It may seem that to have good research, one merely needs good testing
tools. The lack of good testing tools is not the greatest weakness in exercise physiology.
As I stated in the last newsletter (Volume 1, Issue 2), exercise physiology attracts many
to its ranks who are nondiscriminators. They do not have a talent for discriminating
research. And such minds will misuse good tools and procedure and draw faulty conclusions
from such.
Arthur Jones is a man who I believe is extremely aware of much of the world about him.
This is particularly relevant to intuitions about training intensity and human behavior to
avoid meaningful intensity. Arthur has also contributed heavily to the art of mechanics in
exercise. Arthur's detail in many areas has illuminated many principles and precepts for
my work, which work would have been impossible without Arthur's revolutionary insight and
elaboration.
Even so, Arthur is not a detail person when it comes to some particulars. Indeed Arthur is
often the proverbial bull in a china closet regarding some aspects of mechanical control.
One of these shortcomings has been his lack of attention to consistency in exercise form
and training style. Contrary to the image he often portrays in his story telling, control
of the subject's form under his supervision has always been quite sloppy. It is more
controlled than almost any coach or personal trainer outside the Nautilus experience, but
I still regard it as sloppy.
This observation and appraisal on my part dates back to the 1975 West Point Project. No, I
was not there, but I have seen pictures and movies of the training that went on there.
Even by Nautilus standards that existed before the advent of Super Slow, the training was
conducted with poor attention to speed of motion and other form details. One picture that
remains fixed in my mind is a still photograph of a cadet performing Leg Extension: the
cadet's neck and head are excessively extended as he attempts completion of the movement.
As hundreds of black and white still negatives were exposed during this 8-week period of
time, I was appalled that anyone would print this one and be proud to disseminate it as
representative of proper supervision.
I have always admired Arthur for his ability to motivate big, strong athletes. He has the
ability to really frighten or shame them into doing their best. (In fact, one observer
once stated that Arthur could put an athlete's heart rate to 200 beats/minute before
starting him to exercise.) I watched him do this with Casey Viator several times and, on
occasion, the Mentzer brothers and Boyer Coe.
When Arthur first acquired the property in Ocala, Florida, Jim Flanagan became exited that
he could take visitors to Ocala to train with and talk to Arthur. I never exposed myself
by saying my reasons, but I avoided taking customers to the Ranch. It risked putting
customers in Arthur's line of fire and having them humiliated to the point that they
disliked Arthur, Nautilus, and we lost sales. In fact, I believed then that this is
exactly how Arthur wanted me to consider my job: deal with the customers myself and keep
them away from Arthur.
Arthur was good for sales under some conditions with some people. In some situations,
though, Arthur was bad — too strong — for sales. Arthur knew this himself. And
for awhile I was unable to judge when to involve Arthur and when to not. With experience,
however, I became adept at this call.
Also, I did not want customers to see Arthur train or see Arthur train somebody. Now
realize that Arthur's personal form has always been excellent as he trained himself. He
exhibits incredible control. Although he does not quite perform SuperSlow, he is almost
stoical. I believed that Arthur preferred to train privately.
However, for several reasons, I did not wish the typical customer to see Arthur train
someone else. For one reason, the observer might misinterpret high-intensity as something
harmful and be horrified by the experience. For another reason, I did not want them to see
how fast Arthur permitted subjects to move. A usual comment from individuals I mistakenly
permitted to observe was: "Arthur sure permits people to move a lot faster than what
I expected."
Approximately 1983, Arthur trained Boyer Coe and somewhat later the Mentzer brothers, Ray
and Mike. Arthur trained them in the rear studio at Lake Helen. Several days before a
Nautilus Seminar was to be held, a friend of mine visited and asked if he could observe
one of the workouts. As I was ashamed of Arthur's control of Boyer's form, I stonewalled
my friend with the response that the workouts were performed in private sessions. Of
course, this was true. Arthur often did not like visitors around when he was training
someone. However, he would permit a limited number of observers if proper permission was
asked first.
My friend weaseled around me and gained observation of the workout. Afterwards at dinner,
he expressed that he was appalled at the poor attention by Arthur to control Boyer's form.
Others who were trusted friends of Arthur stated much the same, something like:
Arthur, when away from the gym environment, has eloquent arguments for proper form and slow speed of movement, but once Arthur gets into the gym he becomes one of the boys. Seemingly, when Boyer begins to falter on an exercise, Arthur belittles his manhood and puts on another 50 pounds. And then Boyer's form is worse. He just throws it faster as Arthur cajoles ever louder.
In the latter part of the Summer in 1985, I phoned Gary Jones. Gary had
been extremely supportive of our efforts at the Osteoporosis Project in that he had
prototyped special one-of-a-kind movement arms for some of our Nautilus Leverage machines.
One of such machines was a Leverage Hip & Back for which he had made a special
movement arm handle to facilitate our helping the women subjects into the machine.
One large problem remained, however. The subjects were often so weak that the variation of
the bodytorque of their legs grossly exceeded the variation of the cam. This was so
problematic that their legs fell into the fully rotated position with a resistance that
they could not begin to lift out of the starting position.
I complained to Gary. He brushed off the problem with an explanation that it was not a
solvable problem and that we had always had to deal with it. I then argued that it was
easily solved by building a special movement arm with a variable counterweight. Gary,
usually very glib, became very quiet. He made me explain: place a steel rod 180 degrees
out of phase with the thighs. Place hash marks in one-inch increments and use them to
position a lockable weight club at precise positions to perfectly counterweigh each
subject's legs when positioned horizontally and with no weight on the resistance lever.
Once determined for a subject, it would not have to determined again for her.
Gary seemed to be speechless. He then said that such a movement arm would make the
Leverage Machines too expensive to produce. I answered that I only wanted a one-of-a-kind
for our study. I then proposed that a more elaborate device could be prototyped for
commercial machines whereby the variable counterweight could be dialed on in an accurately
quantifiable way. Gary argued that for even for the present commercial line such a device
was too expensive. He said that a future line of medical machines might justify such
expense.
As far as I knew then, I was the first to ever conceive the variable counterweight for
bodytorque cancellation. Arthur had not yet reached this sophistication with his testing
machines, although the problem had been discussed for years. Arthur spent untold millions
of dollars on research and development of his strength testing machines. He had several
teams of engineers working on these projects for at least ten years by this point. And I
had seen every prototype version by these various teams. None had ever incorporated the
variable counterbalance device I explained to Gary.
Gary never made the special movement arm for me, but later in November of that year I
spoke at a Nautilus Seminar where, as usual during Seminar trips to Lake Helen, I toured
the prototype shop to update myself on the status of projects. Then and there for the
first time I saw what I had explained to Gary over the phone. Arthur was working double
shift prototype crews to build elaborate testing machines with a variable counterweight
that could be dialed on just as weights are dialed onto a balance in a chemistry lab.
Did Arthur already know this information but he was saving it to stretch the life of a
future patent? I did not believe such an idea was patentable. After all, it was merely the
application of the lever, a simple idea that had been around for thousands of years. I
guess I was naive about this. But I was also concerned about the release I had reluctantly
signed regarding my employment at the University of Florida. Any inventions or patents I
made as the result of the Osteoporosis Study were to remain the property of the
University. And if I did indeed beat Arthur on this one then his denial of my contribution
was his way around this problem.
Coincidence? It seemed unlikely that with Arthur's penchant to build expensive, elaborate
testing equipment for the past ten years, he would have avoided the opportunity to use
this idea. Perhaps he was truly that careful that he could control himself to not expose
this idea for many years. But doesn't it seem odd that it shows up as a finished product
within 60 days of me telling his son about it?
Nevertheless, I was glad to have made a contribution. If not, I was proud that I had
solved the problem independent of Arthur. This was much like solving a math problem
without looking in the back of the book for the answer. Also, I do not deny that Arthur
was the first (between the two of us) to have known about this solution. (After all,
Arthur possesses a tremendous repertoire of mechanical approaches. I also believe that
many of his mechanical bag of tricks are contributions from many intelligent sources who
will never get credit for things they shared with Arthur.) I do not believe that I can
ever know one way or the other. And he can certainly never prove that I did not solve it
within my private milieu. I certainly do not claim his patent nor his right to say he
discovered it first. I merely claim to have also solved the bodytorque problem independent
of anyone else.
Looking back, I can retrace my steps to this discovery. Two related problems stand out.
First, I recall seeing an early model Nautilus Leg Extension machine that incorporated two
remotely mounted counterweights. One counterweight was to counterweigh the eccentricity of
the movement arm, the other — smaller — to counterweigh the eccentricity of the
cam. I noticed that, later, these counterweights were combined into one. Collectively,
they counterweighed the entire movement-arm/cam system. This then appeared to have been an
obvious, simple solution that somehow was previously made unnecessarily complex.
For instance, a pullover movement arm with or without the cam mounted to its hub is
eccentric. If you allow it to freely swing to bottom dead center and mount a counterweight
to balance this 180 degrees out of phase with bottom dead center, all eccentricity is
cancelled.
In a Leg Extension, however, one encounters obvious trouble if the cam and counterweight
is mounted between the subject's knees. If so, the subject's crotch is in harm's way. A
cantilevered system later became popular to solve these problems coaxially with the
movement arm. However, the original approach was to locate the cam and movement arm
counterweights remotely behind the seat. In so doing the collective system contained
within its closed loop of chain was organized as two separate systems: a movement arm with
its remotely located counterweight and the remotely located cam with its counterweight.
Then someone slapped themselves sane and saw the counterweighting problem as one system
that had a collective eccentricity and that required only one counterweight for the whole
business.
Second, I originally saw the bodytorque problem as three separate problems. If I was to
counterweigh the lower leg, for instance, I had to address three factors: mass of the leg,
length of the leg, mass distribution of the leg. And integrating these three problems
seemed an insurmountable problem.
Then I reflected on the mistake made with the early Leg Extension. That mistake had
required unnecessarily expensive duplication of counterweights merely because someone had
not acknowledged that torque is a product. Was I making the same mistake with the
bodytorque problem? — most certainly. Had Arthur made the same mistake with the Leg
Extension design? Was he able to apply his lesson from this mistake to the body torque
problem? If he had acknowledged this principle, why did he not use it? No testing
prototype incorporated such a variable counterweight.
I asked myself these questions for weeks before I presented the solution to Gary Jones.
Why did Gary seem so surprised? I wondered if this was really new to him. Was he
momentarily speechless because it was new information or because he was surprised that I
knew of it?
I never broached this subject with Arthur. I knew to expect a humiliating roar that he had
known about this idea in Africa or some fantastic place and time. As many of my coworkers
from my Nautilus days have agreed since, this was the usual response from Arthur whenever
he was told that Clay or Scott or George had developed a new solution to something. Arthur
likes to belittle me and others who might have a new development with the wry sarcasm that
we claimed to invent the bow and arrow, fire, the wheel, etc. but it is Arthur that I
believe invented the bow and arrow. At least he gives the most dramatic case of contrived
one-up-man-ship to deserve this sarcasm.
Knowing these sensitivities about Arthur, I did not dare let him know that I was the one
who suggested the variable counterbalance to Gary or that I had solved the problem without
regard to the possibility that Arthur may have known this information all along.
Arthur, more than anyone else, has led the march against explosive training, however he
has not gone far enough. Moreover, his rhetoric is inconsistent. In Iron Man Magazine
(1994) he repeatedly hammers against training fast — underscoring his traditional
words that "It is probably impossible to train too slow." and "If in doubt
about the speed of movement it would be better to go too slow than too fast ." Then
for no apparent reason good old Arthur turns on a dime to slam me and SuperSlow as too
slow. In so doing, he still failed to define what he means by slow or fast. Which is it,
Arthur?
In early 1986, I met with Charlie Barth and Lesley Organ, MD, to discuss the need for a
bodytorque counterbalance in the Leg Extension Medical machine (later to be the MedX).
Organ argued to delete this variable counterweight on the grounds that it was unnecessary
with smaller limbs during exercise mode and was computer cancelled when in the testing
mode. Considering the expense of these counterweights, I thought he might have a
reasonable argument. Contrary to my private thoughts, however, I argued that these
expensive machines justified every elaborate perfection as could be incorporated. And I
was pretty sure that Arthur's penchant for mechanical complexity would drive him to this
extreme.
Now why did I keep my possible agreement with Organ a secret? Why did I not voice my
belief that I had invented the device to pull some authority of sorts on its behalf? Well,
I wanted Arthur to use the counterweights in every possible design with the hope that it
might slow his exercise movements. I hoped that he would eventually come around to see
that SuperSlow is the ultimate protocol and, furthermore, that such a protocol dictates
the resistance curve. After all, resistance curves are speed dependent. Until and unless
you have defined the bounds of the speed range your efforts to decide the ideal cam
profile and thus the resistance curve will be forever frustrated. I had come to believe
that Arthur was hopelessly lost on the subject of resistance curves, the speed of movement
and the subject of friction (another story).
Approximately 1990, Howie Young, PhD, visited me. At one point, he became very irritated
with my war stories about Arthur. Howie complained that the personal antics of researchers
is not important and that only their conclusions should be discussed. Perhaps Howie was
correct to some degree, but if we choose to ignore the personal side of researchers, we
also ignore the reality that much of what is promoted as fact is often due to
overwhelmingly powerful personalities, not necessarily the quality of their research. It
is difficult to convey the tremendous effect Arthur exerts on the beliefs of his employees
and coworkers. And for this very reason I believe that stories about Arthur's antics are
important.
Also for this reason, I believed that it was important to convince Arthur of the value of
SuperSlow. If not, his coworkers and employees would continue to underemphasize the
importance of such control in equipment design. As a result, this problem goes on today at
MedX. MedX prototypists are somewhat interested in SuperSlow, but they do not yet
appreciate that it is the protocol that determines much about general design as well as
the specific resistance curve of any given exercise machine. And if Arthur suddenly began
to strongly insist upon SuperSlow, then his salesmen, truck drivers, prototypist and
researchers would be almost unable to bring themselves to consider anything else. Arthur
can have this effect on people.
During 1985 and 1986, Arthur was performing his study with twins. In so doing, he trained
sets of identical twins in partial movements of Leg Extension. Leg Extension machines were
pinned off with blocks of wood to restrict the upper or lower range of excursion. Later,
they were tested statically throughout the range to see if they elicited a general
response or one just specific to the range exercise.
The form during this experiment was extremely bad. Each time I visited the Ranch during
this study, I could hear the movement arm from across the length of the pavilion slammed
up-down, up-down to a one-second cadence. Then, at great cost, Arthur published Exercise
1986. Therein, Arthur proudly announced information that seemed to refute much of Nautilus
Philosophy based on the poorly performed twin study. I believed it would only confuse
customers, [Later, after Arthur sold Nautilus in 1986, I advised the Ward people to
incinerate several entire pallets of the publication. They followed my instructions.]
Nevertheless, I encouraged Arthur indirectly to build the heaviest movement arms possible
for his medical machines. I knew that a movement arm in a testing machine could not be
cantilevered to receive support from only one side. It required extreme rigidity, thus
support from both sides by the frame of the machine. This alone would make it very
massive, even more so once the cam and movement arm counterweight was added. In addition,
the bodytorque counterweight and the subject's body part would add additional mass.
Result: once Arthur got this mass in motion, it would be like trying to stop a train. I,
therefore believed he would be forced to argue for an extremely slow speed of movement,
therefore SuperSlow. I was wrong. Arthur still permits subjects to slam the movement arms
in his testing machines.
On July 29, 1994, Fred Hahn and David Landau attended a MedX Seminar in Gainesville,
Florida. During the seminar, Fred tried to pin down some questions regarding
standardization of the static strength test performed on the MedX Lumbar Machine. Fred
wanted to know the exact time interval to maintain between the eight positions of the
static test. His question got an unsatisfactory answer to the effect that, "not too
little, not too much." Fred pressed hard for a definite answer. After failure to
obtain one, Joe Cirulli, another MedX salesman, led Landau into an adjoining room to make
him appreciate the words displayed on a large sign. The sign read:
Thou Shalt Not Standardize
Hearing this story, I was in disbelief. To spend Arthur's millions for 20
years to develop the only valid testing tool in exercise, so that standardized testing
could be possible only to then hold up as a standard not to have a standard, is nuts. This
represents the most outrageous crass stupidity imaginable. And to dramatically present
this idiocy as though taking pride in it makes me wonder if we are not all a bunch of
stupid human donkeys (to borrow a metaphor from Mark Twain) for even being involved in the
enterprise. If Joe and whoever made that sign is not ashamed of the folly it represents,
then I feel embarrassed for them. [As noted in the SuperSlow Technical Manual,
there is another sign stating "Thou Shalt Standardize" in another area. I
guess the researchers ascribe to this one while Joe and his sales staff ascribe to the
other. This permits a convenient back door to any unanswerable questions posed to the
nontechnical sales types.]
The point of this rambling sequence of events may now be obscure. To clarify: having the
best tools in a field of study does not assume good use of the tools toward subsequently
valid research. Furthermore, how does one certify that the tools are applied to research
subjects — only those subjects possessing the correct exercise experience intended to
be studied? Have they really been supervised with controlled loading of the muscular
structures? Have they been supervised at all? I will answer this emphatically for Arthur
and everyone: If they are not performing SuperSlow Protocol or a protocol very similar in
speed of motion and against cam curves dictated by said speed of motion then the research
control is practically nonexistent. You really do not know what the subject is doing. This
is fact at least with research regarding positive or negative excursions.