Time Warp Training

Time-Warp Training

By Joe Mullen
Fitness Scientist


Everyone who works in a fitness center knows that it is very difficult to workout without interruption. And, for many owners/instructors, it is not convenient to workout in the early morning or late at night. So, many fitness professionals must squeeze in a workout whenever they can.

When I began working in the fitness business, I used every spare moment trying to devise new, improved methods of training. Because my typical workday was 14 hours, I was always trying to find an exercise routine that: (1) produced results, (2) was convenient to my hours, (3) took very little time.

One day, during a lull in the business, I was playing with a calculator and attempting to calculate a training method that would allow my body the most recuperation time, without sacrificing a high-level of muscle contraction.

My training program was the typical basic Nautilus workout: 12 exercises, 2 seconds up/4 seconds down, the largest strongest muscle groups were trained first, then moving to the smallest, weakest. In short, the basic Nautilus concepts were followed.

Since I was in the club for up to 14 hours daily, I decided to take my standard workout and split it into a 12 hour workout. Not 12 continuous hours, but one exercise per hour, until I completed 12 exercises. This took twelve hours. I reasoned that this would allow me to give 100 per- cent effort during each exercise and allow maximum recuperation time between sets.

Of course, I knew that I was sacrificing the "high intensity" feeling as well as any cardio respiratory training effect. My goal was to get as big and strong as possible, so I sacrificed the two training effects just mentioned.All I did was take my standard workout, beginning with the first exercise, the Hip and Back Machine, and perform that first in my workout.

After working to complete muscular failure, I would not do any other exercise until exactly one hour later. Then, I would do the second exercise on my workout; work until muscular failure and rest for an hour -then do the next exercise.

I would continue the exercise/rest formula until I had completed my workout 12 hours later. Surprisingly, Strength increases were very rapid. Faster than with any previous method of experiment. I highly recommend this type of training! Especially, if you are interested in strength and size. It is the rest period, between each exercise, that permit huge strength increases.

Everyone I shared this concept with experienced swift results.

If you work in a club for several hours a day, try this method. Although my experience with this method combined only basic concepts, my guess is that it will produce superior results through an advanced concept like the Negative Training Concept.
This concept is awesome.

As you know, it means that your workout involves only Negative Movements. Training partners raise the resistance into the top position of the movement. The you control the movement back down to the starting position. To be safe, control the resistance for about 8 seconds through the movement.

Whichever advanced concept you use, perform only one set per hour. Maintain accurate records. If you are interested in cardio- respiratory health (and you should be), supplement your exercise program with some form of aerobic exercise.

Joe Mullen
Fitness Scientist
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Excellent article! Have you ever tried one exercise per day?

Sincerely,

David Shores DC

Hello Dr. Shores!

No, I have not tried one exercise per day.

The problem with that, may or may not be: If a person is trying what is called total conditioning, then the complete workout could be made up of 8 to 12 exercises. That would mean a total of one exercise per day, over a 8 or 12 day time. I'm not sure if a body-part, the lower back for instance, that was exercised on a Monday (as example) , and not again until 8 or 12 days later, would get strong, quick enough to eliminate the pain and get the lumbar spine stable enough not to need a brace.

I did do research to see how long a person, who did a total workout in one day, could get away with not training (so to speak) before they had to workout again. Long story short, that indicated that it may be possible to wait up to 6 days and not have the muscle tone start reversing back towards a "normal body type, and start losing strength and muscle endurance.

Of course, to be accepted by critics quite a number would have to be tested to be accepted as valid. Unfortunately.

In my career, I offered physical therapy, work conditioning, and improved sports conditioning, having the patients come in only twice a week. Usually, on a Monday and Thursday, or Tuesday and Friday.

I knew that I could have used different days of rest between visits, but in a business sense, I tried to live a balanced life and have time of my family, friends, etc.

One interesting thing you might be interested in from the rehab point of view is: the improved results I was getting, especially in the workers comp area made the head of the California workers comp insurance and their Physician come to visit me to see what the heck was going on.

They spend three hours with me. Every thing went very well. As they stood up to leave, the woman who was head of Workers Comp for the state of California said to me: Well, I can see that your facility is not a typical therapy facility, I'm going to send you the codes and the prices we will pay for your services!

They were very happy with the data I always submitted, meaning: the initial test, the progress within each visit, and the final testing
of which was a person much improved when compared to the initial testing of the issue they were having.

I was told by other practitioners that I was being paid funds from Workers Comp in a way that was the highest in California. I'm not sure that was true but it sounded good at the time. Because Workers Comp was notorious for being tight fisted with paying for the services rendered. A the time I did have a very clear meaning of how to bill for services.

The equipment I used was the MedX computerized Lower Back, Computerized Cervical Neck, and other MedX computerized equipment. Plus I had a compliment of 12 Nautilus machines. So, clients were tested on the MedX computerized equipment to determine the issues and used it (supervised) one set as a very light warmup, then one set to complete muscle failure, then they would be supervised within a total body one set to failure Nautilus Program.

The MedX were incredible machines. Their testing ability was fool-proof and the strength building was beyond belief.

I sure miss those days!

Joe Mullen
Fitness Scientist
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Hey Joe intereesting. Whats your take on workout frequency? Some people claim making good progress once every 10-14 days on a split routine. Im a little skeptical of this?

Hello -

Because I have been lucky enough to own 8 High-Tech fitness centers, I have helped people experiment with various protocols they wanted to try for themselves, and I was trying to find a protocol that produced what I termed Maximum Fitness in Minimum Time as my Research and business goal.

Having experimented with the "split" system, I continued to believe in a total body workout within one workout. I felt that the one day workout created a large demand for muscle tissue, and that what would provide the muscle tissue would be recuperation, not in a mental sense, but in a cellular tissue sense.

Another way of saying that in this day and age, is that adult stem cells would exit from the bone marrow and travel to the "muscle tissue" in disrepair and distress, the adult stem cells would attach to the tissue in need of rebuilding (because of the stress damaged tissue caused by the exercise). And, brand new muscle tissue would be created.

That proved to be true.

When you get a few minutes, give me your definition of the "split" system and I'll comment on it.

One of the things I will share and post with every member of this site is a Research Project I did for an International Corporation who contacted me a while back to ask me to do fitness related Research using my HIT protocols and their natural product. Their product had the ability, once digested (in capsule form) it entered our bone marrow (where adult stem cells live) and the product signaled the adult stem cells to enter into the blood stream and travel to the muscle tissues in disrepair and then repair them.

The results were astonishing.

The clients performed only two workouts a week, total body workouts. Only one set each exercise. The average amount of exercises was about 8. I'll talk more about that on another post.

Joe Mullen
Fitness Scientist
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Thank you for your response! There would definitely be overlap problems. In the past I have made great gains on 8 exercises twice a week until the weights get heavy. Then It gets much harder to progress. I would image that doing your time warp training would be one way to correct that problem.

I would love to hear about your research project.

David Shores DC

Dr. Shores -

I am not sure I actually responded to your last post, so let me try it now

You wrote: " Thank you for your response! There would definitely be overlap problems. In the past I have made great gains on 8 exercises twice a week until the weights get heavy."

I'm not sure what you mean by overlap problems. Unless, as an example, you do two exercises in a row that work the same muscle groups, such as a set of bench presses, followed by a set of overhead presses. Initially, when I first learned the HIT protocols, exercises like those two were recommended back to back. And, I followed them exactly.

The major problem is that, as an example, if you do a set of bench presses to failure, it will dramatically effect the overhead press, especially if you do not rest much between the exercises.
So, typically since the bench press exhausts primarily the triceps, then your triceps are basically wasted and do not recover enough to do a heavy weight on overhead presses.

The effect was not liked very much by most of the clients is my first Nautilus Club. So, I compromised. I placed one exercise between the bench press and the overhead press. In a business sense that went over well. And, both the bench and overhead dramatically, increased in weight and repetitions. Therefore, the muscles involved in the movements grew at a greater rate than when the bench and overhead were back to back. I've kept it that way ever since.

You also wrote: "Then It gets much harder to progress. I would image that doing your time warp training would be one way to correct that problem.

I would love to hear about your research project."

You also wrote: "In the past I have made great gains on 8 exercises twice a week until the weights get heavy."

In my experience, the weights should never get "too heavy." The way around that is kind of wordy, so I'll thoroughly explain that in another post. What I would recommend is:

Test yourself for a one rep max on 5 exercises, then finish your workout in a typical way.

On your next visit, take a percentage of each exercises one rep max. Meaning: in your case take 80 % of the first exercise one rep max, and do as many reps as possible to absolutely possible.
For example, lets say you do sets of 8 reps to 12 reps in you typical workout.

If (make believe), you did 12 or 13 reps, that is a sign that for the next workout, you should increase the resistance slightly, but not so much that you won't get a minimum of 8 reps.

Let's say you increased the resistance so that you only got 9 reps. Then, you stay with that weight until you reach as least 12 reps before you increase the resistance for the next workout.

When I say "increase the resistance," I mean in a small amount, many times even 5lbs. will be too much, so it is OK to use less weight, something like 2 lbs. The small amount will enable you to almost always get the same reps as you did last workout. And, that is the goal.

Here's why = When you multiply the weight X the reps (thats your Performance Code), the total should be more than what the total was on the last workout. As an example, 50 lbs X 10 reps =500 Units of Performance. If in you last workout, the weight X reps equaled less than 500, you did not improve at all, you only fatigued the muscles but not not in an equal way as this workout.

If you only slightly the amount of weight, you will probably match your Units of Performance or exceed them, EVERY workout. That's what happened to almost everyone in all of the Nautilus Clubs I have owned.

It seems to me that when you mention that the weights get "too heavy" you have probably increased the resistance to much in one jump.

I hope I made some sense out of what I said. Let me know if I did not.

Joe Mullen
Fitness Scientist
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]