Arthur Rules

Nautilus/MedX inventor, Arthur Jones, his co-pilot (an elder man near deaf, and who generally ignored Arthur) and Dr. Michael Fulton (orthopedic representative for MedX Corporation) were flying to Daytona Beach, Florida from the west coast. Arthur was convinced there was something wrong with the plane and decided to land at his private jetport in Ocala (Fl) to check things out. The jetport housed the longest private runway in the world - elevated with slopes decending steeply into native brush on both sides. It was early AM.

Once the plane landed, Arthur insisted through a flurry of profanity that both passengers remain in their seats. And when Arthur insisted, you'd better not be deaf. After the tonguelashing, Jones lowered the steps of the plane to connect with planet earth. According to Fulton, "He disappeared into the dark." The plane was parked closer to the edge of the runway than anticipated. Jones ended up somewhere deep in the brush. The passengers didn't budge. Rules were rules.

Ten minutes later, the profanity returned, this time aimed at the pair who refused help.

Rules were rules.

Balance

For the past decade, I have been involved with the training routines of the elderly, currently have seven clients that range in age from 85-95. And while it differs greatly from the training of world-class athletes, there is a degree of satisfaction that is no less meaningful. The elderly have reduced egos, few specific training goals and are more appreciative. If they can return for the next workout and maintain mobility, they are grateful - which does not diminish my efforts. As a trainer, however, I am bombarded with the challenge of "I need to improve balance" - a common request of all trainers. So, as good Samaritans, we run our elderly clients through a series of balance activities that are supposed to improve balance for daily living. I was never comfortable with the scenario.

First, I was not schooled in balance activities and felt inadequate despite devouring several books full of 'balance-improving' activities.

Second, I was not convinced that improving balance at specific tasks had any positive transfer to other activities, such as the daily-living ones we were trying to improve. So I read, and read.

Brian Johnston put it together nicely in his book Systems Analysis, in which he critiques various forms of popular exercise, including "functional" training. Johnston classifies balance as an innate ability, not subject to change. You have it or you don't. The improvement in the performance of skills specific to balance (those generally administered by trainers) were just that - skill improvement through practice. Balance improvement occurred specifically to that skill, with no transfer to other non-specific skills . "Other" skills were different - almost the same, similar to - but they had their own set of specifics, their own input of balance, an input different to that practiced in the gym.

Aside from making the elderly feel better about their balance (a psychological factor) and the effort made to improve balance by trainers, the fact remains: Balance cannot be improved as an ability. It can only be improved specific to a skill.

With apologies to the elderly, balance is innate.

Fat Guys Rule

A female client asked an interesting question the other day in the fitness center.
"Did you watch the Masters?"
"Certainly," I replied.
"Well," she stated, "The three guys in the playoff looked fat and out-of-shape. Tiger Woods, on the other hand, looked incredibly ripped and Phil Mickelson more fit than ever. Do you think Woods and Mickelson (neither of whom made the playoff) have overdone fitness to the point that it is hurting their game?"

The question caught me off guard. I grew up in an era when strength training for golf was taboo. Gary Player was the only professional, an outcast, who dared train with weights. I recognized the value of strength for athletes in my 2005 book, In Arthur's Shadow, stating, "...professional golf would embrace strength training only when a Mr. Universe won the United States Open title." I was wrong. Mr. Universe hasn't come through yet, but Woods is a reasonable substitute.

THEN: When fitness was first adopted by the professional golf community, I waited for the first sign of skill deterioration to trigger a blame on 'lifting weights.' I worked with enough pros and amateurs who hopped aboard the fitness train to realize that most were looking for an out. They never tried it long enough to produce an effect, just as the majority of today's fitness novices.

NOW: Professional golfers generally recognize the value of strength training and fitness, having been bombarded by a commercial monster over the potential benefits to improve performance. Suddenly, 'lifting weights' is OK for golf.

How much seems to be the issue. Some training is good, but too much is not. The reported workouts of Woods and others reflect the same errors made by bodybuilders when they first arrived on their scene - more is better. Really? More exercise is often the cause of lack of progress among many trainees, but hardly in the case of golfers. Most players are afraid to get strong enough to make a significant difference. They tiptoe in just to say they're part of the movement.

My answer to the female client, before I stray too far, was as follows. Golf is a high skill game in which strength plays a minor role. When a skinny runt outhits you by 60 yards, you'll soon discover that skill and timing have more to do with success than strength. Strength protects you from injury and improves power production, but the fact remains, the most efficient way to improve golf is to improve your swing through proper skill training. Nonetheless, if strength represents 5% or 10% of golf success, one must fill that percentage to reach one's potential. According to Nautilus inventor Arthur Jones, "A stronger athlete is a better athlete, short of checkers and chess." He found few professional athletes strong enough for their sport.

As I see it, too much strength and conditioning in golf is rarely, nor likely to become, the problem. It remains, however, a viable scapegoat on the horizon.

THEN: Golfers did nothing.

NOW: They're doing too much?

How can you win?

How We Learn

Somebody once asked Ben Hogan for a golf lesson. His reply, "You can't teach golf. You can only learn it." Hogan wasn't arrogant, just giving an honest opinion. To learn golf, you must practice until an efficient and effective motion is ingrained in the nervous system and the muscles they feed. Timing, control, balance, feel, rhythm - the muscles and nervous system must figure things out. It must be precise, specific, exactly the same - swing after swing - to reach the pinnacle. Things almost correct will likely retard the process, insert roadblocks, promote negative results.

Yet, this insertion is exactly the essence of sport-specific or performance training. Do something (an exercise or movement) that resembles a sport-movement pattern; then assume there is a positive transfer to the sport itself. Poor assumption. The motor learning principle of specificity is violated every time - something coaches and trainers don't get. They continue to train athletes under false assumptions and beliefs, then argue that they produce results. They have the studs in the barn to prove it. Doing something will produce a result, not the best result, a result.

Why do coaches and trainers not get it? Your guess is as good as mine, but one thing is certain. The alternative, old-school thought, is unattractive, not hip, not functional. Strengthen the muscles needed in the sport, independent of 'how' they are to be used. Then, take the new muscles out to the ball game. Let the nervous system piece the new structure and strength together in the only way possible - by practice of the sport itself, specifically, with no added weight or opinion. Practice the sport exactly as you would in competition.

Let's put the current sport-specific training approach where it belongs - the nearest trash can. The nervous system is capable of improvement with the proper signals - signals not confused by extra weights that trigger patterns similar to, but not exactly like, that encountered in the sport.

Strengthen muscles; practice the sport. Anything else is insanity, fraud or both.

Get it?

New Equipment

Something new in the field of exercise. It's been a while. Equipment. Equipment that focuses on what Arthur Jones once emphasized, the negative phase of exercise, lowering the weight. Jones built a number of prototypes in the early 1970's called "Omni" machines (shoulder and chest presses, biceps and triceps) that allowed trainees to lift weight with the stronger muscles of the legs, and lower it with the weaker muscles of the arms. Besides the "Omni" series, he developed techniques (negative accentuated and negative emphasis) that emphasized the lowering phase of exercise. Some techniques required outside assistance; others, not. Nonetheless, Arthur's approach pointed in one direction - fatigue a muscle beyond normal by adding resistance as weight is lowered.

A Swedish entrepreneur with the help of automotive designers has come up with a new way to emphasize the lowering phase of exercise. Instead of adding weight to the lowering, as did Arthur, the Swede has reduced the resistance on the lifting phase and restored it during the lowering phase. This is accomplished by tilting the weight stack (a motorized system) to approximately 45 degrees as weight is lifted and returning it to vertical as weight is lowered. The return to vertical is a half-second process. In plain English, resistance increases by 40% during the lowering phase. Since muscles are 40% stronger lowering than lifting under fresh conditions, trainees experience the same difficulty to lift - but a new ballgame on the way down. Hard on the way up, equally hard on the way down. As a result, fatigue occurs more quickly, inroad into the muscle's reserve system is greater, and repetitions and training-time are reduced. More efficient workouts, less frequent workouts as recovery time is increased. Eight exercises. Twice a week. More results. Sound familiar? A commercial? This is for real.

Yet, the concept is not new. I trained on a version of the same, a line of equipment introduced by LifeFitness, more than 20 years ago. The machine tested strength, selected an electronic weight, and challenged the lowering phase by increasing the load by 40%. But all was not roses. One problem lay in the testing. The strength test was neither accurate nor safe, typical of all dynamic test efforts. Another problem lay in the execution. The transition from what the muscle felt during the lifting phase to what it experienced while lowering was rough - a sudden jolt, dangerous. Let's hope the Swedes have that down.

Kudos to the new equipment, called X-Force, and to the emphasis on negative training.

Only one thing remains. When will someone take on another of Jones' innovative concepts - the return of Double machines - so that pre-exhaustion can again soar to the forefront of muscle training?

Of That Kind...

Years ago a friend of mine named Frank received a birthday gift from his kids - an international golf membership at Royal Dornoch in Scotland. That summer he timed his arrival for the senior club championship where he proudly found himself on the first tee, swinging his driver to warm up. The local pro wandered over, introduced himself and said in a deep brogue, "Laddie, that's the finest swing of that kind I've ever seen . . . but we don't swing that way over here. Let me show you . . ." During play, Frank hung in as long as he could for someone not knowing the course. The wheels of his three-handicap, one-of-a-kind swing came off early in the back nine.

Lately, I feel like the last of the Mohicans in a gym, the place in which I once felt most comfortable. Education from my mentor, Arthur Jones, and certification as a HIT (High Intensity Training) practitioner have all but left me standing alone, like Frank on the first tee. "He's the finest trainer of that kind I've ever seen," they say, "but we don't train that way here. Let me show you . . ."

And what I'm shown is functional training - no weights, no barbells, no machines - exercise performed essentially using body weight as resistance. Are you kidding? As Arthur once put it in his own brogue, "It is rather easy to establish bullshit; and once established, it is impossible to eradicate." Is high-intensity training not functional? Or as functional as functional training? Show me your results and I'll show you mine. Then, let the chips fall where they may.

In a West Point Academy study in the mid-1970's, Jones took half the cadets on the football team and ran them through his version of "proper strength training" - a brief circuit of high-intensity exercise that targeted the major muscle groups important to football. No barbells, no free-hand exercise, machines only, three 25-minute sessions per week. His group increased their strength in six weeks by 60%, decreased their time to run two-miles (part of everyone's training) by 88 seconds, increased their flexibility, reduced body fat significantly, and suffered no injuries in the process, despite practicing football at the same time. The results were compared to the other half of the team who continued to train using traditional football methods. It was no contest. Proper Strength Training. Brief. Hard. Not good enough? Put your best functional training research results up against that and I'll guarantee less results in every category - less strength, less cardiovascular effect, less flexibility, less fat loss and increased injury. My money's on the table.

The results of "Project Total Conditioning" could not be duplicated by any other method, a fact made clear to Dr. Kenneth Cooper whose team measured the cardiovascular results - 60 different tests. When Dr. Cooper viewed the summary on his desk, the man who firmly believed that strength training had no significant cardiovascular benefit ripped it up and threw it in the garbage. "These results are impossible!" he claimed. Jones eventually heard about the response and called the famous doctor. "Yes, Dr. Cooper, those results are impossible, the stupid way you do cardiovascular training. They are only possible by performing proper strength training."

Functional? Very. My money's on the table.

The Dumb Leading The Blind

During The Golf Channel's coverage of a PGA tournament from the Doral Country Club (Miami, Florida/March 13, 2009), announcer Nick Faldo mentioned he saw Phil Mickelson in the gym that morning doing "all sorts of bunny hops." What Faldo undoubtedly referred to is the trend among athletes in "explosive" sports (those that involve power production) to use "plyometrics." Poor Phil.

Plyometrics involves jumping - sideways, forwards, backwards, horizontally and vertically - up and down. And it involves forces, high forces. Twenty-five years ago I watched Nautilus inventor Arthur Jones demonstrate the forces involved in running and jumping activities. During a four-inch vertical leap, a 200-pound man registered, upon landing, a cool 1,000 pounds - five times his body weight. And the effort was passive - with both legs. Running activities expose each leg, hip, low back and system to 3-5 times the participant's body weight - at every step. Multiply that by millions of steps and you'll soon realize the cost of liftoff - what goes up must come down, and the landing is never pretty. Add the practice of leaping from one level to another, as in plyometrics and . . . you get the idea. Pretty dumb.

That's the "good" news.

The "bad" news: You don't need to jump to create high forces. They can be realized by performing "explosive" movements against resistance. A fast speed of movement alone does not create injury; but a sudden change of speed does - and that includes a rapid acceleration or deceleration. Sudden movement versus a stationary object (such as a weight stack) can produce forces 2-5 times that of the weight of the object. Not smart when you don't know the breaking strength of the joint or muscle system. The result, and only result of explosive activity in an exercise program was summed up by Jones decades ago. "Anybody dumb enough to do plyometrics will get exactly what they deserve - hurt."

High forces produce injury, plain and simple. If the forces during running are 3-5 times one's body weight, they may be 50 times that during jump squats. Trendy but dumb. And who's at the forefront of the outrage. Experts. Trainers. The dumb leading the blind.

Forty years ago I entertained the thought of playing on the PGA Tour. If I wait long enough for the young guns to injure themselves because of the stupidity of trendy trainers, I'll join Mark Calcaveccia, Tim Herron, John Daly and others who had the common sense to lay low, to not participate in the fitness craze.

I'm neither dumb nor blind, and I'll do nothing, thanks, if doing something involves plyometrics.