Bob Harper swings and getups fail

I have a question for you. If you watch a handful of boxing matches on television does that mean you to be a coach for it? What about if you watch a youtube video on martial arts does that mean you should open up a martial arts school? Well somehow the laws of fitness are different in this case at least if you are a “celebrity”.

You know there are two ways to get my blood pressure up. One is to make a pass at my wife (for your own safety do not attempt.) and the other is to teach dangerous form with the kettlebell (for the safety of everyone else do not attempt.)

So you can imagine how annoyed I got when Biggest Loser’s Bob Harper decided he wanted to teach that which I hold dear. I used to think that Bob Harper was the lesser of 2 evils since he wasn’t as much of a bully as Jillian Micheals (who I have nicknamed the Nazi princess). I thought Jillian was the more dangeouse of the two when she invented the “kiss your own ass goodbye swings”. (I was going to show you the video but they thankfully have taken it down).

Bob Harper has suddenly taken a swing at kettlebell training but once again like so many before him didn’t take the time to figure out how to do it right and if something is worth doing, it is worth doing right. So first let’s compare his swing to my swing. Notice my swing is safe and effective while his is unsafe and ineffective. He says the right things but does it all wrong.
His swing

His swing was taken down before I was able to post this but read on and you can get the gist of it.

Notice he says it’s in the hips and yet both of them muscle it up with their back? You swing like that you aren’t going to get the same effects that others have gotten from swings. What you’ll get instead of tree swinging traps and an android work capacity is a back injury. You might lose some fat but you’ll probably just lose your money to your chiropractor as they try to undue the damage that an “expert” taught you on a youtube video.

Now the turkish getup
I have a special place in my heart for a properly performed turkish getup since I had sustained shoulder injuries from martial arts that never quite healed properly and the getup was the best thing I ever did to them. After doing turkish getups for maybe a month and just getting to know the exercise I would actually have to think for a second to figure out which shoulder I injured. Notice however I said a “properly performed turkish getup”. At the time when I was doing this proper meant “standing up with a kettlebell locked out overhead anyway you safely can”. Well the video was taken down to people that aren’t friends with him on youtube so I actually had to go to Josh Hillis’ blog and steal his pictures (thanks Josh). Hell Josh saved me a lot of time because I couldn’t have done a better job myself.

I was ranting about this in that animated way I tend to be when I am in front of a group of people and I couldn’t even bring myself to demonstrate it for them. That and I didn’t want to corrupt my class’ minds by demonstrating shit form. So the best I can describe Harper’s turkish getup is take one of our RKC foundational movements. One that has been known to fix many shoulder injuries including yours truly, restore primitive movement patterns and just a cool looking exercise all together. Just take the way it is currently taught and do every single thing that could be done ass backwards. Seriously the only way I could make this exercise worse would be to do a face plant or maybe have someone soccer kick you in the head when you are at the bottom.

Alright Bob Harper knock it the hell off. Yeah I appreciate what you are trying to do but what you are actually doing is going to create a mess. Yes I am aware that anytime some uber famous dude does anything with a kettlebell it raises awareness but the fact of the matter is that you are going to make the kettlebell not famous for fixing people… but for breaking people. You have a lot of money Bob just retire and leave the trench work to people like me that know what is going on with the swing and the getup. I am still trying to fix someone that injured their back with the crossfit kettlebell swing and I don’t need you entering the mix as well. You have the money just go buy an island, live there and quit trying to train people because they are better off without you.

Now if you don’t think he is doing damage then stay tuned for a post I have coming up because one of my clients just told me something today that earns it’s own blog post. I’ll post it later this week.

Eric Moss

Related posts:

1. training blog 1/26/09
2. beef cake