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PROJECT “TOTAL CONDITIONING”
In 1975, Nautilus Sports/Medical Industries funded what many in exercise consider
to be one of the most (if not THE most) important study in the history of exercise
science. It was conducted at the United States Military Academy, and was overseen
by Colonel James Anderson. The purpose of the study was to identify the consequences--good
or bad--of a short-duration, high-intensity training program on Nautilus exercise
equipment. Questions like: how much skeletal muscle strength can be achieved
from intense but brief workouts? How does strength training affect an individual's
degree of cardiovascular fitness? His flexibility and his overall body composition?
The study involved 53 varsity football players who were split up into three groups – one
Nautilus-only group (referred to in the experiment as the “whole body group”)
of 21 cadets; one group that trained their necks only of 16 cadets; and one control
group of 16 cadets that trained according to the athletic program at West
Point (running, weight training, stretching, for several sessions per week).
The Nautilus-only group had two cadets withdraw (one for illness, the other after
suffering a football injury on the field).
The 19 Nautilus-only trainees trained all of their major muscle groups with between
8 and 15 different Nautilus machine exercises for one set to failure three times
a week for six weeks. An extensive battery of tests and measurements were administered
to the subjects after two weeks of training to insure that all of the gains were
the legitimate, rather than merely the result of motor learning. A second series
of tests and measurements were taken at the conclusion of the six-week project.
As Dr. James Peterson, who set up and oversaw the experiment on behalf of West
Point, wrote in his report of the experiment:
The pre-study testing was not scheduled until after two weeks of training to
minimize the 'learning effect' on individual performance.
The results astounded even the scientists who conducted the testing. After only
six weeks of training, the 19 Nautilus-only subjects increased the amount of
resistance used in their exercises (for the same amount of repetitions) by minimum
of 45 percent, and a maximum of 70 percent, for an overall average of 58.54 percent.
And, despite such a tremendous increase in strength-- and the associated increase
in overall physiologic stress that attended--the duration of their workouts decreased
by 40 minutes (at the start) to 20 minutes (at the conclusion), with most training
sessions lasting just under 30 minutes in duration and the average decrease in
training time falling somewhere between 4.5 and 9 minutes.
As a measure of the functional application of intense, short-duration Nautilus
strength training, the actual subjects and the control group were administered
three tests -- a two-mile run, a 40-yard dash, and vertical jump. In the two-mile
run, the Nautilus-only group improved over 4 times as much as the control group;
in the 40-yard dash the Nautilus-only group improved 2 times greater than the
control group; and the Nautilus-only group’s flexibility was assessed at 8 to
11 times greater than the control group’s; and the Nautilus-only group’s improvement
in the vertical jump was measured to be 4 times greater than the control group’s.
On the cardiovascular tests three different states of the cardiovascular function
were tested:
1. Cardiovascular efficiency at rest.
2. Responses to sub-maximal work
3. Responses to maximal work
The tests for the resting state consisted
of measuring each subject’s
heart rate (or HR), his systolic blood pressure (or SBP -- when
blood is being forced out
of the heart), diastolic blood pressure (or DBP – when the chambers of the
heart are filling with blood); and a systolic tension time index (STTI) – an
accepted measure of coronary circulation which is calculated by multiplying
one’s heart
rate by systolic blood pressure.
The tests for the sub-maximal state consisted of having each
subject perform on a bodyguard model 990 bicycle egometer.
An ergometer is a basic research instrument
which allows a subject to pedal against a resistance or load that can be
predetermined and adjusted when necessary by the experimenter.
The submaximal tests required
each subject to perform a continuous, progressive ergometer ride with increasing
work loads (360 kpm/min increase) every two minutes until the subject could
no longer sustain the rate (60 rpm) or wanted to stop. This
was followed by two
minutes at the initial light load (360 kpm/min), then three minutes of rest.
At each condition, the HR, SBP, DBP, STTI, and a subjective rating (by the
subject) of his perceived exertion (RPE) were obtained. Cardiac
feedback was provided
by means of a continuous EKG, which was obtained on each subject while on
the ergometer.
The maximal state was evaluated by means of two measures: total
riding time on the bicycle ergometer and the subject’s 2-mile run performance. With the exception
of administering then 2-mile run test, all cardiovascular testing was conducted
by outside consultants from Dr. Ken Cooper’s Aerobic Institute in Dallas who
came up with 60 different cardiovascular fitness tests. In light of the fact
that these consultants were not informed until after all the testing had been
completed about which subjects were a member of which group – control or Nautilus-only
-- their efforts can be accorded as additional degree of legitimacy.
