Alright
I was in a local bookstore the other day since being in the business I am in I have to read up to stay current. Anyways this particular bookstore is the one where I stumbled into Enter the Kettlebell and was my intro to “the party”. Well when I get a bit of time to kill I can either play ps3, or I can try to be half way productive and read up. The 2 books I have been reading lately are the new rules of lifting by Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove and the Female Body Breakthrough by Rachel Cosgrove. If you are new to my evil ways Alwyn Cosgrove is one of the fitness professionals I look up to. Many of the motto’s he preaches I have taken as my own personal slogan’s because it makes me better at what I do and I would like to be the best possible.

Now when I am reading these books I am never able to read them through in one sitting, so I leave my business card as a bookmark in those pages. When I come back if someone hasn’t bought my book I’ll be able to pick up where I left off. If someone buys my book, well maybe they’ll find my business card, realize I stay current with proper training knowledge and hey maybe I’ll get a new client.

Well as I am reading the Female Body Breakthrough by Rachel Cosgrove (a book I think all women NEED to read) I place my business card/bookmark on the arm of the chair plainly visible by anyone who is anywhere near me. So I am reading, and learning and learning and reading when a severely overweight gentlemen waddles over breathing heavy and sits down next to me. As he sits down next to me breathing heavy because of how out of shape he was I start planning his training program in my head on autopilot because that’s kind of how my brain operates.

Now if you don’t really know me and the majority of you don’t, as loudmouthed as I am, I am not the guy who tells everyone he knows that they need to start exercising. If you haven’t read my post about the birds of a feather flocking together then let me just tell you I don’t normally hang out with all fitness people. I normally only hang out with them at seminars when I see them but that’s normally it. Well anyways I am not the type to go pushing my methods on someone that isn’t going to be willing to receive them (kind of like religion). If you come to me for advice that’s different, but if you are there minding your own business I am not going to stick my business in your face.

So anyways I am sitting there minding my own business and he is sitting there minding his own business. I started thinking about the different things I would do to try and help him out but since I don’t want to go pushing my $hit on anybody I kept my mouth shut. When I got home I actually had regrets about it.

“If I said something, would that possibly have changed or saved his life?” chances are no but what if I did? Is it my responsibility to help those who need help whether they know I am the guy to do it or not?

so the question is…should I have said something?

Alright I guess it is time that I do a follow up to probably my most highly commented on post…my response to the shake weight.

The fact of the matter is I thought this would have been dead a long time ago. I thought people would watch the video, have a good laugh and be done with it as many have a very short attention span when it comes to things internet related (myspace or aim instant messenger anyone?). I had no idea I would still get people complaining as comments on my blog about how terrible their customer service was and I had no idea people would still be defending them….anonymous people which makes me wonder who they really are. oh yeah and by the way my comrade Steve challenged them to show us the studies they are based on and I challenged them to show us real people with real results…we haven’t heard back.

There are more reasons to laugh at this pathetic excuse of exercise equipment then simply because it looks like someone is training for a pearl necklace. That fact is what made the thing so damn popular because it was so ridiculous looking that it went viral. One person claimed they put 2 on their order (an order they did as a joke) because customer service said some people like to use 2 at once. Well hell why stop there let’s go full body like Southpark’s Mr. Garrison did with the Entity Are they going to come up with a shake weight meant to tone your glutes as well? I’d like to see how that one is marketed; I have a feeling it would be a completely different demographic.

Well before I go off on yet another tangent let me explain why it wouldn’t be good for females other then the fact that they are paying to do something that has been going on in brothel’s for years. The fact of the matter is that they are going up the wrong tree when it comes to generating the kind of results they want.

The promises are vague in what they say it accomplishes. Long lean defined arms? Huh? If women are unhappy with the “floppiness” of their arm it isn’t normally just because it isn’t “toned” or “defined”. According to the textbook on the American Council of Exercise as it was when I was going though school a couple years back one of the 3 sites for using the skinfold caliper for measuring body fat on women was on the skin around the triceps muscle. For most women the reduction of body fat would be what shows the long, lean, defined arms. Spot reduction of body fat (the theory that body fat is reduced in the area that is being worked) has been shown to be vastly ineffective. Just think about how many people you see crunching away and have pot bellies to show for it.

Next the amount of time that that “dynamic inertia” (which is the term they use to market their hand job exercise), just simply doesn’t give the muscle long enough to develop any reasonable amount of tension. What muscle “tone” really is, is residual tension within a relaxed muscle (read power to the people if you want to learn more about it). Ever notice how crappy muscle looks when you first take your cast off of it and it has lost its “tone” and atrophied? Get the muscles “ready” in a half contracted state and you will have that toned look assuming you are lean enough to pull it off. Do that by building up and mastering the use of tension and you do that with heavy weights. Don’t give me any of that crap about not wanting to be strong and only wanting to be toned. That is akin to saying to me “I want to graduate college but I don’t want to learn anything.” Flirting with the professor won’t work with this one so there is no getting around it.

Next, “machines are designed to produce bulk.” Uhm…maybe. The thing is unless you are some genetic anomaly you won’t get bulky. And if you are after that defined whatever I would guess that a little bit of bulk would be involved. The fear of bulkiness is probably the highest one I have amongst my female clients and its because they have been blitzed by this kind of crap over the years. It isn’t going to happen. To get big you need to be lifting heavy with enough volume, have the appropriate recovery mechanisms in place and you have to be in a caloric surplus. The caloric surplus is when you are taking in more calories then burning off…which I told you not to do when you are after a lean look. Also I have told you repeatedly not to use machines because they undertrain the stabilizing muscles and put you in an unnatural movement plane.

If you really want to get that look you have been looking for try giving kettlebells a go…but only if you are really willing to work hard. The shake weight is for lazy people to waste their money. Kettlebells are for the serious person after serious results. Take a look at 2 of my female comrades’ physiques….Neghar Fonooni and Delaine Ross. Is that the look you are looking for? Good…get to work, real work…not that perverted looking device designed to rip off ill informed or lazy people.

Eric Moss over and out

yeah i know im not updating my blog as much as I should but thats the way the cookie crumbles. half the time when i think up something great to blog about and get all fired up im nowhere near my computer to get my rant off of my chest.

speaking of my computer…my hard drive has crashed for the 5th f’ing time. when the hell are they going to wise the f’ up and realize they gave me a lemon comp?

and hell they aren’t the only ones that need wising up…which brings me to my next couple points

earlier this year when I needed a new place to hold my kettlebell classes. i ended up finding a wellness studio that had classes like belly dancing, hot yoga and pole dancing as their flagship classes. one of the things that drew me to it was that females are my main market in fat loss since they are the ones that typically seek out trainers. i posted signs about what it is i have to offer including some of my instructor reviews saying things like “I went down a dress size in a month” and “I didn’t fit in my wedding dress because I went down 4 dress sizes when I only needed 3″ and “I lost 12lbs so far.”

I would have thought the results I got for people would sell themselves. But I guess real results are secondary to entertainment.

Now don’t get me wrong. I had a small but loyal following there praising my classes up, down left and right. One of the girls who followed my classes pretty nearly every session also did the belly dancing classes including some of the shows. When you do the shows your belly is exposed (it is belly dancing after all). Her belly was exposed and everybody was complimenting her on her abs and the results she got. She told them it was from my class and how much she enjoyed it and said they should join too. Did they do it?

Nope. They took one look at my kettlebells and didn’t want to do it. It was suggested that I change it to be a more cardio oriented class. First off kettlebell swings have been described as lung searing cardio. If I was to make it a different kind of cardio (aerobics) it wouldn’t be effective. To me training that isn’t effective is wrong…and for me to change it to that for the sake of a better dollar would be selling out.

and remember what I said…never surrender…not even in the face of annihilation.

meanwhile the dance exercise classes are cleaning house…and yet doesn’t generate real results. You want entertainment…fine it works, but if you want results train better. or i am right again

Like I said…”they are doing it wrong”

but they aren’t the only ones.

I sat in on a martial arts class at that mma gym where I run classes. You might have remembered Frank Mir being there from a previous post.

Now I have always loved martial arts. Wanting to be better at it led me to training, which led me to being a personal trainer and even though it ended up pulling me away from martial arts the kettlebells have given me the bug to start doing it again.

So I am watching a Judo class (one I was a green belt in about 8 years ago) I am watching them practicing their ground game. I overhear one of them say to the other this precious bit of advice

“Use his strength against him.”

Right…as if its that simple. Try that on Brock Lesnar and let me know how that works out for ya. Ok back to reality. That particular expression grates me since I am a strength and conditioning coach. First off its out of context. It shoudl be “use his momentum against him” not strength.

Second off a lot of martial artists don’t take their strength seriously. They are in the “all you need is technique” camp. Now if that were true then as my comrade Master RKC Dave Whitley pointed out to me, there would be no need for weight classes in anything. I would also like to add that there would be no point to testing for steroids in mma as well.

It doesn’t matter how perfect your technique is if you don’t have the strength to pull it off. Royce Gracie was legendary for being a small guy beating on big guys in the octagon but he took his strength seriously because he understood this. Bruce Lee (the quintessential martial artist imho) was known for constantly strength training, because he understood this. Both were also big into conditioning because you are going to need staying power if you aren’t able to defeat them immediately or if you have multiple matches.

Now as for the martial artists. They haven’t really taken me on as a strength coach because they don’t believe in what I have to offer or they don’t really understand it. In any case they are leaving it up to chance because if their level of martial arts skill is equal to their opponent but their opponent is stronger or better conditioned….well you can probably guess what that leads to. And if you don’t believe strength is a component… then when it comes to training…yer doing it wrong.

Eric Moss out

You know doing what I do and keeping my ears open has given me a lot of opportunities to meet interesting people. I’ve met some of the world’s strongest men, UFC champs, rock stars and just regular joe’s like you and I (well i guess nobody is really regular after all). I had the odd experience of having 2 guitars from one of my favorite bands in the back seat of my car while their music is playing in my car stereo but hey I am getting a bit ahead of myself here.

Well I had become friends with the guitarist from one of my favorite heavy metal bands Overlorde simply because I had taken the chance on emailing him and asking if I could put his kickass tunes as the background music for some of my youtube videos.

videos like this one

You know kettlebell training is kind of a form of Old School Heavy Metal itself.

Well Mark Edwards (the lead guitarist from Overlorde) has a solo gig going and he asked if I would go see him and chill where he was performing. So I drove up and watched him play….and play awesome he did.

Now I knew he was good but watching his fingers dance across the fret board like it has a life of it’s own actually made me realize just how spectacular he really is. And hearing one of my favorite bands actually call out my name and thanking me in the middle of his set was a bit surreal.

As I sat there having a beer with him and wiping the melted face off of my shirt I told him that I thought his performance was amazing.

His reply was “It’s all just scales man. Once you know those you can play anything.”

Now that got me thinking. Scales are the foundation from which music comes from. It is a bit like the foundation movements we use as general physical preparation. Swings provide the foundation from which ballistic movements come from. TGU provide the foundation for the grinding movements.

If you build a house on a shitty foundation you are going to have a shitty house no matter how much you want it to look like Wayne Manor or Buckingham Palace. The same thing goes with music adn the same thing goes with strength and conditioning (and fat loss).

So what can you learn from this? Stick to the basics. No matter what you do. (notice how it always seems to come back to that?) Get good, be strong and melt some faces \m/

and don’t get ahead of yourself

Eric Moss RKC
over and out