Show notes
In the last episode we discussed understanding failure. Reaching muscle failure in your workout to be more precise and by hitting muscle failure safely, you get a weeks' worth of exercise in just one 20-minute session. In this episode Adam Zickerman provides a very descriptive and detailed definition of a high-intensity workout from Ken Hutchins, one of the pioneers of this slow motion, high-intensity strength training system. __________ If you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10. Send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. Join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question. The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. To purchase Adam's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution click this link to visit Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Once-Week-Revolution-Harperresource/dp/006000889X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485469022&sr=1-1&keywords=the+power+of+10+book Ilf you would like to produce a podcast of your own just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.com The transcription to this episode is below: 05 Who is Ken Hutchins - Transcript Intro: You're listening to the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with New York Times, best-selling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. Brought to you by InForm Fitness, life-changing personal training with several locations across the US. Reboot your metabolism and experience the revolutionary Power of 10, the high intensity, slow motion, strength training system that's so effective, you'd get a week's worth of exercise in just one 20-minute session, which by no coincidence is about the length of this podcast. So, get ready InForm Nation, your 20 minutes of high-intensity strength training information begins in 3, 2, 1. Thanks for joining us for the InForm Fitness podcast, 20 minutes with Adam Zickerman and friends. I'm Tim Edwards, the founder of the Inbound Podcasting Network. Back with Adam's friends and colleagues. Sheila Melody from the InForm Fitness Toluca Lake location and Mike Rogers from the New York City location. And across the hall from Mike is the founder of InForm Fitness and author of the New York Times, best-seller, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution, Adam Zickerman. We are in the middle of a series of high intensity during your workout. In the last episode, we discussed understanding failure. Reaching muscle failure in your workout to be more precise and by hitting muscle failure safely, you get a weeks' worth of exercise in just one 20-minute session. Now, coming up in this episode we'll provide a very descriptive and detailed definition of a high-intensity workout from Ken Hutchins, one of the pioneers of this protocol. We'll also discuss how this type of workout will enhance your performance and whatever activity it is you enjoy but first, Adam, let's dispel the stigma associated with the word intensity. I mean, we don't want to scare anybody. Intensity, yeah, an intense workout, I think will scare most people if they feel like they're out of shape or they haven't worked out in a long time and yeah, that raises concern for sure, raises the red flag so to speak in peoples' minds when they hear that this is not only an intense workout but a very intense workout and one of the first things that pops into a lot of peoples' heads is, "Can I do this?" Or, "Is it safe for me?" And that's what I meant when I said it depends who's telling the story about intensity. I think what we do so well is explaining that intensity is not the problem but it's the way we try to achieve intensity that's really where the problems lie. When I talk to clients and when I say high intensity and when I personally think of high intensity I think of that -- the first thing that comes to my mind is that Insanity Workout. High intensity! You know, it's like -- and I always try to tell people, you know, "You're not going to be jumping around. You're not going to be like you know, we're not going to kill you." So, you have to kind of -- yeah, you do have to kind of qualify it a little bit, you know, when you say, high intensity. Yeah. It's interesting because a lot of the medical research and fitness research that's been coming out over the last few years which we've been advocating for, you know, I don't know. Adam, how long now? Almost 20 years. Is -- My whole life. Exactly, you know, but it's a -- Yeah, sure. [laughs] Everyone's now a big advocate and they've showed through a lot more of the studies that a high intensity stimulus is the more worthwhile stimulus in order to gain the adaptation and the effect over the muscle in the body. So, it's a, as Adam said, it is the modality. It's defining it. I mean, some of the things that have taken the headlines are the 7-minute workout in the New York Times, CrossFit boot camps. You know, all engaging, fun, highly intense and where people have gotten, like, a lot of results but often times they're not assessing the risk when entering into those types of workouts and I think that's where Power of 10 and InForm Fitness is really, really -- that's where we have the advantage. And when we're talking intensity too and for 20 minutes, we really want to make it clear to somebody who's considering this type of exercise that it is not 20 solid minutes of intensity. Really. I mean, based upon, you know, the five to seven or however many exercises somebody's going thorough within that 20 minutes, the intensity really is in the last 30 seconds of the exercise. At least that's how I feel. Well, Tim, you make a good point actually. Your question is right on because you're not doing 20 minutes of high-intensity exercise. If you're doing six exercises that last a total of a minute and a half, that's nine minutes actually of exercise. Mhm [affirmative]. Alright. So, one and a half minutes, times six is nine minutes. You know, when it comes down to it, whether it's a two-minute set or even a three-minute set or a one-minute set, at the end you've reached muscle failure. At the end it's still those last 20 seconds. Now, there are a lot of people that if you pick a weight where those last 20 seconds come in 60 seconds. Alright, so come on -- that means it's already starting hard and challenging but it's not like grueling. Now, I understand that some people, especially beginners need to kind of work up to that burn but, you know, what I found is once you understand what the bottom line is and where you have to go, a lot of people want to get it over with. People want the weight to be heavier so they don't have to take two minutes to get to that point. And as long as their form is solid it's going to be okay. When on the first couple sessions it's usually not about deep muscle failure. It's just about understanding intensity anyway. So, it's something that you know, we're focusing more on the form and making sure people feel confident and safe while they accept and understand what it feels like to do to have an intense stimulus on their body. Usually, it's unlike anything they've had before. Even with very, very competitive athletes. It's quite a challenge. Right and it certainly takes some getting used to but it really doesn't take long. So, Adam, let's shift gears a little bit here. In your book, Power of 10: The Once-a- Week Slow Motion Revolution, and in earlier episodes of the podcast, you've mentioned the name, Ken Hutchins, one of the pioneers of the super slow technique. Tell us a little bit more about Ken and share with us his definition of a high-intensity exercise regime. We'd be doing everyone a disservice to not mention where this all came from. This was not my brain child, this idea of exercise versus recreation. I wish it was but it's not. Regardless, I'm following it but the person who's responsible for this is a guy named Ken Hutchins and he worked for Nautilus. He was a protégé of Arthur Jones who was the founder of Nautilus and Nautilus had their own protocol. They weren't just an exercise company. They were a protocol, an exercise protocol. A lot of the early body builders were using it back when he came out with this thing in the mid to late 60s, the Nautilus equipment. The protocol was high intensity -- this is the beginning of high-intensity exercise where finally intensity, almost above all else was the key to seeing results and it was done in a -- he called it a two, four protocol which is lifting in two and lowering in four. So, that was drastically slower than what was -- that used to be done and it was being done on equipment which is also very radical because free weights were king at that time, especially for body builders. So, Arthur Jones had approved that equipment. You know, it doesn't matter what the tool is. Matter of fact, the equipment can actually do some better things for you. Ken Hutchins realized that the protocol can even get better. So, here is Ken Hutchins' actual definition. I'm going to read it. "Exercise is a process whereby the body performs work of a demanding nature, in accordance with muscle and joint function, in a clinically controlled environment, within the constraints of safety, meaningfully loading the muscular structures to inroad their strength levels to stimulate a growth mechanism within minimal time." What does that mean? Simple, right? [laughs] Who wrote that, Justice Ginsberg? [laughs] Yeah, exactly. [Inaudible 08:04]. Wow. I need a law degree to understand that. Yeah. [laughs] [laughs] Exactly. It's brilliant and it is a true definition because as he points out, the definition of definition is to delimit, which means that there are no other possibilities that could exist. For example, if I said somebody, please define what a pen is and they said a pen is a writing instrument. So, therefore, I can hold up a pencil, I can hold up a quill and say, well, therefore this is a pen, right? Says, no. No, actually a pen actually has ink. Oh, so, a pen is a writing instrument that uses ink? Yes. Okay. So, this quill and ink is a pen, right? Okay, so you have to define it, you have to break it down even more. You see where I'm going with this? Mhm [affirmative]. Alright. So, that's what he just did with this definition. I mean, there is no possibility of exercise being anything other than lifting weights really slowly on retrofitted equipment in a very cool environment that is going to reach a certain level of intensity. Alright. There's no other way of doing it according to this definition. He wrote this definition, to narrow down exactly how you have to perform exercise which is to life weights ten seconds up, ten seconds down, according to muscle and joint function so you better have your biomechanics right and your machines retrofitted for those biomechanics. Alright and you better do it in the minimum amount of time and reach failure pretty darn quickly and not hurt yourself in the process, he says here. That's what he just said in a very long way but, like, there is no room for error there. There's no ambiguity with a definition like that and that's his brilliance. He finally did it. Now gardening is not freaking exercise anymore. Tim: [laughs] Adam: Alright. Doctors can't tell their clients, "Oh, go on a walking program. Get some exercise." They can't say that anymore if they go by this definition of exercise which is good because a doctor that's telling their patients that all they have to do is get out there and be active and go on a walking program because they want to save their ass because even if they die on a walking program, they can't get sued for that. Tim: [laughs] Adam: That's his definition because that is what it has to be but this is how we interoperate it and this is how we explain it to our clients which comes down to basically what Doug McGuff did, which is another great contributor to this movement, writing the book Body by Science who hopefully will be a guest on our show one time. Tim: Mhm [affirmative]. Adam: Yeah. Tim: In that definition nowhere did it say -- in Ken Hutchins' definition, nowhere did it say a leisurely activity. Adam: Right, what I've been doing and what Doug McGuff did in his book is kind of tweaked that definition for layperson, something that you can just kind of have as a mantra if you will. Alright. And have it be that [inaudible 10:51] that will guide you to deciding how you want to engage in exercise and his definition was much more succinct. To build fitness, to improve and enhance your fitness while at the same time not undermining your health and that is the essence of what Ken Hutchins wrote in his definition. Tim: And what you -- Adam: Although -- Tim: Built and based -- Adam: You know -- Yeah. Exactly. When it comes down to it you just have to work out and not hurt yourself in the process. You know, and it only -- it comes down to like doing five exercises or so to work the whole body really hard and then move on with your life. Well, Adam, I have a question. So, as we move forward with the exercise versus recreation debate, so, say somebody comes in and I'll use myself as an example. So, I want to enhance my game in softball. Right. So, somebody comes in with some specific goals because they want to get better at an activity that they enjoy for recreation. Do you tailor an exercise regime based upon that or is it pretty standard throughout? Read Doug McGuff's book. [laughs] That's an excellent question. I get asked that question all the time. You know, "I want to get better," you know, "I'm a softball player," to use your example. Mhm [affirmative]. And how are we going to go about that? Do we do certain exercises for throwing? Do we do certain exercises -- we're going to do plyometrics and jump side to side laterally like a shortstop would or how are we going to train for this? And the application is very general. We have to strengthen your hips. So, we're going to do a leg press. We're going to do some abductor exercises. We'll do some adductor exercises to strengthen the whole complex. We're going to do lower back exercises. We're going to strengthen your lower back but we're going to do it in a way that's not mimicking what a stress stop would do. We're going to do it the way your body was meant to move. What's great about our program is we are building all of the muscles of your body which are involved in the movements that you're going to execute when you're performing a sport. And, you know, all the people who are playing golf and playing tennis and playing softball and skiing, they've been -- you know, they report incredible testimonials about it. The bottom line is, doing leg press is not going to make you a great softball player. Doing hip abduction, lower back extensions, they're going to make your hips and your back and all the muscles involved in playing softball very strong and hopefully those joints really safe. And then it's up to you to practice that skill. So, it's a two prong approach and you do both. You have to get strong, you have to do -- you have to get strong without using up all your resources. The last thing you want to do is do an exercise program that's going to make you so tired and so fatigued and put your joints in such stress that as soon as you leap for a ball in the softball field, that's whe…
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