Bam. We’re live Almost Got it synced. Can’t even believe this story I’m reading this morning, I’m watching absolutely the most bizarre show I’ve ever seen The boys. And just when I thought it couldn’t get any more bizarre, the actress that Starlight, Erin Moriarty has taken a break from Instagram. This is fucking crazy. She’s taken a break from Instagram. Holy shit. If you don’t know the show, I can’t tell exactly what the show is doing Exactly. I can’t tell if it’s satire regarding the left and the right. I can’t tell if it’s woke or making fun of woke. It’s so bad. But if you see woke stuff, you start to realize that what we think is making fun of them is actually who they are. So it’s really difficult to tell. It almost seems like satire that this story that she got off of Instagram, she’s quitting social media after Meg Kelly went on a rant about her. Looks well. Yeah, she did. She jacked her face up. Starlight character. Something happened to her between season three and four. I just can’t believe this is actually real. I think the guest isn’t here soon, so I will. Oh, yep. Here we go. We’ll come back to this insanity. Yo, what’s up dude?
Adam Adkins (01:49):
Hey, ban. How you doing my friend?
Sevan Matossian (01:51):
Good, how are you?
Adam Adkins (01:52):
Oh man, I’m doing good. Just coming off a long weekend.
Sevan Matossian (01:56):
A good weekend.
Adam Adkins (01:58):
Yeah, good long weekend. Obviously at the 4th of July, so yeah, all is well.
Sevan Matossian (02:04):
Yeah. Awesome. Well thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it.
Adam Adkins (02:08):
I appreciate you. No, my ability to be able to help and show people what we have is dear to me. So I love the opportunity.
Sevan Matossian (02:17):
Adam, can you pronounce, is it C Strength?
Adam Adkins (02:21):
So it’s Caris, so it’s Zeus’s youngest son, the Greek God of opportunity and fortunate timings. So Caris strength,
Sevan Matossian (02:29):
Caris Strength, God, Google wants me to spell it as Cesar. So bad. Caris Strength. Hey, so there’s so many ways to look at this. I want to start at the very beginning. So you invented this device.
Adam Adkins (02:49):
I did. So give you a little bit of a background on how it came about, please. So during the pandemic, everybody was at home. I was in the worst shape my life. We were looking around, you could only order food out. And I was talking to the gentleman who is now my partner, Carl Fink. Can
Sevan Matossian (03:07):
I ask what state you lived in?
Adam Adkins (03:08):
Yeah, so I live in Florida and my partner’s up in Illinois, but we were talking during the pandemic and he is like, man, I’ve never felt better. I’m like, how can you feel better when everybody else can’t go to the gym or do any of that? And he kind of went into it. He goes, I don’t have to drive to work. So I lift an hour in the morning, I do an hour of cardio in the evening. I’ve never been better. So I went under my own health journey, started losing weight. And in that journey I came up with the invention that you now see as the care restraint trainer. I was walking and I was thinking about things. There was a condition called sarcopenia, which is a muscle strength and size disease that at the time there were only three books that were published worldwide.
(03:55):
And my partner and I wanted to let people know that you don’t have to get old and get weak. We were looking at the theory of elite aging. And so I was looking at the books with all these people. They were sitting in front of either a big bulky machine, which obviously I know I’m an athlete that they were using or they were pulling stuff that were off the screen. And while I’m reading the book, my daughter who was born with fasted quadriplegic, cerebral palsy with microcephaly, my angel’s always going to be in a wheelchair, but she was sitting in the room with me and I looked and I was reading this. I’m like, there’s nothing that somebody in her condition could use the machines that they have effectively in this picture. And so I was thinking about it and all of a sudden I got the vision and I went over, grabbed the pen and paper and literally drew out what you now see is the device, the system from all four angles.
(04:50):
I started doing in my head things that weren’t even ever created. We have the world’s shortest functional resistance band ever made. It took us over a year, which seems like it would be easy, but it’s not to be able to make sure you get a full range of motion and yet you can have enough resistance on there, but have it short enough that you can start far enough back. So I started drawing this all up and my partner happens to be a patent attorney, one of the most prolific patent attorneys in the us. And I went to him like everybody else that talks to him, he is like, Hey, I’ve got an idea. And he was very interested, started listening to it and he is like, man, you’re onto something big. Then we did our patent searches and there was nothing like it. And so then we went to the next phase of, okay, I made a rough prototype myself. But then we went on the journey of having a commercially made prototype and it took several iterations and then moved to commercialization. So there’s a bunch of steps in there, but overall it was me during my health journey looking to start a website or start a company to help people stay and get fit, get healthy. And I just was inspired by looking at what I was seeing and the lack of a tool for people in the marketplace that made me come up with this idea.
Sevan Matossian (06:12):
So just really quick, was your daughter’s born? I don’t know much about cerebral palsy. She’s born like that.
Adam Adkins (06:17):
Yeah, so she was born, so she had oxygen deprivation at birth. They told us she wasn’t going to live. She was in the NICU for 13 days. She was 41 weeks when she was born. But her brain damage affects several parts of her body. So when we say spastic quadriplegic, it means that in all four limbs she’s really tight. Her wrists turn in, her feet are really tight. And then microcephaly, because she had oxygen deprivation, the size of her head is smaller than it’s supposed to be. So that’s called microcephaly. And it was a traumat birth. She aspirated meconium, but it didn’t kill her. She’s with us, she’s our angel. But yeah, she was fully healthy until that occurred. And so now,
Sevan Matossian (07:05):
And it occurred at birth?
Adam Adkins (07:08):
At birth and there was nothing. I mean, there was a fetal monitor strip that went missing. There was things that we couldn’t really prove. But I got to say, I told my wife, instead of being bitter and try chasing lawsuits her entire life, let’s just love our daughter the way she is. She’s going to be with us. I don’t want to feel bitter about her situation or whatever happened or keep griping about it. So after we looked and we knew there wasn’t enough stuff that we could prove, we let it go. We put our arms around her. You know what? I made the commitment from that moment forward that my wife will do the therapy and I’ll make the money. And she’s been a stay-at-home mom for my oldest daughter and now two other children. But it ended up working out. But yeah, it was definitely a mistake at birth.
Sevan Matossian (07:58):
How old is she?
Adam Adkins (08:00):
She’s 17.
Sevan Matossian (08:01):
And how old are your other kids?
Adam Adkins (08:03):
So my younger son just turned 15, who happens to be six foot eight, 300 pounds. And then my youngest daughter is 10.
Sevan Matossian (08:12):
How tall are you?
Adam Adkins (08:14):
I’m six four. Six four and a half.
Sevan Matossian (08:17):
Your son is six eight
Adam Adkins (08:19):
Size 19 shoe. He has a seven foot five wingspan and he is very gifted as far as academics goes. So he’s got both sides. He’s got sides, but he’s also got brains.
Sevan Matossian (08:36):
Is he playing sports?
Adam Adkins (08:38):
So he played football this year. He’s going to play basketball. He loves basketball and he’s really into volleyball, so he really loves playing it. So like beach volleyball, his arms go way over the net jumping, so I am not sure where he is going to land. I played at the University of Michigan, so everybody thought he would play football, but I didn’t push him down a lane. Whatever he wants to do, it’s his life. I support him and if he’s going to do it, he’s got to do it at his best. But right now he’s testing out other sports. He’s always been good at basketball, but now I think he’s really got a niche for volleyball.
Sevan Matossian (09:15):
Yeah, volleyball is cool. That’s a great scene. That’s a great healthy scene. Beach volleyball’s a cool scene. How tall is your wife?
Adam Adkins (09:26):
She’s five eight and a half.
Sevan Matossian (09:29):
Is she tall for her family or she short for? No,
Adam Adkins (09:30):
She’s short. Her two sisters are six foot.
Sevan Matossian (09:33):
Holy cow.
Adam Adkins (09:36):
And my 10-year-old daughter is five seven.
Sevan Matossian (09:40):
Wow. And you said your boy’s only 15?
Adam Adkins (09:44):
He just turned 15 in April.
Sevan Matossian (09:48):
Let me ask you this. This is totally off subject. I’m only five five and my kids are active all day and they don’t go to school and they’re homeschooled. And I don’t think that they’re going to go through an awkward stage for two reasons because they’re short and because they’re moving all the time. Is it possible to do that with tall kids also? Do all kids have to go? Because I’ve seen these kids who are just fantastic athletes and then around boys who are like 11 years old, and then from 11 to 13 they’re still good, but some shit kind of goes haywire. Right?
Adam Adkins (10:28):
Well, I will tell you, being that tall, he had problems with his knees at football. So they were having him do squats down to his ankles and all sorts of things, and he’s got flexible joints they say. So for him it was almost like a puppy growing so quickly that it almost threw off his equilibrium a little bit. He’s gained a lot of that back, but there was a good year there that he was just trying to growing so fast. I don’t think he’s done. He’s hoping he’s done. He may be done, but again, he just turned 15, he looks and he’s still got a baby face. So I think he’s got a little bit more to go, but
Sevan Matossian (11:07):
So it’s a lot to deal with. It does. Your center of mass basically changes every morning when you wake up?
Adam Adkins (11:14):
Yeah, and again, as he’s growing, so there’s the growing pains and literally grew a foot in a year. So just to be shooting up, it’s like how do you gain that, keep your balance and everything with that much growth. But he’s done a great job and we got in the weight room. So like I said, most kids that are his height are skinny, tiny kids, but he’s a powerful kid,
Sevan Matossian (11:40):
So
Adam Adkins (11:41):
He, he’s getting really strong and he’s getting addicted to the weight room where he really loves to go. He pushes me. And so he’s very healthy, but nicest kid in the world. He looks like he could be the most intimidating thing, but he just, again, he’s just a sweet kid.
Sevan Matossian (11:59):
What a lifelong gift if you get into the weight room when you’re a kid and then you can just have that your whole life. What a great addiction.
Adam Adkins (12:07):
Well, and I love that we do it together because a bond experience for me and my son that a lot of dads don’t do, we’re in there and people are like, I wish my kid would come with me. At first. I’m like, well, I made him come with me. But now again, he loves it. We talk. I think obviously the health benefits from getting strong and doing the whole thing, but the time the one-on-one time that he could tell me things and just let go. I wouldn’t change it for anything.
Sevan Matossian (12:37):
Going into the pandemic, what was your job? What was your vocation?
Adam Adkins (12:41):
So I’ve always been in sales. I was in legal sales, so anything that you had with a lawsuit, so if it was electronic discovery, getting emails or things off of people’s computers or cell phones all the way through what’s called e-discovery, electronic discovery, so filtering all that data, so anything to do with the legal industry, that’s what I was doing. I sold those services to law firms, deposition services, trial services. And then before that I’ve had various sales positions in different industries.
Sevan Matossian (13:15):
And had you ever invented anything before the Kara Strength device?
Adam Adkins (13:20):
I am like crazy old Maurice from Beauty and the Beast. I literally had probably 15 other things that I’ve come up with in life that I just didn’t know how to move forward. I’ve got some that I’ve made the prototypes and people still use ’em today, but this was the first one. And there’s a lot of things I’ve done in life to chase money where I’m always going, how do I make money? This is the first thing that I’ve ever done that I was like, how do we change people’s lives? My daughter, and just so you know, and I’ll put it out there, what I’ve invented is the world’s first body anchored strength conditioning and therapy system that can be accessed in any position. So laying in a hospital bed to a wheelchair to a fully functioning individual. We’ve got professional athletes all the way to 95-year-old grandparents using the system, 5-year-old kids to quadriplegic veterans.
(14:17):
It really just depends on when I invented it. I didn’t realize how many areas that this would help. And we’re seeing things on the performance side from people’s vertical jump, like increasing multiple inches in a short period of time. We had an athlete that went into it was going into the NFL draft and he dropped his 40 from a four seven to a 4 4 8 by doing sprinting exercises and things with our system on. So there’s a lot of different benefits that have come once the invention was created, but it literally has different benefits for different people at different stages. As you see the gentleman on your screen, it has all sorts of, these are more for your athletic moves. There’s a lot more functional strengthening that goes on here. So you can do all sorts of different combinations. But again, it can also be done by my daughter.
(15:11):
Well, she uses it for correctional positioning. I’ve got Medicare codes and stuff approved to cover a back brace version of what I’ve done. But we’re really just trying to get it on as many people as we can to change lives. And in the sports world, we’re trying to give a competitive advantage to those that want to try it out. And I know you specifically are a big CrossFit guy and we’ve been talked to by several people. Obviously there’s weighted bags that can go in it, so you can rock, but we don’t have it where you’re doing 40, 50, 60 pounds. Literally it comes with 10. You could probably do 20 pounds in that vest, but the most comfortable weighted vest I’ve ever worn because most of ’em pull down on you and it really is
Sevan Matossian (15:51):
Tough. Yeah, this thing’s crazy tight to your body too, which is nice. The worst part about all those vests and rucks and everything is just the bouncing, the moving around.
Adam Adkins (16:00):
Absolutely. And this we make in every size. You do want it to fit tight like a glove. There’s an internal belt that actually straps on that makes it where it does not twist at all. And our goal. And then when you have the foot straps, so you can do up to 600 pounds abandoned weighted squats, or you can do
Sevan Matossian (16:20):
600 pounds.
Adam Adkins (16:22):
So there’s, the foot attachment has four different places that you can attach bands to. And so on the vest, there’s also multiple attachments around the bottom up in the front, on the side in the back. So if you take the red bands or 50 pounds and you do two of the red bands from the front hook to the inside of the shoe to the side hook to the side, and from the back hook to the back of the heel, that’s 300 pounds per leg and that you could be doing 600 pound banded weighted squats.
Sevan Matossian (16:55):
Do the bands come in different lengths for a guy who’s six eight versus a guy who’s five five versus a kid? So
Adam Adkins (17:01):
The standard system comes with eight inch bands, so two sets. One is at 15 and one’s at 25 pounds of eight inch bands. Then we have same weight allotment for 10 inch bands, and then we have 18 inch bands for the legs. Now we can customize and do things. We made ’em different lengths for a reason. So say you have somebody that 30 pounds is the lightest leg band that we give with our basic package, but say they just can’t do it, they could link a 15 pound band and imagine this one’s yellow and they can click these two together. And now they have a 15 pound band, leg band that’s exactly 18 inches. So you can have, with the same system, you can do 15, 25, 30, 45 up to 50, and then multiple weights all the way up. And when you hook ’em in, it just feels like one constant resistance,
Sevan Matossian (17:57):
Adam. So you think of this and you draw it. Can you tell me the very first time you put it together is this like you go to Home Depot and get bungee cords.
Adam Adkins (18:08):
So I went out again. I’ve had crazy old Maurice moments, so obviously I write ’em down. I went in just so I can have a visualization. I took an old fisherman vest, took off all the pockets. I went in. I still have it. It’s kind of funny. I went in and
Sevan Matossian (18:25):
You used one of those things that my mom has that takes, or I used to use it as a kid to take the sleeves off my shirt, those things that popped the little
Adam Adkins (18:31):
Ripper.
(18:32):
And I was using scissors to cut it out, little pieces, scissors. But then I took wire hangers and I broke ’em off and I bent them into triangles. So then I put the triangles and I put ’em on the vest because I knew that I wanted it and now the way that they are, almost half moon. But I wanted to make sure that there was almost a cradle for it to go into. And I started putting ’em on and attaching them on this vest where I would put them, and it was way too loose. So I knew it was just for visualization of where these things would go. So I’ve got the original, but it was literally a fisherman’s vest and coat hangers that were broken off and bent into triangle pieces for the different attachment places.
Sevan Matossian (19:14):
How long did it take you to make the first one? Is it just like you’re just doing it all day every day for a week? You’re just start assessing on it? No, no. So
Adam Adkins (19:22):
I drew it up. I made that prototype just visually in probably 20 minutes just so my wife could understand what I was talking about, kind of showing her where it was at. But then I had
Sevan Matossian (19:33):
Does she care or does she just pretend to care?
Adam Adkins (19:36):
No. Well,
Sevan Matossian (19:37):
You know what I mean? You could be like, honey, I’m going to make this vest that’s going to change the world and our daughter’s going to use it and increase her strength. She’s like, okay,
Adam Adkins (19:45):
Sweetheart. When I picked up the piece of paper, I’m like, oh my gosh, I have an idea. She’s like, not again. I was like, no, honey, this is the one. But no, she absolutely, we’ve seen stroke patients that have been paralyzed on one side of their body regain movement after 15, 20 minutes of working with them. In our system, we’ve seen people with a severe front tilt. You can put the straps across the back in an accident, pulls you right back in a proper position that go from leaning over to walking in a proper gate in 20 minutes. We’re sorry. The stuff that we’re seeing on real people, real patients is what’s so motivating is that we literally have people changing their lives. Our system is being used at Fort Belvoir, the Army’s largest rehab center, and we have helped reverse bladder incontinence in almost two dozen women because the way that it works when they’re doing their pelvic floor exercises, their main civilian PT there, Anna Lynn puts them in our system.
(20:52):
And because you’re the anchor, but also so you’re the stability, but also the strength production. It just engages your core at a whole deeper level. So by wearing our system and doing these moves, after an average of about four visits, they stop coming back to her, the bladder leakage stops. And that’s something that every single woman will experience in their lifetime in a majority of men. And we do believe we have a non-invasive, non-surgical solution that will help people keep their dignity and not have to wear pads or diapers. And this is globally, again, an additional benefit. I didn’t know when I was first putting this together, but the more we have it in clinical settings and with different therapists, the more benefits that they’re seeing.
Sevan Matossian (21:41):
That’s so funny. Just Google, I’ve never seen this. I just googled Kara strength to see and typed in Amazon to see if it was on Amazon. And I got this note from the browser request was throttled, please wait a moment to refresh print page.
Adam Adkins (21:58):
They don’t have it. They don’t know about it. And we’re not, the reason we’re not selling it on Amazon is because if you sell over a hundred million dollars of product on Amazon, I’ve heard from insiders, they end up taking your product and making their own version and they’re like, go ahead and sue me. And we already know what the value and where this is going. And so we’ve decided at this point we do not have it on Amazon. And again, it’s not about the money. It’s about the mission, and we want to make sure that we can keep it pure. So yeah, it’s not on Amazon.
Sevan Matossian (22:27):
Does Rogue sell it? Does Rogue Fitness sell it?
Adam Adkins (22:30):
No, they’re a competitor of ours.
Sevan Matossian (22:32):
Oh, really? Yep. Oh, I had no idea. Meaning they have something similar?
Adam Adkins (22:37):
No, just meaning that they’re in the same space. Actually, we’ve got several potential licensing deals that we are discussing right now with some of the world’s largest, I can’t won’t say their names, sports companies as well as some of the world’s largest orthopedic bracing companies in the world looking to license this. But a rogue fitness, I think a peloton. Now, here’s the other thing, think about this. Peloton has an issue because they never figured out the strength training portion of anything. Then they sold you a bike with two little dumbbells that you put behind your butt. You’re supposed to do that. Now imagine you could be banded in our system while you’re doing the bike, but in between, you could be doing chest presses, you could be doing overhead presses, lateral raises. You could be intensifying and doing things while you’re on the bike without ever having to get off.
(23:27):
And they can do a combination of strength training and cycling that has never been done, but they don’t have what we have. We have the patents, everything on our product. But it would be a, so we’re open for different relationships because for me, how do we help people? It’s literally, I can’t help ’em if they don’t try it. If they don’t put it on, then I’m not able to help that person. So for me, it’s all about exposure, showing people what we’ve done, all the amazing things that it’s doing for people. But typically, once somebody tries it on, they want one, they want one, their parents want one because once you feel it, I was obviously a college athlete all the way through Michigan. I had never felt anything interact with my body the way that this does.
Sevan Matossian (24:11):
So the bladder control was not, that was just like an oh shit moment. That wasn’t, who figured that out?
Adam Adkins (24:21):
Anna Lynn Para she, again, she’s the top civilian PT at Fort Belmore. We went in and we got a presentation in front of, it’s like 75 to a hundred of their physical therapists and physical therapy. And
Sevan Matossian (24:35):
They’ve seen it all. By the way, everyone’s pitching everything to the government,
Adam Adkins (24:40):
Everything. And we go in the room and the main guy at the base, the main military pt, he always is tough on vendors. So we go in there, people got
Sevan Matossian (24:53):
To of shit. Yeah, he’s got to be skeptical of shit.
Adam Adkins (24:55):
Got a room full of people. It’s like, all right, I’ll try it on. So we put ’em on him. I started anchoring him, man. I started putting bands on him and he is jumping around being goofy and everything, and he is like, yeah, but I just don’t know if this is enough of a workout. Then he takes it off, his shirt is dripping wet, and everybody looks at him and he goes, huh, I guess I was getting a really good workout. So then we demoed it with all of his people, and every single one of ’em, top level doctors are like, oh my goodness, it can do this, it can do that. And they started walking through it, and by the end of the meeting, the most skeptical person in the room, Chiarello told Anna Lynn, order as many as you need. We’re a hundred percent in.
(25:37):
So they’re using ’em in clinic now. We’ve got patients that they are prescribing the back brace version two that have the correct diagnosis that’s covered by insurance, but we’re getting those through there. But Annaly is a 32 year pelvic floor specialist. So she’s a pt, but she specializes in the pelvic floor. And when she saw it, used it, put it on, first time she saw it actually was her daughter started the wrestling program at the Army at West Point, the female wrestling team. And her daughter tried it on from one of my sales reps at an event. And we have videos of her. She was blazing fast in it. She used it when she took it off. She scrimmaged a guy who won two national championships in high school and took him down three times in a minute. She felt quicker, she was more explosive.
(26:32):
And that’s when Anna Lynn’s like, Hey, I can see this with our patients. So then she got us into Fort Belvoir and then used it on her patients. And just by putting ’em in it and going through their different exercises, she’s the one that revealed that it stopped pelvic pain. And men, they have pain in certain areas. So it stopped the pain. It stopped bladder leakage. There was a captain that was waiting to take over a aircraft carrier, but had to wait until this issue was corrected. And after four visits, it was, so now she’s able to move up in her career. And it was just an ancillary benefit that we had no idea, but it was discovered in the clinical
Sevan Matossian (27:15):
Test, Hey, because that’s a huge problem. I don’t know if problems the word, I don’t want to make it a problem, but I don’t know if it’s a problem if your bladder leaks, but it’s
Adam Adkins (27:26):
A gigantic, I would say it’s an issue that a lot of people deal with.
Sevan Matossian (27:30):
CrossFitters have it, female CrossFitters. I mean, every competition I’ve ever been to, I’ll be interviewing one girl. I’m like, how was it? And she’s like, oh, I was peeing out there lifting, jumping ropes, lunges. There’s a ton of people that’s happening to a
Adam Adkins (27:47):
Hundred percent. And it’s literally every single lady. So whether it is post child or even as they get older and gravity takes place, almost every single woman will have a problem. When they sneeze, they pee, they cough, they pee. I mean, it just happens. And then the unspoken truth is it happens to a lot of guys. And think about just the dignity of both of having to talk about wearing a diaper or wearing pads because you can’t stop the flow. It happens.
Sevan Matossian (28:17):
Or how the fuck, the dignity, someone like me that’s completely egoless and 100% enlightened a walking Buddha. Thank you. How about I just don’t want to pee in my fucking pants, right?
Adam Adkins (28:27):
That’s it. Oh, a hundred percent. That’s saying, well, you don’t want to walk down the street. So yeah, either you don’t want to be all that. And our solution, because it is non-surgical, so the only way you can do it are bladder suspensions, I believe are the surgical side. They’ve got devices that have to be inserted and it
Sevan Matossian (28:47):
Works. I’d rather pee my pants than have surgery. Yeah, I like your way.
Adam Adkins (28:51):
And for ours, we’re actually being able to see it. So we’re getting a clinical trial started with we’re in the talks with Henry Ford Healthcare up in Michigan, and then Anna Lynn from Fort Belvoir to start putting something together because now what she has seen in the clinical setting, we’re going to be doing trials. This could be the number one reason that my system is a huge success because literally billions of people on this planet will have that issue and nobody likes it.
Sevan Matossian (29:22):
Leaky vagina,
Adam Adkins (29:23):
There’s not really a solution for it. I mean, you see things on TV that things that pull moisture away. It’s like, let’s get to the bottom of it if we can. And just depending on agent and where they’re at. And as long as there’s not, if there’s minor lapses and things, but if there’s a major prolapse, there are a few things that it won’t work on. So again, in the clinical setting, we’re going to make sure that we know all
Sevan Matossian (29:50):
A major prolapse. Yikes.
Adam Adkins (29:52):
So if people have certain issues, this may not work. But otherwise, what a great
Sevan Matossian (29:58):
Word, right? Prolapse. I mean.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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