“Kip Eng needs a good donkey punch.” –Robb Phillippus
Dave Tate’s masterful article “Deconstructing the Deadlift” was hammered by a slew of negative comments, the most notable of which came from a poster by the name of “Kip Eng.” Kip espoused a series of beliefs that ran counter to virtually everything embraced by the powerlifting community. Not surprisingly, he raised the hackles of regular readers.
I had never heard of Kip before reading his comments, and considering how he was savaged, I figured he would never interact with elitefts™ again. So to say I was surprised when he e-mailed me with an invite to his facility…well, that would be an understatement. It was a simple missive:
“No one can be told what Jaguar Jump is. You have to see it for yourself.”
Here is what I learned.
August 5th, 2014
I timed my interview to coincide with a trip to see my wife’s extended family in Ohio. Elite Functional Fitness Systems can be found in Anmoore, a small community just off I-70 south of neighboring Bridgeport, West Virginia, inside what used to be a small auto garage. It’s easy to spot: there’s a billboard of a snarling jaguar head fixed to the roof. The jaguar looks strikingly similar to the logo of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers.
A man waits for me at the front door. Even though he wears a sweat jacket and orange and black Zubas, I can tell he’s slender. I can’t discern his face, however, as he has sunglasses on and a bandana around his face.
“Welcome to my jungle,” the man says.
This is Kip Eng.
“As for Kip Eng and the rest of you cocksuckers from Cultfit, neither you nor that punk Glassman could hold a candlelight to Dave, Louie or any other serious powerlifter.” —John
“I hide my face to prevent unwanted attention,” he explains as he leads me into the building. The garage’s front office has been scooped out and merged with the auto bay to create an open gym space. The first thing I notice is an absence: there is almost no traditional strength training equipment. No weight plates, no squat racks, no benches, no bells of any sort—whether kettle, dumb, or bar. Instead I see parts of a playground, wheelbarrows, sets of stairs and ladders propped against the wall, half a skateboarding tube, a section of picket fence, and a trampoline. Grocery bags, fountain jugs, suit cases, trash cans, backpacks and bowling balls litter the ground. A sign hangs over all this. It reads:
JAGUAR JUMP JUDGMENTS
- Be No Stranger to Danger!!!
- Function is Fundamental!!!
- Become the Beast!!!
- Rhabdo or No-Go!!!
What seems to be a collection of random yard garbage actually embodies the first tenet of Jaguar Jump training: function is fundamental.
“The great folly of modern fitness is its reliance on dysfunctional implements. No one ever got fitter humping a barbell around. I always disliked traditional weights, but used them out of necessity when I started Jaguar Jump. I finally phased them out a few months ago. See those footstools over there? Those are our plyo boxes. For weights we have suitcases filled with sand, shovels with cement dried to the blades, bowling balls, those grocery bags filled with water jugs. I used to have a tire to flip, but I replaced that with a heavy mattress—the instability of the flexing foam gives you a better workout than a tire ever will.”
Jaguar Jump began as an idea. Seven months ago, Kip was a bored communications major, staring out the window of his Seattle apartment.
“It was raining,” he says. “I saw an old lady walking on the street slip and fall. She must’ve broken her hip because she rolled around forever just moaning and splashing until someone called an ambulance. I had an epiphany: people get hurt in these situations because they never practice for them. That became the core of my training philosophy.”
Some of the tools of chaos are visible even to a novice such as myself; some parts of the gym are sprinkled with tennis balls and Legos, and another corner has smooth linoleum flooring and a nearby garden hose. Some of the stair steps have strategically located toy cars, and a few ladder rungs look suspiciously slick.
“All of our exercises are multi-planar and multi-forcile. An unstable exercise is the best kind, especially if you’re fighting gravity and another force like a band or being pulled/pushed by a training partner. A pogo stick is actually an amazing tool for amplifying this methodology.”
He congratulates a student on his skipping form before continuing.
“But it’s more than just the impact of forces on the body. I’ll fire up random strobe lights or blast air horns. If you’re an advanced student, I might walk by and punch you in the dick. There’s an animal shelter next door and we used to have kittens and puppies roaming around, but then the shelter didn’t want to work with us anymore.”
He sees the shock on my face.
“All of you caveman types think I’m crazy. But I’m not. Jaguar Jump is actually very safe: the worse that’ll happen is a soft-tissue injury that’ll heal. Compare that to the barbell squat or the deadlift, where you can ruin your discs. Discs don’t heal, bro. That’s why you see all these fat powerlifters with their suits and their wraps and stuff. Their bodies are so broken, they can’t stay in shape, much less lift without so much supportive gear and steroids. They don’t tell you this, but a bench shirt literally doubles what you can lift.”
“I realized that all the programs out there were failing because they weren’t functional enough and because they were all broken up programs cobbled together by fat powerlifters and gross-looking bodybuilders. And is there anything dumber than powerlifter? I’ve seen more power in a light bulb—if they were any slower, you’d have to watch their lifts with a time-lapse camera and time them with a calendar. That’s how I came up with the Jaguar Jump Judgments, by looking at how people were training stupidly and then fixing the problems.”
“Wow, Kip Eng. You have a lot to learn, buddy. No one who knows the first thing about training is going to take advice from a guy who created a special boot camp. Period.” —Mike
When his first class of the day begins, I realize that Jaguar Jump is about more than super-functionality. After thirty minutes of warmups and then thirty minutes of hopping while snatching grocery bags, the group transitions to what Kip calls Beast Mode.
Put simply, his charges “become” animals. They crawl and gallop and skip and snort, flap their arms and bray and tumble. One woman squats in the corner of the gym to urinate, then gets on all fours and pretends to kick dirt onto the wet spot.
“Kangaroo!” he yells, and suddenly they all tuck their arms to their torsos and begin hopping.
Kip smiles. “I feel like Dr. Moreau, sometimes. Beast Mode is essential for changing the dulled mindset that comes with Western culture.”
I’m surprised to learn that Beast Mode wasn’t inspired by a visit to a zoo or a nature hike.
“I’ve had lots of revelations with Jaguar Jump. One was that I needed a strong heart for this program. All the great training programs out there have a really strong theme, and I realized my program would only go as far as its theme. Think about it: Samurai Training, the Super Hero Workout, Matt Kroc’s crocodiles, Warrior Training, T. Rex Tex and his Tyrannosaur training. CrossFit has crosses. I spent a lot of my time figuring out the best sort of spirit guide. Then one day I was watching Apocalypto, which is like my favorite movie—it’s completely badass—and there’s the scene where a jaguar rips a guy’s face off and I realize that’s my guide. That’s how Jaguar Jump was born. Jaguars are just the ultimate badasses.”
“Pyramid!” he shouts suddenly. At this command his trainees take the suitcases, mini-fridges, steamer-chests, and other cube-like objects and carry them to the center of the room. They begin stacking the items into a ziggurat. “First to the top is the conqueror!”
“My understanding of jaguars naturally blended into incorporating Aztec culture in my methods. The Pyramid Drill is inspired by the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan.”
Once assembled into something rising a good fifteen feet from the ground, the trainees begin clambering its sides, and as they near the top they become a jostling scrum of elbows and knees. Two trainees fall, bringing with them an end table that knocks a third trainee from the joust-cum-climb. One is unfortunately enough to not only hit bottom, but to have the table land on his hand. He shrieks and starts to sob.
“The Aztec temples were places of sacrifice,” Kip explains. “We sacrifice the weak here. It’s beautiful, in a Darwinian way.” He turns to the sobbing man and shouts, “Pain does not exist in this dojo!”
Eventually so much of the pyramid has collapsed that simply lying on its remnants qualifies as reaching the top. A loser lies in the fetal position. Someone vomits out a sea-foam puddle of half-chewed broccoli florets and pear chunks. Another person has to be carried from the room; from where I stand, her ankle appears to have rotated 90 degrees the wrong way.
“Burpees and firewood carries!” Kip orders, and the ones who can stand begin the drill. “My best trainees are here seven-days-a-week, twice-a-day sometimes. They’re the ones who’ll graduate from Cubs to Hunters.”
He refers to his ranking system. Kip himself is a Jaguar God, though he more commonly goes by Grand Master for marketing purposes. The nomenclature and classification extends beyond certifications, however.
Kip has established a categorical system for each person’s essence, one inspired by the physical types found in Chinese folk medicine. Rather than the elements of earth, wood, fire, etc., Kip applies biology: predator, prey, and carcass.
“My goal is to move every person who enters this facility to the predator category. No one enters a predator—they’re either prey or carcass. You can help the prey, but the carcasses are too far gone. They’ve succumbed to hyper-consumerism and corporate greed.”
“Kip or whatever your name is — I’ll choose Troll instead — Dave’s left nut could probably still 1RM more than your best 1RM, doubled. Come back and tell me something once you total half of his best.” —D
Back towards the garage’s old office space, I notice a series of Mason jars on a shelf, each filled with an amber solution. “That’s the Rhabdo Row,” Kip explains. “If you train enough to have rhabdo piss, you can put it in a bottle and have it displayed here.”
I look closer and notice that each jar has a picture of specimen’s owner. The most striking is of a shirtless man collapsed face-first into a urinal. When I ask him if this is dangerous, Kip responds, “It’s just used-up muscle. Muscle grows back.”
When I press about kidney damage, he looks at me incredulously.
“Kidneys aren’t muscles.”
It’s another core tenet of Jaguar Jump: the body must be compelled to adapt. If training isn’t enough, he has a kendo sword that he’ll strike his charges with. The sword has PAIN DON’T HURT engraved into the blade on one side, BAD MOTHERFUCKER on the other.
“It’s a great tool. You get all the soft tissue damage of a crush injury—which is great for inducing rhabdo—but without the bone trauma.”
Kip sees that training has gone soft. Belts, wraps, and suits have robbed powerlifting of whatever limited benefits it may have had. Olympic lifting has become a sport of technique minutia. Bodybuilding has lost itself as a way of health.
“Training splits?” he asks. “How can that possibly be functional? Total-body or no-body—that’s the only way that makes sense.”
When I ask him to respond to his criticisms on the elitefts™ article, he smirks.
“I’ve never seen such a display of ignorance in my life. It’s a perfect example of how a little knowledge can be dangerous. Just the other day I saw where they were extolling these guys in deadlift suits herky-jerking up these ‘huge’ weights when you know not a single one of them can touch their toes, or get off the toilet without rocking for a few minutes. Hell, I can lift up a house if you give me a car jack. Does that mean I have an elite total?”
He bends over at the waist.
“See? The spine was never meant to work in a parallel-to-the-ground position. We aren’t quadrupeds. Deadlifting to get stronger is like cleaning your ear canal with a handgun. And those people who think it’s functional? They’re fucking retarded. A deadlift is nothing like anything you’ll do in the real world. There’s no chalk when you’re chopping wood, no barbells when you’re carrying bags of cement, no belts when you’re rolling up a carpet. The only thing deadlifting makes you good at is deadlifting. And that’s just until it turns your spine into rice paper.”
He shakes his head. The sadness in the slow movement is palpable.
“The guys at elitefts™ are the worst. The worst. After Burr sent me the deadlift article, I looked around the site a little. One of the lifters was choked out by a 95 pound girl who dabbled in MMA. They have guys so fat and inflexible they can barely wipe their own asses. Guys who are proud of eating McDonalds every day. They brag about getting stronger by adding more supportive equipment, and they brag about the surgeries they’ve so stupidly endured. No one will ever leave my gym like that. They only leave healthier and more functional.”
“Kip, You are a moron. That is all.” –Mike Rotch
It’s apparent that at least one of the building’s garage bays hasn’t been incorporated into the gym room. I mention this, which prompts Kip to walk me a section of wall with a lone door.
“The real secret is on the other side,” he says before pushing open the door.
I’m dazzled by a burst of blue. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. What I’m seeing is a room full of Bosu Balance Trainers. They don’t just fill the space, but cover it so that every square inch of space—floor, wall, and ceiling—is home to half-spheres of inflated plastic.
“We call this the Blue Room.”
I follow him inside. I stumble and sway on the balls, but Kip balances perfectly and calmly. He looks as stable as a stork stalking through a marsh.
“People talk about unstable training, but it’s really not unstable. If you can do more than a few repetitions, it’s pretty obvious you’re actually doing stable training. That’s why I laugh at people doing lunges and stuff on level ground and calling it unstable.”
An overweight client is in the room with us. He gasps, wobbles, and collapses into the center of the room.
“He’s being trying to get out of here for a few hours now. Too tired to see the outline of the door, I guess.” Kip points to the door we came through. “It’s over there, Tom.” Then he approaches Tom, who is lying on his back. “And your jaguar is here,” he says while touching Tom’s forehead, “and here,” when touching Tom’s breast.
He leaves Tom alone to run me through a circuit, where I can do little more than stand and fall repeatedly.
“It’s okay,” he tells me as I continually fail. “Sometimes we call this the Blur Room because it kicks your butt so bad.”
“I sincerely pity the fool who has you as their coach…” –Randy
Kip proudly says he’s never had any formal education in training theory or practice. Beyond books, and reading his favorite websites and forums, he eschews the establishment, viewing it as horribly misguided.
“I’ve learned from all the books. Bruce Lee’s library had over 2,000 books! And I mean I really learned from them. Like the Russian books. You see guys talk about Russian training all of the time, but they don’t really get it. Sometimes it really shows that we only use ten percent of our brains.”
To my surprise, he steers the conversation away from the scientists and back to the famous movie martial artist.
“Bruce Lee has been a huge influence on my theorizing, but to get the most out of him, you really have to dig deep into the layers of what he was saying. Like when said to “be like water.” Lots of people think means to just be adaptable, but underneath that he’s recognizing that we’re all 90% water! That’s why we focus on hydration so much and on carrying water implements.”
When I note the list of credentials following his name on his infamous elitefts™ posts Kip sighs.
“I’ve never finished a course, certification, or workshop,” he says. “I get in and finish a few hours or a day and I realize they’re completely worthless. I could’ve finished them, though, so it’s okay to include them on my business cards. The Jaguar Jump Jaguar God/Grand Master is complete, though: I’m the first and only one ever. That’ll change in the coming years, but right now I’m basically the chosen one.”
“Kip, you’re either really funny or really fucking stupid.” —Hanson
We hold the rest of the interview in his office. I take a chair, while he eases into a cross-legged position on a yoga mat.
The space is small and Spartan. It reflects the stripped down, practical essence of Kip Eng.
“I moved across the country to get here.”
I ask him why he’s chosen West Virginia, a state across the country from his childhood home.
“I needed to get as far away from the pervasiveness of bad science and just the general malaise of Western culture. I’d heard of West Virginia being this sort of backwater and thought it might work. I knew it was the right place as soon as I crossed the border: right as I left Maryland, the road just started to crumble and the weeds had overgrown the highway. I saw a drunk guy with this huge-ass Duck Dynasty beard and camo overalls staggering down the road just a mile in. The people here live off of Mountain Dew and Cheetos. They burn living room furniture for fun. I’m pretty sure they’re all inbred.”
Kip’s personal life reflects the simplicity of his workspace. His home is a small apartment built into the back of a gas station. He’s cut off contact with his family and friends. For sustenance he consumes greens and berries from nearby lots in the summer and organic produce in the winter.
“The nearest organic grocer is about twenty miles away, so I ride my bike there once a week. I only eat vegetables. Your body isn’t meant to handle nuts and grains, and protein is an acidic carcinogen. So basically the classic bodybuilding diet of chicken and rice is just a death sentence. You can’t train if you don’t have healthy organs. Organs at the key to all fitness, and you can’t abuse them with protein and seed coatings. You’ve got to eliminate toxins from your diet like that. One of the first things I do for new clients is take them through a series of enemas made from juiced vegetables.”
Jaguar Jump hasn’t begun to turn a profit, so what money he spends comes from a trust fund set up by his grandparents. Running the business has become a night-and-day obsession for Kip, one that he admits wrecked his social life.
“Things are better now, though,” he says. “I am in a long-distance relationship with my girlfriend, Adriana. She sent me a Facebook e-mail right after I deployed Jaguar Jump for the first time, and we’ve been together since then. I can’t wait to meet her in person.”
“My sensei from the Y used to tell us that strength comes from within. So I went within. Deep within. I went to a self-realization camp when I was a teen. I took yoga and meditation classes as an adult. My last paper in college was about how Buddhism is portrayed in the media.”
Kip relates a tough youth. He never felt accepted at the private academy he was enrolled in, and his burgeoning interest in martial arts and Eastern spirituality only alienated him more.
“I had acne. I was overweight. I was the last guy in my grade to get pubes. You name it, it went wrong. Nothing turned right for me until I got the idea for Jaguar Jump.”
There’s no doubt that Jaguar Jump will be Kip Eng’s legacy. His last words to me before I leave cement this:
“The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.”
“Someone directed me to your comment as they copied and pasted this crap on Facebook. I just can’t sit here and be quiet about such drivel.
So in other words, you don’t know what max strength means. You also think we actually do one-arm KB swings, broad jumps with med ball tosses, or cleans with a full stomp in nature? When?! Where?! NOTHING IN THE WEIGHTROOM IS AN EXACT MOVEMENT PERFORMED IN NATURE. NOTHING. Even a squat, as almost no one walks outside and sticks a bar on their back and goes ass to grass.
As for what transfers to activities of daily living: You’ve never lifted a dead weight off a floor before “bro”? Really?! I have. I am pretty sure most other people have as well. There is a difference between training force and training the rate of force production. You seem to think training strength before power is useless. Many would disagree with you. Strength is typically the foundation for everything else. There are times to train force and a time to train the speed at which you produce that force. That’s been the system for years, and it’s done just fine for many. I feel for you if you think the deadlift is a horrible lift that ruins your back. Can you provide statistics, or was this thesis just a trolltastic rant? Can you explain to me why training max strength is useless? I’d love to find a lift that trains that many muscles with one lift, in addition to grip strength. I’d love to find a lift that does a better job at producing raw force through the floor — a lift many of us perform raw. I’d say that movement is pretty damn quality if you do it correctly.
P.S. Can we see videos of you showing us all your power, endurance, and suppleness? Since you base your critique of this man on his athletic prowess. And before you criticize me, deadlifted 352, at 135 pounds, and zero back problems as a woman. Zero. In fact, it has helped to protect me against injury more than it has pushed me toward injury. Still beat guys in sled drags, still produce plenty of wattage on bike sprints, still do everything without a problem. It’s called appropriate progression, good form, and knowing your limits. It many not be for everyone, but it has a place for many of us. And please God, do NOT tell me you are a CF coach trying to tell us all about what causes injuries! LAWL.” –Shauna Stavely
I bump into a client just before leaving Elite Functional Fitness Systems.
“He’s the real deal,” Tom says, who found his way out of the Blue Room shortly after we left. “I’ve never been so tired. I’ve gotten rhabdo all three of my first training sessions before I adapted. I had to be hospitalized the first two times. It’s so intense! And he’s more than trainer. He’s a mentor, a life coach. I quit my job last week to learn from him full-time. It was the easiest decision I've ever made.”
The jury is still out on whether this paradigm will reap the results claimed by its enigmatic founder. I’ll admit I have my doubts. But if public opinion counts for anything, his growing fanbase and clientele are indicative of the opposite conclusion. Perhaps there are more Toms out there, waiting to collapse in the Blue Room. Time will tell. As to you readers, I’ll keep my opinion to myself, and let Kip’s words speak on their own.
“I just want more from Kip Eng.” —Jeremy Hyde
