The Renaissance Exercise team has been very busy over the last few months training clients, prototyping and manufacturing the Renaissance line, certifying trainers, and planning a big event for fall of 2012. Unfortunately the blog page has fallen by the wayside as of late. We are currently completing Dumpers IV and getting ready to launch an introduction to four new pieces in the RenEx equipment line. In the meantime we decided to write a response to one of our viewer’s critiques.
– Joshua Trentine

Fair Play

An Opinion by Ken Hutchins

Some of our readers have asked why we criticize X-Force^TM exercise equipment so harshly especially when X-Force says nothing derogatory about RenEx^®.

Note that to phrase the previous sentence as I did and others have done is an emotional charge. “Harsh” really has no place in the characterization of technical criticism. Criticism is criticism. Apparently, some people regard stark criticism as mean-spirited and unfair.

Also note that X-Force might not be openly critical of RenEx; however, they do make a statement… a big statement… by holding a presence in the marketplace. They are not merely a Ken Hutchins 20 years ago tinkering away in the privacy of his garage. When X-Force… or RenEx for that matter… takes action to garner huge financial resources to design and manufacture equipment and to promote it, they also expose themselves to all. And when they expose themselves they are tacitly assuming the risk of criticism in the marketplace. They make themselves fair game. They are not, metaphorically speaking, innocent bunnies that the Big Bad Wolf slaughters on Easter morning.

X-Force is not the only producer of the so-called Dumpers, and we do not single them out in our criticisms of the hyperloading mentality. However, X-Force does provide us with a somewhat unique and highly invaluable opportunity to study and to elucidate the principles therein that are abused and/or misapplied. Of the current genre of Dumpers, X-Force represents the only extant line that is weight-driven rather than robotically-driven.

Another attribute of X-Force is that it is more or less the progeny of the Jonesian Nautilus. Note that the Nautilus old guard swarmed around Arthur Jones for about 16 years—from about 1970 to 1986. The old guard was mostly comprised of young men who—as Eric Hoffer would put it—possessed “undifferentiated selves.” Their lives were empty and worthless. They had nothing else to attach themselves to, and required Arthur’s vision and machismo to develop their inner self-respect and confidence. Otherwise, they were doomed to aimlessly drift around searching for something—anything—to cling to that would provide their life meaning. (I state this with the realization that they might castigate me for this observation. Hopefully, they will seriously consider its truth if I also underscore that the characterization applies to me as well.) By the way, it was Arthur who bluntly pointed out these so-called true-believer traits in all of us. And he was correct.

Technically speaking, we of the Nautilus old guard considered ourselves able to speak a better understanding of exercise. In some ways we could, but also to a great extent we spoke only a different understanding.

Note that Arthur made a giant intellectual contribution with his Six Factors of Functional Ability. He also soared on the subject of work intensity versus work volume. And his stance on specificity in exercise was clear and courageous. In addition, we must acknowledge that Nautilus equipment pioneered proper tracking of muscle and joint function that no one else—SuperSlow^® Systems, RenEx, and MedX^® excepted—has managed to maintain, much less improve upon. However, Arthur was incorrect with much of the Nautilus Philosophy: The Ten Requirements of Full-Range Exercise, the proper speed of motion, the correct resistance curves, friction minimization, the position of full muscular contraction, unilateral loading, etc.

And Arthur was blatantly inconsistent in some areas. For example, Arthur’s design of the Leg Extension machine embodied a body attitude perfectly consistent with the principle of muscular sufficiency, but he was inept to explain why hip flexion was required in the body attitude for the Leg Curl (knee flexion)—the same principle at work with the same musculatures except in reverse.

And then he violated the sufficiency principle when he designed the Nautilus Compound Position Biceps and the Compound Position Triceps. Afterwards, the design crew at MedX—the MedX design crew was mostly comprised of the former Nautilus design crew—didn’t know any better than to copy the same body mechanics for the Compound Position Triceps. Instead of correcting the mistake with muscular sufficiency (they are/were truly ignorant of Arthur’s inconsistencies), they continue to proudly promote the constraint system in this machine.

My writings during the past 20 years have addressed all of the foregoing inaccuracies of Arthur Jones and early Nautilus. And I have also addressed his asinine assertions that Gregor Mendel faked his results in genetics, that lions run faster than cheetahs, and that the sound you hear in the woods emanating from a woodpecker as he pecks is due to the speed of his head breaking the sound barrier.

In retrospect, I see another important inconsistency with Arthur. With the backdrop that Arthur was strongly promoted to me as all-knowing and interested in all matters great and small, early in my Nautilus career Arthur rather put me off by one of his responses. It was cold, brusque and typical Arthur. I dismissed the offense in characteristically obedient fashion.

Before Nautilus I had taken a more-than-casual interest in breast cancer. I knew some of its history going back to Drs. George Crile senior and junior as well as Dr. William Stewart Halsted. With my father and others I had talked at length about the then-current policy of informed consent when approaching the possibility of surgical intervention. I had studied some of the studies involving isolated (walled-off) tissues as well as contact-cell inhibition (a la Hayflick). This background led me to believe that proper strength training might work as a prophylactic and/or treatment. I was forward thinking, though perhaps a bit naïve.

When I asked Arthur about the subject his response was: “Ken, I have no opinion regarding breast cancer or any other form of cancer. It serves no interest of mine to have an opinion; therefore I don’t have an opinion.”

So, he had no interest in cancer—even to a slight degree—but it did serve his interest to assert an opinion on supersonic woodpeckers?

We do, indeed, now have some usefulness for strength training in the rehabilitation following breast cancer surgery. What other applications it may have are very speculative. Nevertheless, we may have some articles posted on this subject in the near future.

In 1986, Arthur sold our little fantasy world out from under us (I speak as though he had no right to do whatever he wanted with his company—ha.) and some of us swarmed around him again at MedX. There, the Arthur Jones Institute was eventually formed—a virtual shrine to the man.

And within the last several years Arthur has passed and some of us remaining oldsters have swarmed to X-Force. I maintain that some of the old guard are emotionally needful of the good ol’ days with Arthur and X-Force supplies this to a great degree. Without this attachment they are empty selves again as they were before meeting Arthur. It is important to them that X-Force arises and survives. It is the phoenix of Nautilus in their psyches. And requisite here is a repeat of the original Nautilus rhetoric.

Note that if you first become inculcated with the vintage Nautilus literature and then read the new, beautifully printed X-Force brochures, you can imagine being at 1970s-era Nautilus Sports/Medical Industries again. X-Force is, ostensibly, vintage Nautilus repackaged and reincarnated to a great extent.

In essence, X-Force represents the Nautilus old guard, including the same quintessential folklore. I remain fond of the Jonesian war stories, but I’ve long since abandoned the head trash that serves to maintain the well-meaning but incorrect slant on the hyperloaded negative and several other important principles. It would be irresponsible to the extreme (for me, for RenEx, and even for the Nautilus old guard) to waste this opportunity to critically re-examine this information and perhaps correct the thinking of all.

At one time, all of us as a group were an influential force. And it can be again, but it must be reconstituted with updated information.

By the writing of the Dumpers series, we at RenEx learn as much as the readers. It fuels much productive discussion among us as well as with others. Of course, some readers don’t always appreciate our approach to criticism. They see us as unprovoked aggressors. This is expected and unavoidable.

Some have criticized, “Why can’t the RenEx boys just state the attributes of their equipment and let other companies state theirs? Why do they insist on attacking X-Force and other companies?”

No one gets a free pass on criticism—RenEx included. There are websites out there where we are royally roasted. This is good. It forces us to think and to reconsider what we say and how we say it. It reveals perspectives we might not have adequately explained.

Also note that RenEx equipment is merely the physical manifestation that best facilitates the application of RenEx exercise principles. (Please seriously study the foregoing sentence.) The tail does not wag the dog here. The equipment does not determine the principles. The principles are valid—or not—regardless of whether or not Ken Hutchins and/or the equipment exist. They are valid if there is no RenEx. They stand on their own. They must!

And if something is incorrect—especially if something is incorrect as well as dangerous—it is also wrong in a moral sense. And it needs to be exposed so that everyone can understand that it is wrong. Anything else is shirking responsibility.

There are many other issues out in the fitness industry that are as bad or worse—sometimes far worse—than the Dumpers. But as we move forward to take on these issues we must put our own house in order. I am referring here to the greater community we call High-Intensity Exercise.

Tagged as: High Intensity Exercise, High Intensity Training, Ken Hutchins, Renaissance Exercise, RenEx