In his youth, Nautilus inventor Arthur Jones performed three four-hour workouts a week, four sets of each exercise while moving at a torrid pace between. The only thing that stopped him was lack of progress. When frustrated, he'd quit, often for long periods of time. But his brain never stopped. Upon return, he'd adjust a number of factors to see if he could break through prior size and strength barriers. On one such occasion, Arthur cut his workout in half - from four sets to two, no other change. In one week he vaulted over previous records, gained ten pounds of muscle and didn't understand why. His brain never stopped. Eventually, he identified the inability of his system to recover from the amount of exercise performed (four sets) as the problem and stated, "It took me 20 years to figure out that two sets was better than four, and another 10 (years) to discover that one set was better than two." He believed the field of exercise was focused wrongly on how much exercise the body was capable of performing instead of how much it actually needs. Quality vs. quantity.

He later hooked up with the University of Florida (1990's) and caught the attention of the PhD's in the Center for Exercise Science. Arthur was so insistant on his one-set theory that the Center's Director, Dr. Michael Pollock decided to investigate the phenomenon. Pollock's team first reviewed all of the literature published from 1962 that compared one set of exercise to multiple sets. In some cases, several sets was superior in strength results; in other cases, one set of exercise was superior. In none of the studies, not one, was the difference (either way) statistically significant, which led to the conclusion that 35 years of strength research had been wasted. In addition, Jones felt, and could prove, that the tools used to measure strength during that period were "useless for their intended purpose." Arthur changed things around when he introduced tools for specific, isolated testing of the spine and knee, the latter at a cost of 22 years and $120 million. He was not easily satisfied.

Pollock's group took the next step: they performed their own research with Jone's Knee machine. They first selected a large group of untrained individuals, tested the strength of their isolated front (quadriceps) and rear (hamstrings) thighs, and assigned them to two random groups. One group performed one set of leg extensions and one set of leg curls to momentary muscle failure (they were pushed, and pushed hard), three times a week. The other group performed three sets of leg extensions and three of leg curls (every set pushed to failure, with a brief, timed rest between), three times a week. No other exercise was performed by either group. After six or eight weeks (I can't recall), both groups were retested. There was NO difference between the strength gains between the groups. Zero. The conclusion: A second and third set of exercise is useless if the first set is taken to failure.

Convincing. Perhaps the best study to date. Tight controls. Professional supervision. Tools that could actually measure exactly what they set out to measure. Tools that were nominated for a Nobel Prize in medicine. Tools that led to the pet phrase of the unsatiable Jones, "We now know..."

So, what do we see in gyms - trainees that don't know. Set after set of low-intensity exercise that leads to nowhere. If the first set is hard enough to stimulate change (and it rarely is), subsequent sets are unecessary. As Arthur put it, "If you are capable of doing a second set, you didn't do the first one right." There's only one way to the top (reaching your potential) - outright hard work. And if it is hard, it won't take much. At high levels of intensity, a little goes a long way.