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Super
Slow
By Brad Wieners -
Outside Online For a stretch, it appeared as though slow-motion
strength training—better known simply as Super Slow—would take its
place alongside the fleeting exercise fads of yesteryear (OK, it was only two
years ago—but it seems like forever). The claims sounded outrageous: Spend
just 20 to 30 minutes, twice a week, doing traditional lifts at the speed of
continental drift, and you'll build strength 50 percent faster than you would
with conventional resistance training, kick your metabolism into high gear,
reduce body fat, and raise your levels of HDL (the good cholesterol). When the
hype over Super Slow quickly died down to a murmur—for reasons to be
explained—people soon glommed on to the Next Big Thing (wobble boards,
anyone?).
But it turns out that a handful of curious athletes and
researchers stuck with Super Slow's program and, facing incredulity from their
peers, now swear by its effectiveness.
My own cynicism remained
intact until I began trying to crash into shape for an upcoming kayak
expedition that, if I hadn't been ready for it, could have become a lesson in
boat-bound misery. Fortunately, I ran into Renjit Varghese, 32, a largely
self-taught exercise trainer and owner of Time Labs, a new five-story downtown
Manhattan facility devoted to slow lifting. Born in Kerala, India, and raised
outside Cincinnati, Varghese has been slow-training former pro athletes and
business professionals for six years. Varghese contends that slow training is
superior to multiple-set, clean-and-jerk approaches because (1) it eliminates
the ballistic movements that cause many weight-room injuries; (2) strength
improvements come faster; (3) you spend far less time in the gym, leaving more
time for your sport; and (4) it's more preciseyou keep a record not of the
number of reps, but of the exact amount of time your muscles are stressed,
known as "time under load," or TUL.
After following Varghese's program
for six months, I realized that at least some of Super Slow's claims are legit:
I shed ten pounds and toned up my legs, chest, and arms. During my ten-day
kayak trip above the Arctic Circle in Norway, I found I could pull through the
chop for hours at a stretch. My body recovered faster between paddling days,
and I even had better control of my breathinga welcome asset when I came close
to panicking in rough, freezing seas.
The idea for Super Slow came in
1982, when Ken Hutchins, a 50-year-old entrepreneur from Conroe, Texas,
pioneered the technique after conducting a study at the University of Florida
Medical School. Armed with $3.5 million from the Nautilus Corporation, Hutchins
sought to devise a weight-training regimen that increased the bone density of
retirement-age women who had osteoporosis by building their muscles and
improving their circulation without harming their joints. On a hunch, Hutchins
had the women lift relatively heavy weights very slowly over extended periods.
It worked. Some of the women in the study actually dispensed with their walkers
and took up ballroom dancing again.
Convinced he'd hit on a
breakthrough program suitable for all ages, Hutchins published a 1989 how-to
manual, Super Slow: The Ultimate Exercise Protocol, and began building
his own custom exercise equipment.
The word spread, and by the dawn of
the 21st century athletes of all types (and fitness trend-watchers) had
embraced the idea. At the elite level, 20-year-old professional trials biker
Jeremy VanSchoonhoven took up slow training during last year's off-season.
After three months of slo-mo lifting, VanSchoonhoven had put on seven pounds of
lean muscle. "This sounds ridiculous, but my whole workout is only about 15
minutes long, once a week," he says. "But now I can compete longer at a top
level, and I make fewer mistakes late in competitions." His increased strength
helped him place 16ththe highest finish ever for an Americanat this year's UCI
World Championships.
Last summer, Jason Watson, 30, a Washington State
Patrol SWAT team member, took home seven swimming medals from the Can-Am
Police-Fire Games after slow training, sometimes only once a week, under Greg
Anderson of Seattle's Ideal Exercise. While such results are tempting,
beginners should take note: This efficiency involves a sadistic level of
intensity. At first, Watson had to pop a Tums before each workout just to keep
from puking.
Super Slow is not without its critics. "I don't like it,"
says fitness consultant and six-time Ironman champ Dave Scott. "Especially if
you're an endurance athlete. Imagine you're this lean runner strained under
this huge, unnecessary load. You come to the gym, you're already fatigued, and
now you have to drop your weights 20 pounds to do just one rep: How do you stay
motivated? It can be psychologically destructive."
Wary of the
opinions expressed by road warriors like Scott, I nevertheless signed up to be
trained by Varghese, following Ken Hutchins's original protocols. According to
Hutchins, each exercise should be 10/5 per repthat is, ten seconds on the
positive contraction, or push, and five on the return, or negative contraction.
(By contrast, a typical rep might be 1/1, 2/4, or 4/4.)
During my
workouts, I do exactly one set of as many reps as I can until my muscles fail
completely. At the end of each rep, Varghese tells me to make the transition
from easing the load down to pushing it back up imperceptibly. Any faster and
I'm using momentum to cheat. All along, Varghese reminds me to take controlled,
quick breaths: "Pant like a sprinter." Holding my breath, he tells me, will
just make me dizzy. At the end of the set, my muscles feel torched by a fresh,
white-hot rush of lactic acid.
Because of slow lifting's difficultyone
Super Slow chest press can be harder than ten quick onesthe program suffers a
high rate of attritionanother reason it's no longer the fitness flavor of the
moment. Wayne Westcott, fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in
Quincy, Massachusetts, has conducted two studies on slow lifting. The results,
published in the June 2001 Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical
Fitness, indicated that, yes, single-set slow lifters realized a 50 percent
greater increase in strength over eight to ten weeks than did those lifting
weights at a faster pace. However, only two of Westcott's 147 test subjects
opted to continue the slow-lifting regimen.
"The psychological aspect
is just as important for a successful fitness program, and this was just too
tough," says Westcott, who adds that slow lifting is perhaps best applied as a
plateau buster. "Do it for six weeks. But then return to what you're more
comfortable with week in and week out."
Positive testimonials and my
success with slow lifting aside, Westcott and Scott do have a point. The happy
medium may be to see it not as strength training's silver bullet, but rather as
a valuable addition to your arsenal of fitness techniques. Periodically fold it
into your existing routine (see "The Slow-Motion Workout," below) and you'll
soon reap the performance rewards. "There's this kind of undercurrent in Super
Slow circles that almost makes us sound antisports," says Ideal Exercise's
Anderson. "But the point of its high intensity is to give you more time to
play, and better results when you do."
The Slow-Motion
Workout 
Use this six week
slow-training program to bust out of a midseason plateau, or as a ten-minute
preseason strategy for building strength and stamina. To get started, grab a
stopwatch, find a gym with strength training machines for the exercises listed
below (free weights are too dangerous), and enlist a partner to clock you. For
each exercise, record the amount of weight used and your time under load
(TUL)the elapsed time from when you start the exercise to when you can no
longer continue. When choosing a weight for each exercise for the first time,
select an amount that allows you to reach muscle failure in no less than two
minutes.
Start by breathing deeply and engaging the weight so it barely
starts to move. Now complete the positive phase of the movement over five to
ten seconds, until your joints nearly lock out. Pause momentarily at the upper
turnaround and then reverse direction, taking five to ten seconds to lower the
weight. At the lower turnaround, slow down further, so that the weight hardly
touches the stack, and then start the next repetition. Focus on moving
gracefully, not forcefully, continuing until it becomes impossible to move the
load. When, after time, TUL reaches two minutes, increase the load by 10
percent.
Give yourself a minimum of 48 hours' rest between workouts.
And it's a good idea to lay off slow strength training a week or two prior to a
major competition. At the same time, wait 48 hours after an all-day ride or
backcountry ski, and up to seven days after a triathlon, before resuming Super
Slow training.
Be sure to breathe continuously throughout the set with
controlled breaths. "Every one of our clients has said that learning to breathe
throughout the exercises has helped them remain calm and strong under
pressure," says Varghese.
BEGINNER
ROUTINE
(First Two Weeks)
TUL goal: 2 minutes per
exercise Frequency: 2 times/week
Leg press
Leg curl
Chest
press
Lat pulldown
Abdominal machine
THE ROUTINE
(Weeks Three to
Six)
TUL goal: 2 minutes per exercise
Frequency: 2 times/week
off-season: 3 times/week
Alternate A and B routines on successive
days
A. Leg press
Chest
press
Shoulder press
Triceps extension
B. Leg curl
Calf raise
Lat
pulldown
Compound row
Biceps curl
(for more workouts see
www.timelabs.us) |
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