Doughnuts to Power Your Deadlifts (with Amanda Kohatsu)

 I feel like we tell ourselves as athletes or competitive people that if we don’t take every single thing seriously that we’re not going to get where we need to go. That’s just not true.

Welcome to the “BarBend Podcast” where we talk to the smartest athletes, coaches and minds from around the world of strength. I’m your host, David Thomas Tao. This podcast is presented by barbend.com.

Today I’m talking to Amanda Kohatsu, an elite powerlifter, who’s also the owner and CEO of Doughnuts & Deadlifts, an apparel brand focused on the strength community.

We chat about how Amanda took over Doughnuts & Deadlifts, the ups and downs of running an apparel brand focused around strength, and what balance really can and should mean to people who strength train. We also chat about SoCal versus NYC and share some funny stories about the origins of strength stereotypes.

Also, I want to take a second to say, “We’re incredibly thankful that you listen to this podcast.” If you haven’t already, be sure to leave a rating and review of the BarBend Podcast in your app of choice. Now let’s get to it.

Amanda, thanks so much for joining us today. The first question I got to ask and I did give you the heads-up, so this is not like a surprise question, “Doughnuts & Deadlifts where’s the name come from?” It’s too good for me to not ask.

You did warn me. It took me a second to think about it because it’s not my name. Maybe some people don’t know this, not a lot of people, I’m not the founder of Doughnuts & Deadlifts, I am currently just the owner CEO.

Krissy Harkleroad, is her new name but she used to be known as Krissy Mae Cagney, she started Doughnuts & Deadlifts six-and-a-half years ago with a #doughnutsanddeadlifts, because Krissy used to bring doughnuts to the gym where she works.

It took off and it went, back then, six-and-a-half years ago, going viral was probably what, 10,000 hits? [laughs] It turned into a thing. She started screen printing T-shirts with the logo on it. There you go, the rest is history.

 The rest isn’t history because there’s an important part of that we missed which is where you come into the picture.

Where do I come in? I became a Doughnuts & Deadlifts-sponsored athlete, just a short two years ago. [laughs] I hit it off with Krissy and Chloie, who was her VP at the time, really fast. We’re the same kind of chicks. We think very similarly.

It became clear [laughs] after the first six months or so at the Arnold, Krissy had made some comments about being ready to move on. Krissy has dealt with some health issues and that took her away from powerlifting, basically. She had to focus on other kinds of training. She got really, really into endurance climbing and outdoor sports. That’s where her passion was.

She was running DNDL, but her passion was really out of the gym and was rock climbing and long-distance climbing, and things like that. She had started another brand already in the outdoor space and managing the two was becoming impossible for her.

One day, last year, it feels like 10 years ago now, but it was just a year ago, I got a call right around my birthday. It was actually the week of my birthday. It was Krissy, and she was very nervous. She said, “I’m ready to walk away from this and I don’t want to sell it, per se, to a stranger.” Long story short, she said, “Would you take over?” I said, “No, absolutely not.”

I said, “That sounds crazy.” At the time, think about this, I’m online coaching. I’m coaching and training in-person in LA. I do sell some T-shirts through Krissy. She helped me with that through my website.

I’m not an apparel person, per se. I never had an apparel business, so I said, “No, that’s crazy. You’re nuts.” She said, “At least come to Reno and talk to me about it,” so I flew up to Reno and I talked to her about it. There were some loose ends to tie up. It wasn’t exactly a gift. I had to…

It wasn’t a birthday gift?

No. [laughs] That’s a lot of people said that to me that week. I didn’t think that was funny, until now. [laughs] There were some investments that I had to make in it. I had to talk to my now-husband, T, who a lot of people know probably that are listening.

We talked it over, and we thought it was a worthwhile investment to save a brand that so many in the powerlifting CrossFit community still loved. We invested and we took over. That’s a very condensed version of a complicated story. [laughs] I’ve been at the head of the ship here since January. It’s only what? November.

Like you’re still within the same calendar year as when you took it over.

Yes.

This year’s been a decade, though.

It feels like 20, I’m telling you.

You said it felt like 10 years. Everyone feels that, and you get to pass. 2020 was the worst decade for a lot of people.

Yeah. [laughs]

Here’s my question, “When you run an apparel brand for something as niche as powerlifting and CrossFit, because Doughnuts & Deadlifts I see it in powerlifting gyms, I see CrossFitters wear it. I haven’t seen anyone wear it who isn’t a strength athlete.

Sometimes you’ll start seeing that on the street. I’m sure at this point, there are people who just come across it. They might not be a strength athlete, but they love the name and then they’ll wear it. What does the operation look like? How many people are doing this? We’re talking a few days before Black Friday because you were lovely and awesome enough to take some time to talk…

 …when things are really busy. What does the operation actually look like to run an apparel brand like this?

It’s different for everybody. For some people like Krissy, towards the end of her what we call, “the Reno years,” she had built it up. She moved from New York City to Reno and said, “It’s cheaper in Reno, let’s just print everything ourselves.”

She bought automatic presses and she basically moved half of her friends to Reno, Nevada, and started doing everything there in-house. Obviously, living in Los Angeles, that is virtually impossible. I would have to buy in huge amounts of money to make that possible, so we have a tiny team.

When I say “tiny,” it’s three of us. [laughs] The first person I called was one of my very best friends, Alyssa, who I hope when she hears this, she knows how important she is. She is like my little angel on my shoulder. When I want to say things, she’s my happiness interpreter, she’s my polite interpreter. [laughs] She does all of our customer service and admin stuff.

Any time you email DNDL that’s who you’re talking to. She’s doing that out of Sacramento, California and I’m down here in the southern part of California. I have another person up in San Francisco who is our social media person. Between them and our photographers, I guess that puts us at a whopping five people.

We manage all of the media, the creative decisions. Creative is really more me, and I work with the designers and the manufacturers. Then we have a third-party shipper, at this moment. We may start to do that ourselves, if I can get enough people to come over here and work for me in SoCal.

For right now, it’s really just the tiniest team. It’s a ragtag bunch of friends that we’re just trying to keep this brand going type of thing.

You said you had someone who was like the angel on your shoulder. That implies that you have a devil on your other shoulder. Who is influencing the bad decisions?

That’s just me. [laughs]

That’s just your natural state. OK.

That’s my natural state. I say that because Alyssa is the best person to do customer service. It’s been years since I worked in customer service. My replies are going to be shorter, more blunt.

I probably am not going to think it through. She’s Mrs. PC, and I say that with all the love and respect. She’s got the goods for customer service. I would mess that up. I feel like, “I don’t know, deal with it. It looks great.” [laughs]

“You look fine.” Who’s more sensitive? Your two big audiences are powerlifters and CrossFitters. Who is a little more sensitive when it comes to reaching out to the brand, if they have an issue that needs to be resolved?

By the way, we have a wider audience than that. We do have tons of regular gym-goers and strong men and strong women and things like that. Strong people, I should say. That’s a tough one, man. [laughs] Who’s more sensitive? Everybody when it comes to clothing, they have sensitive expectations.

Just in saying, “I’m going to avoid answering directly your question,” I’m going to be honest about that.

The interesting thing about taking up a brand though that already existed for five years before you came in is you’re not just starting a company. You’re not starting a company. You’re stepping into an existing space where people have existing expectations.

That has been the hardest part for me to deal with because I need to understand that everybody has these expectations because they’ve been here. Some of these customers have been buying DNDL before I even started buying DNDL. They have every right to have expectations.

Excuse my phone. To complain if things aren’t up to what they have been used to experiencing and also they’re confused about who I even am. It’s been a game of me trying to present myself to the DNDL audience in a small way when I need to and also, backing away and allowing the brand to be more about the brand and less about who is behind the brand.

I think that has been the thing that I’m having to navigate because it probably was a little more about Krissy before and about the team. We’ve got to make it more about the clothes. That’s why I’m going into designing new clothes and not putting myself in the pictures and things like that.

Everybody that has been shopping with them, it’s not a matter of what sport they compete in, I’ll give you this, it’s more about how long they’ve been shopping with DNDL. The longer fans are like, “Hey, where’s this, where’s that? I want to see this.” They’ve got demands.

Well, strength athletes, it’s a demanding bunch, let’s put it that way. People are very particular, especially because if you are a strength athlete no matter what level of competitive you are, you’re probably type A. You’re all about self-improvement and tracking your progress.

You might be a little bit intense, and most of the people listening to this podcast are strength athletes of some sort. I don’t mean that as an insult, it just can be an intense crowd. People are very dedicated, and they like what they like.

Otherwise, we wouldn’t be powerlifters, weightlifters, CrossFitters, strong men and strong women. You yourself are a strength athlete. You were a Doughnuts & Deadlifts athlete before you were the owner and CEO. Tell us a little bit about your journey in strength sports.

My journey in strength sports. I accidentally stumbled on powerlifting because I [laughs] thought I would be good at that CrossFit. I’m laughing, sorry, at myself.

I really did, though. I’m telling you, dude. This was years ago, so, years ago I was a little bit younger and a little more agile. I was training CrossFit so religiously. I did local WODs and things like that, but I had no confidence to go to bigger competitions because I was still missing a lot of pieces of my CrossFit game.

My coach of the time, Gabriel Perez, out in North Pasadena, California he [laughs] basically…Sorry, I’m cracking up myself. He put his hand on my shoulder and was like, “Look dude, you’re never going to make it to regionals.”

He said, “You’re going to be 30 soon. You’re not going to get muscle-ups this year. Time’s ticking, dude. Here’s the thing. You’re the strongest person in the gym and you don’t even work on strength, so why don’t we enter you in a powerlifting meet?” I was so insulted. I was like, “I will do Strongman. I will do something. I’m not doing powerlifting, there’s no real finesse to it.”

I didn’t know anything about powerlifting. Finally, he convinced me to go to Barbell Brigade to check out the gym, and he’s like, “You need to at least lift with real equipment because we don’t have any of that stuff here.” I go to Barbell Brigade.

It’s at Barbell Brigade that I meet a bunch of serious, at that time, there’s not a lot of them now at Barbell Brigade, but there was at that time crazy serious powerlifters, including my husband, and that’s where I met him. I met this group of just giant men who were pounding these crazy weights. I had never seen in my life. I had never seen a guy squat over maybe four plates, probably in a CrossFit gym.

No offense CrossFitters, sorry. It’s just not an everyday occurrence to see a guy squatting hundred-plus…

The quote we’re going to pull from this is, “CrosssFitters are weak.

No, no, no. Not at all.

“Get your act together.”

Dude, not at all. Go look at who I follow online. I still follow a lot of OG like CrossFitters. Anyway, I saw these guys just squatting 700 pounds, benching 500 for reps, it was crazy. I started to understand that this was more than just some lazier sport.

That’s what I had thought of it as. That’s what the CrossFit community at that time had said about it. These aren’t my opinions, obviously. I started to see how much skill it took, how much strength it would require, and so I started training both for a little while.

When my husband and I started getting better friends, he’s the one who convinced me that, “If you want to get good at strength, you’re going to need to stop doing so much, like anaerobic conditioning every day.” [laughs] I gave it a shot for six weeks. I stopped doing CrossFit for six weeks, and then I did my first meet. I just ran like a template program from probably Juggernaut.

Sorry about that. I got an elite total. From there, everyone was telling me, “You’ve got something.” I competed four times in a row in the next year. It just took off. It was crazy. I was in “Power Magazine.” It was so nuts. My head was still spinning the entire year. Like, “How did that happen?”

Do you ever wake up and you crave, not that powerlifters don’t do conditioning, I think that’s a misconception that powerlifters do no conditioning, but do you ever wake up and crave going for a run or doing a WOD with running in it or are you like, “Nah, that’s way behind me”?

What’s interesting is every morning when I wake up for the last three months, I do 45 minutes of cardio in my garage. I have a stair climber in my garage. [laughs]

That’s like old bodybuilding-style cardio.

Yeah. We’re doing the whole bodybuilder-cardio thing because as you get older, like you said, I can’t just go out and go for a run. Which I don’t think there’s ever been a moment, to answer your question, in my whole life where I’ve been like, “Yes, let me just wake up and run.”

Even when I was doing it for CrossFit, I was waking up doing track workouts, all that stuff, dude, no, there’s never, to answer your question, never a day where I’m like, “Hell yeah, I want to grind the shit out of my knee joints so bad.” [sarcastically]

No, I have so many injuries, I’m so beat up. Yes, I did miss cardio, which is why I took a break from powerlifting for this year to just improve my conditioning, improve my overall physical fitness, and even just like I’m going for hikes almost every day and stuff. There is a big part of me that missed it. That’s why I needed this year to clear the air a little. [laughs]

It’s not like you took over a business or anything this year as well. [sarcastically]

There’s that. Yeah, I work a little bit.

Your timing was probably good. The year you decided to take off from competing, to take a step back, and work out a little bit more at home, get outside, and enjoy nature, just happens to be the year when everything shuts down and you clearly can’t compete.

Absolutely. I think a lot of people, I don’t know what your feed looks like, but it feels like a lot of people are getting back to basics, with going on more walks, getting healthier, I guess you could say.

At a certain point when you’re competing in powerlifting, we all can agree maybe privately, but I’ll say it publicly, “When you’re competing at an elite level of powerlifting, it’s not the healthiest conditioning you’re ever going to be in.”

I was feeling super sluggish for a couple of years. I was in the 160s to compete at 165 and I don’t think my body was necessarily super comfortable there, and I had to eat up constantly to stay a little bit bigger, to stay stronger, which was great for my strength but terrible for my cardio.

I was feeling like my joints were hurting. I was out of breath and not able to really jog through an airport or go upstairs with the same quickness. That’s not good, [laughs] when you call yourself an athlete and you can barely walk up flights of stairs without getting out of breath. I’ve seen a lot of people, not just me, a lot of people get back to getting their fitness together, their overall health.

Forgive the illustration, but the stereotype of powerlifters just eating doughnuts and doing deadlifts and sitting down, it’s a little broader than that. I feel that was potentially a trend in the powerlifting community even before COVID was like, “Hey, maybe we should do a little bit of aerobic conditioning here. Maybe we should do a little bit more GPP.”

Yes. I was talking to T about this. Even Stan Efferding and Mark Bell with their 10-minute walks. They made that super popular. I don’t agree with a ton of stuff that [laughs] they say about training sometimes, they’re not the people I go to straightaway for fitness advice anymore, but they were ahead of the time.

They got hundreds of thousands of people to do it. I saw people with their #10minutewalk all over my Instagram feed. You’re right, they were getting ahead of that trend and then boom, this hit. We all had to pivot and just think about, “What is really important?”

Getting exercise and stimulus doesn’t always have to look one way. It doesn’t have to look like four sets of six. It could look like going out and playing basketball and you’re not going to lose every single thing you’ve worked so hard for in the past decade by just chilling out for a little while.

They were ahead of the time, and this whole thing has made us really take a different look at our fitness overall. I’m sad though, that the gyms are closed. Don’t get me wrong. I’m super sad. I feel for everybody.

Well take it from Amanda folks, it doesn’t have to be four sets of six. It could be five sets of five. It could be three sets of seven. It could be 3 sets of 10. It could be…

You have so many options for your fitness. It is all just variations on the same thing. No, I take that back. I’m putting words in your mouth. Who do you look for, I’m curious, when it comes to, who are your go-tos for people who you think might be ahead of the curve or just putting out good information when it comes to fitness content, specifically strength?

That’s interesting. The fitness-content world has turned into this vortex of the same stuff. I’m constantly looking for new influencers to watch because I’m addicted to influencers. I don’t know. I’m a fan. I’m a fan. I like watching their content. I don’t care if you guys think it’s cheesy. I like it.

Squat University always puts out educational stuff. You guys always put educational stuff. Actually, I like BarBend because they give highlight Reels, so, if I didn’t catch everybody’s big lifts of the week because I’m busy with DNDL and stuff, I usually see it through BarBend.

Keep doing that because I love seeing those big lifts when they happen. None of us are doing a lot of big lifts or not a lot of us. Let’s see. I still follow the same people I followed. I do follow a lot more doctors. I don’t know if that’s because T’s going to medical school now, but Dr. Nadolsky, I watch his stuff a lot.

Spencer?

Yeah.

Spencer Nadolsky, yeah.

Yeah. He’s very controversial sometimes, but for saying very mundane things, like just normal facts.

 I like his memes and I like his comment sections. It gets spicy. It is getting a little redundant. I see a lot of Reels, a lot of influencer Reels. This year is hard-pressed for inspiration.

It’s so funny that you mention Squat University because Aaron, who is Squat University, who runs Squat University, he was literally the last person I talked to on this podcast before recording with you.

Oh, really?

It’s incredibly random. I literally talked to him, I think it was yesterday we recorded. It won’t come out for a few weeks, we record a few weeks ahead of time. When you said that, I was like, “Wait a minute, did you coordinate this with him or something like that?”

No.

He’s great. I’m going to tell him you’re a superfan.

I’m a superfan.

He’s got another book coming out, too, in January.

Yes. I can’t wait to hear the podcast.

Yeah, it was fun. We’ve worked with him before. We’re going to start doing more stuff with him. He’s one of those people you talk to and you’re like, “Oh, I’m not the smartest person in this conversation.”

That’s everybody, for me.

I live with a smarty-pants in my house. That’s every day for me. I listen and go, “Oh, really? Oh, OK.” [laughs]

You live in Southern California. Everyone’s good at pretending to be smart. I’m not convinced. I’m not convinced they’re smart. I think everyone’s just a really good actor.

Yeah, there’s an element of that. It all depends on your circle. I feel like I have a pretty smart circle, a pretty savvy circle.

I’m just a jaded New Yorker. You can tell me to shut up, by the way.

No. I think you’re totally right. It’s someone who’s native from LA. I know the real people. You know what I mean? It’s the transplants that mess it up for everybody. That’s a thing with New York, too. It’s a lot of transplants, and bridge-and-tunnel people that mess it up for New Yorkers.

Oh, we’re talking about some controversial topics here on this podcast. Oh, my goodness.

[laughs] Not mess it up. For my Jersey people, please, don’t hate me. It’s not that. We get the image of the New York accent, the New York persona, but those aren’t really New York people a lot of times. Those are people that live in the outlying areas of New York.

It’s like the cast of “Jersey Shore.” They weren’t from the Jersey Shore. The Jersey Shore was where they went. They were from Staten Island or Long Island.

Exactly.

Got you.

Now, I’m sweating. People are going to send me hate mail for this, the New Yorkers.

It’s going to be OK. 90 percent of our readers are angry powerlifters from New Jersey, so they’re going to hate this. No, I’m absolutely kidding.

90 percent. [laughs]

Just 70 percent.

OK, great, great. Perfect.

The people you don’t want to see at a powerlifting meet. I’m joking. We don’t want to take ourselves too seriously. That’s another thing I like about the strength community. You look at a brand like Doughnuts & Deadlifts. You can’t take yourself too seriously, if you are repping that brand.

Nope. [laughs] That’s our motto. Our whole thing is we are for people, made by people, for people that take their training seriously but not necessarily themselves seriously.

That’s a great framing. The next time I miss a lift in the gym because I don’t compete these days, [laughs] because I’m also old and busted up, the next time the training gets serious, it’s nice to have that reminder.

If I see someone wearing a Doughnuts & Deadlifts shirt, sometimes, it’s a nice reminder, it’s like, “OK, why are we really in this?” It’s about self-improvement and not everything’s going to be perfect.

Now I’m going to go, “The reason I strength-trained in the first place or started was so I could eat something like doughnuts or go, enjoy some food.” I’m going to keep that in mind, too. It’s a good reminder.

It’s a good reminder. Balance. Doughnuts & Deadlifts came into my life at a really good time because I was completing lacking balance in my own training. Now that I run Doughnuts & Deadlifts, I realize I have to live the motto a little bit more.

When things mess up at Doughnuts, behind the scenes, or if I mess up in the gym, you got to let it roll off your back a little bit. Learn from your mistake and move on. It’s the way that I coach. It’s the way that I teach my athletes. It’s the same.

I feel like we tell ourselves as athletes or competitive people that if we don’t take every single thing seriously that we’re not going to get where we need to go. That’s not true. It’s not true. You can have fun, and still be an elite powerlifter, still be really good at whatever it is that you compete at. It’s possible, I swear. Have the doughnut, relax, chill.

Enjoy yourself.

I can’t top that, so we’re going to basically end the podcast now. Amanda, what’s the best way for people to stay up to date with you and also to stay up to date with Doughnuts & Deadlifts?

Probably Instagram. Instagram @doughnutsanddeadlifts. It’s doughnuts with a D-O-U-G-H, not the D-O-N. [laughs] @haparican, @H-A-P-A-R-I-C-A-N, haparican, that’s me.

Perfect. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Thank you.