Ian King

Helping as few as one person avoid damaging their body through the training is worth the effort!  

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I received this email today and I thought it was such a great email that it was worthy of a longer reply. So here it is!

Hi, I was listening to Mike Mahler’s podcast with Ian recently and what he had to say was very eye opening and went against some, actually most of my perceived training wisdom I have garnered over the years from the internet and other sources that Ian would probably find appalling. The more I listened and read up on Ian’s concepts the more I realised maybe I have been doing everything wrong.

I had walking lunges in my warmups, I didn’t stretch until the end of a training session. Anyway I could gone on forever in that vein, I would say I am general population, no athlete. I know Ian doesn’t coach general population. Hence I am writing this.

I am over 40 male carrying a bit to much weight. I tried to get strong over the years, but I say I did more damage than good. Never had great flexibility and probably have enough imbalances to write a book on. I injured my knee (mild cartilage damage), but recovering well with physio exercises. So range of motion has returned and I am pain free with just some minor stiffness.

Finding bodyweight and 16kg kettlebells good in my rehab and might continue in that vein for a time.

So I guess it comes down what product of Ian’s would be good for a 40 plus male (general population) looking to train and enhance his strength, flexibility, iron out imbalances and give longevity to his training life. If Ian doesn’t have a product that’ suit me, that’s fine. I would assume his business is mainly built around elite athletes.

Any help with this inquiry would be greatly appreciated. Yours Sincerely, –xxxx

P.S. Apologies for the long winded email, but I just can’t afford to many more mistakes with my training.

So I wrote back:

xxxx– great to hear you received value from the Mike Mahler podcast! I like the way you say ‘perceived’ training wisdom. Because at the end of the day, that is all it is when we take on others thoughts. When they are truly our own, based on our own experience and analysed as objectively as we can, then they can be more than this.

Most people I talk to are little more than a collection of other peoples thoughts, and the threads are so clear to me I can typically trace their influences.

I like the way you are willing to review your current training habits. I share my conclusions to help people just like yourself, not to be right. So it’s rewarding to hear you have at least paused to reflect on your choices.

I am also impressed with your realization and conclusion about your pursuit of strength that ‘I did more damage than good.’ This rings a bell of familiarity in my writings!

I have formed the opinion that most strength training programs do more damage than good. However it takes many years for the average person to realize this, if ever. The short-term results cause pleasure, but the long-term results inevitably pain. King, I., 2004, Get Buffed!™ III, p. 8-9

…in my opinion most people do more damage to their bodies and long term health than good, through their training. Amazing when you consider the aim of training generally is to improve your body. King, I., 2007, Email to clients – KSI pre-production offer, 6 June 2007

So to answer your question – which of my products would serve? I would recommend the education in the Get Buffed! book combined with the info in the GB II book. I am not suggesting that all the programs in the book are right for you right now, but they are only generic programs and I have always recommended you individualize your training. And the content in the book will help you do that.

Whilst our main focus has been elite athletes, the GB range (an extensive range of products for people just like you) is a by-product of the conclusions I reached during my many decades of training a high volume of elite athletes. The content and methods published in these books have been very well received, changing the way the world trains arguably more than any other single source. And amongst the most plagiarized books as well, so it’s great if you can get the original intent from the source.

In conclusion, I like your PS – you can’t afford to make many more mistakes in your training. I agree, which was my motive for publishing as extensively as I have during the last 20 years – if I can prevent as few as one person from damaging their quality of life, it’s worth my effort. So I look forward to what you can change for the better in your training with my published training information! –Ian King

Helping as few as one person avoid damaging their body through the training is worth the effort!

Ian King

The rock and the snake  

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A few weeks ago I went into my gym and discovered a large puncture hole in the wall.  I seen my share of firearm puncture holes and my first instinct was to wonder what size caliber firearm had been used to pierce the walls, and cause the inward flapping of the wall sheets. I felt under seige.

After closer examination I discovered a sizeable rock on the ground at the base of my work desk. The rock had entered immediately below my work desk, underneath my computur which housed my intellectual property.   It was a shocking feeling, having such a piecing of one’s special space, and so close to my computer.

I then realized the rock has been thrown from my lawn tractor during a recent grass cut.  I certainly had not intended to cause the rock to become a projectile, but indirectly I had caused this penetration into my gym. I had trusted my lawn tractor and the ground too much, failing to cut with the outlet shoot facing the other way.

About a week later we discovered a brown snake lying beside the lifting platforn in the gym, meters from where the rock had pierced the walls under my work desk. The snake was dead, however this was not obvious at first as it had no apparent wounds. A closer examination of the snake revealed symmetrical depressions lines across the body. I figured out the snake had entered the gym and hidden under the lifting platform. I had then walked on the platform, killing the snake without even being aware of its presence.  Effortlessly, and as part of my daily movements during training, I had snuffed out the dangerous intruder.

It felt strange knowing that I had been going about my daily training and work unaware that a snake was hiding in my presence.

The promimity of the events in time and space seems beyond a coincidence. The rock had penetrated the walls of the sacred space of my gym in the immediate proximity of my computur containing my intellectual property. Following this a poisonous snake had entered the gym, and been killed through normal daily activity.  These are not your ordinary daily, run-of-the-mill experiences. And they had happened so close together.

The rock and the snake. Interesting….

Ian King

Why the variation on my single leg stiff-leg deadlift? I’ve just had an epiphany!  

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I was in the eccentric phase of a set of my own innovated exercise, the single leg stiff leg deadlift, when it hit me! No, not the muscle pain! But the realization of a possible explanation of a question that has gnawed at me for a nearly a decade!

You see in the few years following my initial release of this exercise (first in 1998 in my Strength Specialization DVD series, then on t-mag articles, and the video ‘Ian King’s Killer Leg Exercises sold by t-mag, and in the Get Buffed series and in the How to Teach Series in 2000 etc.), I could not fully understand this:

Where did the ‘variation’ on my innovation – where you allow the non-working leg to drift up the back like a counter balance – come from? Why?

My initial conclusion and I believe there still is merit in this possibility – that it was a simple misinterpretation. Keeping in mind that many of the photo shoots done for my articles and book published by other publishers were shot in my absence. So this is a real possibility – the model misunderstood it; the photographer got it wrong, or the editor or the publisher….

But suddenly I had an additional reason!!! And of all places to come to me was while I was at the business end of a set of the very exercise!

Now when I first noticed the ‘variation’ it caused me to scratch my head. And to this day, nearly a decade later, I am still scratching my head. Why? Are they serious?

I have gone through all the possible reasons:

1. Firstly, as I said above there is the real chance of simple misinterpretation.

2. Secondly, some gate-keeper of the truth somewhere felt he was missing out on the kudos so felt the need to tweak the original version to get a warm feeling of being an innovator.

3. Thirdly, you get the approach ‘Well if I reverse it up I can pass it off as mine’. (Like my innovation the Co-contraction partial range – where another has chosen to promote the movement in the absence of credit to its origin, reversed the title to Partial co-contraction Lunge, and reversed the movement order – more on that another day…)

But that was all the answers I had found, and the question still confounded me – not only where did it come from but why would you do it?

Here’s my interpretation of what’s going on when you do this ‘variation’. I have never written about this before so I have kept my silence all these years.

And no, I don’t have any science to ‘back me up’. I’m just a simple coach. A coach who simply developed the movement in the first place, an exercise used throughout the world today, for the most part disconnected from it’s origin because so many want to be ‘significant (like another exercise I innovated, the King Deadlift, where I finally said ‘Right, I am going to put my name on this one because all the others I have realised by have bastardized and claimed by various self-appointed gate-keepers of the truth.’ I was reading a document the other day that is about 20+ pages long and it was a 100% copy of KSI propriety information – with the exception that the word ‘King’ was removed from this exercise description and replaced with ‘the words Single leg’….more on THAT another day.

Anyway, I digress.

From my simple coach mind, using the same thought processes based on extensive practical application, I raise this points about the ‘variation’ where you allow the non-working leg to raise up behind the body as you lower towards the ground:

a. it takes the stretch off the target hamstring, reducing the primary benefit of doing this movement

b. It becomes an exercise of counter-balancing body parts (back leg against trunk) and therefore becomes more of a mechanical balancing act than an isolated exercise full range on the target hamstring and poster chain.

c. if you need more load, as some ‘experts’ claim you need as justification for the movement – go an do more load friendly exercise – like the single leg hip/thigh extension on a roman chair etc.

So I finally have another explanation, and it hit me as I was executing the movement – no better place for real world solutions to appear – THEY CAN’T TOUCH THEIR TOES.

I know what you might be asking – what do I mean? So let me explain.

If you cannot touch your toes with your legs straight, seated on the ground or standing, then you probably won’t have much success in executing this movement full range with the load of your upper body, or external load in the form of DBs. Even though the original movement allowed and expected a minor knee bent, the additional range this allows relative to a fully straight leg is probably negated by the load.

So quite simply if you can’t touch your toes with legs straight, you probably will look for any way to do this movement OTHER than the way I introduced it originally – with working leg knee only slightly bent, and the non-working leg kept still just off the ground, parallel to the working leg but not touching it or the ground.

Is this theory accurate? Can’t say for sure yet. I am happy to test it over time. But I am excited and relieved to have added another possible explanation to a question that has been bugging me since the first person sought to ‘re-invent’ this wheel. And I have often wondered….why haven’t I seen more of those who teach my exercise as the ‘expert’ performing it in the ordinal form, themselves…..