Nowadays, almost no one knows the name Arthur Jones. If you do not know him but are interested in Fitness or just like to workout, that is quite a pity for you. Arthur Jones created the ‘High Intensity Training’ (also known as H.I.T.) approach, not to be confused with the ‘High Intensity Interval Training’ that is growing in popularity today in Fitness group classes. Effectively, Arthur Jones can help you improve your workouts and probably teach you a lot. So let’s dig into this!
Who was Arthur Jones
Arthur Jones was a Fitness enthusiast who imagined a new way of training, different from the mainstream bodybuilding training theories. He started to formalize standard principles for bodybuilding in the 1970s, which totally changed the world of physical training. Back then, most of the strength, Fitness and Bodybuilding workouts were centered around moves from weightlifting (bench press, squats, deadlifts…). Most of these exercises were poly-muscular and poly-joint. Remember that back then, barbells, dumbbells and body-weigth exercises were almost the only tools available to athletes and Fitness practitioners.
He then started to write down some key principles in the Nautilus Bulletin (that we will see below in detail) and created the first Nautilus fitness machine. The main innovations of these machines were the chains and axes of rotation that made it possible not to be dependent on sole gravity. He started to work on several Fitness machine lines which totally revolutionized the Fitness world. As a true entrepreneur, he quickly realized the market potential for its machines and quickly created a company called ‘Nautilus’. He quickly had a true commercial success in North America and started to sell his machines worldwide. By 1984, over 4700 Nautilus Fitness Centers were active in the USA. His Fitness machines were used almost everywhere from professional sports (baseball, basketball, U.S. football…), universities and high schools to commercial Fitness gyms. Jones became so successful that he was included in the Forbes list of the 400 richest people of that time. He then created the company MedX to develop medical-based exercise and equipment for the cervical spine, lumbar spine and knee.
His company, Nautilus Inc., is still active today and owns other Fitness equipment brands such as Bowflex and Stairmaster. Many of his Nautilus machine designs and equipment are, in fact, the true ancestors of the equipment and brands we can see everywhere nowadays.
Inspired by his father, Gary Jones (Arthur’s son), founded the iconic fitness equipment brand Hammer Strength in 1989. Interestingly, what is now the world reference in fitness machines started with a partnership with the Cincinnati Bengals (the US football franchise) to craft strength-training machines that would simplify the biomechanics of weightlifting while matching natural human movement.
Arthur Jones’s starting point: the hypocrisy of steroids
Jones’s desire to invent a new training system was born from a simple observation (already topical in the 70s): the omnipresence and abuse of steroids in the world of Bodybuilding (and in professional sports).
“invent a totally different training system that would give good results and eliminate the scourge of steroids”
Therefore, why promote Fitness, which was supposed to improve the health and lives of practitioners, if it was to see people gorge themselves on steroids and destroy their lives? That was total nonsense, something might be wrong!
Perhaps the whole approach based on poly-joint movements and exercises inherited from weightlifting was bad. That is why he wanted to restart from the beginning. What if it was possible to invent a totally different training system that would give good results and eliminate the scourge of steroids?
That was the starting point of Arthur Jones’s High Intensity Training theory.
Key Principle 1: Isolation is how a muscle grows
After observing how bodybuilders trained, he quickly realized that almost all their trainings revolved around compound and multi-joint movements inspired by weightlifting. Whether it was squats, bench presses or deadlifts, all these movements were at the heart of any bodybuilder’s training back then. To the point that barbell-based isolation exercises (biceps curls, etc.) were practiced mainly to be able to increase their performance on these weightlifting movements. Which was, according to them, the only way they knew that triggered muscle growth.
Certainly, through this method, many athletes had experienced muscle gains quickly and without taking steroids. However, the curve of muscle gains was stagnating very quickly after these initial gains. And that was when most athletes were turning to steroids in order to continue their progress.
“machines to target and isolate muscles, maximize their contraction and reduce the risk of injury and overtraining”
From then on, he considered the simple fact that it was the very nature of these movements that limited the progress of athletes. The very fact that they engaged several muscles only made it possible to saturate the muscles during a very short period of time and with necessarily heavier and heavier weights. Therefore, it was very difficult to progress under these circumstances without lifting too heavily which significantly increased the risk of injury and resulted in overtraining.
It was from there that Jones began to imagine his Nautilus machines to target and isolate muscles, maximize their contraction and reduce the risk of injury and overtraining.
Key Principle 2: Shock the muscle with as much intensity as possible
While studying the bodybuilders workouts, Jones discovered that they were training for hours every day. However, this training pace was only tenable on the condition of taking doping products. Indeed, most athletes not taking steroids were unable to reproduce these sessions as regularly without a significant drop in performance, stagnation of muscle mass and above all injury.
He deduces from his observations that muscular exercise and strength training should only serve to create an external stimulus that forces the human body to react. For this, it was absolutely necessary to shorten the training sessions and make them as intense as possible in order to create adequate muscular and hormonal stimuli.
“Without ever compromising on safety and the risk of injury, it would be a question of putting on the heaviest weight possible and performing the maximum number of muscle contractions possible, both in terms of contraction intensity and repetition”
Arthur Jones saw the execution of a muscular exercise only as an external stimulus that it would suffice to execute only once in the most perfect way possible, with the greatest possible security and with the highest intensity. He synthesized this in the form of a training system based on one single serie per muscle that would have to be pushed to the absolute limits of what is humanly possible.
Without ever compromising on safety and the risk of injury, it would be a question of putting on the heaviest weight possible and performing the maximum number of muscle contractions possible, both in terms of contraction intensity and repetition.
Key Principle 3: Avoid overtraining, you just need the stimulus
Arthur Jones was well aware that any muscular exercise could be broken down into two distinct phases: the catabolic phase (when the muscle needs energy to perform the effort and tends to self-consume) and the anabolic phase (when the muscle recovers from its effort and rebuilds itself).
It is from this observation that Jones proposed in his principles to reduce the catabolic phase to the strict minimum necessary to trigger muscle growth (stimulus).
“the longer a training session lasts, the more detrimental it will be to the potential for muscle gain”
According to this approach, any training carried out after triggering the muscle growth stimulus would therefore be totally counterproductive because it would only lengthen the catabolic phase without guaranteeing a better ‘natural’ anabolic phase (the word ‘natural’ is very important here, because Jones considers only athletes who have never taken steroids in his reasoning).
Therefore, according to this approach, the longer a training session lasts, the more detrimental it will be to the potential for muscle gain.
Key Principle 4: Recuperation is how the muscles naturally grow
After initiating the muscle growth phase through training, the most important phase to ensure muscle growth is the anabolic phase (when the muscle recovers and rebuilds).
“everything must be done to improve the quality of this recuperation phase”
Therefore, it is just as important to focus on the quality of the recovery phase as on the stimulus phase. Indeed, this post-training recovery phase is the moment when the muscle overcompensates and grows. Thus, everything must be done to improve the quality of this recuperation phase, thanks to the best possible recovery, the best sleep and the best possible nutrition.
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