Want Perfect Form? Meet Peak Performance

There’s one human in the world who has squatted and deadlifted one thousand pounds respectively. To make that fact more impressive, he did both for reps. Can you name this powerlifting anomaly? 

His name is Chris Duffin. Not only is his strength undisputed, he’s one of the most intelligent minds in the strength and conditioning world. 

I recently heard him answer a question about “achieving balance” in an interview and his answer might surprise you. His answer? The best way to find balance is to explore the extremes. While it’s counterintuitive, he made a great point. Duffin used the analogy of the squat. He said, if your goal was to perfect the squat in idealistic balanced harmony, you might say, “Let’s start with an air squat and really work on perfecting the movement, even before adding any weight.” Instead, Duffin offered that progress towards perfection halts in this conservative approach. When you try to pour every ounce of training effort and leave no stone unturned to develop the heaviest squat humanly possible you learn to balance and perfect the squat in ways a middle of the road approach never could. 

Said differently, you can air squat incorrectly all day but you absolutely cannot squat 1,000 pounds poorly. Think about it.