in a little bit, the not doing anything part. Second piece is, just tithing in and understanding what the needs of the business are and then creating, what does that actually look like? What does that look like?

What does it feel like? Okay. And then it’s not the doing this report, doing that, like all the actual busy work, it’s things that you can’t even measure that drive huge change. And that is going and having conversations one on one, not a group meeting, not getting up in front of the company and going rah, that we’ve all been.

And this was a big eye opener early in my career. Cause like I said, I was a little socially awkward, introverted, whatever you want to call it. I didn’t see myself as a leader because that’s what I saw a leader doing that big rah coaching thing. That wasn’t me, but I started seeing change and that was because I had all these little conversations every day, one after another, going from one employee to the next and just painting the picture for them over and over of.

What does it look like? What does the company look like? What? How do we interact? And then what are the things that are happening? What are the things that are happening in their area? How do they fit in? And so this is the big thing is we have to understand where you’re going. What does it look like? And then how do they fit into that puzzle?

So you just start this and over time, you’ll just develop this momentum that starts driving everything forward. It’s huge as far as what that can accomplish. And it sounds gimmicky. It sounds like something you’ll read in a book that you would disregard, but in practice is an incredible thing. Now let’s drive back to the not doing anything.

Again, I find that a lot of people fill their lives or their work with things that maybe make them feel like they’re accomplishing things. So you’ll literally find or create work so that you’re working all the time so that you feel that you’ve done something. Because sitting out there and, again, having a small conversation here doing these other things doesn’t feel like work, right?

But in those types of situations, that’s what needs done. Now, the not doing anything is also a very specific process. So it basically is removing everything from a scope of work so that you can truly find out what has to be done. Okay, because the things that have to get done will keep coming back to you.

So you’ve already done the first step of the process, which is basically eliminate things that don’t need to be done. Now, things will start coming back in. You’re like, Oh, this has to get done. My laundry has got to get done, right? Like those things you’re not going to get away with not having them done.

So the next step is, okay, how do I automate these processes? And this could be company wide, it could be in your job, whatever it is, having that and helping people with understanding that as well. I’m not paying you to sit here and press this button and enter this report every day that needs done.

How can we just make it, figure out a process where we just, you know, that happens automatically, right? And then if you can’t get done, and this is more of a personal, because not everybody can delegate an organization, right? But then the last phase is. How do I delegate? So it’s eliminate, automate, delegate is your process, but you literally have to start by removing everything to truly understand what needs done and what doesn’t need done.

And the same thing can be applied to all aspects of your life. And you’ll find that you, that we just create this. Busy a lot of times. Oh, I’ve got to go do this. I’ve got to do, and you think you’re swamped, but in reality, what are the things that are actually driving you forward? Again, if you don’t have a vision and a vision is going to be created off of your values, you’re not going to be able to get there.

You’re not going to be able to, Actually get things to a line. I’m definitely on the leadership stuff here, but we’re also veering into a little bit of life 

Mike Matthews: philosophy pieces as well. And there’s overlap there. So I think of like Peter Drucker’s stuff, right? Managing yourself. Where it starts, you need to be able to, and what I immediately think of is systems.

And that’s something that I’ve been big on in, in my businesses and working with the people who work with me is. Thinking of a job as a system, and initially it’s a very simple system, but we want to be improving this system over time and want to be codifying this system over time so that it requires less and less.

Maybe some of it can be automated, but if it can’t be automated, you can get close to it with something like a checklist, for example. So if you have a checklist of the things that let’s say daily actions that actually frees up a little bit of time. Of your attention and your energy to not having to try to remember what things do every day.

And so that’d be one example. Or if there’s something where there’s, let’s say if in the case of automation, right? So let’s say there’s like manual data entry that’s occurring. Okay. Is there a way to automate this? Oh, there is great. Now I, my system just got a little bit more sophisticated and freed up more of my time to go again, work.

At least have time to work on the system. And, I’ve made this mistake, probably anybody who’s ever worked has made the mistake of where you get to a point where 100 percent of your time is just working in the job and the job self, though, the system that is driving it has, you have no time to work on that.

And that leads to stagnation. And on a business level, it leads to stagnation. And also on a personal level, and if we’re talking about career, it leads to stagnation, but it also, I’d say in your personal life or outside of work is it’s very similar. And that, like you said, it’s very easy to fall into these set patterns and these set routines.

And often these are paths of least resistance. Often we’re faced with some little obstacles, some little problem we have to solve, and we don’t. Think about it very much. We just take the first thing that kind of comes to mind that will work and we just run with it. But what we don’t realize is maybe that’s a very inefficient way of actually dealing with this issue or accomplishing whatever end we’re working toward.

And yet we, then we never though stop to think is there a more efficient way to, is there a better way to do this? Yeah. That’s something that’s for anybody listening. That if that resonates with you, I recommend two books. One is the E myth by Michael Gerber, and it’s all about the importance of building systems in a business and that you want a business that has extraordinary systems that can be run by ordinary people, not the other way around.

You don’t want to have a business with shit systems that requires extraordinary people. And then there’s a book called thinking in systems that I recently did, like a little book review thing on podcasts that I also recommend, but just having that being able to look at work. And I think life through that lens of systems thinking, at least has been very productive for me and has allowed me to.

Keep things moving ahead at a decent rate. I feel in my business and also other areas of my life. 

Chris: Yes, I agree. A hundred percent. And that’s been like the big focus when I was in, in that world was putting systems in place. And to tie back on the leadership stuff really quick is. You’ve got to know where the business is going, what the needs are, paint that picture of what it looks like, show people how they fit in, get them engaged in that process, which you can do through the, of what I just said, or also the additional, like putting them in that gap, that place, that fear of the unknown to get them engaged.

And then we didn’t dive into. But, there’s obviously a lot of things when it comes to mentoring people and how you interact in that manner. But those are some of the bigger picture things. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. I was going to ask on mentoring. I probably am not a good mentor. I probably am not because I’m the type of person who I don’t really like having to manage people very much.

I like doing my own work. That’s just my personality. I like. Sitting here and writing a book more than even if they’re productive meetings and more than being a manager, let’s just put it that way. And so I’m curious as to your thoughts on, because I’m probably not a terrible, I’m not bad in the way of like where I treat people badly and make unrealistic demands of people and don’t provide any help.

But I am by my own estimation, I’m probably like. Neutral, not positive or negative influence as far as mentorship goes, even my own businesses. 

Chris: For me on mentorship, there’s a little bit of distinction between mentorship and managing, right? But this will fall a little bit more in the management side of things.

One thing that. Is I found tremendous value in is definitely not ever wearing your emotions on your sleeve. You need to be a very consistent individual so that people, no matter what has happened, they know when they come to you, how you’re going to respond. Okay. So if you’re a hothead and they’ve got something that just popped up, they’re afraid to come to you because they know you’re going to blow up or Oh my God, I can’t believe you did that.

So just never allow anything within the business to affect your emotions. So that you become, volatile in any manner, like you should be, people know exactly how you respond in any situation. This makes it much easier for them to engage with you and comfortable in coming to you with issues. Then as you’re dealing with the individual, there’s a lot of work around setting expectations and things of that nature.

So be very clear and explicit with your expectations, but not relying on what you’ve done. Necessarily told them to do like I tell you do, but actually working off of commitments. Okay. So getting to a point where you’re asking them, what are they able to do? It’s not, I’m your boss. But you’re committing to do this.

You’re giving me your word, just saying that you’re going to complete this task and not out of like fear of reprisal or something. No, exactly. Say, so when you come back, you’re not meeting the expectations of your job, which gets more into, you’re going to have those conversations, but whenever possible, it’s more of a person to person, even if it is a manager to employee.

Piece of Hey, you said that you were going to, it’s managing off of the shared relationship that you’ve developed with them and then the, what they have committed to you. And so you’re queuing off of that next place you can go is to expectations. But ascent, if you set expectations, you may push the commitment.

Can you agree to this? Never, ever going into a space of. Hey, we need to do this because the company policy is this or HR says this. You must own everything personally, commitments, expectations, because that’s where you get value is from managing from that relationship that we, and that shared trust from that relationship that you have with that individual.

If you defer authority anywhere else, You’re handing that over, you’re losing it’s just a different thing. And people want to do this all the time. I really don’t want to do this, but policy says this, that’s not leadership. These things help build that relationship.

Again, making sure that people are understanding where they’re part of the system and stuff like that, and working all this in concert, you’re going to end up getting a lot better. Results. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I totally agree. Those are good points and things that I guess I’ve been checking those boxes. Even maybe I’ve come across those points and stuff I’ve read over the years and internalized it, but I don’t know.

I’ve read a bit about leadership, but it has, again, I’ve just been, I feel like, Oh, I’ve been so focused on just doing my own work, but I have been, I’m not a volatile person in general. So I guess that came pretty easy. I don’t get overly emotional, but it takes a lot to make me actually mad. Sure, I can get annoyed, but to get me truly mad, you have to really go out of your way.

And you, there’s probably only a few people who could even do it. Maybe my wife and a couple of people like 

Chris: closest to me. Maybe you want to have personality. You don’t want to be a complete robot, but you need to show command. Your emotions and I feel like you also you need to be able to stay upbeat but authentic.

So this is like where a lot of raw managers fail. They’re up there. They can give these amazing speeches, but it doesn’t come off like when you’re having these one on one conversations with people, you need to be authentic with everything that you’re doing. And this is why. You want to tell somebody, Hey, when I want you to succeed, I believe that you can pull this project off.

They need to believe that and know that you’re doing that and know that you’re not doing it from a standpoint of you’re trying to set them up for getting written up or, something like that authenticity. Also, you don’t have to go very deep in the saying, saying, Rob, I’m disappointed. That, you were not able to meet this deadline and you didn’t communicate to me until the last minute.

And that literally can be all that’s needed where somebody else would be doing, a writeup and like a disciplinary meeting or something along that nature, if you develop that wording coming from a friend that you trust or a, a figure that you trust can really have a huge impact. So it’s really important that you’re also an incredibly authentic person that people can connect with because when they connect.

Yeah. Again, and now we’re talking about managing off of individual commitments and shared trust, right? Like all these things fit together to create. You know that it’s not just this one thing or this one trick. And then that authenticity, when you give a compliment, I’m not known for giving compliments, it’s actually a kind of a failure.

I wish I did give more, but people like they’ll literally run around and tell everybody, Oh my God, Chris said that da. Like it’s, everybody knows that it’s. It’s real. It’s not something. And I’ll be very specific when I do it. Like I’ll tell somebody, Hey, that was a good job. And they’ll say, Hey, thanks.

And I said, no, I want you to listen to me. What you did here displayed this and this. And I’m really appreciative. Are you hearing what I’m saying? Like just being really just drawing, like making a point to just draw them into the moment, not this thing in passing and all the research. I think it says you got to give 10 or 11 compliments for every other one for it to be heard.

But if you do it in this style that I think changes that. Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: I tend to be the same way. I’m just like, yeah you’re speaking my language where I’m not one to give many explicit compliments. I’m also not one though, to give so much criticism that it’s out of line or even to, if I have something to say, I’ll say it.

I do keep it in mind when things stand out to me as hey, that was actually, that was, I’m happy with that. That was good. I make a point of saying it and maybe it’s not as much as some people. And I’ve read a bit about just about this and I’m like, yeah, there’s a point where I don’t know if I’m that guy to just go walk around and give every person I see a compliment.

Hey, I really like your dog. Hey, I really like your shoes. Hey, I really like your hat. I just, 

Chris: I don’t know. Again, let’s get back to authenticity and that rah manager that. Looks the part, but they’re not getting the results. It’s the same thing. That rah person is running around Oh, I read this.

I got to give compliments all the time. And he doesn’t come across as is real and people aren’t hearing them anymore. Totally. I 

Mike Matthews: think it’s also going to be said for setting an example yourself. Cause there are a few things that people. Despise more than hypocrites and liars. And so if you are in a leadership position and you are, for example, trying to tell people to do things that you’re not willing to do, or if you’re trying to get them, even if it’s just a matter of working harder than you work you have to be somebody worth following 

Chris: to absolutely.

I don’t even think about covering that one. But we think about my discussion earlier I don’t want to sell products or teach methods that I don’t like. Walk the path and show people what it does. That’s a cornerstone of my approach is like being able to do and walk the path and everybody knows it.

So it’s a hundred percent I agree with you. You’ve got to be that leader that people will follow for that reason, 

Mike Matthews: without a doubt. So my last question for you is what fears are you chasing? Where are you at now? Currently? So 

Chris: I am chasing a thousand pound squat that will make me the only person in history who’s ever both squatted a thousand pounds and deadlifted a thousand pounds.

Where are you at on that? I hit 900 for a triple a few weeks ago. I’m getting closer, but it’s taking quite a toll on my body. I’m getting old, so I’m worried if I can still pull it off before older. I’m not, we’re all going 

Mike Matthews: to get old. We might as well just accept it. 

Chris: My business and training partner, he’s 70 years old and he’s a freak with what he does, but he’s always like age is just a number.

And I’m like, yes, it is. I get what you’re saying, but in reality, like there is a window on some things. So I’m working that and I’ve got a couple of different business ventures I’m involved with as well beyond Kabuki. So working on launching a shoe line of barefoot style shoes. We’ve had the design done for a while and just got some funding done for that.

So there’s obviously always risk. Scarce a little bit of a fear with chasing things like that. That’s a very big market with a lot of big players. That’ll be interesting. Why barefoot out of curiosity. So from our principles of movement, we focus on the largest global impact first. So first thing that we look at is breathing.

Bracing spinal mechanics. That’s a whole lot of stuff. That’s two days worth of coursework, but that has the largest global impact. The second place of focus beyond that in our priorities is the foot and foot mechanics and the impact they have upstream throughout the entire body. You know that we have our traditional shoe and society today is very counterproductive to how the foot operates and there’s a lot of Bones and muscles and everything in there that really don’t get used and actually get deformed.

And we lose some immediate, like changing footwear can immediately enhance performance through to increase in proprioception. But if we get the foot strong and controlled, we actually take care of a lot of, there’s a lot of issues with shoes. That’d be interesting. I’d love to have you back on sometime just to talk all about that.

So there’s a specific attributes that we’re trying to achieve that will actually allow us to strengthen and control and use the foot appropriately, removing some of the passive modalities that we have in our shoes that actually cause problems throughout the body. So just as a brief primer, meta analysis of the use of orthotics in shoes clearly demonstrates that there’s no long term impact from those to alleviate any issues, even custom.

That’s right. Actually pushing your body into position passively doesn’t accomplish much. So other than the short term, it can remove pain in like a six to eight week period of time, but there is no longterm validity to the use of orthotics, which is a lot of how shoes are designed with arch supports and other stuff.

We actually cover it really well on a podcast on our strength chat with Dr. Ray. He’s a podiatrist that I work with that works in that market 

Mike Matthews: as well. So cool. And what’s the name of that podcast for people? Strength chat. Okay. Strength chat. Okay, cool. Yeah. I didn’t know if that’s the name of it or just the colloquialism for it.

Cool. And then, so of course then there’s also the book, which just recently came out again for anybody who jumped into the, or missed the mention of it. 

Chris: Yep. So the Eagle and the dragon, if you go to my website, my personal website, Christopher Duffin. com, you can get a free audio, a download of that book, or you can get on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or wherever paperback hard cover audio as well.

So whatever your choice there. It’s a bestseller in five different categories. Read the reviews. It’s a life changing 

Mike Matthews: book for a lot of people. And then lastly, where can people find you and all of your things? What’s the best place on the interwebs? 

Chris: So Kabuki strength is the main company. K A B U K I strength.

We do education and products that basically improve biomechanics under load. Specialty barbells and equipment that are used throughout professional and collegiate and Olympic sports. On social media. I primarily interact on Instagram and LinkedIn. So you can find me just typing in Chris Duffin, but my user handle is mad underscore scientist, underscore Duffin on Instagram, but just type in Chris Duffin.

I am on Facebook, but don’t really use that medium for just my personal reasons. So we’ve got, the company has several different social media accounts as well. My favorite to reference people is Kabuki underscore virtual coaching every single day. We load free educational content on that platform. 

Mike Matthews: Definitely check that out.

Awesome, man. Thanks a lot for taking the time. Again, this was a great discussion and I look forward to hearing about the orthotic conspiracy. 

Chris: Actually it’d be a great podcast cover that. And a lot of the other biomechanics stuff that we do based around hips and shoulders with the equipment that we’ve got.

So we can dive into some very scientific discussions around those concepts. Awesome. 

Mike Matthews: Sounds great. I look forward to it. Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I’m doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my best selling health and fitness books, including Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100 percent practical and hands on blueprint for personal transformation.

Inside and outside of the gym, the little black book of workout motivation. Now these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes Noble stores.

Again, that’s Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100 percent free when you sign up for an Audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime like commuting.

Meal prepping and cleaning more interesting, entertaining and productive. So if you want to take audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, go to www. legionathletics. com slash audible. That’s L E G I O N athletics slash a U D I B L E and sign up for your account. All right.

That’s it for today’s episode. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don’t mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening from? Because those reviews not only convince people that they should check out the show, they also increase the search visibility.

and help more people find their way to me and to the podcast and learn how to build their best body ever as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and whatever app you’re using. To listen and you will not miss out on any of the new stuff that I have coming.

And last, if you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at Mike at muscle for life. com and share your thoughts. Let me know how you think I could do this better. I read every email myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback. All right. Thanks again for listening to this episode.

And I hope to hear from you soon.