Smart Training
An interview with Dr. Kinakin, Part I
By Chris Shugart The
old adage goes something like this: Two guys try to chop down a tree.
One is using an axe, and the other is using a sledgehammer. Both are
working hard, but only one is working smart. Training can be the same way: smart training gets you results, and dumb training
usually leads to an injury. If you lift weights long enough, chances
are that you're going to suffer a few injuries. There's perhaps no
greater frustration than to have the desire and the fortitude to train
but not be able to because you're injured.To make matters worse,
when you finally see a doctor, he smiles and tells you to just take
some aspirin and stop lifting weights. Stop lifting? Could Mozart have
just stopped composing? Could Da Vinci have just stopped being creative? Would Sosa just stop hitting homers? Would Jenna Jameson just stop...well,
you get the idea. So you try to "work around" the injury. Soon, you
can't even open the door to the gym without pain, and again you have
two choices: you could quit and spend the extra free time building your
own Topanga shrine on the Internet, or you could seek out a
real doctor, one who understands the needs of athletes. If you're
lucky, you'll find someone like Dr. Ken Kinakin. Dr. Kinakin falls into the same esteemed category as Dr. Mike Leahy. He's one of us. Dr.
Kinakin has been involved with bodybuilding and powerlifting for over
20 years. He's a chiropractor and a certified strength and conditioning
specialist. Not only has he created the revolutionary Society of
Weight-Training Injury Specialists (SWIS), but he wrote the book —
literally — on weight-training injuries. "The Encyclopedia of
Weight-Training Injuries" is revolutionary in itself — a "virtual book"
that's constantly updated as new information becomes available (call
877-220-7947 for more info).Recently, Dr. Kinakin put together
an International Weight-Training Injury symposium that included
presentations by Dr. DiPasquale and Dr. Leahy (don't freak out just yet
because you missed it — there's still a way you can see it in its
entirety...stay tuned). In other words, Dr. Kinakin is the Da Vinci of
weight-training injuries. By the time we finished our interview, I
decided that he was also da man on the subjects of drugs, diet, supplements, and even ethics in sports.
T: Let's get started with a little background information. Tell us a little about yourself. KK:
I'm originally from Kelowna, British Colombia, Canada. I came out to
Toronto in 1987 to attend CMCC, which stands for Canadian Memorial
Chiropractic College, and I graduated in 1991. Then I went into
associateship with a mentor of mine, Mark Percival, who's also a
chiropractor and a naturopath. At the same time, I got into a
partnership with a gym and opened a clinic inside of it — I did that
for a couple of years. I opened up my own practice in 1995 in
Mississauga and have been there ever since. I've been teaching weight
training for a number of different organizations across Canada and into
the United States. Also, I just recently created a new society for
weight-training injury specialists.T: You competed heavily in powerlifting before you became a chiropractor. What lead you down that path?KK:
Well, I'm a welder by trade. I used to build and develop machines and
even bridges. I got tired of being on fire all the time, so I got into
chiropractic.T: Sounds like a good reason to switch professions!KK:
I got into chiropractic because I was getting ready to compete in the
Canadian Powerlifting Championships. I had spent six months training
for it, and two weeks before the contest, my right patella just ripped
like a bed sheet. I went to a medical doctor, and his advice to me was,
"Don't squat, do leg extensions." I said, "Yeah, like they're going to
drag a leg extension machine out onto the platform!"I finally
went to see a chiropractor — which I didn't think was necessary because
it was my knee, not my back. But I went anyway and underwent a lot of
muscle testing and found out that my entire right leg was weak. I
thought, "How can it be weak? I can squat 525 in the 165-pound weight
class!" The doctor said that it was because of my back. He fixed it,
and I was back to 100% in two weeks. I thought, "Man, this is cool —
and the guy doesn't really even understand lifting!" So to heck with
it, I went to chiropractic college.T: Were you also involved in bodybuilding?KK:
I started bodybuilding competitively when I was 16 and did that for
about three years. The drug situation was a little out of hand, so I
left bodybuilding and went into powerlifting. But I found that
powerlifting was actually worse than bodybuilding!T: Do you mean as far as drugs?KK:
Yeah, but it's cleaned up unbelievably now. In fact, Canada threw out
all of the powerlifting records in 1987 — actually retired them.T:
You Canadians are strict! We live on some of the stuff that's not
allowed over there, like ephedrine and its derivatives, and even a lot
of over-the-counter pain medications. KK: None of those things
— andro, melatonin — are legal. We do have more stringent testing. The
whole Ben Johnson thing just kind of made it explode, and it's been
pretty sensitive ever since.T: Rumor has it that Johnson was actually using the least out of any of those guys in the race. KK: That's probably true.T:
Speaking of ethics in sports, Brain Batcheldor once wrote about Olympic
swimmers shooting helium up their asses so they'd be more buoyant in
the water. What's the deal here? I mean, the Olympics aren't even going
to be fun to watch!KK: Well, it's like with the natural
bodybuilding scene. A lot of the guys going in are on drugs. I know a
number of guys who've won the different championships as "natural and
drug-free," and they simply aren't!T: Are they just beating the tests?KK:
Yes, I saw that when I went down to the states and competed in the
American Drug-Free Powerlifting Association — they polygraph and urine
test. We dealt with a group of athletes who were about 90% clean, and
the other 10% were on drugs. A lot of these guys just weren't any good
anyway or didn't know what they were doing.T: I've judged and
coached powerlifting a little on the amateur level, and I've seen these
guys do some crazy and often scary stuff just to win a lousy trophy.
What's it like when there's money and endorsements involved?KK:
Huge. It gets down to the morality of it. I don't promote or condone
any of the behavior. If I drink a glass of wine or beer, how could I
judge someone who's going to be on drugs? But if they're going to go
into a competition that's supposed to be drug-free, then I have a
problem with it. You know, play by the rules...but the rules keep
changing. It's like the Mr. Olympia where they don't drug test — they
did it once, and it was such a poor showing that they never did it
again.T: Now, what do you think of safe, sane, and relatively
mild steroid use? Like say that a guy in his forties wants to get back
what he had in his late teens. What do you think of that whole idea? It
seems to be getting more and more popular.KK: My attitude is that anabolic steroids are probably the most addictive drugs on the planet.T: Psychologically, you mean?KK:
It has to do more with identity. If you go out and have a beer or smoke
pot or do cocaine, then those are basically escapism drugs. You do it
to change your state, to feel better. But with anabolic steroids, you
take a kid who's 150 pounds benching 180, get him on drugs, and he
balloons up to 180 or 190 as far as bodyweight. And his bench shoots up
to 300 or 350 in six to eight months. All of a sudden, his friends are
putting him up on a pedestal. The girls are attracted to him, and his
whole identity becomes wrapped around looking that good. So, as soon as
he tries to go off, he drops down to 160, his bench goes down, and he
doesn't get the same respect. His friends actually make fun of him. So
he goes back on to try and regain his identity.That's why a lot
of guys can't go off. Their entire identity is built on how much space
they take up in a room. The self-esteem just isn't there. That's the
real challenge in getting someone off. I've been trying to find
alternatives to drugs but, unfortunately, nothing works as good. I'm
not going to sit here and lie about all the scary stories, because they
really don't exist. What I teach in schools is that there's use and there's abuse. "Use"
is about equivalent to the birth control pill, so the side effects just
aren't that severe. But unfortunately, we get into the mentality that
if two is good, then four is better, and eight is spectacular. So the
abusiveness will always be there because we want it more, now, and faster.T: What do you think of some of the dietary approaches to doing that — like, say, the Anabolic diet?KK: