EJM: Chris let me just say that I feel very honoured to be interviewed on your blog.  You have a great thing going here and the more people that read this the better off the fitness industry can be.

CB: So, Eric, we know from reading your blog that you’re an RKC, you’re a practicing physical culturalist, you take bold stances against stupid fads in the fitness industry and you’re ripped as hell.  Tell us a bit about what you do and how you came to where you are now.

EJM: Well Chris I guess it all started when I was a kid.  I grew up idolizing people like Arnold, Sylvester Stallone, Van Damme and other action stars.  They made strength and fitness look cool.  When I was a teenager I started doing martial arts and since I felt that just doing a couple classes a week wasn’t enough I started to train on my own using body weight and stuff I could hang off of.  I also joined wrestling but sucked at it but I guess it gave me a pretty good sense to keep pushing on.

I made a lot of mistakes along the way but learned from them and used what I learned to become a personal trainer in a gym.  The gym I was working for had a world champion powerlifting team who I became friendly with.  When that gym was taken over by a new owner he tried to boot out the powerlifters because grunting and deadlifting “scared away the women”.  Needless to say that pretty much took the joy out of working there.

When I left the gym I needed a new way to train and called up Arnel Ricafranca who was running fitness bootcamps.  I wanted to help him “stick it to the man” and he introduced me to kettlebells which I absolutely fell in love with.  I learned everything I could about how to use them for a variety of goals and an interesting conversation with then senior now master RKC Dave Whitley that ended with him bending a bunch of frying pans with his hands “inspired” me to join the RKC.  As you can tell it worked.

CB: Fantastic.  Hang on, while I’ll just go hide all my kitchenware.  Anyway, talking about stupid fads in the fitness industry, you’ve recently ranted about the Skechers shape-ups, military-style boot camps, running for fat-loss, the Biggest Loser, the shake weight and a number of other crazy and idiotic ideas.  What in your opinion is the very worst thing you’ve seen in the fitness industry and why?

EJM: Hmmm.  That’s rather difficult to answer.  There are varying degrees of bad.  Most things are a waste of time.  Others are just flat out dangerous.  I would have to say that the methods they use on the show The Biggest Loser is pretty high up there.

Here you have a completely uneducated audience being told to do things like plyometrics when their joints and ligaments are barely ready for climbing a set of stairs.  When you watch them swing a kettlebell in what could be listed as the worst swing on YouTube and people try it on their own, do it wrong (because it was demonstrated wrong) and injure themselves they blame the kettlebell instead of the trainer and that cuts into my business.

CB: Right.  Technique is key for the swing and we’ll come on to that in a bit.  Not quite as silly as the above, but close, a friend of mine has just started P90X and raves about it.  How can I persuade him to do something more sensible instead?

EJM: You can’t.  P90x has such a cult mentality and it is literally everywhere you go.  I have had people unfriend me on Facebook because I said muscle confusion is a farce.  Now don’t get me wrong p90x works, it’s just not the ultimate elite program it’s made out to be.  If the worst thing people did was p90x then the industry is still a lot better off then people trying to take acai berry extracts and doing Hip Hop Abs (another Beach Body product).

CB: Oh well, it was worth a shot.  As an RKC, you’ve recently talked in detail about the Turkish Get Up and you’ve also reviewed Master RKC Dave Whitley’s recent DVD on the subject.  Can you remind us why it’s such an important exercise and give us a few tips to consider when we’re practicing it?

EJM: The Turkish Get Up will always have a special place in my heart.  One of the things that got me out of continuing martial arts was I had returned from a torn ACL surgery and injured my rotator cuff, went to physical therapy to get it working again.  Even though I had use of my shoulder it wasn’t normal again and the doctors and physical therapists told me it never would be.

I bought the book Enter the Kettlebell, saw the Turkish Get Up and thought it was the strangest exercise I ever saw.  I tried it out and my shoulder quite literally became normal again during the session.  It was practically magic.  As for the other benefits of the getup is it promotes strength, flexibility and stability across the entire body while at the same time bringing it up as one unit with muscles that cooperate with each other and gives you better movement quality.

When doing the getup strive for perfecting the movement and don’t try to hurry through it.  That’s a common error I see.  Oh and keep the arm and wrist locked out at all times as well.

CB: I’ll concentrate on that.  And obviously, you have some YouTube videos of that move anyway, so’ll be sure to review those.  Talking about Dave Whitley, who do you see as your mentors in the industry and who have you been most influenced by?

EJM: Hmm that’s a rather long list.  Pavel and his evil minion’s have always been a valueble source of inspiration and information especially since it directly pertains to what I do.  Dan John has a great way of conveying life and lifting lessons.  Alwyn Cosgrove is who I look to for fat loss info.  Smitty and the other fellows at Diesel Crew are very innovative.  Scott Sonnon, Mike Boyle have some interesting approaches.  Zach Evan Esh has great stuff.  Also a lot of the guys on T-Nation have something worth saying as well (the coaches that is).  Bret Contreras’ article “Dispelling the glute myth” got me trying out an exercise I normally would have laughed at.

CB: Too right.  Mr Contreras has rocked the industry with his glute emphasis.  And in a good way, I’m certain.  What do you do to make sure you keep up to date with your continuing education and skills?  What do you read and who do you seek advice from?

EJM: I try to stay active on specific forums.  Being an RKC I have access to the RKC forum which is like a collective intelligence from some of the brightest, strongest and forward thinking minds in the fitness industry.  You might find when I update my blog it tends to be pretty late at night because I am constantly scouring the net for new info.  I have made a lot of mistakes over the years and learned from them so I have a sort of built in BS lens to filter the bad from the good and have built up an intuitive sense.   Another thing that happens is that I am always using myself as a guinea pig as well as some of my clients.  Sometimes things pan out, sometimes they don’t.  In either case I learned something from it.

CB: On a lighter note, you’re a big fan of classic heavy metal from the 70′s and 80′s.  Can you give us some tips for the best workout music that we might not have heard before?

EJM: Overlorde is an awesome band that almost nobody has heard of.  I became friends with the guitarist there because I wanted to merge two different kinds of heavy metal.  His brand and a style of lifting that has it’s roots going back over 300 years.  My all time favorite band though is Judas Priest.  If they are touring  you have to tie up, gag and drug me to stop me from going.

CB: Sounds like a great party!  Anyway, back on track, now.  You’re a relative strength fiend, with a fairly chunky weighted chin-up and weighted pistol to your name.  What are you most proud of when it comes to your own lifting achievements and what is your favourite lifting goal right now?

At the moment I am most proud of the weighted pistol because that is my most recent accomplishment.  When I finished the infamous 300 workout in 16:10 it was that.  When I did the 48kg double Get Up (24kgs in each hand) that was my favourite.  Every time I set a new personal record then that becomes my favourite because it is a sign that I continue to become stronger.  The name of the game is progress and as long as I continue to step forward then that means we are getting somewhere and somewhere is a lot better then nowhere.

CB: I recognise that mentality.  Still talking about relative strength, I think I’ve read that you’ve done a one-arm chin?  I’d be really interested to hear how you got yours.  (I got mine in two phases: firstly, building up to a decent weighted chin and secondly, doing assisted one-arm chins using a counterweight on a pulley, looped over a pull-up bar to take some weight off.)

EJM: At the time I was doing  a lot of single arm overhead pressing and weighted chins in a sort of superset fashion.  It’s not real super-setting because I am getting rest in between (critical for strength).  One of the things we have in the RKC system is during the overhead press we do something called an active negative.

When you have locked out the press and want to lower it into what’s called the “rack position” you don’t just simply lower it.  You imagine pulling it down by tensing your abs and arms which is actually meant to keep your joints safe but neurologically it is very similar to a one arm chin.  With the combined power of that and the weighted pull up/ chin up it would just be a matter of time before the one arm chin up is accomplished.

CB: Interesting.  I found that even moving massive weighted chin weights, I couldn’t get the one-arm chin without specific one-arm movement practice.  I guess you got that doing the one-arm press.  Moving nicely on to kettlebells more specifically, one of the things I really like about kettlebells, having only just started using them in earnest, is their versatility and the strange and wonderful things you can do with them, like bottom-up pressing and halos.  Do you use any slightly unusual kettlebell lifts with your clients?  If so, why?

EJM: I try to have them stick to the basics as much as possible but every once in awhile you have to give them something flashy just to keep them interested.  I am convinced that one of the things that separates the elite from the rest is the willingness to stick to and perfect the basics.  Sometimes we have what I like to call physical challenges where we come up with something like the pistol sots press or just take a difficult exercise that we haven’t practiced.  It adds a little bit of fun and tests out there non specific strength at the same time.

CB: Cool.  Sounds like fun.  Still on kettlebells, how do you start your clients out if they haven’t even seen a kettlebell before?  How do you progress them?

EJM: It all depends on the client and how the answer their health status questionnaire.  A lot of times you can tell the abilities of someone just by looking at them.  When it is a severely deconditioned client I’ll have them practice bodyweight half getups and have them practice just holding the kettlebell in the bottom of the Turkish Get Up.

If I have a cage fighter a lot of times I can just do a monkey see monkey do type of deal where I just do one and say “your turn” and then just make the necessary corrections as they go.  Most of the time my clients are in between those two extremes and I like to unleash something that I stole from Dave Whitley called the “furnace workout”.  He broke the Turkish Get Up into Half Get Ups and Reverse Half Get Ups which when you train the two of them it greatly shortens the learning curve of the full Turkish Get Up.

CB: Great tip there.  I’ll get onto to Google for that right away.  Last question on kettlebells: Tony Gentilcore recently showed a video of the difference between a snappy hip swing and a squat swing.  How do you cue your clients to help them get more movement at the hip?

EJM: When it comes to teaching swings I teach them to chop, fold, pop and lock their hips with their hands and use the pendulum drill (hold the kettlebell like a pendulum on a clock) to teach them not to front raise the kettlebell.  On the way down I’ll compare it to closing a car door when your hands are full to teach them to be explosive.  Depending on a client’s sense of humour, I may also compare the top of hip snap to a porn star.  It’s all about the hips.

CB: I’ll give that some consideration and maybe try the humour out under safe circumstances…  More generally, you’ve mentioned training brides before their weddings a few times recently and I seem to be at an age where quite a few of my friends have got married in the last couple of years.  What do you focus on with your clients who are going to be brides?  What kind of programmes do you set for them?

EJM: I mention brides because I like to talk about some of the things that are going on my life at that moment.  With a bride you get a person that is hungry for results and doesn’t have time to waste on doing a bunch of useless crap.  It’s the perfect conditions for ideal progress.

Right now one of my brides told me before she started that she has a tendency to bulk up and I explained to her the differences between high reps for sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and low reps with heavy weights for toning.  She listened and is ecstatic with the results so far but there is still more work to be done.

The training for brides is the same as any fat loss program.  Increase metabolic rate, burn lots of calories, create a caloric deficit via proper nutrition, consistency over time.  I guess the main thing that I would suggest is to sort of fuse HIIT with strength so you can get the best of both worlds and create a fast paced productive training session.

CB: Of course.  And given your ripped condition, I’m guessing that a lot of your clients come to you for fat loss.  How much time do you spend with them ironing out the daft things they do with their diet?

EJM: It depends on the client really.  Some are actually pretty smart when it comes to nutrition and I barely have to touch it at all.  Others are completely clueless.  One asked me if Spaghetti O’s were proper post workout nutrition.  I usually just tell them nutrition is so simple even a caveman can do it.  Cavemen don’t eat Twinkies or spaghetti O’s.  If a caveman didn’t eat it they probably shouldn’t either.

CB: I love that approach.  It really takes the pain of analysis out of the whole nutrition thing.  And finally, come on, be honest, do we need to have a whip-round to buy you a couple of shirts?

EJM: LOL, I have plenty of shirts I just don’t wear them a lot.  It’s annoying to do laundry… especially when you have to use your “washboard abs” to do it

CB: That’s brilliant.  Thanks for the great interview, Eric.

You can find out more about Eric at his blog.

TH: Sure.  I am the Director of the National Personal Training Institute of VA.  NPTI is a 500-hour, 6-12 month long school for personal trainers.  I’ve been devoted to fitness for the past 15 years, in college a collegiate All-American Powerlifter, and I’ve competed in several local strongman and armwrestling events.  I currently hold the USAPL VA state record for the deadlift of 700lbs at 198lbs.  I attended James Madison University where I got my degree in Kinesiology with minors in psychology and coaching.  I am lifetime drug free.

TGGO: OK, so I don’t feel intimidated or anything, now… Anyway, moving on.  In my article, I took issue with something you wrote on T-Nation, that “one legged squats (pistols as they are sometimes called) don’t do jack to increase maximal strength or muscle size”.  I probably didn’t make it clear in my article, which is my fault, but I don’t agree with you that pistols don’t increase maximal strength, if you allow that they can be externally loaded.  Was your point about pistols purely limited to unweighted movements or were you actually just thinking about muscle size, in which case, I completely agree with you?

TH: The short answer is that I don’t think that pistols of any sort, loaded or not, are very effective at increasing strength or size.  We seem to be in agreement on the later so let’s focus on the former.

First, my definition of a pistol or one legged squat is when somebody does a full squat with just one leg, the other leg is usually held out in front of them and it is not allowed to touch the ground.  Of course you can’t hold onto anything for it to count as a real pistol.

Also we need to define strength, as Supertraining tells us the expression of strength is very specific.  Of course if you want to define strong as being able to do a loaded pistol, then pistols are great.  But I am defining leg strength as one’s maximal back squat.  If you want to take coordination out of it we could define it as one’s maximal leg press although that is not as common of a definition, but using either of those definitions I don’t believe that pistols are very effective in increasing the 1RM on pretty much any bilateral leg exercise.  Could they help a little bit, sure, are the best choice, I don’t believe so.

I don’t hate pistols just to be clear.  My point in the article, which I may or may not have communicated well, was my goal was to have the athlete know why they are doing something.  Pistols do have value, but I believe their primary value is to develop hip, knee, and ankle mobility and flexibility.  So if you are looking for those things, then a pistol is a good exercise for you.  But if you are using the pistol to increase your 1 RM on squats or leg press (or increase leg size) then I think there are many better exercises to do. 

TGGO: Ah, I see.  So it’s the expression of leg strength bilaterally that you are focusing on.  Moving on to a more specific point, you have suggested that people who can do 5 good pistols often get buried with 275lbs on the bar in a back squat (and for the avoidance of doubt I am sure that this is true, especially if they’ve not back squatted before), but don’t you think this is more to do with lower back strength and stability than leg strength?

TH: My basic point is that I am guessing that there is a reasonably poor correlation to a person’s 1RM on the back squat and how many pistols they can do.  I don’t really think it is lower back strength or lack thereof, I just think it is a lack of overall total body/leg strength because a pistol doesn’t do a good job of developing that in my opinion.

Most people’s spines and lower backs should be able to support a 275 squat, as demonstrated by the fact that a 275 deadlift for a male would be moderately common even with basically no training, and that is primarily a lower back exercise although admittedly the ROM and load are different from a squat.

TGGO: My main disagreement with your article was the fact that you held up the idea of 5 good pistols as some sort of significant achievement in single-leg strength.  I don’t agree.  I think it’s a pretty basic level of leg strength and balance.  I would suggest that 5 good pistols with half-bodyweight is a significant achievement in single-leg strength.

So I suppose what I am saying is that if there are people out there who weigh 135lbs soaking wet who can do 5 good pistols with half-bodyweight and who still get buried under 275lbs (assuming their lower back was not the limiting factor), then I would have to agree with you that single-leg squats are poor for building maximal leg strength.  Are we still at cross purposes because I am talking about weighted single-leg squats and you are talking about unweighted single-leg squats or is there something else important here?    

TH: I can agree with you that 5 good pistols is not a great measure of pistol strength, but then again a 275 squat is pretty crappy as well.  So if you want to increase your standard to a half bodyweight pistol, which I would personally consider impressive and I haven’t seen too many people do, then I would say a 405 squat (or double bodyweight full ROM) is probably on equal footing.

And that is my basic point.  Seeing somebody be able to do a half bodyweight pistol is no guarantee of a double bodyweight squat, and most likely the correlation would be because the same person that spends a fair amount of time working on their pistol also does a reasonable amount of back squatting.  On the flip side, a 405 squat is not guarantee that the person is good at pistols.

I come from a powerlifting background and I can’t think of anybody that attributed a lot of their squatting prowess to doing pistols, and I can think of a lot of guys that can squat 400lbs, 500lbs or even 600lbs that would struggle doing just one pistol.  Clearly they have the strength to do it, but they don’t have the mobility/flexibility to it.

TGGO: And finally, getting away from the hair-splitting, is your main concern that pistols don’t really cause hypertrophy because of the limited spinal loading or am I completely missing the point?

TH: To me it is not about spinal loading, it is just about loading in general.  I would consider a half bodyweight pistol pretty rare and even that is only 300lbs of load assuming a 200lb person with 100 external lbs.  The same person could squat 400lbs (which would be 300lbs a leg including bodyweight) and achieve greater strength development and hypertrophy in my opinion.

My basic philosophy is that to increase maximal strength (as I defined it earlier) you want to choose exercises that allow for the greatest weight to be lifted and also require the most skill to lift.  These exercises will best build your strength in those exercises and the ability developed in those exercises will transfer over to other exercises.

For example if somebody can squat 400lbs with good ROM you know they have a pretty good leg press, good leg extension, good leg curl, are probably decent at lunges, decent at step ups, etc just from that one exercise.

I feel that a pistol meets the second half of that stipulation (it requires a lot of skill) but it doesn’t allow for a lot of load.  It does little good to become proficient at a high skill low load exercise and then expect that to transfer over to a high load exercise (regardless of the skill level necessary).

To summarize, I do feel that a pistol has a lot of benefits to offer, but it mainly from a mobility/flexibility/balance point of view, which certainly do have value and I think for general health of the lower body that is important.  Having said that, I often think they are oversold or claimed to be a near equal to the squat in terms of improving maximal leg strength or increasing leg size, and to those points I think the pistol comes up short.

My ultimate goal is not to bash any exercise, but instead get the lifter or athlete to know why they are performing that exercise.  All exercises have pros and cons to them, once you know those pros and cons then you can decide if that exercise should go in your program and why it is in there.

TGGO: Tim, thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to understand more about your experience in helping athletes develop leg strength.  I look forward to reading more of your articles in the future.

TH: I appreciate you being willing to debate this further.  One of my favorite quotes is “You can’t argue with results” so if things are working for you, by all means keep doing them.  But if they aren’t, then it is time to find out why and move on to something else.  Good luck with your training.

TGGO: Thanks, Tim.