An Interview With Paul Kelso

Perhaps you've seen his name around on the web bulletin boards including the Q&A board on http://www.drsquat.com. However, this man is not just another name in the crowd. He has written two books: The Kelso Shrug System (1993) and Powerlifting Basics, Texas Style (1996), as well as articles for magazines like Ironman and Powerlifting USA. While many write books, after reading them you realize that Paul knows a thing or two from being around the block.

Fred II: Paul, aside from what I noted in the introduction, can you tell us a little more about your experiences in training?

-I started in 1952, age 15. Everything available to me in Dallas then was York oriented. Trained the basic 8-10 exercises, 3 sets each, 3 times a week, like almost everyone. I also wrestled 3 days a week. Sounds like overtraining but I grew fast. I was a tall skinny kid so I began 20 rep squat programs, all kinds of chest expansion movements, and grew even faster. Started weightlifting at 18 and absolutely loved it. In those days weightlifters and bodybuilders were often the same people, so our training programs were mixed. I was lucky as I got to train with Sid Henry and the Gilliland brothers for about a year. If I had it to do over again, I probably would have stuck with weightlifting, especially if I had known the military press would be dropped.

The Army intervened in '56 and again during the '61 Berlin Crisis. Then came the folksinging boom, I had a fair career at that, and marriage and grad school, so my training became erratic. Did some lifting in the Army, got off a 275 lb clean and jerk at age 20, which wasn't that bad a lift in those days. I did pro wrestling tank-town shows off and on.

I didn't try powerlifting until I was forty. Loved it, but my leverages were all wrong, and I had no desire to blow up to 275 lbs or more or use juice to try to overcome the problem. So I got into coaching and writing, trying to make a contribution.

After I came to Japan in 1989, age 52, I began using short, full-body programs, lost two inches off the waist and gained ten lean pounds. That experience is the basis for the "20 Sets Or Less" training I've written about..

Fred II: I understand you are in Japan now. What's going on there in terms of competitive lifting and strength training in general? Is there any differences in the way athletes are training? How about the health and fitness trends of the general population?

-Heck, Fred, I could write a book on this subject! Japan was one of the early powerlifting nations to join the IPF. They formed an association in 1968. They have a hardcore of about 2800-3000 lifters to draw international teams from. Japan has had its share of World champs like Inaba, Midote, Isagawa, Hisako Yoshida (women) and women's Bench Press champ Yukako Fukushima. Japan has consistently placed 4-6th in team PL scoring for the last decade and won the IPF BP world's last year.

Japan hosted the '95 Womens World, the Mens' World in 2000 and the World Games in '01. (BTW, I have had a great time reporting those contests and running around Asia covering Regionals for PLUSA). There is only the IPF affiliate in Japan, no rump Feds, as the Japan government only recognizes sports groups with IOC connections, which the Japan PL Association has through the World Games.

The weightlifting program here sends lifters to the Olympics and the WL Worlds. There are many chains of fern-bar spas with Smith machines and boxing to music. Hardcore gyms are often small, even rented real estate here is unbelievably expensive. Bodybuilding and 'Fitness' shows are popular although I think no Japanese bodybuilder has yet made it as a pro. Training 4-5 times a week is common. A weird belief is that Japanese have smaller muscles than caucasians - and longer intestines - and so need to train longer and harder.

Training in general is about 20 years behind the USA. Still lots of old hardheads that think like USA coaches did back in the '50's, except here the emphasis is on spirit and heart over wise training. Over-training is common in every sport. That's why so many Japanese top baseballers, especially pitchers, are now trying to escape to the States. Baseball and soccer dominate the school programs; there is almost no American football below the college level and maybe three dozen colleges have teams. Rugby is more popular. Sumo wrestlers have gotten into weights in the last ten years, even if the sport's mossbacks frown on it.

To sum up - yes, a lot of people are exercise conscious although Japan is still a smokers' paradise. Only 1 in 50 are obese because of the traditional diet. There are lots of joggers, old folks doing tai-chi in the parks, martial arts, soccer, hordes of golf nuts, etc., and a huge number of hikers. Japan is 70 % hills and mountains - easily accessible - and the people love to get out of the cramped towns often as they can.

Fred II: I'd like to talk about your books. First, "Powerlifting Basics". This was an extremely entertaining book as it was written as a story, but weaves in routines and tips on lifting. What inspired you to write this book?

-I taught at little Lon Morris College in east Texas 1983-85, while living on nearby Lake Palestine for 5-6 years. We cobbled up a weight room at the college, started a PL club and went to four meets in '84-'85. I also set up a weight program for the basketball team, which won the local conference in '85. I had been a fishing tackle rep in the southwest in the '70s, so fishing was part of my life. My wife at the time, the red-headed 148 pounder, was a singer/guitar player, as was I, so we met a lot of people from the 'tonks and roadhouses. It was, for the wife and me and kids at the school, an exciting time. Lots of bizarre characters in and out of our perimeter.

I had been a devotee of John McCallum's work in Strength & Health, like just about everybody from my generation. Loved John's use of an ongoing cast of characters to advance his ideas; pretty old device actually. Did you ever read Chaucer? I taught English and had written for newspapers in the past and then began writing for PLUSA in 1984. First article was about the "Kelso Shrug." When I moved to Sacramento in '87 I had time to sit back and reflect and also discovered at that time the wild redneck-spoof stories put out by Joe Bob Briggs. I had found a voice and a setting for my training ideas.

So the Lope Delk stories (Lope as in antelope) began appearing in PLUSA in '88 and ran two years or so. I put them and other info together as a book after I came to Japan in 1989, in fact after I wrote the Shrug System in 1991-92.

Fred II: Your first book "The Kelso Shrug System", you speak of "shrugging" exercises for the shoulder girdle. How can these movements help a lifter beyond regular bench pressing, lat pulldowns, rows, etceteras?

-Because the arms and other smaller muscles fail before the large muscles that are targeted by such exercises. My basic example of this is if you do a set of bent over rows to failure, and then from arms' length extend the set by doing a "shrugging" motion without trying to bend the elbows. Most folks can do 4-5 shrug reps before flaming out. I wrote a looong time ago that I believe deep-seated fibers that have not been exhausted by the regular exercise can be reached in this manner.

Your dad mentioned on his forum that he experimented with the bent over shrug - chancing on it it independently of my work - and wrote about it some years ago. Why more people haven't stumbled on this principle I don't know; it seems to have been a well-kept secret in the gyms.

Fred II: Now that trainers know about shrugs, they will have to figure out how to incorporate it into their training. Does your book detail that task?

-Yes, there are any number of suggestions of how to use the variations to improve lifts and stages within lifts, and to strengthen the shoulder girdle. Also quite a bit for bodybuilders. USAPL world bench team memeber Collin Rhodes and I corresponded for about a year and a half while he experimented with half a dozen shrugs to stabilize his lateral arch. His bench jumped about fifty pounds in that time, a fine gain for an already veteran lifter. I put some suggested courses, sets and rep info, etc., in the book, but they are not carved in stone as I encourage trainees to experiment and use the techniques in ways best suited for their needs.

Fred II: You have made a case for the Gerald Trap Bar. Can you briefly make some points about the advantages of this bar for training?

-Well, it or any other parallel grip bar you stand in the middle of can aid the DL and allow for heavy hip and thigh work with less strain on the lower back. However, it is best is to do both the leglifts and stiff legs with such bars for maximum progress. They are terrific for standing shrugs, and the high-pull and overhead press in tandem put mass on the delts. As I can no longer squat for several reasons, the leg lift works great for me. I'm 65, but still get to the gym regularly.

Fred II: I understand "The Kelso Shrug System" is out of print. What changes or additions can we expect from the new book?

-KELSO'S SHRUG BOOK is from a different publisher, is newly copyrighted by myself, and rewritten and expanded by 10,000 words (65%). Technically, it is not a second edition as it has no connection to the publisher of the Kelso Shrug System. I presented about 8-9 "new" shrugs, about 30 all told, an expanded intro, two new chapters including one focusing on the Bench press, updated the "trap bar" info, put in new-to-me thinking about the chest expansion controversy, listed The Shrug Laws, and use 24 previously unpublished photos and some drawings to illustrate the movements. There are also examples of famous lifters who have used shrug variations with success.

Fred II: Let me quote your first edition, "…the Kelso Shrug is not some kind of magical single exercise, but rather a principle based on the natural adduction and retraction of the scapula…" In the fitness world, the trend is to develop a product or system and make the public believe it is a MUST have. It doesn't appear you are taking that route.

-No, I'm not. I'll bet your father will back me up in this: a lot of the NEW WHIZ BANG theories and gadgets we see promoted are just revamps of old ones recycled. Dressed in new clothes. The late great Charles A Smith, who wrote hundreds of articles for Weider in the early days once said that "There is nothing new in weight training." To agree with your "MUST have" remark, a number of commercial empires in the field were built on borrowing and defalcation. Newcomers are easily misled.

In fact there are some very fine powerlifters who think extra shrug work is not needed. A few have told me my ideas are unnecessary, but no one who has tried them has told me they don't work. I do think I am the first to really get into the subject of shrugging in depth, or to try to codify the variations and their possible uses for a heck of a lot objectives.

Some of the "new" shrug variations in the Shrug Book were sent to me by guys who were experimenting on their own, and I credit them in the book for their efforts. In the end, I hope the book will become a standard addition to the training literature.

Fred II: You've been around powerlifting for quite some time. How would you compare today's lifters with those of other decades?

-This is a hard one to answer. It may be apples and oranges. But I have little doubt that Americans like Cole, Bridges, Pacifico, Don Reinholdt (sp?) would tear up the place if lifting with today's training methods and equipment. If they lifted in the organizations which do no drug-testing and are far gone into apparell technology those fellows might be truly scary. In the old days when the USPF was the IPF affiliate before the divisiveness began everybody was lifting under equal conditions. Now there are several dozen feds with different rules and the the American pool of lifters is spattered all over the map. The lifters get lost in political infighting.

Despite what some of the admitted drug users and proponents of super-duper suits and shirts on some forums claim, American powerlifting has not gone downhill because of the IPFand its affiliate insisting on basic gear and drug testing. American IPF teams are still placing second and third in team standings and bringing home some golds.

The truth is that the rest of the powerlifting world has come up rapidly in the last ten years and the sport is growing and spreading like crazy. Even the Philippines, with their tiny membership, has brought home medals recently.

America simply did not have any real competition in the first fifteen or so years of the IPF, except for a handful of individuals from various countries. But the emphasis in the USA now seems to be predominately on huge guys trying to bench 750 and squat 1000 while using any kind of "aid," chemical, textile or mechanical, to get them there, and far too little attention is paid to developing the lighter weight classes.

The dichotomy is that world powerlifting as seen in the IPF still thinks that team standings are very important and many if not most of the - what? - 17? - USA organizations emphasize individual performance or personal records. And that makes for two different games.

Fred II: Is there any other burning topic you'd like to discuss?

-What? You're giving me a license to rant? Well, I 'll try to keep it down. Here are some things that have interested me lately:

1) I recently saw some claims that Paul Anderson used AAS drugs and maybe even Tommy Kono. Steroids may have been invented before their time, but I hung out in the mid-fifties with national class lifters and bodybuilders then, as well as pro wrasslers like Ray Gunkel and Tex Mckenzie. We ate, drank and slept training and talked of nothing else except girls. I never, that's NEVER, heard any mention of sports drugs in those days, much less learned of anybody using them. Steroid use didn't become wide-spread in the USA until after 1960, well after Anderson and Kono peaked.

2) There seems to be a popular belief spreading recently that weightlifting ("Olympic") is only for the few, that the ordinary weight trainee can't cut it due to lack of special qualities of athletic ability, speed and strength. Powerlifters are said to be hopeless prospects except for an exception or two. I don't believe it. I was poor at hand-to-eye coordination sports like basketball or baseball, below average in strength when I began training, but developed into a fair journeyman weightlifter through stubborn practice. If the USA had as many kids trying out for overhead lifts as are going into powerlifting - starting fairly young - there'd be a slew of fine competitors.

3) There are too many glossy-magazines raving about becoming Mr. Wonderful or that "YOU TOO!!" can lift fabulous weights. The vast majority of people who train will never enter a contest. That's why my books are geared both to rising competitors and to ordinary trainees who do it for their own satisfaction. I admire the former and empathize with the latter.

Fred II: Where can trainers get a copy of your books?

-POWERLIFTING BASICS: TEXAS-STYLE is from IronMind Enterprises., Inc., - they have website ordering, and KELSO'S SHRUG BOOK is from www.hatsoffbooks.com. Two different publishers, which sometimes confuses purchasers. A bunch of other outlets will carry both books, like Rickey Crain, Amazon and Barnes & Noble, a lot of iron-game websites and several magazine book clubs. I'm working on libraries and bookstores. But please, people should not order from me here in Japan..

Fred II: Thanks for the interview, Paul. Best to you!

-Thanks for the opportunity. This was my first time to be interviewed about my weight training interests. I'm sure I went on too long, and I was just getting warmed up!

-PK