Our Why

Because our company exists as a metamorphosis from a non-commercial entity - a garage gym - we were built on a bedrock of good ol' fashioned blood, sweat, tears, heart, and soul. Most of our leadership team were training partners before we were co-leaders. We built friendships around a shared passion, and turned that passion into a vocation when the calling came. Kabuki co-founders Chris and Rudy from the very beginning placed an emphasis on investing in people. We are proud that our company's turnover rate is hardly measurable, and we continue adding exceptional people to our team from our local and global communities. Our training facility, where it all started for us, lives on today as Kabuki Strength Lab. Previously known as Elite Performance Center, today The Lab continues to offer an affordable training environment to our local community and is also the home of Kabuki Coaching and Education.

Our community is also made up of a network of tenured professionals in various domains who serve on our Advisory Board, a first for a company in our industry. We are deeply thankful to have relationships with and seek counsel from these highly skilled and influential educators, clinicians, medical doctors, and coaches.

As an organization, Kabuki Strength stands humbly at the intersection of two eternal virtues, experience and knowledge. From the very beginning, one of our core, foundational tenants has been education. It is this never-ending pursuit, application, and expression of knowledge that is central to our mission of making the world a better place through strength. We are committed to sharing our platform and working with the clinical, academic, and strength & conditioning communities to teach, coach, and equip more and more people with the tools and knowledge needed to better themselves.

People are the DNA of community, and without beautiful and incredible people Kabuki Strength would be nothing but a lifeless shell.

People like Cassandra, a Physical Therapist Assistant who joined the gym and embraced the community only to find herself married to another member and working as a full-time strength coach and educator for the company.

People like the writer whose widowed mother quit her nursing job, sold her apartment and all possessions, left a devastated and corrupt post-communist eastern bloc country and emigrated to the US so that her 7-year old son might have a chance at making more than $180 per month – the average monthly salary in Romania.

People like Derrington who moved all the way from Texas to Oregon when confronted with the opportunity to work for Kabuki as a full-time coach teaching the sport he loves to other athletes.

People like Brandon who mentored under Chris and eventually become such a good coach, he started coaching the coach and is now our VP of Athlete Experience.

People like Brady, who moved across the country just because he wanted to train with our team. Brady now works as our VP of Operations, having grown into the role over the years after starting out in his first role - packaging the Duffalo Bar, our first barbell.

Many incredible strength athletes have been born out of Kabuki Strength’s family of lifters and world-renowned training methods. In the early days it was Chris Duffin leading the way as one of the top multiply powerlifters and Rudy Kadlub along with his training partner John Hare, who were both world-record holding masters lifters pushing the barriers and proving that age truly is just a number. Over the years Chris transitioned from geared powerlifting to RAW powerlifting and become a dominating force in the 220lb weight class, at one point becoming the heaviest man in history to squat 4x times his bodyweight. More recently he has performed incredible feats of strength: becoming the first human to sumo deadlift over a thousand pounds…and he did it for almost 3 repetitions. This incredible deadlift was the first part of Chris’ “Grand Goals” campaign, an effort to raise money for the Homebuilders Foundation of Metro PDX via proceeds from sales of a Grand Goals shirt and hat. At age 72 Rudy continues to compete, coach and inspire athletes across the world, competing and training after countless injuries and setbacks. In his 60s, Rudy has totaled 1604 pounds and come within a mere 35 pounds of Ernie Frantz’ “unbreakable” 1639 total as a masters lifter. Other athletes from Kabuki Strength have won world championships in numerous weight classes and divisions all across the world, competing in international-level meets and invitational meets reserved for only the best-of-the-best.

Chris recently completed Part 2 of his #GrandGoals campaign by squatting 1000lbs for 3 repetitions. This time, we used the platform and attention from Chris' training to help raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society for our friend Connor Green. Connor, who you can see in the picture below, is one of Kabuki co-founder Rudy's 13 grandkids and was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma 2 years ago. Today, Connor is in remission and getting back to the swing of things as a young athlete! To learn more and hear from Connor, Rudy, Andy (Connor's Dad), and Chris - watch this video!

From the very beginning a common denominator among those who trained with Chris and Rudy in Chris’ garage was a pursuit of strength. The powerlifter’s dream is one that most can’t relate to, even remotely. What makes a man or woman painstakingly train hours each day for the sole purpose of lifting heavy metal weights? To those people asking the question, the answer won’t be very convincing. It will, however, share a central element of humanity that is present in everything tangible and intangible that mankind has touched – perseverance.

But what does physical discipline have to do with living a good and meaningful life?

We live in an age of dopamine overdoses, of instant gratification and self-contained bubbles we fill with entertainment and our own rapidly ballooning egos. Human history is marked by the pursuit of power and the oppression of mankind, set in stark contrast with the brilliance of mind and the subduing of the very planet we inhabit to serve our needs. Our common story is marked by drama, chaos, war, death, and unimaginable suffering. But that same story is also marked by passion, love, victory, family, and brilliance. What human history has NOT identified with so far is apathy and mediocrity – two poisons of the modern age taking hold of lives with so much potential. The vision of Kabuki Strength in a philosophical sense is to see people deeply driven to live better through strength. For us this isn’t just some mantra to encourage the pursuit of a heavier squat, but rather a universal belief that each individual human being – regardless of circumstance – is fully capable of living a meaningful life.

This is not a moral proclamation. It’s simply a call to unshackle ourselves from cheap pleasures, spoon-fed propaganda and entertainment, overstimulation and overabundance, lack of physical and emotional discipline, and most importantly from our own ego. This is a return to what truly makes us human – drive, grit, will-power, freedom, work, and passion.

In a slightly less philosophical and more technical sense, the vision of Kabuki Strength is to develop equipment that bridges the gap between clinical and performance worlds, teach correct, clinically-based movement which can serve to improve performance and reduce injury modes, and coach athletes of all levels using traditional and our own proprietary training/programming methodologies. That’s quite the mouthful, but don’t worry, we expand on it further below.

Our vision is to see people live better through strength. But vision without mission and action is nothing but a dream.

As a community we have a deep and powerful vision that is a part of our DNA. This is a vision that looks beyond the self. In fact, it requires active participation by it’s community to inspire and influence those outside who are looking in. There are four primary mediums by which our vision comes to fruition – equipment, education, coaching, and charity. The active participation of our community, both internally and at large, is assumed in each of these core tenets.

Equipment – The combination of an engineer and businessman who both share a love for strength sports and kinesiology is the perfect foundation on which to start manufacturing equipment. Our focus and specialty lies in bridging the gap between the clinical and performance worlds. How can we do that? Community. Professionals from both sides of the spectrum - like those on our Advisory Board - are among those who we closely work with and whose counsel we seek when developing a new piece of equipment. The idea is to see where there is a gap between the academic/clinical world and engineer a barbell or piece of equipment that can then serve a purpose based on that research and clinical experience. Being involved in the discourse of both academia and athletics allows us a unique position in which we can develop clinically-backed tools that can be effectively used to improve performance, reduce injury, and many other reasons. Every product we design and manufacture serves a purpose and can trace it’s development back to a tangible need we identified and chose to meet.

EDUCATION – In the early day’s in Chris’ garage, content was recorded and shared with a modest, yet quickly growing, audience on YouTube. Fast forward to today and hundreds of thousands follow and consume the free and paid educational content we produce on multiple platforms and via several different mediums. What started as a friend filming one of Chris’ breathing drills using a cell phone camera has become a professional production with a full in-house staff of educators who present continuing education courses around the world. The evolution and growth of Kabuki Strength has always emphasized content development and sharing the knowledge we gain with others. We provide a curriculum of clinically-backed courses covering a wide range of interconnected topics around human movement, biomechanics, strength, and athletic development. At a typical course, our coaching staff works with groups of up to 60 individuals in a lecture-workshop format, alternating between in-depth learning, hands-on floor work, and practical application in the gym. Our staff also regularly presents this material to organizations via private seminars and in professional industry settings/conferences.

COACHING – From the very beginning people have sought personal coaching by Chris, Rudy, and other members of our organization and community. Due to the rapid growth we experienced and the need for one-on-one coaching services by our community at large, we launchd a virtual coaching service in early 2016 staffed by full-time coaches who work with athletes and lifters all across the globe. These coaches are the same talented individuals who regularly produce educational content as well as present at in-person seminars across the US. Brandon – our own Director of Coaching and Performance – is developing and researching new velocity-based training methods with other industry professionals who specialize in these topics. At our expense, Kabuki Strength coaches regularly attend continuing education courses in various topics and schools of thought. We are as much students as we are teachers.

CHARITY – All of us on our team have a heart for those in need, those less fortunate, and those too weak to go at life alone. We believe strongly in the power of love, of a simple gesture of kindness, of charity, and of being there for someone and saying “I get you, I love you, I want to help”. As a company, we take every opportunity we can to serve others – examples of which you can read about or see in images in this essay. We believe that making the world a better place through strength goes far beyond selling equipment, coaching, and education people – and this is why Charity is our 4th pillar. Our commitment is to continue using our platform, our people, and our resources to help support those in need.

The purpose of this article and the intent of this writer is to allow for our leadership and team to express to you, the reader, why we do what we do and what we stand for. We deeply believe in our vision here at Kabuki Strength, and want to extend an invitation to anyone to join us and participate in our story. We are about as open as organizations and communities get, so if you are in the Portland area we invite you to stop by the Lab and get a training session in and hang out with the staff! Or maybe you’d like to join us at one of our seminars across the US and learn the intricacies of our movement philosophy. And of course, always free to send any of our staff an email or message via social media. If you're not on social media and want to get a live look at what's new - follow our Live Page.

Thank you to each and every person who has supported or interacted with us in any way, both big or small. From the largest customer to the average joe learning how to improve his squat through our educational content, we appreciate and thank each and every one of you for your support. Community is the bedrock of our company, and we will never take you for granted. Thank you for believing in us.

we Hope and deeply desire for each of you to live better through strength.

– The Kabuki Strength Staff