Body-for-LIFE EAS Grand Master Champion Leaps to New Heights — with Russian Kettlebells

Thomas Phillips was the Grand Master Champion of the prestigious EAS Body-for-LIFE challenge in 2002. Since his victory, he’s been using kettlebells to keep his workouts exciting and to maintain his high level of fitness. He attended the October 2004 RKC in St. Paul, MN, and took time out to talk to us about his success.

Dragon Door: We’ve heard about your amazing transformation through the Body-for-LIFE program. Can you talk about that?

Thomas Phillips: Sure. I was an athlete since I was eight or nine years old: basketball, baseball, cross-country. I was quite an accomplished runner in high school. I did a lot of boxing, golf…pretty much everything. I was always intrigued by sports and competition in general. When I was nineteen, I heard about Bill Phillips’ challenge, the very first one that he did. And ironically Bill Phillips is my father’s name. [Laughter]

Actually I’ve known about Bill Phillips and have been a follower since he came out in ’92 with Muscle Media 2000. But when he came out with the contest, I was a nineteen-year-old cross-country kid who weighed about 150 pounds. So I put on some lean mass. I did the challenge then and at the end I was about 167 pounds. At that time there was no Body-for-LIFE program. He just did the 12-week challenge and said, “See what you can do.”

So I hired a trainer and I worked my butt off and I really got a lot of success. To make a long story short: a few years past, I got married, had kids, went to college, and eventually went to graduate school for special education. I started teaching full-time and before I knew it, with my wife working full-time as well with the kids, there was no time for me to be in the gym, which was really disturbing. About a year passed, and if you are only gaining two pounds a month you don’t really notice it. [Laughter] But after about a year, I was literally about 25 pounds heavier than I had been the year before. And a lot of that was due to the school lunches and whatnot.

But what I did was I used the Body-for-LIFE challenge, which was now about seven years after the first one, as my incentive to get back into shape. I figured, “Hey, I’m going to do this. I’m going to get back into shape.” And I talked to my wife about it. She said, “Well, how are you doing to that? I work nights, you work days.” So what I wound up doing was just waking up earlier in the morning. I used a lot of behavior modification techniques to succeed, which I also use in the classroom. And that’s another long story.

I’m really interested in behavior modifications—changes you can make toward success and fitness. Muscle Media wrote a lot about that in their article about me, how I used those techniques.

I completed the challenge, submitted the packet, and really didn’t think much of it. I knew I did a great job. I had completed it toward the end of the year, and it was only a matter of a couple months before somebody contacted me from the EAS. They did several interviews with me, both over the phone and face to face. Eventually, I found out that I had won. Since then, I’ve done a lot of appearances. The EAS does something called “The Transformation Camp” out in Colorado. I’ve been to two of those. I’ve done a lot of motivational-type speaking and also stuff that I do during my workouts. I talk about some of my behavior modification work for the campers. So that’s pretty much the Body-for-LIFE story.

After I won, what I opened my own personal training studio with the prize money. I was hoping to get 60 people. Or I should say 60 appointments within the first six months. We got 180 within the first four months.

I was absolutely blown away by how many people were drawn by just word of mouth. So right now, there are four other people that train with me and we go pretty much from 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, working Saturday and Sunday all morning and part of the afternoon.

I pretty much work seven days a week. I really love the training component, but I also teach. So it’s kind of the perfect schedule for me, because early morning is your peak time to train people, then I go to school, which is a down time, and then I come back at night. But I don’t do that every day. I mean, I did that for about six months, where I was literally working 120 hours a week just to build the business, and then I gradually backed off.

I’ll tell you a little bit about what I do as a teacher, which is probably even more intriguing. I teach emotionally disturbed high school kids. So there are a lot of challenges and this is my sixth year doing that. The first two years were probably the hardest years of my life, as far as understanding the ropes, because you are dealing with kids that are very unmotivated, which is totally opposite from me. I’m a very self-motivated person. They are not. But you start to learn little things that they respond to, and little tricks that get them to raise their performance little by little. And over the course of a couple of years, I fine tuned it.

What’s really nice is that a lot of the kids come back year after year. So you get a reputation as a certain teacher, and when the kids come in they are excited to have you.

So it’s not like walking in as the new teacher and feeling, “Oh, my gosh! Now I’ve got to prove myself.” You’ve already earned their respect and kids learn, “Oh, great, I have Mr. Phillips next year,” and they are excited. So that’s one big advantage, being able to start the year feeling fresh.

I mentioned before that I got my Masters Degree in Special Education. I have an Undergraduate Degree in History. I have a Minor in English. I went for what’s called a Second Masters’. It’s really a Post-Master’s Certificate; what’s called a “Learning Disabilities Teacher’s Consultant.” I finished all of the qualifications except the last one, which is really an internship. And with my schedule right now, I’m putting that off. To be honest, I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it. I was really just doing it for myself.

But I’ve got quite a bit of schooling in the education background, which definitely helps me in the personal training field to communicate to clients. Because you are a teacher to them. And some people are learning disabled with their bodies, and I use that analogy with my trainers. You really have to watch and critique exactly what’s going on. So it’s almost a natural transition between the two. I really feel like I’m in the right spot for both things that I do, being a personal trainer and being a teacher. And I’m a father.

D.D.: What are your kids like?

T.P.: My son’s name is Jordan. He’s seven. And my little girl, Julia, she’s four. I call them whenever I am away for even a couple of days. And they are crying every time I call: “When are you coming home?”

D.D.: That’s a good thing. So when did kettlebells get into the mix?

T.P.: Well, I pride my studio on not being behind anybody. In other words, I like to know what’s going on with everything. I got into the Ironmind stuff, the grippers, the grip tools, and through different links, I eventually found kettlebells and then Dragon Door. I started looking into kettlebells just in general and I began ordering some of Pavel’s stuff and using it on my own. I saw how capable and how knowledgeable this guy was. I also ordered a lot of Scott Sonnon’s club bells. But the thing about club bells is that they are not really tools you can use with your clients. It’s really for myself and I don’t want people getting clubbed around in my gym. I think that club bells are great, but I saw the kettlebells as something a little more “out of the box” that I can introduce into my gym.

I messed around with them for several months and watched all of the videos. And I went to Mike Mahler’s workshop with my other trainer, which was a nine-hour day. Literally no lunch—we got our butts kicked there. We learned a lot from that, and we continued implementing them into our gym as one of the components. We don’t do only kettlebells, but we want to mix it in. And the clients love it. It’s fun.

D.D.: What have kettlebells done for you that other systems haven’t done?

T.P.: The thing with the kettlebells that’s great for me is that it teaches you to use your whole body. It’s not the typical bodybuilding approach, where, “Okay, we are doing biceps now” or “Today we’ll do legs.” It really teaches your body to be used as a whole unit, which is more functional for athletics. And that’s appealing to me, because I don’t like to consider myself a body builder or anything like that. I like to consider myself an athlete.

To me, the kettlebell workout is the natural workout for most athletes. And I have the athletes that I train use a lot of the techniques that Pavel does in the Naked Warrior—a lot of body weight and kettlebell stuff. It’s intriguing, because in bodybuilding you are used to breaking things down by body parts and it was really an education for me when I started coming across Pavel’s stuff. His products and books, and listening to what he had to say. I became fascinated by it. You realize, “Wow! I’ve been doing a lot of things wrong.” But I’m humble enough to admit it.

I’ve told all of my clients, “Hey, this is an approach that this guy has and let’s try it and see if it works.” Don’t get me wrong, some people just want to look good. They want to look like a bodybuilder. And so I train them that way because that’s what they want. Some people think, “Well, I want to look like Ronnie Coleman.” And by the way, I did a promotion for Ronnie Coleman. That guy’s the size of a house. His bicep is as big as my head [Laughter].

So that’s the approach that I take: different people want different things. Some people are very specific, saying, “I want to work this way” and I say, “Okay, then I’m going to train you in this way and if your muscles bloat out and you look this way, you trained the fat out of you” and whatnot.

But some people are more interested in functional strength, joint mobility, and overall fitness and health. And to me, that’s the practical component of KB exercise.

D.D.: What about with your clients. Have you seen any improvements?

T.P.: Oh, yeah. I have some unbelievable testimonials from my clients, everything from joint mobility to fat loss to strength gain. We keep their successes well documented. We do strength tests with them as motivation to continue. Strength tests are a tangible thing. Measuring people’s body fat can be very ambiguous, but when they see that their strength increases over time and their strength is more flexible, it’s hard to argue with that success.

D.D.: What’s the demographic for the people that come and train with you?

T.P.: Wow, we have a broad variety. We have a 50-50 split of men and women. And mostly between 35 and 45 years old, but I do have quite a few kids that come for sports-specific training. I’m a Certified Sports-Specific Trainer, but I don’t market to that group, they just come. I try to market to the 35-, 45-, 50-year-old men and women. The “mid-life crisis” crowd, so to speak. Because that’s the biggest crowd.

D.D.: That’s when you start feeling your body.

T.P.: Exactly. People come in and they say, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do that anymore. I used to be an athlete.” That’s when I started putting on more weight, because I just couldn’t do the things that I used to do. I’d go out to play football with the kids and I’d pull a hamstring, and I’m like, “What’s going on?” I couldn’t keep up with these kids anymore. And at the time, I was only 26 or 27 years old. I was discouraged by that.

D.D.: And how old are you now?

T.P.: I’ll be 29 next month. So that was another motivation for me to do the Body-for-LIFE challenge.

D.D.: What about the RKC? How has that been going for you?

T.P.: It’s everything and more than I expected. I am just amazed. I’m freaked out by how capable some of these senior instructors are.

D.D.: Yes, it’s incredible, isn’t it?

T.P.: It’s incredible. It’s motivating. I’m amazed at how much pain I’m in. [Laughter] It’s been a great experience. I’ve learned a lot this weekend and that’s saying something, since I had read and seen just about every product you guys have.

I think it’s great to market to people who think, “Well, since I’ve seen all the books and all the DVDs…,” because I’m telling you, I’ve probably learned 75% more here, despite the fact that I’ve read everything and I’ve seen everything. Because there are so many finer points of the techniques that have such depth, and you can’t possibly cover in a 35- or 45-minute DVD. And then of course you get your own questions answered.

D.D.: Wow. 75% more in just three days. I can’t think of any other training in the country that’s like it, actually.

T.P.: That’s right—in just three days! And no, I don’t think there is anything just like it. Obviously not for kettlebells. There are other things that try to be similar, but there’s nothing quite like it. And the other thing is that you guys do a great job in showing how functional this type of strength is in different areas. Like Steve Maxwell’s “Joint Mobility” thing this morning just kicked my butt! I mean, it’s discouraging when you think that you’re in great shape and people look up to you for the things that you do, and then there are certain components of fitness that you have to work on. And it gets exposed to you. You can’t fake it. When you have a 50- or 60-pound kettlebell over your head, you start to realize that there are certain things that you can work on. So it’s been great!

If you’re in the New Jersey area and are interested in training with Thomas, call his studio at (732) 780-2270. Or shoot him an email at tjp732@cs.com.