Chris Duffin- Kabuki Strength
Travelling to teach DNS has allowed me to meet lot of interesting people and make some great new friends. When teaching an Exercise-2 course recently in Portland, Oregon, USA I had the privilege of spending some time with Chris Duffin at his Kabuki Strength Lab.
This is how they describe Chris Duffin at Elite Fts:
“Chris Duffin is a dominant force in both raw and multi-ply lifting. He currently holds the all-time raw World Record with a 881-pound squat at 220 pounds bodyweight. In 2014, he posted a raw total of 2061 pounds in the 220 -pound class. In addition to his own competitive success, he has been the owner and coach at Kabuki Strength Lab in Portland, Oregon since 2008. Chris Duffin holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from the Oregon Institute of Technology and an MBA from the University of Phoenix. Duffin approaches powerlifting at a level of technical efficiency that is unsurpassed. His insight into training has helped many of this students go on to success beyond their expectations.”
Chris and I spent some good time discussing powerlifting and the integration of DNS into it, and we finished the session off with a short Q & A to illustrate and explain Chris' approach.
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Questions and Answers:
You have attended 5 DNS courses, what benefits do you see in the DNS concept for lifters?
DNS has had a profound impact on how we teach and coach the basic loaded movement patterns, from cueing methodology through to postural patterns, as well as how we correct deficient movement patterns. This can be seen across all of our platforms from coaching, education, to products. Putting all this together has skyrocketed not only our own team’s performance, but also that of all the other lifters we work with.
How would you best describe what you do here at Kabuki strength?
We are focused on helping people live better through strength. We are an education and products company focused on movement and safety. Our products allow people to move better, offer self-treatment options, or are tools or for the clinician to use. From an educational standpoint many of our products take education to use, which we supply for free. We also have a subscription based movement portal that is heavily DNS influenced where we teach people how to assess and correct basic moment issues with corrective exercises. Then we use the same cueing and postural strategies in teaching people how to transition to loaded movements in training. This approach is meant to minimize injury risk and increase performance.
How does the on-line coaching work?
Online coaching covers an incredible scope of the athlete’s needs.
It starts with a personalized assessment of your movement along with a personalized corrective strategy. Videos of lifts are reviewed weekly, with additional input on refining technique and adjustments to the corrective plan as needed.
Programming is done individually based on your work capacity, training availability, training equipment available, goals, and where you’re at in your annual training cycle. We use an innovative Velocity Based Auto-regulation system that takes nearly all subjective measures out of the auto-regulation. You are shipped a measurement device at the output of the program and then we build individual profiles for each of our lifts to use for the training plans.
An annual training plan is developed based on work, vacation, competition schedules, and your development in the life cycle as an athlete.
What are your plans and goals?
Current personal goal is to be the first person ever to both squat and deadlift 1000lbs (454Kg). Company goals are to positively impact how strength coaching is performed as well as raise the standards for what is expected of clinicians working with athletes. We believe much is to be desired by the current status of strength coaching and training. This also stands for clinicians who do not recognize the stress response from training and the value of loaded movement, who immediately fall into taking a trained athlete off the field for rest and essentially detraining via remedial movement patterns. We want the bar raised across the industry and are helping with both education and products to do so.
What products are you supplying?
Duffalo Bar - reduces shoulder stress in nearly all squatting and pressing movements though several mechanisms explained on the product page
ShouldeRok - is patented for its impact on shoulder health and strength. The video for teaching it using both bracing and postural strategies form DNS.
Pain Pill & Boom Stick - are myofascial treatment tools for self-use and for clinicians.
Kabuki.MS - our movement portal
Seminars - Held 4 times a year in the US as intensive hands-on 3 day workshops with me and my team.
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It was great to spend time with such an interesting and forward thinking lifter and coach.
As an additional benefit did I get some of his coaching hints on my deadlifts and by applying some small changes in the set-up and by focusing on the speed have I in just a couple of weeks doubled my number of repetitions on the sub-max training weights (70-80%). Thanks for that Chris!
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