I even had a running series on this here blog about everything I thought they were doing wrong. If I were the trainer on the Biggest Loser you bet I would do things way way different. It would be a lot more conservative, very boring and wouldn’t make good tv (maybe that’s why I am not making the big bucks but hey, I’ve kept my soul). Boring but I haven’t killed anybody yet and I plan on keeping a good track record.

DO NOT DO THE SWING THROUGH WHATEVER YOU DO

Well anyways the whole thing with that show is it would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad. The fat loss and fitness industry is littered with snake oil salesmen and she isn’t exactly helping the cause. She goes and says that all you need is diet and exercise (good on her!), and then goes and promotes some kind of piece of crap diet pills (bad on her). The thing is a lot of these overweight people are victim’s of false advertising and unscrupulous people who would lend their name to anything that can make them a quick buck. She’s been sued for it before.

But now she has entered the realm of my precious kettlebell, my favorite training tool.

Here is where the defense part comes in.

In the LA Times article about her dvd he goes and attacks the claim on the package where in the advertising it says you can drop 5lbs a week. He goes and breaks down how many calories are in a pound of fat (3500kcals btw) and points out that you can’t possibly lose 5lbs a week, and that’s actually the point I take issue with because it isn’t true.

From the article

“Part of this massive caloric deficit can result from dietary restriction — but not too much or it could cause her metabolism to slow down and she would experience intense hunger. A minimum intake for our hypothetical woman is around 1,400 calories a day, which is about 500 less than her typical weight-maintenance diet. Over the course of a week, she could lose 1 pound this way. So just 4 pounds — or 14,000 calories — left to account for.”

You want to pick on her form then fine because it’s dangerous and it makes it more difficult for me to convince people that this is safe and effective. If you read my last post I interviewed Geoff Neupert Master RKC and in it I asked him what kind of results his clients were getting from Kettlebell Burn. One of his clients dropped 40lbs in 7 weeks from his Kettlebell Burn program, and their metabolism was soaring.

If you itemize it so to speak then 40lbs divided by 7 weeks = 5.7lbs per week which is actually even higher then what Jillian Micheals’ dvd claimed. Now admittedly not every user is going to get that kind of results that that dude got but at least you can see that it is in fact possible to do it and to do it using kettlebells (safely too I might add) and I think one of the big factors is that Geoff’s Kettlebell Burn program also contains a section regarding nutrition where Jillian’s doesn’t. My test group though only followed the training portion and had a different source for their nutrition so to me it’s the actual training in this case that counts.

I guess in the end I am not actually defending her but I am defending our system of kettlebell training (which is very different from hers because it is uhm how shall I say this…safe and effective.

I guess that’s it for now but I would love to hear your thoughts.

In the bonus dvd that comes with the movie there is a section where they give a short glimpse into what they did.

And around the same time the 300 workout surfaced straight from the guy that trained the crew.

Here is the original 300 workout
Pullups – 25 reps

Deadlifts with 135lbs – 50 reps

Pushups – 50 reps

24-inch Box jumps – 50 reps

Floor wipers – 50 reps

Single-arm Clean-and-Press with 36lbs Kettlebell – 50 reps

Pullups – 25 reps

And that is where the confusion started.

You see this workout is not what they did until they went from the before picture to the after. It is what they did as sort of a “graduation”. Gym Jones “the place where they all trained” periodically uses training sessions as challenges. Do that training session as fast as you can within the guidelines (ex. during the kettlebell clean and press the kettlebell has to touch the floor between reps). If you can do it quickly it means that you have great levels of fitness. The 300 workout was the destination, not the road.

Me being a guy with too much damn time on his hands and a burning desire to learn about what they did I dug deep into their training logs (which at the time was free) to find the areas where the actors trained. What I found was crossfit style workouts but geared towards individual goals (what makes them better imho). It however isn’t really something you are likely to be able to do in your home. I’ll give an example of what I mean by this. One training session may consist of alternating between deadlifts of 3 different bars. Do you have 3 different bars with the amount of weight necessary? Neither do I.

Just because you don’t have access to the equipment that they do doesn’t mean you can’t achieve the same types of results. The key is in the principles of what they did…not the details.

Here are the key principles.
1) Train hard. If they were wussing out Mark Twight (the trainer of the cast) would “smash them”.
2) Eat Right. One member was said something about grapes and cottage cheese and you can’t out train a bad diet.
3) Fitness over aesthetics. I am paraphrasing here but “the look of fitness will come with actual fitness”

As you may have seen in some of my before and after shots I used those same principles to get myself all ripped up. The thing is I had very limited equipment when I had left the gym. The kettlebell was my main tool (when I completed the 300 workout in a little over 16mins I had to borrow the deadlift equipment from a friend).

So try testing yourself with the 300 workout. If you can even get through it that’s pretty darn good but time yourself. Train by applying those 3 concepts and watch the bodyfat fall off of you and retest yourself to see if you scored higher. Madness? That’s the real secret.