Thoughts on the Nautilus Revolution
30 June 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I saw an old Nautilus machine forlornly sitting unused in the corner of a gym yesterday. It bought on a flood of memories about the philosophic drive-bys those Nautilus guys used to unleash on us old school conventional trainers. It made me think about how in the end fitness is a solitary path and movements and schools in fitness are often corrupted by product and money and the message will be stretched and crafted to generate sales no matter what.
You people missed the fireworks. Back in the late seventies and for the following decade old school devotees were harangued continually by Nautilus proponents. The Arthur Jones organization propagated the idea that the Emperor was wearing clothes. We thought the Emperor had no clothes. History bore us out as Nautilus is now defunct. Art Jones was an animal trainer who had a wild kingdom type TV show. He was a wicked self-promoter and a self-proclaimed tough guy who often threatened to shoot people. He was a ruthless salesman who had an idea about building muscle and built a fleet of exercise machines that converted his idea into reality. His idea was that weight trainers trained too much. If a set of reps in a given exercise was the right type, an extended set during which the lifter/athlete performed as many repetitions as humanly possible and when they could do no more a capable training partner would step in and administer several forced repetitions. The lifter would be assisted by a training partner in completing that which he was not capable of alone. To finish the extended set the athlete would have the training partner(s) lift the poundage to the start position and the lifter would perform negative reps: lowering the poundage having totally exhausted all push or pulling power. Go to positive failure followed by forced reps and finished with negative reps would create the ultimate muscular inroad in Jones jargon.
Wow! Push or pull until you cannot do another repetition, then have someone administer a series of muscle-searing forced reps and end the set by lowering a weight you can no longer lower slowly, precisely and safely. Jones contention was that after completing a single set using this procedure, you were done for that muscle. I would agree but with many provisos that were deemed heretical. Entire Nautilus workouts were done in 30-minutes and further, a person need only train 3-4 times a week for 30-40 minutes per session. Any more than that and youll be over-trained and when metabolic status crossed the redline into over-tonus no progress was possible. Period. Anyone who disagreed with Jones was branded, stupid and addressed as a plantation owner might a runaway servant upon recapture.
The Great Man informed us of his ideas in monthly 5,000 word advertisements in the old Iron Man magazine. These ads were combination diatribe and hard-shell preacher sermonettes. He was rough on his critics and used contorted science to build an army of followers and a financial empire that netted him hundreds of millions of dollars. He took his one-set-to-failure and beyond idea and built a fleet of exercise devices to be used in the execution of his proscribed exercises. These machines were gargantuan and very, very expensive for the day$5,000 back in the day. Once the idea was in place and the custom equipment constructed, Nautilus Studios sprang up by themselves or integrated into the larger fabric of more upscale fitness facilities.
Nautilus became synonymous with affluent prosperity and had the same effect on clientele as say parking a brand new Rolls Royce Silver Shadow on the gym floor. The ultimate was to have a double row of these War of the Worlds mechanical monstrosities sat on a spotless gym floor. Instructors would instruct members to begin on machine #1 and perform one set of 10 reps. They then move on to machine #2 then 3 and 4 etc., until a complete circuit was done. That was all you needed to grow as much muscle as you needed. Any more training than this and youd be over-trained Nautilus instructors told wide-eyed clientele. Every facility that expected to cater to professional people had to have Nautilus in order to compete for this lucrative identifiable fitness segment. The first question out of any college-educated individual inquiring about membership was, Do you have Nautilus? Hardcore Nautilus-only facilities began springing up in shopping malls nationwide. Once the machines were delivered and in place, once the clients were dazzled by the magnificence of dozens of the gleaming monsters, compromise took over.
Jones philosophy was riddled with irreconcilable flaws, foremost was the question of warming up. Once a trainee is past the raw beginner stage and capable of handling significant poundage, it becomes physically foolhardy to perform the one set-to-failure (and beyond) without first performing a few sets to raise core muscle temperature. Tendons and ligaments need to be stretched and prepared before subjecting them to a test that is literally past capacity. If a man is capable of handling 300-pounds in the chest press were to walk in off the street, load the machine and begin a maximum set that ends in forced reps and negatives, he is risking a trip to the emergency room. Tendons and ligaments can snap like sheared steel cable when cold and stressed past capacity. Muscles can rip and tear from insertions points when taken from ice-cold to past-failure in less then two minutes. So why not advise trainees to take a warm-up set or two? It added to the advertised time, slowed the flow and ran counter to the all you need is one-set philosophic commandment.
Health clubs and fitness establishments conveniently dropped the forced repetition and negative portion of the Jones equation. In order to administer forced reps and negatives would require a paid attendant stand at each station and does nothing except help client perform forced reps and negatives. That wasnt going to happen so now members were doing a single sub-maximal set of 10-repetitons before moving on to the next station. And dont forget to wipe the seat down with a towel before moving on which was a funny as hell because doing one sub-maximal set of 10-reps never made any client sweat.
This went on for years and years but eventually users discovered that nothing much happened and the whole Nautilus concept ended up on the trash heap of fitness history. Back in the day the nautilus one-set proponents were aggressive and always slicing up anyone who dared disagree with the Jones tenants, the commandments. Jones was a compelling writer who loved to deliver philosophic body shots to non-believers and rally the troops.
I once was drawn into a panel discussion that included a US Olympic Coach and total Jones proponent. He wanted to debate me and his basic premise was inside ten years barbells and dumbbells would be looked upon as oddities of a by-gone era, akin to buggy whips or set of Indian Clubs. He was haughty, arrogant and addressed me with a tone used by an Oxford Don to redress a freshman caught cheating. He plucked his pseudo science out of mid-air and spoke with the easy assurance of the unknowingly ignoranthalf-truths, exaggerations and outrageous assertions that would make a communist political commissar blush. He spoke like a Leon Trotsky discussing the inevitable decline of capitalism and like communism; it was the Nautilus wall that eventually collapsed into a heap of rubble. Why? In the end no one got any real results. The nautilus preachers all melted away and occasionally like yesterday I will see one of these ancient machines tucked away in a corner of a gym, like some cranky alcoholic great uncle on his last legs who lives in the attic.
Krishnamurti asserted that all organizations are inherently corrupt and in fitness world we need be wary of products that purport to speed the process. More often than not in fitness philosophies are reverse-engineered to justify the existence of a product. As a purposeful primitive I believe a person can achieve 90% of their god-given genetic physical potential with barbells and dumbbells, food purchased from the grocery store and a little cardio thrown in. Dont eat too much, dont eat too little. Lift weights and be sure and perform aerobic-related activity. You dont need an elaborate exotic system, fancy equipment - or any equipment at all past a few weights and a bench. No short-cut supplements or expensive spa memberships needed either.
What you do need is time, a sound training and eating plan and some initial discipline and willpower to push the process forward until results set in. When real results start appearing enthusiasm, a self-regenerating substance, takes over from willpower (a finite substance) and the process of transformation begins a self-sustaining forward momentum. It can happen for you. Clean up your thinking. The processes and procedures are infinitely less complex than you might imagine but the training and eating discipline much more difficult than you might anticipate. Use this forum to clear up the fuzzy thinking. Commit to the process. Set a plan to paper and quit wasting time searching for the next short cut product or procedure. Lets hit the ground running!
Tags:Popularity: 2% [?]
Related Posts:
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
