Mike Silverman (part 1) | Owner of That Guy Fitness, Kettlebell coach, Army veteran & retired first responder

All right, welcome into this week's episode of the platform podcast. We have a first in the history of my podcast, such a long conversation that was so free form that I had to break it into multiple parts because I ended up talking to my guest Mike Silverman for about two and a half hours. Mike and I met on the Kettlebell Kings online forum on Facebook and I reached out to him in a direct message because he just seemed like the kind of guy that I would really get along with and that who's perspective I would really enjoy based on the interactions that we had had on on Facebook. And he has a very interesting and extensive background. He started his career back in the late 80s as a firefighter in paramedic. He was also an athletic trainer. He has a degree in kinesiology from the University of Maryland in 1997. He is retired army as well as retired firefighter, retired paramedic, you know, a lot of really interesting and extensive background. And now he is into the Kettlebell scene, particularly into Kettlebell sport. He started off like many of us in more of the hard style, the more of the hard style tradition which we get into in this conversation, but his list of credentials is quite extensive. I mentioned the BS in kinesiology is also Brookbrook Institute human movement specialist to certify personal trainer with multiple certifications, living that fit slash Kettlebell Kings advance Kettlebell coach, a nascent women's fitness specialist, AFAA certified group fitness instructor, action certified advance nutrition, CrossFit concepts, level one, steel mace and Indian clubs instructor, hard style, Kettlebell certified, so HKC. So a number of certifications as well as a bunch of expired certifications that he doesn't list on his resume because he doesn't want to misrepresent his credentials, you know, everybody the impression that that old credentials that he's let expire are still active. So he has an extensive education and I think you'll get a sense of just how much Mike knows the breadth and depth of his knowledge is very impressive and he's very opinionated too, which I love he doesn't back down. He has his opinions and he they're very grounded in logic and reason and ethics. He has a very strong sense of ethical behavior as well. And we get into a lot of that, you know, there's this was honestly my most challenging job from an audio editing standpoint because there was so much content to get through. I'm honestly not done, I had to split it into two chunks, but I think I think I hopefully made it relatively, relatively salient and palatable for everybody, but I really hope you enjoy the conversation. You will kind of jump in right at the, in the middle of the conversation that was ongoing because there wasn't any smooth introduction or anything like that. We just were two guys who just started talking and didn't stop for multiple hours and the conversations have continued offline as well. So or not in the in the recording studio. So we've continued to talk about a number of other topics as well. So I, you know, I very thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I really look forward to connecting with Mike more in person. So without further ado, we will get into this week's episode with Mike Silderman from that guy fitness. I hope you enjoy. Thanks. You know, they say when I retired, it was time, I mean, it was, it was really, it was time. And I didn't really choose to get out of that time, right? So I, I trashed my lungs up at ground zero, just absolutely destroyed them. I get shorter breath going up flights of stairs, right? Cardio, you're adorable. That's hilarious. Oh, that's funny. Oh, control my breathing. I'll get right on. My lungs are trashed, right? And they're not going to come much back better. But you get to a certain point with, you know, with it that, you know, where you can't really physically do it anymore, right? And so they put me out at 18, two years shy of my 20, because I couldn't, I couldn't fake pulmonary function tests anymore. I used to have a little stunt that I would pull for my annual physical, which is probably dangerous for myself, not so much for the crew, but more for me. But I would go in for my annual physical, do all my normal stuff. And before they got to any of the respiratory, I'd say that I had a pee. Go into the bathroom, pop two shots about butarol, and wait about two minutes, and then go back in with the dog and be like, yep, looking good, brother. Everything's great. Fantastic. To sign this for another year, baby. And so I did that from about 2002 till 2007 when I really just couldn't even cover it up anymore, because I'd have to take enough albuterol to make my heart race. And I couldn't pass stress test because I was going to have my heart blow through the, you know, my rib cage because heart, you know, I'll beat it all when your heart rate up pretty nice. And so I just couldn't, he just couldn't fake it anymore, right? Finally caught up with me. And so got out on 07, and then did pretty much with everybody who has absolutely no job or no prospects did, sat on my couch and fucking ate. And basically took myself from about 165 pounds to 240. So literally fat Mike and Captain Mike was not a very nice guy to begin with because I was just jaded and bitter and fried and my, my wife's kept me this long, but, but yeah, I mean, how tall, how tall are you? Me. I'm about 58. Okay. So it's like 58 240 240 240 is a lot to pack on to a 58 frame. No doubt. I was a size 44 pants, a size 17 neck, right at 5 foot 8. So yeah, I was a bit of fat angry little bastard. And so probably I guess about, you know, and I was fitted shit at the time, right? I mean, it's like I was in, you know, I'd been training, I'd been, you know, in Maryland's ECology program by the time you would graduate with about four certs. And so you'd, you'd graduate with a certified personal trainer, ACSM Health Fitness Instructor, which is now called as Physiologist Certified, CSCS, and board eligible for ATC. I mean, so you came out, you were like, employable, fitty shit ready to go. Yeah. I got involved in CrossFit very early on through the DOD. So you know, before they were even ANSI certified, right? So like all those pre-2005 certs that are of no value to anybody anymore. CrossFit doesn't even acknowledge they ever existed. Because you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, we're certified. Before they went through their ice and 2001, ANSI, let's say NECA phase. And so, like I said, you know, I was in great shape. Second degree of black belt in Toluxido, it was kickboxing for fun. I mean, I was, you know, on SWAT team, right? I have a great idea. But look, you know, fantastic, you know, 30 something and you're ready to pull a piss and vinegar for any take on the war while jumping, literally jumping out of helicopters and shit, right? And then, you know, my shoulder was trash because I fell through a roof in the 90s. So I've never had much for, you know, like overhead press or snatch or anything like that. But I could power lift like a freaking beast. You know, so I was, you know, pulling a well over 500 deads, pulling well over 300 benches. And, you know, as a little dude is 165 pound here, right? And I mean, a 500 pound pull, you know, 58 is pretty impressive. I mean, I mean, that's a good, that's a good pull. Yeah, and I could, and I could pull that unbelted, right? I mean, so, like, you know, in the day, I was, I wasn't pretty good, then one up to ground zero came back, lungs were trashed, everything sort of kind of slowly degrading a little bit. And then in 2007, basically, I did what I jokingly call my magic trick. I took off my uniform and watched my ass expand, you know, and so it's apparently, you know, you know, battle, battle, does in fact hold everything where it belongs. And as soon as you take it off, it's an inflation device, right? And so I've just basically got fattest shit. Combination of getting fattest shit in PTSD as a motherfucker. And I've got no nicer way of saying that. And so basically spent about the next six years wallowing and eating. Did it really pretty poorly? I was just a mean nasty pissed off little fucker. And there's just no nicer way of saying. I was just not a nice human being. So basically banged around doing handful of different jobs. Thought it would be a great idea to open up a motorcycle shop of all things, determined, it turns out that when you're a mean nasty bastard, you're probably bad at retail. So that's been more counsel. You know, the small business and the carburetor. Fix it yourself. The fuck pussy. So, you know, I need some jackets over there at all. You know, it's like, hey, my girlfriend needs a jacket. Oh, I'm in, it just covers her up, right? You know, it's like just being a jerk, right? It turns out it's just a really bad business model if you're in a customer base kind of an industry. And so I ran that into the ground in about two years. I'm still writing checks every month to the SBA to pay off that wonderful life choice. You know, I've been to the 10 years of paying that shit off. A couple hundred bucks every month for, you know, until I'm dead. You know, I was like, oh, I hate my college loan. I'm like, oh, my bear. Or both of them. I don't really even care at this point. You know, here's adorable. I just drink vodka now. I'm a Russian Jew, man, it's genetic, but, you know, it's what our people are fueled by. It is very true. That is very true. You know, vodka, chicken soup, and brisket, man, if it wasn't for that, we don't die. Got you through World War II, so, you know, you know, there's actually tears to that. There's actually saying about all Jewish holidays, right? They tried to kill us. They failed. Let's eat. I mean, that's every single Jewish holiday. Hey, what's poro? They were audience. They tried to kill us. They failed. You know, it's like every single Jewish holiday. It's the exact same team. So, you know, you got to get used to that sort of thing. But yeah, about 2013, 2014-ish, I finally just, I looked in the mirror, and I realized that I needed to get yet the next size up of clothing. And I said the hell I will. And I decided not to. A buddy of mine who was literally the little kid across the street growing up. He's about 15 years younger than me. You know, it's like I was a grumpy fireman and he's like the eight-year-old that lives across the street. And he's like, you know, a little blonde kid who used to wave at me when I'd come into my mark car. And so, he'd look over at me. And he opened up a gym that was a military boot camp-style gym. Like, you know, black hat and yellow people kind of stuff. I mean, like the whole freaking deal, man. You know, I'm like, fuck it, let's go. There's your sign. Get off your ass, dude. And so, I joined his gym. And in about six months dropped, about 55 or 60 pounds. Just went, just ham. Just absolutely nuts. You know, worked around the shoulder to, you know, too stupid to stop even when it would hurt. I got to the point one time where we were like, you know, couple of hundred burpees in an hour and, you know, just burpees and wind sprint and sled pushes. The shoulder gave out on me. So, I basically just picked up a 40-pound med ball carried it and walking lunge back and forth for those reps. You know, it's just like, no, shoulder might be dead. I don't care. I will still continue to move and punish myself for the duration of this workout. So, you know, at that point, you know, probably about six, seven months in. One of the, one of the trainers looks over at me. He goes, dude. Remember how said you used to be a trainer? I'm like, once upon a time when I was less fat and less bitter, yes, yes, I was. And he goes, no, like apparently like you were like a fairly high head trainer, I was like, again, once upon a time. You know, you know, it's, you know, good once as I once was by the day. And he goes, well, why aren't you training here? I say, because I'm fat and beat to death and look like shit. And I'm not doing this because if you lecture yourself lately, I mean, he goes, you're, you're not really fat anymore. And I looked over in the mirror and said, well, shit, what did this happen? And I'm looking at it like my clothes are falling off myself. You know, and I kind of knew that I had to buy a new stuff. But I was too god damn cheap to go out and actually re-word drugs on like, you know, we're in size 44 pants on a size 36 ass. Cause you don't want to have to, you don't want to have to go re-buy it again. If you put the weight back on, right? There's always that like little, that little, you know, narrative in your head like, well, this is, this is probably a phase. And you're going to, you're going to get fat again soon. You don't want to get rid of these clothes. You know, like I've both, I've got my steam clothes, my fat clothes. I'm like, the clothes I can actually wear that, you know, at that phase of my life. You know, but this wasn't even that, this has been, I had become so just like completely OCD about actually being not fat. I forgot, that I forgot to actually look at the, to recognize that I was no longer fat. You know, it's like, yeah, it just, I wasn't even looking at myself. I was just going ham and it was driving my family absolutely bad shit crazy, right? So like we went out to Michigan where my wife's family's from and went out to, yeah, to sleeping bear doons. Here, here, here. In North of Holland, actually. Oh, so like that. Yeah, right on the lake, man. And so, you know, Holland, where black water was consumed, go, there it go. All right, man, whatever. So we went out there, we went out to sleeping bear doon and the kids are out with me and they're like, oh my god, dad's going to do some bad shit. And then, you know, I've been to like my dad shit. And then it's like, dad will just like decide he's going to like win sprint across the parking lot or something just arbitrarily, which at that point, you'd be like, you know, it's like, I had all this energy just from, you know, losing all that weight and just like banging out, you know, well, I mean, that's what happened, right? You know, you get yourself back in shape and you just cat, you know, at a very scientific level, your cataclysmine tolerance is a change as well as your cataclysmine production and the combination of a lower sensitivity and a higher level of available cataclysmine reserves means you get like, frickin' ricochet rabbit. You know, I mean, so, yeah, I get science out with the best, right? I mean, like, I've got a degree in Kinesis, the biological equipment of meth in your bloodstream all the time. Exactly. I'm sitting there, it's like, look, man, I'll give it the actual physiology reason for it. And I can science out with the best of the nerds and the best of them, right? But at the end of the day, it's a matter of, yeah, you got fitter. Yeah, you can be hyper shit. And people are just like, I mean, it's like, why? I was like, it happens. You know, you know, you don't over, you don't over nerdome, right? But so we got out there and this thing, you need energy to work out. You've been working out more. So your body got better at making energy. Yeah, I mean, you know, I've got a hundred different ways that I explain really complicated things in a matter of, you know, less than complicated. And I do have some of my clients that will actually ask for that. Like, I have one of my clients who is actually working on the coronavirus vaccine for a major pharmaceutical company. She's the chief medical officer of a major pharmaceutical company. And I mean, this woman's got like, you know, an MD in 27 ancillary decrease on airs for gotten more about endocrinology than the average human will ever learn. And with her, yes, I will absolutely nerd out because she loves it, right? I mean, you know, it's like she'll spar with me on it, you know, want to, you know, want to get, you know, Mongo one lift barbell. Yeah, it's probably not really going to be a product of engagement. Yeah, you got to meet more there at for sure. Yeah, you know, so, you know, I've got a, I've got a 64 year old former football player got played for the bills. It was one of my clients and this guy is broken. Now he owns a state farm agency, right? This guy is, you know, and he totally does not get the from state farm jokes. He's two all the quarter. I've totally put a, yeah, he's Jimmy from state farm. He's like, what? Totally doesn't get it makes me laugh every day on time. The other trainer's in the gym to start busing out. He has, you came into the gym one time in a red polo shirt and I almost lost my shit. But, you know, but, but, you know, after, you know, kind of getting myself put back together, I go out to this dude and it was one of those sort of like reality moments and kids were looking at young teens and this is like a 3,500 foot sand dude. Wow. I mean, Michigan's got some pretty good size dudes, right? Yeah, they do, yeah. And I look at this thing and I go, right, shoot at the top and they look at me like, it are like, yeah, okay, that's funny. And then I just took off and they're just like, oh shit, he wasn't kidding. And next thing you know, like, I'm up at the top. My son like comes up next to me and he's like, I'm just like, what? And I look behind me and I'm like, oh shit, I'm like, dude, there's no way I have this thing. You see people are like crawling hand or hand or hand or six and I'm like, you know, full of run. You know, when I get up the top of this dude and I start doing like the rocky dance, you know? My wife's sitting down the bottom of the parking lot and I can see her like a speck and she's like laughing like, what did you eat, dude? You know, and at that point, you kind of realize like holy crap, I actually am not like the old slow beat death fat fireman and you shit, something must have happened, wow. And so we got back from our family vacation and I went in and I talked to the gym owner. You know, I looked at him and I said, hey man, a couple of the trainers are telling me that I should, you know, start teaching here. And he's like, he's got a current cert and I'm like, no, he goes, can you get one? And I was like, you got the test handy. I can probably hold, wing it and get through. I mean, whatever dude, I mean trainer searcher like, you know, dude, study for him in a week and can't be that kind of tough. Yeah. And so he goes, and so he goes, now I said, you have a preference to which one he goes, well, I mean, we really like this expensive cert or that expensive cert said, okay, so let me rephrase that which one are you paying for? And he said, well, none of them. I said, great, I'll be getting the cheapest one that's acceptable. And he started laughing and I said, dude, I can't agree with you shit, I'm not sitting here comparing pedigrees all day to teach $20 boot camps. I'm not doing it. All right. You pay me 20 bucks to teach a boot camp, I'm not spending $800 on a cert to teach $20 boot camps. And he goes, all right, fair enough. So I went out and he's normally cheap trainer cert. And next week started, started teaching boot camps. That for him for probably about two and a half years and walked away from that gym just because the the other owner was such a flaming narcissist, I just couldn't deal with it, right? One of the, there's certain qualities that you just want to punch people for on pretty much a regular basis. And, you know, and things that are either sort of gaps in professional ethics or narcissism are like two of my absolutely intolerable acts to put it in revolutionary speak. But it's like you go in there and it's like, you know, typical gym, you know, you walk through. Yeah, they all have some inspirational quotes from like Eleanor Roosevelt, you know, Machia Valley or whatever makes you tick, right? This guy, the walls recovered with quotes from him, I'm like, all right, you look at pictures on the wall in the typical gym, right? And they're like pictures of members working out or some, you know, do the Schwarzenegger maybe or, you know, somebody cool, they worked out at your gym or, you know, somebody that they oiled up in front of, you know, in front of a squat rack for Instagram or some shit, right? No, 80% of the pictures are of him and we started basically referring to the places the church of Danny, because it's like effectively he had set up altars to himself throughout this gym. And I'm just like, you know, I just can't do this shit anymore and he's formed himself this nice social media bubble right where all of the sick of fans, you know, and they just puff him up and it's a fact, I was like, you know what, I have a religion already, I really don't need the second one of my life at this point. You know, it's the same reason that I'm sort of like not involved with CrossFit, right? It's like I only have room for one cult in my world. You know, I really don't need the second, thanks. You know, I mean, if you want to talk to my rabbi, hey cool, but at the end of the day, you know, you know, honestly, I'm not, you know, no, how about hard, how about a hard style versus a gear voice board style, who you can get into those, those churches of, so, so, so funny, you should bring that up. So, I have a personal aversion to cults of personality, right? So, and part of it's just because as a Jewish kid, they never work out well for us. You know, I'm just saying, you know, typically it's not to my advantage, right? You know, the Zars, you have pogroms, you might have heard of them, Hitler, you know, not a buddy. You know, you know, and so, you know, King of Hush Vero's, let's go really old school, right? You know, it's not working out to our advantage, right? So, I tend to have a phenomenal personal aversion to cults of personality, right? You know, you don't worship a human. You don't, you know, you don't swab his ass to get the sweat, right? I mean, it's just like he's just a dude, right? If you listen to Julie Mason on Sirius XM, she'll tell you never fall in love with the politician, they're just politicians. You know, and, and so I sort of look at it that way. And so, originally, when I started with kettlebells, I did start in the RKC system. I went through the program. I actually took my course from, you know, from, from, from Andrea, the director of training, right? Do King's wife. You came. Yeah, so it's like, you know, it's like, I took it from like the top instructor and the whole thing. You know, Mike Krivka, one of their master RKC's is a good friend of mine is Jim's 10 minutes up the street from me, right? I mean, it's like, you know, you're in Bethesda, right? Yeah, I'm right here. So, you know, I mean, I know a lot of fairly prominent guys in the system, right? And, and, and, you know, consider them to be friends, but I started to kind of, some things within the system. And John and I had a really spirited, and by spirit, I, I, I largely mean, he, he hates my ass at this point, conversation about this. And so. I can't imagine you backed down very much. You don't seem like a back down kind of guy when somebody confronts you on something and you strongly disagree. Well, it wasn't even so much that he confirmed me. It was that I, I came to him. So as I was, as I was actually prepping to go from my age KC to my RKC, right? Is, you know, getting ready for it. And I'm working with my fitness director, Nate, who is an RKC, you know, a good friend of mine. He's since moved on. He's now out at Equinox in LA. And, you know, we're both, I mean, like, we're both kind of like science-y, right? And it's like, very CS, CS kind of a mindset on things. And, you know, I, I very much believe that sports science is at its core science, right? There's, there's no secrets, there's nothing to unlock. It's not magic. It's just science, right? You know, so it's like. It's, it's, it's, it's not real complicated, right? So if I look at a personal training client really as a biology experiment with the brain, what I'm largely looking at is I'm looking at psychologically, how do they learn, right? I taught college for about 12 years, part time, right? So I was a University of Maryland faculty member teaching cardiology of all things. And so, you know, I, I kind of like to teach, you know, fundamentally, I, I, I like people to understand why they're doing something and, and learn why and exercises in their program to understand why I'm taking them through something in a certain way, understand why your elbow goes in this position, understand why your feet are in this way. As I tell all my clients, I already have a wife, we're not getting married. I want you to outgrow me. My job as a trainer or some of my professional ethics is I don't want to be in your wallet. We're not getting together as a family. I like you as a client, I value as a friend, I will treat you with the utmost respect and we will potentially be very good personal friends, right? But at the end of the day, you, you don't hire a trainer because you need a permanent person leaning over your ear while you bench press. You hire a trainer to get you to something, to get you to a goal, to get you past a point. And there will be a time where you just don't really need them that much anymore. And you might come back to the job, right? Right. If I'm doing my job right as a trainer, I should be working myself out of you need, should work myself out of that job. And so while I'm practicing for my RKC and some of the stuff that I'm looking at, I'm going through my buddy Nate's RKC manual, okay, and he only took it a few months prior, so I knew it was the current version, right? It wasn't some antiquated thing that Pavel forgot in the office when he quit to go to strong first, right? Nobody will still talk about that reason, but, you know, hey, whatever, man, pedal drum, I got to love that shit. And so I'm reading through the book and I'm like looking through the testing sheets and I had talked to Andrea a couple of times about it both, you know, in classes as well as, you know, after class. And some of the stuff that they were sort of like teaching started to kind of right on me a little bit. And so it's like, well, things like they're kind of making up biologic terms like, like muscle confusion. Yeah, exactly, like muscle confusion. Your shield of strength really could, could you just say abdominal pressure? Inter-abdominal pressures, you know, far too far too far too. Soft-brain. Right, you know, and so, again, mungolift bell, you know, it's like, I got breathe behind the shield. You know, right? It's like, you know, you've started. I like that cue. There's nothing wrong with that cue, but it's not a, it's not a, it's bullshit. It's, it's not, it's not a scientific term. It's a, it's a psychological cue to get somebody to understand the concept that you're trying to, to get them to do. So as I start reading through more and more stuff in the RKC manual, I'm starting to notice that some of the things in there are just actually just flat-false claims. And so then I start reading on, on the Dragon Door website, and I'm starting to get more and more sort of annoyed by both the tone of it, you know, the, you know, are you man enough to take our cert, you know, the, the, the, the sort of, you know, big, strong screw you or you a badass nasty Russian like me kind of toned the whole thing, which I get might have been sort of tongue in cheek cool, but I don't even care about that. That's just, that's just sick, right? It's like, I used to wear a black hat and stand there and camo pants and yell at people, you know, it's like, got it, it's sick, you know, it's like, cool, you know, I just stand there and be known as Sergeant Mike, right? What the fuck? I don't care. You know, whatever, man, it's, weren't you a captain, though? Yeah, which is actually kind of funny because when they for, they're like, so you're going to start off as a PFC, I'm just like, well, that's a hell of a no-motion. I'm just going to say, when did you get bused down to Sergeant and you get bused all the way down to PFC, huh? Well, arguably for a junior officer, that might be a promotion in certain people, that's all I suppose. And the foreign department, I was a battalion chief, does that count? I can tell it's a chief, right? Because the chief's mess is a bunch of communists, but, come on, maybe, you know, so, but as I'm reading through a lot of the stuff in these RKC system, and I'm starting to read stuff on their website, and they're sort of starting to arbitrarily use sort of pseudo-science words, which is something that Denon tends to sort of stick in my crawl, right? When they're starting to, you know, it's like, yes, you unlock the secrets of strength, okay, stop. First off, the body has no locks. There's no locks. Okay, there's no hardware, right? It's a fucking muscle, man. If it's locked, it means you need a North-A-Petus, not a kind of kettlebell instructor. Second thing is, I will argue though, the endocrine system, key unlock system, that is what they call it. Sure, it's not really necessarily involving strength, right? I know, I'm just being an asshole, because I know, yes, hold on, I know, I know, I know you, I know you know the endocrine system, so I'll throw it out. Again, one asshole, no, another fuck you with love, but, you know, and so like the secrets of strength, dude, there's no secrets. I hate this whole secret shit, right? So when I was undergrad, we used to go into GNC as undergrad and basically troll the GNC guys, and take Beth from how long it would take him before they told you it was like steroids. You know, it's like, hey, so what's this Elkharnitine, dude, man? It's like legal steroids, boom, 12 seconds, pay me, you know, I mean, we used, I mean, that's the thing, right? And so unfortunately, in the fitness business, it really drives me crazy when you see a lot of these sort of like pseudo-sciencey-brose, sciencey kind of bullshit things, like words like toning, how to hear with this toning, you mean hypertrophy in a targeted way? Yeah, cool. I'm going to build muscle-wide because I'm going to look around in all the right places. Cool. That's not toning. I think you're with that, right? You take your little neoprene wrap, three-pound dumbbells, and GTFO, right? Yeah. So I hate this sort of cosmopolitan bullshit pseudo-science marketing approach that tends to have an influence. And so I started really questioning when I'm reading through most of the stuff in the RKC system, and it's just loaded with that stuff. It's absolutely positively loaded with it. And as I start reading more and more about the system, I started this question, do I want to be a really a part of this? And so I started engaging a little bit within the instructor community in their own forums, and I started asking, you know, appointed questions about things, like, hey, why do we bother prescribing weights for the instructor test, and they were, what do you mean? I said, well, weight's a variable. It doesn't matter if I can do this technique with a 42 kilo kettlebell or an 8 kilo kettlebell. My form is right or my form is wrong. If this is an instructor certification, shouldn't the focus be on, can I properly deliver the training to a client? Can I teach somebody? This is an instructor's shirt, right? They go right. So it shouldn't, 98% of the focus be on how I teach, how I program for somebody, not my personal feats of strength, and they basically say, well, you have to use more weight in order to be able to actually really dial your form in, right? Because you can fake form with lightweight. I'm like, well, no, not really, and they go, well, what do you mean? I said, okay, so if you take a look at like USA weight lifting level one, right, their base coach shirt, probably about half of that class is talking to the PVC pipe that weighs about six ounces. Yeah. A dowel. Right. Exactly. I'm sitting there going, form is formed, dude. So you have to do it with 24 kilo kettlebells is sort of seems a little arbitrary to me. Where did that come from? What's the point of this? It's a personal, it's a personal thing of mine, too, that kind of sticks in my crop because you know, essentially you're getting at the whole thing of coaching proficiency is not ability to do the actual thing, right? Bill Belichick is not the best coach in the NFL because he's a Hall of Fame football player. He's a great coach. Right. And he never made it to the NFL because he doesn't have the physical capability to be the best football player, but guess what? He's a great fucking football coach. Yeah. I'm going to look at his hands and look at all the rings and I'm just going to go ahead and say, yeah, that's a bullshit argument, right? And so within the RKC system, I started asking these kinds of questions about things like, hey, that's what the snatch test and they're like, it's a right of passage. I'm like, okay, why is it? It's to show that you have conditioning. So now give a shit if I have conditioning, I give a shit if I can help condition my client. And they go, well, and you rapidly go within that system and you see it pretty routinely, right? Where everything runs from, the first thing is, hey, why do we do this? The second thing is the bullshit bro science that follows, which when you then counter that with actual science becomes a dick measuring contest, where you get called, let's see, so what have I been called by RKC, I've been called a point external lab goat, that one made me laugh, I personally like riding that one. So let's see, I was attacked by a bunch of Paul Wade, who the fuck is that, right? A bunch of Paul Wade people, when I questioned the ISO chain, while they were trying to roll that one out. And I said, you know, I like, so they had a whole bunch of claims on this, I said, so what I'm largely seeing in here is a short pull handle on a bed spring with a fishing scale. And you tell me that if I yank on that and hold that same position for 17 and a half minutes, I'm going to get massive, right? Absolutely. Okay, so let me go ahead and explain the role of isometrics and muscular development. They don't build muscle, don't go point extra on me, okay? Exactly, I was like, John, they don't build muscle. I was like, dude, you're making flat false claims, you're selling snake oil, man. And he's like, they're not false. I was like, dude, I am on PubMed right now. I've just spent the last two days reading journal articles. And every one of them says that the primary function of isometric exercise is to maintain. It is only really useful in rehabilitative settings. It will not gain any hypertrophy. You're making a scientifically patently false claim, John. And holding things steady keeps things steady, weird. Right. It's like if I am pulling stabilized joints and you stay in your muscle mass stays, stays the same. I might get stronger in that exact one position. It's like, great. So how many positions theoretically, you know, like microfacicular positions might I have in a typical major muscle group, right? You know, a couple thousand. Sweet. So if I run this program for four to six weeks of neural adaptation in every single position, at about 29 years, I'm going to gain about two centimeters of diameter. How about you just do squats? I'm just saying I'm probably going to be able to get you a gain faster and a whole hell of a lot, you know, but it doesn't cost $495. And it's not from Paul Wade, who to this day, nobody knows who the Paul Wade even is, right? And so I sort of look at the whole thing and I'm just like, look, this isn't me trying to be hostile. This is me like flat out saying, let's up our game. And so while some of this stuff generation might have worked with like the Joe Weeder era guys or with like some of the older meat and potato boomer types, I'm just kind of a bitter, grumpy Gen Xer. And I looked down at a lot of my millennial friends and clients and they're looking at it going, yeah, this is a fucking joke. They view the tone as being toxic. They view it as condescending. And I personally hate the term toxic masculinity begin with. I think it's a flock of shit. You know, it's like you're just a person. I don't really care if you're dude or not a dude, right? If you're an asshole, you're an asshole. But at the end of the day, the whole tone of that system and of that company really largely became, they want their instructors to demonstrate personal feats of strength because the Russian kettlebell challenge just changed the name challenge certification and never really matured into an actual pedagogically sound educational system. And so I asked John, I said, would you be open to a couple of suggestions? And he goes, sure, what do you suggest in their mic? And I said, okay, well, Professor Mike, the point next during the lab coat. Now, as a few suggestions for you here, right? So did you go Martin Luther and like pound the No, no, no, no, I mean, I'm reasonably dispassionate about the whole thing at this one. It's like, I'm going to give you 1500 bucks. I don't think I will. It's really a matter of I'm a customer and I'm questioning your product quality at this point. You know, it's not a cheap cert. So if I'm going to spend 1500 bucks on a cert, I better damn well believe in it. I mean, that's an expensive cert. And so the first question I asked him, I said, is being a certified personal trainer prerequisite to be an RKC? And he said, no, it is not. I said, why? And he goes, we don't think it needs to. It's a specialty cert. I said, right, but you are out there saying this is a certified instructor, certified instructor to the public has a meaning to it. There is an implied contract that you are making when you are saying that somebody is certified that you are presenting them to the public as safe, effective and qualified for your fitness needs. In the absence of any base education and kinesiology and basic physiology and even some level of corrective exercise to say what is an indication or a contraindication to do some of these exercises and ballistic exercises and kettlebells can hurt you, right? We all know this, right? They can hurt you. They can hurt you badly. They make no mistake. Moving, moving load quickly can injure you rapidly. Shocking, it's crazy, right? When I have a cannibal, the handle, and I swing it very hard, I can in fact damage myself or property. More of the guy standing next to me because the poor bastard got hit, right? I mean, it's like there are specific things that are beyond the RKC manuals of fast feet or safe feet. Okay, so what? Just jump if you drop a bell, that's your entire safety model. Fantastic. I'm going to think that's might be a little bit light. And so and so they go, and he goes, well, no, we don't. I said, okay, so how are you teaching what is a contraindication to performing some of those big, exact exercises? And he goes, well, what do you mean by contraindication? I said, there are certain people that should not do swings. And he goes, well, what do you mean there are certain people that should not do swings? So it's very simple, right? So if I have somebody with say one of my clients has a torsional scoliosis from T5 to L2, she is concave on the right side. Should she be doing snatches? And the answer that is probably not. You know, her doctor specifically said, do not go into spinal extension. I cannot accurately and completely make sure that she will not go into the rassic extension. Well, doing a snatch. It is a contraindicated exercise, wearing your program as the experts in kettlebell instruction. Have you provided that? Well, she just needs a medical clearance. I said, no, reporting your people has certified experts. Any trainer knows this. Every single certified personal trainer understands the anatomy and going, even though Rookie's going to go, it smells a little funny to me, right? RKC doesn't include that sort of thing. And so when I'm asking, John, why doesn't it include CPT? I said, here's the suggestion I want to get around. You know what's that? I said, if you aren't certified as a trainer, you get a certificate of completion. If you are prerequisite, if you've met the prerequisite, you get an instructor certification. We are not giving you the title. If you haven't met the prerequisites, right? And he goes, well, we're not going to do that. People aren't going to pay $1,500 for a certificate of completion. And that's exactly. And I said, well, if you're trying to sell it as an instructor cert, there is an expectation that somebody is actually qualified in anything other than teaching six lifts because anybody who's ever worked in a gym knows that the amount of weird stuff that a trainer gets asked on a daily basis is pretty substantial, right? He didn't want to hear that. I said, okay, so now let's go ahead and turn to a second thing. He goes, yeah, I said, you got a book. It's 200 pages long. You're a publisher primarily. He goes, right, I said, why don't you have a written test? Well, what do you mean? I said, how do you prove that people know any of the back half of the book, which is how to program, how to implement phasing forgetables? It's all in their manual. It is very clearly in the RKZ book, but there's no written test. There's no way to prove competency on that. And he goes, well, we assume that they got that during the seminar. Like mentioned the word program and go at this station. And how are you evaluating that in any sort of many full objective way? Because if they can do 200 snatches in 10 minutes, they must understand how to program. Clearly, clearly, right? And so with a 24 kilo kettlebell, regardless of their age, weight, or physique. And so what I'm asking in these questions, and he's just giving me pushback on, I said, all right, so now I look at your test. Let's turn to the skills test. He goes, yeah, I said, I'm all about skills test, right? I don't think you should ever be certified as a trainer in something. If you haven't demonstrated, you can actually do the freaking thing you're teaching people. What I do have questions for is why are you describing reps? And he goes, one minute, I said, so what of Mike's sort of training holy rules is never triple constrain your athlete? And that means you don't tell them how big a weight the number of reps and how fast to lift it on the same exercise. Let's say you hurt people, right? That's something CrossFit learned early on, right? You don't say you will do 135 pound overhead presses 37 times in 12 minutes. Okay, well, that's why they got hurt. So when they basically started saying, okay, yeah, so you're going to do as many reps as you can in 12 minutes. Okay, that's where AMRAP came around, right? Because it was breaking that triple constraint. I said, so everything within the instructor test is focused upon, okay, I'm going to do in five minutes, 124 kilo snatches. Yes, right. I said, you understand that's like a rank one, MOSGS tables, right? I said, this is somebody who's been training for a long time to be able to do what effectively amounts to 224 kilo snatches in 10 minutes. I said, so if you break that in half, right, that's a rank one GS. I said, is that where you came up with the number to begin with? You couldn't answer me. I said, so 100 is just a round number. Well, no, it falls back down to because Pavel said so. And it usually, and this is sort of where you get that cult-like thing that sort of ultimately put me out of the system and basically said, you know what, I'm done with you guys. Because at this point, RKC is really nothing but SFG 1.0. You know, because when you take a look at the SFG materials, they are literally RKC materials. They've just been puffed up a little bit. Their website is literally just the same website without all the bullshit on it. The test is almost identical. And it's basically, it's like, oh, it's just the same dude, right? So it's very clear that both of them are exactly the same because the dude said so. And so when you look at that from the matter of a rationale, why is that in a system that is targeted as an instructor certification? It doesn't make sense to me. It generally doesn't. And so when you'll see it like in the Kettlebell Kings forum, you'll say something like, you know, you'll get somebody who, just a rookie who will be like, hey, what size Kettlebell should I be starting with if I've never done swings before? And the answer to both depends guys there. We're both depends guys. You and I both are in there all the time. It depends. Exactly. I was like, I don't know. Are you an experienced weightlifter? How big are you? Do you have any injuries? Should we even do a swings at all at this point, right? What's your goal? Why are you lifting the bell to begin with? What's the thing you're actually doing this for? And then, but then you'll get the guys that come out, you know, the, the, the powerful acolytes will come out and it's like, what the kilos? Okay, how the hell did you just not even, you've never even seen a picture of this dude? And you're prescribing exercise to it. Yeah, their, their profile picture is literally a picture of their six-year-old child. You're telling, you're telling them to pay, they must start with a 24 kilo bell because they're a man. Right. So I started looking at these things, right? And the system just became more and more just like, perennially off-putting to me. And so if you think the system, you're advocating for his bullshit, why are you still advocating for it? As a matter of just like personal ethics, why would you do that? And it gets real quiet every time you ask that question. That's a good question. You know, and it's kind of like if you don't believe in the system, you're paying, stop pimping it. You know, I mean, it's, it's not that hard, right? But there's a personal cost to that though. That's the, that's the hard, like, that's the hard truth behind that, right? Is there's a personal cost to that and people are invested. There's cognitive dissonance. There's pot, you know, there's the whole concept of being pot committed at a certain point, right? I've absolutely, I've invested so many times and like, why do people stay in bad marriages? Well, I've invested, I've invested 15 years in this person. I, you know, I don't want to walk away now because they might change or they might change or I might end up alone. It's usually more around the fear behind the fear behind it, usually, right? Is actually more the, is more the thing the reason the person stays, right? You know, it's like, well, what am I going to, if I'm not in RKC, what am I going to do? Right. And so you look at it from the ankle of it, right? And these people, they got the big red chicken on the wall. They got the double-headed red chicken on the wall. You know, and they were nothing but red T-shirts, right? And they sort of worship at the church of Pauvel. And it becomes so much a part of both their personal and professional identity that this is what I am, rather than this is who I am. And they have a very difficult time making that mental cleave. And so what usually ends up becoming much more fun is when you, you then ask questions of folks like this in public fora, right? So like in a Facebook group or an Instagram or a conference or something like that. And clocking the speed by which you get called a pussy. You know, and so my running joke is it's usually, you know, it's like, you know, there's the old thing of, you know, shirt tails to shirt tails in three generations, right? It's best for end of pussy and three posts on Facebook. And so when you start asking any of these questions, it's almost not even sporting at this point to sort of see how rapidly it goes to name calling within folks that are within those systems, right? And the only real common denominator within those is Pauvel, right? He's the only common denominator between the two. So one can only assume that culturally that culture attributes back to him. Because the two systems, those two instructional systems tend to have that very, very similar kind of culture to them. It tends to be relatively anti-intellectual, tends to be thou shalt not question. And to me, honestly, it looks very similar to something that's culty programming, right? You know, I will do this because I will do this, okay? Well, why? And again, it's, you know, the short-fed Jewish kid, right? You know, what's the word Israel mean? Argus with God. So I don't really care. So less rock, man. And so eventually, I got to the point where, and like probably two years ago, I got so fed up with the whole thing, but I genuinely believe in the systems themselves, right? I think that they have amazing things that they have done for a lot of people. And so I called John, and I actually asked him if he would sell R.K.C. to me. And he goes, well, like sell you a shirt, I said, no, sell me the system. And he goes, what are you talking about? I said, let me buy the intellectual property. I want to own it. Dragon door won't own it anymore. It will be Mike. I will own it. And he got real quiet. He said, yeah, I'm just not interested in selling right now. I said, hey, cool. Call me if you aren't. And that was the last time I were spoke to the man. And so that's about two years ago. I'm pretty well PNGed from his system at this point. But you know, again, you know, it's like I genuinely believe that if you're going to have a system, and you're going to be impactful in the system, the system ought to be backed up with the trust of clients in mind. And I could not in good conscience look at a client and say, hey, man, you know, let's do this thing. So, um, thanks for listening to this episode of the platform podcast. I'm Jordan Kunde-Wright, right? If you have a question, please email me at Twin Cities Kettlebell Club at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Twin Cities Kettlebell Club, on Twitter at TCKB Club, online at Twin Cities Kettlebell Club.com. And please help us grow our reach and give us a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time.