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. This is part three of our interview.

So you work out of DC as a personal trainer. Do you teach your clients any crazy skills?

(laughing) A couple of clients. I still have them use a lot of weights but some of them have certainly taken a shine to different bodyweight exercises. I have one client in particular that I’m teaching a handstand, and he’s getting really good at that. He’s working on a free standing hand-stand pushup as well, and he can get that sometimes, with a half-range of motion - it’s coming along. He’s also learning a one-legged squat which is going well, and I’m teaching him a muscle-up, which is difficult for anyone, but he enjoys the training. I’m teaching him a whole range of bodyweight exercises and it’s not the traditional thing to do in the gym but it’s still a lot of fun and will build a lot of strength. I still have him work out with weights though, I’ve just integrated the skills into his workout plan.

At our gym we just have an incredible amount of strength and fitness equipment. We have sandbags, kegs to lift, we have climbing ropes, and rings. There’s so many things to engage people’s interests. If I see someone who has an interest in bodyweight skills, then I’ll try and work it into their training program.

What exercises do you usually get your clients started out with?

Well, when they first come in I ask them about their history of injuries, working out, do they take any medications, things like that, all the personal questions so I know where they’re coming from. Some people come in with “Hey, I’m working out three times a week myself,” or “Hey, I’m not working out at all, I haven’t worked out in five years.” So you get a wide range of clients. I’ll start off checking their form and their strength with a lot of different basic exercises. I’ll have them do a basic bodyweight squat, lunges, pushups, inverted rows, things like that, so I’ll see where their strength level is on different things. Some people will do a squat and you’ll see a whole bunch of muscular imbalances or they’ll do a lunge and you’ll see where their balance is really off. So I’ll start off with really basic exercises, non-weighted just to make sure they have the form correctly, and then if I see a deficiency I’ll start planning the program to take care of that. I don’t bring in handstands on the first day! I’ll check core strength as well, which is important because you’ll find that a lot of people come in and they just don’t know how to use their core and connect their whole body when they’re lifting weights.

What do you say to so many women who are scared of lifting weights because of a fear of growing huge and too muscular?

Every single time I first start training a woman I have to tell them, you’re not going to get big and bulky just by touching a weight, we’re going to work hard but this muscle is also going to help transform your body and it’s going to help burn fat. Muscle takes up less space than fat, so you’ll become more compact. I tell them all the advantages of putting some muscle on and how you can do that by moving some heavy weights around.

Yeah, the myth in the fitness industry is that men should lift heavy weights so they can build bulk through max effort work and women, like Jazzercise practitioners, should lift two pound dumbbells about a million times.*

Haha, exactly. I’m sure you’ve probably seen the link on my links page to Stumptuous.com.

Oh yeah, she’s awesome.

Honestly, I direct all the women that I know to that, because that’s what woman’s weightlifting should be. It should be, “do the squats, do the deadlifts, do the cleans, do the pullups, do the pushups”. She’s fit, she’s in great shape, she’s got the muscle tone but she doesn’t look like a linebacker. She’s still doing all the exercises that women are traditionally told to stay away from. I think her site is fantastic and it is such a healthy view and guide for women lifting weights. I have it on my links page because while I’m sure a lot of guys come to my site, some women visit too.

It sounds like you’re always motivated because you’re working these really amazing skills. What do you think is the best way to stay motivated, especially for beginners?

First off, I’d say try to find something you enjoy doing. Beginners tend to get the notion that they have to run for an hour, or that there’s only one way to get in shape, and that’ll sap motivation. Nobody wants to do something that’s not fun. I structure my workouts around things that I like to do. I’d say that’s number one, just have fun. Number two, as far as learning different skills or improving your body in general, I’d say the biggest thing is to understand that it takes time. I have kids that e-mail me and say, “I’ve been training for a planche for three weeks and I don’t have it, what’s wrong?” and I tell them quite simply that it takes a little bit more time than that. Breaking down your goals into smaller goals and larger goals helps, keeping your eye on the big picture but work on smaller goals you want to get in maybe a month or two.. Realizing it takes time keeps you motivated by preventing frustration.

As far as other motivations go, I find the fitness community to be a huge help. All those sites I have on my links page – Gripboard, T-nation, Dragondoor, Crossfit, American Parkour – they are all extremely useful because of the strong community involved with them. Talking with other people strikes a fire in you because you realize a lot of other people like doing this too. You can discuss and exchange various ideas as well. Researching different ideas helps as you learn about new ways to train and new methods of training. As I mentioned before, I researched extensively when I was first learning about these skills. It kept me very motivated.

One of the guys I train with is trying to get his first muscle-up, do you have any suggestions on getting that skill? Someone gave me the idea of doing an assisted muscle-up on the Gravitron, but most gyms don’t have one.

We don’t have a Gravitron at our gym either. You can see a couple shots of our gym in some of my tutorials, like the ab wheel rollout. There’s no machines in it at all. It’s all free weights, which I love as it forces us to be creative. As far as the muscle-up goes, I set up a couple steps underneath the pullup bar, so someone will be a couple feet taller. So you grab the bar and jump up with slight assistance from the legs, and go up into a muscleup. Then you progressively lower that step, so that you have to use your arms more and more and your legs less and less. That’s one way to progress into it.

Do you recommend negatives or jumping muscle-ups or pullups for people who can’t quit do the real deal yet?

I’d only advocate using negatives if you can actually control the motion. If you jump up into a pullup and lower down, you should be able to feel that you can control it and if you can’t control it at all, you should probably pick a different method. If you can’t do that many, what I do for clients is I’ll set up a bar on a rack and keep their feet are on the ground.

So you have them do body rows?

Not exactly, you bend yourself at the waist so you’re pulling in more of a vertical direction. If you have bands, bands on the bar are always good as well. If it’s a bit too intense to do negatives, I would definitely try something like that until things strengthen up a bit.

So I want to be able to beat some of the badass guys I know at a skill, do you have any suggestions for improving my L-sit or plank times?

With the plank, if people can hold like a plank with both hands and both feet on the ground for 30 seconds or so I’ll immediately have them start working on a harder variation because otherwise they’ll be sitting in that position for five minutes. Try one-arm two-legs, one arm one leg, one hand one foot, and then try to, it’s actually pretty good because it helps to work tension for the one-arm pushup, but start working to increase the distance in between the hand and foot so that you’re stretched out with only one hand on the ground and one foot on the ground. That’s a pretty good progression to work that stabilization and again it’ll prevent you from sitting in a position for five minutes which not only isn’t that effective, it’s just boring.

For the L-seat, someone in my gymnastics troupe before I joined used to do it with rollerblades on his feet, so that’s an idea. Put shoes on, put heavier shoes on, put on platform shoes or something (laughing), and work on holding the position.

I’ve noticed for both these skills that I can increase my “max time” by fifteen to thirty seconds just by really really trying harder, which made me wonder how much of it is core strength and how much of it is just willpower.

The mental imagery and mental focus is the huge part of any lifting, if you’re really looking for maximal time or maximal weight, and you’re not focused on the skill you’re doing then you’re definitely not going to be as strong. That’s a huge reason why I really focus on what muscles I am contracting. When I do a planche, I’m not just sitting there daydreaming, I’m focusing on pushing out and extending this and flexing that… The mental aspect of it is extremely important in any exercise.

So how can people contact you?

I’ve always had my email address on my webpage – james.bathurst@gmail.com – where I answer a ton of email. If any readers live in the Washington DC area, they can come by the gym I work at – Balance Gym – located just north of Dupont Circle on California Street.

Thank you so much!
No problem, my pleasure!

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*The wording of this question was lovingly stolen from Greg Everett’s Big Kid’s Muscle-Up article.