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 two of our interview.
So how do people find out about your site?
Fully through word of mouth! I have people from all over the world visiting and it’s all totally word of mouth. I started up the blog, got some hits off that, and it developed and people told other people about the page, people mentioned it on forums, people e-mailed people and said “check this site out”. I’ve actually got a lot of hits from search engines. If you go to google and type in “handstand pushup” I’m the first link to pop up and that’s really cool. It’s been satsifying to see that because when I first started the blog, I’d type in “handstand pushup” or something like that and I wouldn’t get any information. Now when there’s people in my same position who type in “handstands, handstand pushups, elbow lever”, or anything like that, it’s going to pop up with instructions on how to learn the skill.
Can I ask you for a sneak preview of upcoming tutorials?
I have a couple tutorials that I’ve had in the works, like the one-legged squat. It’s actually been beneficial that it’s been put off for a bit. You learn a lot about a skill learning it yourself, of course, but you learn so much more teaching it to someone else because they may have different problems that you didn’t think about. So I’m really trying to encompass everything I’ve learned. I’d like to put the front lever in as well. The one-armed pushup is another good one, that’s been one that I’ve had for a while that I haven’t had a chance to put up. I’m definitely putting in a muscle-up tutorial as well – a muscle-up on the bar and on the rings. I’ve taken pictures for that and they’re a couple months old now, so I haven’t gotten around to writing that up. I’d like to write a planche tutorial as well, as that’s probably the number one skill that I get questions about. So I have a lot of good things for that. A couple more handstand presses. There’s this one skill you’ve probably seen that they call a flagpole which is you wrap your hands around a pole and hold yourself horizontal; I’d like to put that in as well.
Eventually in the future, I’d like to have pretty much all the different types of one-arm exercises you can do. Things I need to get better for that – I need to get the one-arm handstand a bit better, and I’d love to get a one-armed HSPU. The one arm rope climb I mentioned before. With the front lever, I would love love love to get a one-armed front lever, that’d be pretty intense. The one arm planche in due time. And the iron cross of course! I’d love to get the iron cross! For the lower body I’m trying to add some more tutorials to give a bit more variation to the site because I was on a kick where I was doing just upper body tutorials, and I decided I needed a little more variety. I just released the ab wheel rollout, so I have that, the next one is going to be one for legs… Looking over the tutorials it’s going to be the very first leg skill that I have on my site! If I ever develop my vertical to the point where I can dunk a basketball, I’d love to write a tutorial about that as well.
I love how your tutorials have a lot of progressive exercises, so that even beginners can get started.
Oh yeah, that’s why I started the page. I remember when I started back in high school my friend’s uncle put all these crazy ideas in our head of what we could do, and then I would go to the internet and spend hours trying to find information on these different skills, and I would find nothing. Absolutely nothing. I wanted information out there to help out other people that were out there trying to get the same information.
Yeah, I think it’s awesome, especially for people that are out there trying to start and can’t do anything…when I went to your site I was like, oh, I could try to do this, maybe I could hold a headstand…
Exactly, and that’s what I want people to do. There’s obviously a whole range of difficulty with the skills in my site but there’s always something that people can start working on. You can start working on something which will eventually lead to a headstand and eventually a handstand, and eventually lead to handstand pushups, and so forth.
So I was kind of surprised to see Swiss balls on your site.
We have them at our gym right now, we had them at my old house, and I found them useful for some exercises, but what drives me crazy is watching people do an entire workout on them. One thing they need to realize is that they’re useful for certain exercises but you can move a lot more weight if you’re on a flat bench or working in a different way. What some people seem to think is that the Swiss ball instantly transforms any exercise into a functional activity, even though I’ve never had to walk on any surface that’s as unstable as a Swiss ball. Standing on a Swiss ball, I just don’t see the point of that. It’s a fun trick if you want to get it, but not “functional.” Everyone talks about how Swiss balls work the stabilizer muscles, but if I throw a couple hundred pounds on my back and squat with it, I’m engaging my stabilizer muscles. If I throw a hundred pounds over my head with one arm, I’m engaging my stabilizer muscles too. It’s just such a shame to see a lot of guys building their workout around a Swiss ball. If you did just a heavy bench and a heavy deadlift, you’d make ten times more gains. It’s got a place in a workout but you shouldn’t be doing more than 10% of your exercises on it, if that. Some of my clients use the Swiss ball for different exercises, like squats against the wall, to keep their back up, especially if they have knee problems. They’re useful in some respects, but don’t build a workout around them for god’s sake!
Yeah, maybe like for kids or something. I read an article about kids using it for chairs in a local grade school, it was more fun than wooden chairs.
All the kids were suddenly able to deadlift five hundred pounds, I’m sure. I think Google does the same thing. They replaced a lot of chairs with Swiss balls.
One of the things I liked on your site was the pictures of people with different body types doing crazy skills.
I put that in the frequently asked questions because I was getting so many questions about it. People are always asking, “Oh hey I’m 200+ pounds do you think I can do anything?” I say, of course you can do something! Don’t let that stop you at all. Of course if you have too much extra fat, trimming off some is definitely going to help things. The two questions that I got the most were people asking, “I’m too heavy, can I do something?” and “I’m too tall, can I do something?” and those are some examples of tall and heavy people doing a lot of impressive things. I like the picture of Bert Assirati doing the one-arm handstand, it just blows my mind.
Anatomy of a Beast, Part Three: Beasts In Training
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