Anatomy of A Beast

Jim Bathurst is the man behind Beast Skills, an incredible website featuring various amazing feats of strength and gymnastics skills, as well as user-friendly tutorials for all skill levels. The site, originally a blog started in November 2004, also features a training log, creative minimalist equipment ideas, pictures that will totally blow your mind, and suggestions on how to get started.

In addition to performing clapping handstand pushups and planches in his spare time, Jim Bathurst works as a personal trainer in downtown DC. I was lucky enough to get him on the phone at the end of October to ask him some questions.

When did you start training?

I started back in high school. My freshman and sophomore year I began weight training as part of our school’s track and field program. At this time I was just lifting weights, no huge overall program, just learning a bit about everything. Then I enrolled in a weightlifting class my junior and senior year. Here I learned a lot more about anatomy and exercises. My old weight training teacher was very supportive, and often held contests in the gym to boost our drive and focus in training.

Also, during my junior year–I remember this because it was such a bizarre thing to do– my friend and I started working on handstands and different things like that. My buddy had an uncle who used to do gymnastics, so he was coaching us in a way. He’d be like, “Oh yeah, you want to straighten your handstand out, you want to do this and that.” He’d also give us stories of the times when he used to gymnastics and all the crazy things he’d do like, press to handstand on a chair or an L-seat to handstand, fingertip pull-ups on a doorjamb, and different skills like that. There was even a time when he and a bunch of people from his gymnastics group simultaneously held L-seats while going down an escalator.

How old were you then?

I guess I was about 16 then, this was back in high school. Again, it was my friend’s uncle who put the spark in us to train towards these skills. He gave my friend his old set of parallettes to work with. A really solid wooden set. We started to challenge each other to get the L-seat going through to handstand press, a skill I have on my site. That was actually one of the first skills we both worked on. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it, so for the next couple years, I worked through the rest of high school on the handstand and handstand pushups and of course continued training into college. Then halfway through college that same friend (we attended the same school) came up to me and said, “There’s this organization on campus that’ll teach you to backflip and do all these crazy things.” I said, “Hey, that sounds great to me!” So we go and we check it out. It was Gymkana. I hadn’t even heard much about Gymkana before at all. We checked out the gym at the end of my sophomore year in college and unfortunately arrived after the spring season had ended. At the start of my junior year, I caught one of their fliers around campus and went to check out their practice and I absolutely loved it. It was so much fun.

The University of Maryland actually has a full gymnastics facility for both men’s and women’s teams. We have a competitive women’s team, but we don’t have a men’s gymnastics team, so the only people who use the men’s gymnastics equipment are male Gymkana members. So we have full reign of parallel bars, pommel horse, rings, high bar, trampoline, absolutely everything. So it’s a unique opportunity for a lot of guys. Male gymnastics isn’t that popular anymore, so here is such an opportunity for guys at the University to try stuff out that they’ve never tried before. So I trained with Gymkana for another two years and then graduated college, and I’ve been training by myself ever since.

How much time would you say you spend training?

I’ll try to do a full body workout three times a week. I’ll spend an hour and a half or so, depending on how fast I’m going, how I feel. On the other days I’ll do some energy system work, as well as some time stretching and doing some soft tissue work on foam rollers, so maybe I’ll spend an hour there. It is kind of hard to judge sometimes because I practically live in a gym right now because I’m a trainer, but the basic workout is maybe 3-5 hours a week and then the supplemental work I do as far as skills training goes, and recovery/maintenance might add up to another 3 to 5 hours, I suppose.

I know your workout cycle keeps changing, but what does it look like now?

I do a full body workout three times a week, in which I like to break up the upper body into horizontal push and pull and vertical push and pull. The different exercises I do depend on what I want to focus on that day; I’m not going to do four intense exercises for the upper body so I’ll say, “Today I’m going to really work on heavy dips” and that’s going to be a really really hard intense exercise, whereas I might do a less intense exercise for the other pulls and pushes that day. I might also substitute a bodyweight skill for a traditional weight training exercise, for example planche work or iron cross for dips or bench, handstand pushups for a traditional military press, one arm chin-up work for regular chin-ups. If you think of the skills in terms of muscles being used and what direction you are pushing or pulling, it becomes much easier to swap back and forth between skills and traditional weight training exercises. For the lower body, I might do a quadricep dominant exercise one day, and then a hip dominant exercise another day. I’m actually trying to work a bit more speedwork as well because my legs are getting pretty strong but I feel like I need a little more pop in them, a little more snap. So for speed I’m doing things like jump squats, some Olympic pulls, snatches, different things like that. That’ll be at least once a week now. For my energy system work, I’ll either do some low intensity incline treadmill walking, or some sprint intervals, depending on how hard I’m working my legs that week. As far as midsection/core work, I’ll do some other stuff during my workout days or on my off days. As far as the different skills go, I’m working on the one-arm handstand just about everyday for a small block of time. When I do it on my workout days, I’ll do it when I feel fresh. I need to develop balance for the skill and if I’m exhausted I’m not going to get any good work done.

What are your favorite exercises?

I love the one-arm push press, just grab a heavy dumbbell and push it over your head, that’s a whole-body workout right there. Similarly, I love the one arm dumbbell and barbell snatch. If you have a heavy weight over your head you’re going to be stabilizing everything head to toe to hold that up. I love the basics, squats and deadlifts, overhead squats, chin-ups, things like that. As far as skills go on my site, honestly, I love the handstand on a chair. It’s a great trick that people love seeing.

What are your favorite combinations?

I love combining the burpee with a chinup, you get a push, pull and legs. The burpees are great because they get the heart rate moving, people love to do them in intervals, and whatnot, but the one disadvantage is that there’s no real pulling motion with it, but that problem is solved if you do them underneath a chinup bar. I like something posted on T-nation awhile back – the bear combo – you take a barbell, clean it to your shoulders, do a front squat, press it over your head, do a back squat, press it over your head, and then bring it back down. You get a bunch of pushes and a bunch of leg exercises. That’ll absolutely smoke you; it’s such a full body intense exercise. They’re definitely fun to do. Another thing I like to do is an exercise called the Zercher lift. I don’t know if you’ve seen the Zercher squats at all, but the idea is that you take the bar in the crook of your arm like you’re holding a heavy box in front of you and then you do squats with that. You can do an entire lift where you start off in a deadlift, pick up the bar, squat down and put it on your thighs, and then regrip underneath the crook of your arm and stand back up, like you’re trying to pick up a heavy box. That’s a fun one. If you’ve ever seen strongmen lifting stones it’s pretty much the same,but with a bar. I try a lot of different types of lifts, but the ones that I always go back to are the basic, heavy lifts.

Are you still working on the iron cross?

Yeah, I’m still working on that, it’s very frustrating. I think that would help a bit if I had a better ring set up, but I don’t want to use that as an excuse. It feels like it’s coming some days, other days it doesn’t. It’s a skill that I still don’t feel comfortable as far as what muscles I’m recruiting. That’s a big thing I focus on when I exercise, especially with body weight skills. Before you contract a muscle, you need to know which muscles you’re recruiting. Just recently for the planche, my chest muscles didn’t feel like they’re contracting as much as they should, and I realized I should really focus on that. And then bam, I got the skill. I think it’s sort of the same way with the iron cross right now, I’m still trying to figure out what exactly to contract, and how my arms need to be turned, and how my shoulders need to be turned. Regardless of all that, it’s a hard exercise anyway.

What other skills are you working on now?

I want to increase my planche, I’m trying to get that stronger. I’m working on a one-armed handstand. I’m actually working on a one-armed handstand pushup too, against the wall. That’s actually feeling fairly strong as far as the motion goes, and my overhead pressing with one arm is getting really strong. The front lever, I’m working on a little grease the groove action so every so often I’ll throw in, actually I have a place at my house where I can practice front levers just about anytime I want to, so I’ll do that when I feel fresh. The main work I’ve actually been doing for the front lever is the weighted pullup, as that seems to really carry over well. Lastly, I’m trying to strengthen up my one-arm chinup again. I’d like to get a couple repetitions for the one-arm chin in a row, and I think that would carry over to the one-arm rope climb, so… everything’s connecting and it overlaps here and there but it’s a lot of different types of work.

So how much are you lifting in this picture?

There was only a certain amount of weight we could fit on the bar with bumper plates, I think it’s something like 325, or somewhere around there. It’s a pretty funny picture because it looks like a massive amount of weight, but it’s really just three hundred something. It was just a fun picture we took in the gym one day.

What’s your favorite piece of equipment?

I love the climbing rope. We have one in our gym, and it’s got all the advantages of a pullup bar but works the grip as well. Most have memories of rope climbing as kids in elementary school, but it’s still a piece of equipment that is just so simple yet effective. I like the simple, I like the basic and you can’t get any more basic than a rope hanging from the ceiling.

In the gymnastics gym, what I really liked, were the parallel bar and the pommel horse, those were two really fun apparatus. Parallel bars because I could do a lot of stuff on it and pommel horse because it was such a challenge. It is so unbelievably hard to learn skills on pommel horse. Just the basic circle is incredibly hard to learn and it’s hard to take up the pommel horse and get proficient, so I liked the challenge of the pommel horse but the versatility of the parallel bars.

Anatomy of a Beast, Part Two: The Blog