THE FIRST DEFINITION OF EXERCISE
By Ken Hutchins

You have, perhaps, never heard exercise formally defined unless you attended my presentation at the November-1989 Nautilus® Seminar in Dallas, the September-1991 Strength Fitness Systems Workshop in Naperville, Illinois, or the October-1991 Super Slow Workshop in Maitland, Florida. [Exception: It is possible that some readers may have heard me or Ellington Darden state The Definition from the presentation notes.] Yes, you may have read the guidelines for exercise policy statements rendered by organizations like the American College of Sports Medicine, and you might have encountered a feeble expression labeled a definition in an exercise physiology textbook, but none of these has ever qualified as a formal definition that complies with consistent academic conventions in physics, chemistry, math, and related classical science.

Why Define?

Repeating what I have belabored for over ten years and in accordance with the strict grammarian, Richard Mitchell: a word that means everything means nothing. When early man uttered “ugh,” what did it mean? It could mean anything and/or everything, therefore nothing.

For a usable language, each word’s meaning must be delimited. In fact, to define actually means to delimit meaning or to give meaning a bounds. We define a word more, not by stating what it represents, but more by restricting what it means. To de-fine is to say what a word does not mean.

Modern science is distinguished by two important traits. Science requires rigidly-controlled experimental method and rigorously-exacting and consistent language to describe the procedures and outcome of the method.

The supreme example of exactness in language is found in mathematics. A mathematician defines a concept such as point in geometry in such a manner that leaves you no latitude for confusing it with some other entity. Point is defined by delimiting meaning, by strictly excluding all other possibilities.

The Pythagoreans came to power 2500 years ago. They left a legacy of exacting mathematical language. But the Pythagoreans were not scientists. They expressed and imposed a strong disdain for experimental method. They reasoned that all that was knowable or useful was derivable from logical thought and mathematical language.

We now see the opposite situation in exercise physiology. Physiologists are aficionados of experimental method yet they possess no exacting language for exercise. What is more, a definition is discouraged. To restrict meaning is to discriminate nondescript activity from activity that is controlled so to be objectively measured and assessed. Though scientifically beneficial, such discrimination confronts personalities who have emotional attachments to the seemingly-infinite variety of indulged nondescript activities. In short, to formally define exercise risks alienation of almost anyone in defense of his pet activity.

It may be argued – however weakly – that experimental method eventually refines a definition of exercise. On the contrary, experimental method is grossly compromised in the absence of a formal definition. A formal definition is of critical importance to experimental method. Particularly when dealing with human subjects, a control group is often required. The definition of control group is interdependent on the exercise definition. To define exercise by what it is not, is to define all else as non-exercise – hence, control group. The converse of this is yet-more pertinent: Without a formal definition of exercise, you can not distinguish control group.

I find it paradoxical that such fanatical buffs for controlled studies are so reluctant to embrace definitional controls.
Our Formative Years

Only recently did I realize the formative effect that my Nautilus experience imposed. It was an experience that few people obtained and even fewer appreciated. The opportunity to work in the strict environment created by Arthur Jones was a tremendous improbability. That I survived ten years amidst turbulent forces and pressures is of yet greater improbability. Even so, a thousand like individuals might have experienced my career without profiting in one unique way. I was unknowingly and gradually forced to develop and refine a definition of exercise.

In the beginning, we – including Arthur and everyone associated with him – sought the same thing. We wanted bigger muscles as well as a safer, faster method to get them.

Arthur’s elaborate mechanics fascinated us. But the mechanics were merely the first step of control – control we did not intend or at first acknowledge.

We (Arthur) first built a Pullover machine. Although it simultaneously mimicked the chin-up, the bent-arm pullover, and the bent-over row (conventional exercises), it unavoidably tracked muscular function. This represented the first level of control.

Then the Nautilus Cam was required to modulate resistance. Placing subjects in the original Pullover machine using round (no cam) drive pulleys, moderate resistance in the fully-rotated, finished position became excessively heavy in the stretch. Since the machine provided a flat resistance curve (no variation) it was obvious that muscular strength varied dramatically from one position to another. Application of the Nautilus Cam imposed the second level of control.

[Thus began the commercial exploitation of variable resistance. Variable resistance is hawked to imply a quality otherwise missing. On the contrary, most exercise suffers from excessively radical and random variation. At least this was true before the advent of Super Slow Protocol. With respect to conformity with Super Slow Protocol, almost all commercially-produced exercise equipment possesses incorrect resistance curves resultant from high-tech cams.]

Our infatuation with the elaborate mechanics in Nautilus equipment set the stage for a reappraisal of our exercise. We developed a disdain for the athletic and coaching community and naturally justified our position as more intellectual and sophisticated. Though correct, this imparted another distinction: We noticed that exercise was not nonsensical horseplay. It had nothing to do with athletics or sports – at least nothing special that was not just as applicable to the functional ability of the common man and woman. Exercise was serious stuff to be conducted in a controlled atmosphere. For whatever emotional or practical and safety reasons, we disallowed frivolity in the gym. We became intolerant of irrational and traditional notions of exercise. This represented the third level of control.

Simultaneously with most of the foregoing, Arthur and others sought and found better exercise techniques. To do so required more serious and responsible use of every second of a workout. That time was most efficiently applied represented another level of control.

Eventually we found ourselves in a clinically-controlled environment training elderly women. Super Slow developed out of the necessity to control the efficacy and safety of loading their musculatures. This yielded a yet-higher level of control.

Thus followed friction reduction, cam refinement, control of head and neck movement, strict avoidance of workout distractions, and other attentions to detail.

These controls shaped our perception of exercise. Coming from a hodgepodge mentality that anything you like to do is exercise, we began to make distinctions. We saw that haphazard approaches to loading muscle through sports activities was inefficient. We began to appreciate the illusion that much apparent strength improvement was actually skill acquisition. [I would never have made these distinctions without Ellington Darden's clarification of Motor Learning concepts. Without his presence and encouragement, I would have been intellectually isolated. Most of my work would have remained undeveloped and transitory notions.] We slowly came to focus our attention away from sports skills toward muscular/joint function, since the real issue in exercise is mechanical control of muscular loading.

I was then prepared to acknowledge the Exercise vs Recreation argument. Once I developed it to its present level, I realized that I was on the threshold of an intellectual breakthrough. I grew confident that exercise could be exactingly and comprehensively defined.

To briefly summarize my formative experience: Over a 20-year evolution, my attitude transformed FROM scorn or apathy toward the possibility of a definition – since it appeared a vast, non-manipulative, subjective concept possessing little or no tangible bounds – TO a revelation that exercise does possess objective limits on which to hang useful principles and an eventual definition.
Consideration Outline

I first stated the rudiments of the Exercise vs Recreation argument at a Nautilus Seminar in 1982. At the behest of Ellington Darden, I developed it to its refined degree within the following year. In so doing, I believed that this argument provided the long-sought formal definition for exercise. Although Exercise vs Recreation were a crucial clarification toward this fulfillment, there were other required and simultaneous considerations.

In 1987, I developed the following outline, The Simultaneous Considerations for a Definition of Exercise. Note that several entries are set-off in italics. These are the only areas studied or emphasized by most so-called experts in exercise. Most are not aware of or particular about the remainder:
1. Exercise vs Recreation
2.Mechanical (Newtonian) Physics
•Force •Movement
•Time
•Lever
•Acceleration
•Friction
3.Intensity/Inroad/Recovery
4.Safety vs Danger
I explained Exercise vs Recreation in the Chapter 13 of Super Slow®: The Ultimate Exercise Protocol.

The second consideration, Mechanical Physics, was partly covered in The Cam, Chapter 14. The Cam is primarily concerned with lever modulation. Acceleration was discussed in Chapter 5. Friction was discussed in the Chapter 6. Nevertheless, thousands of pages are devoted to any one of these subjects in texts where their intricate subtleties are detailed.

Intensity, Inroad, and Recovery are overlapping biological issues. Insights thus far have been logical extensions – primarily by Arthur Jones – of classical biological principles. Further insights are promising due to the control and observation offered by MedX® testing tools.

The Safety vs Danger consideration is particularly concerned with and derives from the considerations of Acceleration, Force, Inroad, and Recovery. It at least overlaps with all the other considerations.
The Definition
Exercise is a process whereby the body performs work of a demanding nature, in accordance with muscle and joint function, in a clinically-controlled environment, within the constraints of safety, meaningfully loading the muscular structures to inroad their strength levels to stimulate a growth mechanism within minimum time.
Embellishment

Super Slow Protocol is the exercise protocol that best represents and physically expresses The First Definition of Exercise. Super Slow offers the ultimate in control from every perspective. It offers the greatest benefits and the ultimate safety. Super Slow is exemplary for The Definition. In other words, Super Slow is definitive for exercise.
Outrage

There are now hundreds of universities and colleges in the United States granting degrees in exercise science. There are approximately 70 multi-million-dollar companies selling exercise equipment. There are dozens of agencies offering certification courses in exercise instruction. Hundreds of millions of dollars of public and private funds are spent yearly on research regarding exercise as it relates to physical therapy, fitness, and general medical concerns. It is outrageous that no one in these areas has yet offered a scientific definition to state what they are talking about!

[I predict that some unappreciative individuals will complain that such detail expressed in Chapters 13, 14, and 15 of Super Slow®: The Ultimate Exercise Protocol is unnecessarily tedious and technical. On the contrary: The detail with which we understand and can control a cam and its lever effects to load muscle is the essence of The Definition and the tangible bounds of its intellectual structure.]
Super Slow is a registered trademark owned by Ken Hutchins. Nautilus is the registered trademark of Nautilus Sports/Medical, INC. MedX is the registered trademark of MedX Equipment, INC.

EXERCISE VS. RECREATION
By Ken Hutchins

Exercise vs. Recreation is the most important and basic concept in exercise philosophy. However, it is rarely acknowledged or applied in any area of fitness or medicine.

Perhaps the most destructive as well as the most misunderstood concept in fitness today among researchers, the commercial health facilities, and the general public alike is the confusion of exercise and recreation.

We accept that both exercise and recreation are important in the overall scheme of fitness, and they overlap to a great degree. But to reap maximum benefits of both or either they must first be well-defined and then be segregated in practice.

Exercise, in a nutshell, is a process whereby the body performs work of a demanding nature. [Here, we use the first 13 words of the complete Definition as detailed in Chapter 15 of Super Slow®: The Ultimate Exercise Protocol. For convenience in this discussion we can temporarily dispense with the remaining qualifiers.] The key word here is “demanding.” If an activity is not demanding, then it does not qualify as exercise.

If muscular loading is not meaningful to render momentary muscular failure within 1-3 minutes then the activity is not demanding.

Through exercise we are sending an ultimatum to the human body: “Your protective margins are inadequate. Adapt, enhance, improve, grow, increase, . . . or you will not survive.” This is perceived as a threat by the body, although it can be effected safely through Super Slow Exercise.

Six Factors of Physical Fitness
1.Muscular Size, Strength and Endurance
2.Bone Strength
3.Cardiovascular Efficiency
4.Enhanced Flexibility
5.A Contribution to Body Leanness
6.Increased Resistance to Injury
Through exercise we hope to see a continuous improvement in these six factors of physical fitness. If we do not see this improvement, then exercise is either piecemeal or non-existent.

First and foremost, we hope to increase muscle size, strength, and endurance. We mention these together because, in a matter of speaking, they are one-in-the-same.

And if we can assume the body to be logical then bone strengthening should result from muscular strengthening.

Perhaps cardiovascular fitness is then desired. Realize that the only efficient route to working the vascular system is to find the best method to strengthen the muscles. The vascular system exists primarily to service the muscles. Improved muscular strength should strongly correlate with improved vascular efficiency.

The fourth factor is enhanced flexibility. Note that I am careful not to say “increased flexibility.” Increased flexibility is contraindicated for many people. And enhanced flexibility may indeed mean less flexibility in some cases.

The next factor is a contribution to body leanness. Many people exercise with the mistaken belief that exercise burns a significant number of extra calories. One pound of human fat can support the energy demands of running 35-45 miles, probably more. This would require the average man to run for 6-8 hours. He would burn the calories he could easily ingest in as many minutes. If one exercises only to burn extra calories his time is not worth much.

Many charts and computer programs in aerobic equipment suggest that hundreds of calories are burned as a result of their respective activities. These references fail to distinguish between the number of calories expended during the activity AND the EXTRA calories expended as a result of the activity. Realize that to assess this you must first subtract out the calories you would have burned as a result of your typical daily routine without the respective activity.

Most of fat-loss emphasis depends on caloric control. Exercise remains essential, however, for the purpose of minimally maintaining and hopefully increasing muscle size and strength. Muscle is the primary modifiable factor that affects your basal metabolism. Muscle is the secondary determinant _ only after your bones _ of your shape (figure). And only by strength training do you impose discriminate weight loss. Without emphasis on muscular strength, you lose weight but indiscriminately. You lose more than fat _ your muscles, even vital organ tissue as well. Other activities often construed as exercise do not impose the desired discriminate weight loss. [Please read Exercise . . . and its Role in Reducing Fat - available from Super Slow Systems.]

The last factor, increased resistance to injury, is a bonus. It should follow from the first five factors. It should go without saying that these factors should lead to safer movement in any activity.

Recreation, on the other hand is a different matter altogether. It is fun, pastime activities, a diversion from daily routine. And recreation is very important to our mental health.

If we surveyed the infinite variety of activities that might be recreational to somebody, they would fall somewhere on this imaginary continuum. At one end are those activities that impart little or no exercise effect; and at the opposite end are those more-athletic activities that possess a more-dramatic exercise effect, though that effect from recreational activities is always marginal and incomplete.

All of these activities or topics are recreation or can be to some individuals in some situations:

Checkers, jogging, skiing, walking, baseball, football, basketball, swimming, wrestling, hockey, rugby, reading, gardening, darts, bowling, music, sledding, hunting, flying, skydiving, racing, sex, eating, cycling, knitting, drawing, writing, calculus, archery, golf, SCUBA, television, cricket, racquetball, tennis, astronomy, archeology, horseshoes, dancing, weight lifting, bird watching,

flying kites, model trains, photography, mountain climbing, catching alligators, mowing the grass, building exercise equipment, a job of any kind, tracking progress in an exercise program or almost any activity under the sun….

None of them are exercise, per se. Exercise may be a reason for performing some of them, but in all cases exercise takes a remote back seat to hundreds of psychological and sociological priorities. Just because an activity elevates your heart rate or elevates your blood pressure or fatigues you or induces labored breathing or makes you sore or makes you sweat, do not assume that you have meaningfully productive and worthwhile exercise. You can have all of these exercise effects without qualifying for exercise. Exercise effect does not assume effective exercise. The essence of exercise assumes a purpose of physical improvement. If the activity does not promote a physical improvement — primarily correlated to increased muscular strength — then it is not exercise.

The confusion regarding exercise and recreation can be traced to our beginnings. Certainly, when our prehistoric ancestors performed any activity, there was a mixture of purpose. An activity served as defense, combat, education, honing survival skills, recreation, sport, competition, as well as some degree of exercise. It is no wonder that we come down to a 20th-century man and woman who cannot distinguish between the two.

The simultaneous development of exercise and recreation leads us to three wrong assumptions: that any movement or activity in and of itself constitutes exercise; that recreation constitutes exercise; and that exercise should be fun. You often hear these popular though incorrect statements in the literature and discussions supposedly regarding exercise.

We have recently recognized that there are five distinct differences between exercise and recreation.

Five Distinctions Between Exercise & Recreation
Exercise Recreation
Logical Instinctive
Universal Personal
General Specific
Physical Mental
Not Fun Fun
Logical/Instinctive: Exercise is a logical strategy to dupe the protective mechanisms of the body. Properly applied, exercise requires a clinically-controlled setting to check our instincts. Exercise necessarily pits the intellect against the instincts. Recreation is illogical. It is instinctual. It is whimsical. It is activity that we would prefer to do.

Universal/Personal: Exercise is based on the muscular and joint functions of the human body, and all members of the species, Homo Sapiens, have the same muscular and joint functions. Therefore, the general principles and application of exercise are the same for every human being on the planet. Exercise is therefore universal. In a general sense, exercise is the same for everybody.

Recreation, on the other hand, is personal, and very so. The activity you choose as recreation may be different than that I choose, and this is as it should be.

General/Specific: With regard to skill acquisition, exercise is general. Improved strength, endurance, and resistance to injury are general improvements throughout the human body that will contribute to the performance of any activity to which the improved body is applied.

But skill, per se, is specific to the task performed. Proficiency in a task is improved by exact rehearsal of the task. In the last twenty years much has been publicized about specificity in exercise. There is no such thing as specificity in exercise. Specificity is the exclusive domain of motor learning discipline. (See Chapter 9 of Super Slow®: The Ultimate Exercise Protocol.)

Physical/Mental: There are many intellectual aspects of exercise. These include the learning of the exercise movements, motivation, and concentration to achieve adequate intensity. And I grant that there are dramatic psychological benefits from the exercise. But the initial reasons for performing exercise are purely physical.

The initial purpose of recreation is mental health.

And if exercise is performed properly in a clinically-controlled environment, then it is not fun. Exercise is not supposed to be fun. If it is fun, then you should suspect that something is wrong.

Recreation is supposed to be fun. Fun is the first requirement of recreation.

There are three other requirements of recreation that we owe ourselves to acknowledge:
• Are we aware of the dangers of the chosen recreational activity?
• Do we accept the dangers?
• And are we willing to prepare to protect ourselves from those dangers through the process of exercise?
The mistake is that most of us attempt to condition ourselves through the recreational activity.

As a result, more than 20-million injuries were sustained last year as a result of exercise, recreational, and fitness activities in this country. That is more casualties, if you will, sustained in one year than the United States has sustained in all wars to date. James Michener, who originally provided us these figures (back when the annual figure was 17-million), states that football alone injures 86% of all high school participants and 28 students are killed each year.

Now, if high school physics could expect to maim 86% of the students each year and kill 25 or 30, I suspect that physics would not remain in the curriculum. And if 20-million people were injured in this country as a result of some dread disease such as polio or tuberculosis or AIDS or as the result of some criminal element, we would organize and band together. We would host telethons, do research, raise money, deliver speeches, and hold rallies to stamp out and denounce the villain. But exercise? . . . that’s OK.

And remember, most of these activities are performed in the pursuit of health.

Along the same vein, it was recently stated that if we could instantaneously exact from every American a number that represents his fitness status on a scale from -10 to +10 and average them all together, then the average would be about -4. And if everyone stopped whatever they considered to be exercise and healthy activity, then the average would rise to zero.

Important Semantics

Exercise has immense potential benefit – probably more than what most of us suspect though we purport to sing its praises. But I have little confidence that more than a handful of Americans are reaping these benefits.

Most of the problem stems from a misunderstanding of what exercise can do. Here we have an important play on words involving four words: Do, Stimulate, Prevent and Produce. It goes like this:

Activity serving as exercise can Do only three things:
1. Activity, if it is intense-enough to qualify as exercise, serves to stimulate. This stimulus is that ultimatum that we discussed earlier.
2. Activity, whether it qualifies as exercise or not, carried beyond the minimum amount required to illicit the stimulus; serves to retard, minimize, or totally prevent the beneficial improvements we seek. Prevention of benefits is the second thing that exercise can do.
3. Activity, whether it qualifies as exercise or not, can produce something directly. And it can directly produce only one thing – something totally undesirable – injury.
Therefore, exercise does not produce benefits. The human body produces the benefits. The body grows. The body adapts. The body enhances and increases.

And the body produces benefits IF the stimulus of exercise is present; and IF the body is then permitted adequate rest, nutrition, and perhaps most-importantly, time, in order to produce said improvements; and IF the body is not destroyed in the stimulation process.

This is our policy: Understand the difference between exercise and recreation. Do not try to make exercise enjoyable. Do not try to make recreation exercise.

If you confuse and mix exercise and recreation, you grossly compromise any forthcoming physical benefits of the exercise; you destroy a large degree of the fun that recreation should bestow; and you make both more dangerous than they need be. Accept both for what they are.

If you can place exercise and recreation in their proper perspective, the quality of your life will markedly improve.

Recently, an article appeared in a local paper trumpeting the arrival of a 70,000 square foot gym – just a few miles from the Carlsbad SuperSlow Zone – featuring stone floors and cascading water replete with 100 cardio machines, each with it own plasma TV and 36 channels. Other amenities include lap pools, aqua aerobics, racquetball courts, basketball and volleyball courts, and spacious studios for spinning, Pilates, yoga, boxing, and gravity workouts. They offer acupuncture and massage. You can even have your golf swing analyzed, get a facial, a haircut, a manicure, and a suntan.

Fanfare notwithstanding, for us as new SuperSlow Zone owners, strikingly absent from the article is any reference to focused client attention and achieving results, which are the real value proposition for any workout regimen.

Having the physical stamina to really improve your golf game; having the energy to keep up with your kids; having the strength to do the things you enjoy – all require results from your regimen. These results are best achieved with personal supervision by certified SuperSlow Instructors:

• Who know how to get the results you want in the fastest possible time by creating the workout your body will respond to best.
• In private and distraction free, climate-controlled environment.
• On the ideal exercise equipment.

“Sandy and I understand that some people find great success with big health clubs, and for some, just the prestige of belonging to a gym like that is like being a kid with an annual pass to Disneyland®; all the sights, sounds and activity can be very exciting. But ask yourself how often do you go? And ask yourself if you are getting the results you want”, says co-owner Thom Tombs. Throngs of card-carrying members pay monthly dues for access to seldom-used equipment. The sad truth is that those monthly fees help drive the proliferation and success of mammoth clubs. As a matter of fact, they bank on the fact that you won’t show up, because most people quit after six weeks when the newness wears off and the results don’t show-up.

Several of our neighboring stores offer many of the services mentioned in that article, but you won’t find those things inside SuperSlow Zone. However, what you will experience immediately upon stepping over the threshold is the calm, serene retreat from the stresses in your life, if only for a little while. Co-owner Sandy Deveze explains that one-on-one exercise the SuperSlow way means the focus is always on you and your goals.

After you push your body through a challenging workout, complete relaxation and sense of well being are your immediate reward, but the real pay-off comes later when your body responds to your hard work resulting in physical improvement. Thom says, “Sometimes we have to remind people to breathe – do you think a bad day at the office even enters into the workout room?”

We’re located in a neighborhood that caters to busy moms and their families. Sometimes the kids sit and read in front or in the consultation room while Mom works out. That’s important, because moms – often the engine driver of the family – generally end up neglecting themselves; they focus on how the kids are doing in school: homework, football practice or karate class or the next soccer game or the next play date. Mom’s love the SuperSlow Zone’s brief workouts, because it allows them to fit time to do something for themselves.

We’ve only been open for a few months, but being able to see and feel the changes in our own bodies and seeing visible changes in others has been extremely satisfying,” says Thom. “Heck, some of my muscles even have muscles, now!”

Success Stories from SuperSlow Zone in Carlsbad, California

As the help desk manager for his company, Vince is always on-call. As many computer support professionals know – whether it’s responding to a virus outbreak, a server crash, or because the guy down the hall needs to print a document for a waiting customer – minutes count! His on-call status made it nearly impossible to find the time to run or bike, then cool down, and then shower before work.

With his wedding day fast approaching, Vince wanted to look and feel better. Initially he was hesitant about starting SuperSlow, because he had his “usual workout routine,” but came to realize that SuperSlow was something he could do before work without a huge time commitment. “I love how quick the workout is and the personal, one-on-one coaching. It helps me to work hard and I’ve really noticed that my upper body strength has increased, and I’m starting to look more filled-out in my clothes,” says Vince.

“Vince may have initially been more skeptical of SuperSlow strength training than some of our other clients, but both he and his new wife are pleased with the results. And he keeps coming back,” says Thom.

We have an amazing female client who just turned 50. She came to us with quite a remarkable life history – it seems she has had more than her fair share of curve balls.

Here are but a few of the challenges she is working through to recover and recapture a satisfying, functional life:
1. She sustained injuries in a car accident that contributed to unwanted weight gain.
2. Then, approximately five years ago, a surgery went awry.
3. Since then, she has endured five corrective surgeries – the fifth most recently.
4. Following the surgeries, she started experiencing the symptoms associated with menopause.

After completing just 28 SuperSlow sessions, her husband – a mathematician at one of the largest research facilities in San Diego – needed only to use his powers of observation to see her remarkable changes.

Her list of notable improvements includes:
1. More muscle and definition.
2. Improved posture.
3. Feeling and looking more like she wants to look.

Her husband’s accolades and encouragement along with the way she is feeling and feeling about herself keeps her motivated to continue keeping her appointments before her typical 12-hour workday.

Business success of a nearby store owner left him with the perception he did not have enough time to workout, resulting in an expanding waistline and vanishing energy for life. Fortunately, when our SuperSlow Zone opened up so close to his store, time was no longer an obstacle. Our convenient location coupled with 20-minute exercise sessions by appointment fit into his schedule and the myth of “not enough time” evaporated.

Still as busy as ever his weekly workout appointments allow him to get out of the store to do something for himself. Read his recent email to us below.

In his own words:
I just wanted to let you know how happy I am with the results of my SuperSlow workouts. Since beginning the program about 2 months ago, I have really noticed an increase in my strength and stamina. I feel better and I’m starting to notice muscles when I look in the mirror!

As a father of two young boys, and a self-employed store owner, I don’t have a lot of time to devote to working out. The SuperSlow technique has allowed me to squeeze a full workout into just a couple of 20 minute sessions a week. And now, with my increased strength, when I play with my boys, it’s not such a strain anymore.

I want to thank the whole SuperSlow crew for their incredible support.

Sincerely,
Jordan Shapiro

Weight loss (fat loss!) is a big, national…and might be a personal…issue.
In the first week of August 2008, a national headline was “A federal agency says a study from the journal, Obesity, predicts that the US is heading toward 100% overweight.” Yikes!

SuperSlow® strength training can promise that you will gain muscle and strength, when you apply your skill. Some clients ‘lose weight’ (meaning increase their muscle mass and lose fat) and inches without changing their eating…but this is rare.

80% to 90% of weight loss (fat loss) comes from changing your eating habits…and keeping them changed!

Several SuperSlow Zones® are now offering SuperSlow Zone® + Transitions™
for weight (fat) loss and optimal health.

Do You Have Any Of These Questions?:

1. Why can’t I lose weight (fat)?
2. When I do lose, why can’t I keep the weight (fat) off?
3. Why does it get harder to lose weight (fat)?
4. Will this program work for me?

SuperSlow Zone® is pleased to work with our strategic partner, Transitions Lifestyle System™, for the perfect combination of healthy eating for weight (fat) loss and/or optimal health plus SuperSlow® strength training….to achieve and maintain your ideal ‘muscle-fat ratio.’ [Click here to see/read client results.]

SuperSlow Zone® + Transitions™ is:

• SuperSlow® strength training plus a food-based, educational lifestyle change, which includes natural, non-caffeine supplements to kick-start faster weight (fat) loss.

What Is Transitions Lifestyle™?

• It is a food-based, educational lifestyle change, which includes natural, non-caffeine supplements to kick-start faster weight (fat) loss.
• A 6 week class follow by a second 6 weeks of either coaching or class.
• It is back by science and research.
• Transitions™ + SSZ = the results you want.
• Real people really do it!

Transitions™ PLUS SuperSlow®…Who Is It For?

• All ages.
• You have those pesky 5 to 10 pounds you want to get rid of…permanently.
• You have several pounds (moderate-to-a lot) you want gone.
• You have a medical or health concern that ‘getting the weight off’ will substantially help (benefit?).
• You have ‘no diet experience’…you have ‘too much diet experience’…either way, this is for you.
• You have ‘inches you want to lose’ and, short of sawing them off…you just want them gone so that your clothes fit better…and for you to feel better.
• You want a better ‘muscle-fat’ ratio = fit better in your clothes; feel better in your body.
• “Learn how to eat better…for life” has been whispered in your ear…by you!

If you have been desiring to…or perhaps struggling with how… to eat better, to be trim, strong and healthy, SuperSlow Zone® + Transitions™ might be for you.

The word ‘lifestyle’ is a common reference these days…what does it really mean to you? The simple truth is, what you do daily = your lifestyle. SuperSlow Zone® is a twice-a-week work out for you…or may become your work out. When you add healthy, balanced, eating daily, and combine it with SuperSlow®, you have simplicity and peace of mind because you are living well – living strong.

The Proof is in the Results!

Results #1: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words…

Deb Dereshkevich Certified Transitions Lifestyle Coach	Brenda & Gabor McLaughlin Before and After

Results #2: Deborah P’s Story…

Read below an unsolicited SuperSlow Zone® + Transitions™ story

[Deb is 45 years old, a CPA and a Winter Park, FL, SuperSlow Zone® client.]

Hi everyone! I had to tell you all about the new me! I am soooo excited about the way I look and feel that I felt the need to spread the good news about Transitions Lifestyles™ and SuperSlow Zone®.

I have tried many, many exercise programs and diets over the years, but I have never felt so healthy and looked so good due to my last 6 weeks in this program.

As you may know, I gained some weight after I quit smoking a year and 1/2 ago. I went from 140 to 165, gradually, even though I ran 5ks with Rhonda and was working out at home at least 4 days per week. My eating habits were not that bad – I had switched additions addictions from nicotine to sweets, but I didn’t eat a whole bag of cookies at one sitting! Nevertheless, the scale kept creeping up, and my clothes no longer were fitting. Yikes!

I was devastated! [Click here to read her entire message.]

Results #3: Two SSZ Owner and Client Result Stats…

SuperSlow Zone® Winter Park, FL
Client Results for Transitions™
Healthy Eating Program for Weight Loss and Optimal Health

SuperSlow Zone® Lone Tree, CO
Client Results for Transitions™
Healthy Eating Program for Weight Loss and Optimal Health

Ask your SuperSlow Zone® about their Transitions Lifestyle program. Soon to be available at most SuperSlow Zones®!

Our best,

Madeline

Madeline Ross – CEO SuperSlow Zone®, LLC

P.S. Click Here to Listen to Clients Results

Learn A Bit More About SuperSlow Zone® – Check Out My TV Interview By America’s PremierExperts® [2 Min.]

I hope you, or someone you send this to, will find it helpful in learning about SuperSlow Zone®.

If you have a crazy busy life and no time to exercise, we can help you GET FIT FAST. 20 minute workout, 2 times a week. That’s it!

Remember, if there isn’t one in your area, call me! Let’s get a SuperSlow Zone® near you.

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Ex-Disney Executive, Lee Cockerell, Speaks At A Special Event For SuperSlow Zone San Antonio, TX

SuperSlow Zone® San Antonio Features Ex-Disney Executive, Lee Cockerell, At Special Speaking Event

Harvey and Marjorie Mabry, SuperSlow Zone Master Developers for Bexar County (San Antonio), TX, and their staff, hosted a special event for about 50 people as a gift to their SuperSlow Zone clients, family, friends and community to hear international author and speaker, Lee Cockerell (www.LeeCockerell.com), former Executive Vice President of Operations for the Walt Disney World® Resort.

Lee’s topic was ‘management and leadership’ and is based on his book, Creating Magic…10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies From a Life at Disney. One of Lee’s major and lasting legacies was the creation of Disney Great Leader Strategies, which continues on as the primary resource for developing the 7000 leaders at Walt Disney World. His book is co-authored by the Disney Institute and is translated into ten languages. Madeline Ross, Founder and CEO of SuperSlow Zone, attended the event to honor the Mabrys and Mr. Cockerell.

“As the Senior Operating Executive for ten years at Walt Disney World® Resort, Lee led a team of 40,000 Cast Members and was responsible for the operations of 20 resort hotels, 4 theme parks, 2 water parks, a shopping & entertainment village and a sports and recreation complex,” Ross said. “Lee’s experiences closely parallel the career of Harvey Mabry who was President of Retailing at H-E-B Grocery, America’s 11th largest privately held corporation with 12 billion in gross revenues. It was wonderful to have two seasoned corporate leaders, Lee and Harvey, meet. Lee was very inspiring in that he, like myself and Harvey, has a commitment to continually grow and develop in management and leadership skills. Lee is a client of SuperSlow Zone® Windermere, FL so we all also have in common our passion for being fit and healthy…of course SuperSlow Zone® is core to this,” continued Ross.

Lee has lived a lifestyle of health and fitness and became a client of SuperSlow Zone® in January, 2010. As of April 2010, Lee has dropped 11 pounds and lost 6% body fat. These are pretty great results from a 20 minute work out, 2 times a week. “Everyone can do this work out,” said Lee. “Tremendous results from focus and concentration. I keep consistent with this because I have an appointment with a professional, certified SuperSlow Zone® Instructor. Who doesn’t have 20 minutes? Plus, I exercise in what I have on for the day. You can’t get more convenient than this. The way I think about it is, ‘go slow and save your life!’”

“Lee is not hired by SuperSlow Zone® to promote us,” said Ross. “He talks about SuperSlow Zone® in his blogs (blog.leecockerell.com), speeches, seminars, etc. because he, and his wife Priscilla, have achieved such great results in a very short time and continue to sustain great health. SuperSlow Zone® is one, critical part of this. As a leader, speaking in the US and abroad, he says what’s on his mind…and people of the world being fit and healthy is a BIG passion of Lee’s.”

For More info on SuperSlow Zone® visit www.SuperSlowZone.com

Madeline Ross
Founder/CEO
SuperSlow Zone, LLC
mross@superslowzone.com

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Ex-Disney Executive, Lee Cockerell, SSZ Body Comp Stats

Lee Cockerell’s Results From Doing SuperSlow Zone®

Lee, and his wife Priscilla, work out 20 minutes, 2 times a week…in their street clothes at SuperSlow Zone® Windermere, FL [ssepe_usa@superslowzone.com]

See Lee’s results to date below. Interview of Priscilla in next months EZine.

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The following pretends that you desire to become as fat as possible as quickly as possible. This, or course, is exactly opposite of what most of us desire from a program designed to enhance our appearances. By taking a backwards view of fat-loss principles—namely how to gain fat—we may obtain insights that normally go unappreciated. This is a picture I have painted for my clients for several years. Although it is written from a woman’s perspective it applies equally to men.

Pretending

You are a 40-year-old woman who needs money—big money. However, you must get big to get the big money.
A renowned movie producer contacted you and offered you one million tax-free dollars to star in his film about a circus fat lady. You accepted the role with one requirement in addition to your acting talent: You must weigh 300 pounds.
The problem is that you presently weigh only 150 and your part is to commence filming in six months.

The fact that you signed the contract presumes that you want the money enough to disregard the inconveniences of being so large at a height of five feet, six inches. You accept the problems of being hot incessantly, the discomfort of clothing, the disapproving looks of other people, difficulty moving, the health risks and the plastic repairs that will be required when you take the fat off, if you ever can. These are no small problems.

There are also the personal costs of your clothing and food to obtain and then maintain the size required for the part. All of these considerations are to be dealt with; however, one large doubt remains: Can you meet the producer’s six-month deadline? Can you gain 150 additional pounds of bodyweight—mostly fat? Do you, at least, possess the potential to store this much fat?

So you have heard that I had a advanced program for gaining fat and you seek my advice. I cannot actually predict your potential unless you tell me that you have been so large before. But assuming this is your first time, I really have no way of knowing your fat potential.

[Is not it strange that we are discussing potential fatness as though it were an asset like IQ or music or athletic ability?]
What I can do is design a regime to maximize your fat acquisition. I can induce you to acquire fat as fast as possible. What regime might you think this to be?

As I ask you this I expect to hear a most common answer. This answer is a natural conclusion, as most people possess a limited knowledge and experience considering the subject at all.

You guess that you expect me to coerce you to eat incessantly and eat the most fat-laden and calorie-rich foods to be found. [I also find this ironic, since most already-over-fat people deny that they eat too much or much at all.] I admit that this is step in the right direction, but that it will not encourage optimal utilization of your fat cells’ potential.

Different cells (tissues) of the body can be stimulated to respond in their own specialized way. In other words, what they are specialized to do can be exaggerated by a supernormal stimulation.

Muscle (skeletal) cells will maintain a norm of size and strength given their normal exposure to the normal demands of their normal environment. Above-normal stimulation—a higher intensity of work—stimulates muscle cells to become larger and stronger. That is, they adapt to do more of what they are specialized to do—produce force. Of course, being stimulated and being allowed to respond to the stimulation by the limitations of the body’s biological resources are two different things.

Certain epithelial cells on the finger, hand, and foot pads are thicker and tougher than the skin in other parts of the body because they are the first line of contact with abrasive surfaces, However, once exposed to a supernormally abrasive intensity they will thicken and toughen beyond their norms. Note that although a mere increase in the volume of abrasive activity may be deemed increased intensity, volume (and force) have limits beyond which the body loses more tissue per stimulation than it can replace between stimulations.

Bone has a similar stimulus-response mechanism although its specialization is for a different purpose.

Our issue here, however, is fat. Fat is a kind of specialized tissue. Other cells do indeed store energy to some extent, but with fat cells, the storage of energy in the form of lobular fat is its forte.

Fat cells are very efficient at storing energy. While muscle cells—the most active cells of the body—consume approximately 50 calories of energy per pound per day to passively exist, fat cells burn only 2 calories daily per pound.

And while muscle cells are growth responsive to intense activity—exercise— fat cells are oblivious to exercise. They have no exercise receptors whatsoever. This should be a sobering fact to all those excessive-compulsive types who religiously pump some parts of their bodies in the desperate attempt to force fat away.

But fat does indeed have receptors to some stimuli. The most effective of these stimuli induces fat cells to do what fat cells do best—store fat. And just what is this stimulus? . . . starvation!

Yes, if you want to make a fat cell grow you must alternately stimulate it with starvation, then provide the body with food that can be converted and stored as fat.

With exercise we desire to shock the body with an intensity it interprets as momentarily life threatening. The result is that the body gears up to meet a supposed survival demand.

With a dietary regimen designed to diminish fat, we do not desire to shock the body. If we reduce calories either too low or too fast, the body reacts conservatively to preserve fat, to become metabolically more efficiently—if it can—and to lie in ambush, so to speak, to grab any slightest foodstuff it can pack away—albeit after the body has converted it to fatty acids if not already in a suitable form.

Realize also that the fat storage process is very advanced in our species. If not, we would not have survived the last ice age. Indeed, those who could not respond to alternating spells of feast and famine with long-term fat storage did not survive. Such adaptive response also had to occur early in life. In today’s society our frustrations with overfatness become most marked with the onset of middle age. Back in the time of the last ice age (15,000 years ago), our present-day middle-aged man would have been considered an ancient. Few people lived until their 40s. Therefore, to survive, an individual must have acquired significant fat much earlier in life than we typically do now.

The regime I am about to explain, admittantly, is extreme and bizarre but I am trying to make a point of principle. Such clinical control is what research requires to be valid. Such clinical control is also the missing element from almost everyone’s personal dietary habit and exactly why most people fail to lose fat, although here we are attempting to do the opposite.

The regime is conducted in a controlled room—jail cell, hospital room, etc. At first, it continues for three days and then repeats:

Day 1 —Fast: Ingest nothing but water and vitamin pills

Day 2 —Fast: Ingest nothing but water and vitamin pills

Day 3 —Feast: Awaken at 8 a.m. to eat. Continue eating all day, concentrating on low-fat foods (mostly complex carbohydrates with a modest amount of protein) until just before you go to bed at midnight. Then eat high-fat foods for your last-ditch attempt to saturate your digestive system. You naturally become drowsy, fall asleep, and we connect you to intravenous glucose to let sugar cruise through your body all night as you sleep.

Day 4 —Repeat cycle

Note that we used low-fat foods for most of the feast day of a fat-gain program. Why?. . . Because we are interested in the body’s absorption of as many calories as possible. Since fat is the last food to leave the stomach, and since the fat in a meal greatly determines your satiety, we want to avoid fat until the last possible burst of calories into the system. Although fatty foods carry the greatest number of calories, they would merely kill your appetite if incurred before the last minutes of Day 3.

An eating contest was reported in one magazine over 15 years ago whereby a typically-sized, middle-aged housewife consumed over 100,000 calories in one day. Her runnerup, male contestant, ate over 80,000. It is, therefore, not too farfetched to reckon that I could coerce you to eat 40,000 calories over the 16-hour period of the feast day.

If we see that fat acquisition is slowing or unsuccessful after some time, we will upgrade to a longer fast—perhaps 3-4 days.
Assuming this concept to be valid in some related form, note what it implies to us who desire to lose fat: That starving merely primes the fat cells to perform their specialization better. That low-fat foods are not necessarily the boon to leanness. That skipping meals favors fatness, not leanness. And that many people, particularly women, who started another starvation diet approximately every eight weeks from their 16th to their 80th birthday are actually fatter today than if they had not addressed the problem at all.

Copyright © 1998 by Ken Hutchins

Learning the skills of musical performance and expression is more than mere physical activity. It is complex interrelationships between mind and body. Skill is both mental and physical.

Perfect performances result from perfect practice. For perfect practice to occur the performer must capitalize on the concepts of specific practice and mental practice to effect positive transfer to the actual performance. He must utilize these principles simultaneously recognizing and avoiding negative transfer wherever possible. And to foster the most efficient application of these techniques the performer must make intelligent decisions regarding the length and frequency of each rehearsal. This is the domain of motor learning discipline and the subject of this article.

The following simple test will surprise anybody who attempts it. Read these instructions through first, then actually perform this test in quiet surroundings:

Cut a piece of string about 10 inches long. Attach a small key to one end. This forms a pendulum when you later hold the string by the end opposite the key. Now take a piece of white unlined paper and draw on it a circle about two inches in diameter.

Sit at a table. Rest your left arm comfortably on the table. Place your right elbow on the table and hold the end of the string in your hand with the wrist slightly forward. Place the paper under the pendulum so that the center of the circle is directly under the key. Hold the string so the pendulum just clears the paper. Loop the string over your first finger for stability.

Now adjust your body so as to be very comfortable. If you are sitting properly, the pendulum should hang in front of the center of your body and the key should be about one-half inch above the top of the table.

Sit very quietly and at ease for a few seconds. The pendulum is motionless. Mentally visualize its beginning to move back and forth, left to right, right to left, left to right, right to left. Actually will it to move. The pendulum is swinging.

Once you have demonstrated that visualizing the key to move does result in movement, you can heighten this process by visualizing the pendulum going in a circle. Now make it go around the other way by visualizing it to reverse itself.
Why does the pendulum obey? Is this mind over matter?

In a way it is. Motor learning experts have found that by placing an electromyograph on certain muscle groups and merely thinking about their contraction produces tiny signals of activity in those muscles. Faint contractile changes take place that rehearse the actual movement. The person is not consciously exerting any effort to swing the pendulum. But by visualizing and thinking about the movement, he is influencing his subconscious to perform the necessary manipulation of the hand.

Mental Practice

It is commonly taken for granted that skills are the direct result of physical practice. Although physical practice is indispensable for acquiring high proficiency levels, mental practice is also a means of increasing motor skill.

Mental practice is seeing a definite performance in the imagination. Controlled studies of mental practice began in the 1940s. The results of one early study found that a group of students learned a basketball free-throw shooting skill and a dart-throwing skill almost as effectively with mental practice as with physical practice.

The effectiveness of mental practice is not surprising when the normal process of motor learning is considered. Thinking is an integral part of such learning before, during, and after the physical practice performed in the practice room on the stage, or on the field of competition. This is especially true as complexity and proficiency increase. Intense, sometimes exhausting, mental concentration is required to climb higher on the imaginary ladder of improvement.

Especially true of musicians, possible alternative actions and interpretations, variable acoustical and tempo feedbacks and many other performance considerations must be acknowledged, evaluated, and planned. The proven probability of success or failure in each possible situation will determine the recourse most suitable for any performer in a given circumstance. Mental practice is generally an attempt to formalize such possible recourse in the performer’s mind.

The primary advantage of mental practice is that a musician can mentally perfectly perform passages 100 percent of the time if he knows the correct performance of the passage beforehand. He can even create a mental picture of the exact performance conditions in various imagined possibilities. He can mentally rehearse those sounds and interpretations he heard from recordings, instructors, recitals, and his own physical practice. This will certainly speed the learning effect.

Distribution of Practice

There are two types of physical practice that develop skills: distributed and massed. Is it better to provide practices that occur frequently but are of short duration over a longer period of time (distributed), or fewer sessions of longer duration over a shorter period of time (massed)? The length and frequency of sessions over time is at stake here.

From a close examination of motor learning literature, it appears that distributed practice is favored for learning music skills. Distributed practice minimizes fatigue, avoids boredom, allows for strengthening the performance image, and yields best performances. Research consistently confirms this opinion for short-term results. The long-term effects, however, are inconclusive. Young, inexperienced musicians should have a distributed schedule. Common sense suggests that time limitations and task complexity are also important variables that determine optimum practice schedules. With more-mature, motivated, and skilled individuals, some form of massed schedules should be used.

Knowledge of Results

Results, in the musician’s mind, are his perceptions of progress he is making in skill acquisition—in other words, mastering progressively more-difficult passages. Studies show that knowledge of that progress is the most important factor in his learning and performance. Without that information, both learning and performance will deteriorate. Not being able to measure progress is like throwing darts in a totally dark room with ear plugs blocking all sounds. But even then the thrower derives certain feelings from the various stimuli in his body.

Normally, every performance gives some intuitive knowledge of results or accuracy that suggest progress to the musician. This knowledge may come from tactile, muscular, visual, or auditory reaction. Summary knowledge of results is often obtainable. Augmented knowledge of results is information introduced beyond intrinsic. Devices such as metronomes, pacing clocks, video tape replays, and other replay equipment give added information.

The factors that allow the musical performer to demonstrate expertise become extremely specialized in each skill. This conclusion is based on a vast amount of data accumulated since the early 1920s. This data indicates that the interrelationship among specific motor performances is almost universally low. For example: It would seem that much interrelationship would exist between speed in the shuttle run and speed in a circle run. Researchers have found, however, that even though both involve fast running, only about 20 percent of the skills involved were common to the two performances. Running back and forth and running in a circle are each highly specialized or “specific” activities. Another example: There appears to be little carryover between tennis and racquetball. Another example: It is not likely that an athlete will improve as a boxer by jumping rope and striking a speed bag.

In a relevant vein, most authors of physical education books write with the assumption that general skills exist. They habitually refer to coordination, agility, balance, reaction time, and other skills as if they were characteristic of all forms of athletic endeavor. An athlete who is quick at running is expected to be quick in any skill or situation. Slowness is also assumed to be general. Research in numerous motor tasks has definitely indicated that this is not true.

Motor learning researchers and writers use the terms, ability and skill in a formal, restricted sense. An ability applies to an activity that is more-or-less developmental and/or inborn. Abilities are general—walking, crawling, running, climbing—and are versatile to apply to many different specific actions.

Skills, on the other hand are specifically acquired. Although they make use of general abilities, they focus actions on precise tasks. Skills are not versatile in transfer to other skills. For example: A specific skill that focuses the ability of running is the 100-yard dash. The precise skills of running a 100-yard dash are not transferable to a 440-yard dash at the runner’s ultimate proficiency level for either task.

Specificity Training

Specificity training affects our lives in more ways than you might realize. Within the last 20 years, the notion of specificity in exercise has gained prominence.

Specificity training epitomizes the belief that to physically exercise or strengthen a muscle for fast performance, fast weightlifting is appropriate.

Also seemingly appropriate is to design strength-training equipment that closely simulates the sport skill in form and speed. The three major exercise principles that are violated by specificity training, whether by partaking of the listed examples, or by utilizing such machines. Following is a brief list of these principles:

1) Efficient Muscular Loading
2) Motor Learning Principles
3) Safety

You probably see that musicians are guilty of much of the same nonsense. These specificity concepts are so much part of our stock notions and folklore that they served in 1980 as the theme for a network mini-series about the first U.S. Olympic Team. As the story goes, our poorly financed athletes defeated the competition because they had trained on heavier, antiquated, more cumbersome equipment than other Olympic teams, making our team stronger and better. This makes for a great fable, but it is false.

Lynn Swann attributes much of his poise and finesse on the gridiron to ballet. Motor learning research disputes this. But we can admit that if ballet did anything to his football performance, besides unnecessarily wasting his precious time and energy, it perhaps contributed to his dancing in the end zone after his touchdowns.

The specificity myth and a general confusion regarding abilities and skills help to foster the popular appeal for the recent rage, cross-training.

What Motor Learning Research Shows

Dr. Edwin A. Fleishman and associates measured the performance of numerous subjects on eight balance tasks. Each task involved maintaining balance on a narrow rail. A subject attempted to maintain a balance with one or both feet in lengthwise or crosswise foot position and with eyes opened or closed.

If a single balance skill existed, those subjects who performed one balance feat well would also do well on the other tasks. Their high level of balance skill would enable them to perform well in each of the balance situations. The same relationship would be expected of those who did poorly on the same task. Their low balance skill would result in equally poor performance on the remaining seven measures.

If varied balance skills exist, then those who scored well on one task may or may not score well on the others.

Conclusion. There is very little common skill in various types of balancing. Dr. Fleishman maintains, with much conclusive evidence, that specific skills are more prevalent than common ones. There are as many balance skills as balance tasks. Very little general balance skill exists, and there is certainly not a balance. Similar findings are present in other performances. There are specific coordinations, not a coordination; specific agilities, not an agility; specific speeds, not speed.

Likewise, there are few, if any, general music skills any more than there are general athletic skills. Skilled performance on one stringed instrument does not necessarily imply a skill advantage toward a similar but slightly different stringed instrument. There is not a keyboard skill applicable to all keyboard tasks. It is also inferred that accurate and fine pitch recognition is dependent upon familiarity with exact tone, texture, and acoustical influence of various sounds. These observations and their significance become increasingly more profound as increasingly higher proficiency tasks are examined.

Except for the general physical fitness developed by proper exercise, a general intellectual understanding of music history, theory, and performance protocol, and very fundamental skills developed to facilitate simple keyboard and other instrumental appreciation, extreme competence in one musical medium is not transferred to another.

Exceptional Individuals

Apparently, extremely gifted individuals exist who do not conform to our last statement. Great athletes and musicians sometimes seem to break all the rules yet perform incredibly well in spite of their practice habits.

Such gifted individuals are termed discriminators. Skills that are regarded as very closely alike in common perception, remain well-separated in their perceptions. As the typical individual might perceive cornet playing and trumpet skills as closely similar, the discriminator perceives the two activities as different as cornet playing and xylophone skills. It is as if the average man can see a gray wall as gray, while the genetically gifted discriminator sees several distinct shades of gray.

Discriminators often mislead other musicians and athletes. Due to their extreme skills and reputations, it is natural to seek their advice and to emulate their practice habits, when in fact their methodology works only for other rare discriminators. Indeed, research suggests that even discriminators would reap more-efficient results if they obeyed the principles of motor learning discipline.

The Role of Discrimination

Pretend that you are a baseball pitcher attempting to achieve the greatest accuracy in pitching. Realizing the principles of specific practice, you practice the same pitch to the same catcher to the same target from the same distance at the same speed. After months of disciplined practice your accuracy is the perfection of shooting baseballs with a rifle.

You then find difficulty applying this precision in a baseball game. Each batter notes that you consistently throw the same pitch and are therefore totally predictable. With perfect practice, a batter can learn to hit a home run off your pitches while blindfolded.

But since an object of the game of baseball is to prevent hits and runs, you must become unpredictable. You must learn to throw different pitches—the fast ball, the slow ball, the drop ball, the slider, the curve ball, etc.—in different locations of the strike zone in order to disturb the batter’s specific skill. The practice of other pitches introduces negative transfer (discussed later) that compromises the extreme accuracy of the single kind of pitch you originally developed, but this compromise is justified and preferable to being hit out of the park.

Now your skill to both control accuracy and deliver different pitches is limited by your ability to discriminate each type of pitch as a completely distinct action. This is also true of the batter. He must learn to compensate and adjust his specific skills (discriminate) as distinct actions or tasks. The athletes that really do this well are true discriminators. They perceive similar tasks as distinctly different and a minimum of skill confusion results.

This same principle is present with music skills. A vocalist is most proficient if he focuses all his precision on a single note. After months of practicing only this note he attains tremendous accuracy and control over that solitary pitch (not baseballs). Although this pure application of the specificity principle has some value, it is doubtful that an audience desires to hear his solos. Like the pitcher and the batter, he must compromise single-pitch specificity for the sake of the discrimination of other pitches. Indeed, he must adequately discriminate control over an infinite variety of possible pitch sequences and volumes. And these similar but specific skills must include proper enunciation of words.

[Note that many novice musicians are first shown the fundamentals of controlling a single pitch.]

An anecdote to this explanation: Several years ago, pitch recognition was discussed at a baseball clinic. Pitch recognition—in baseball—is the first instant that a batter can determine the type of pitch thrown by the pitcher.

Some physicists stated that a batter should be able to recognize the pitch at that point halfway to the plate, but some batters claimed that they knew the pitch much earlier—just as it left the pitcher’s hand.

But one Hall of Famer surprised everyone. He said that he knew the pitch before the pitcher threw the ball. He then explained that after 30 years of batting against the same pitchers hundreds of times, he recognized certain behavioral traits in each pitcher that unknowingly gave away the pitch.

Who was this famous batter? Hank Aaron.

Types of Transfer

The kind of transfer activities used as practice may help, harm, or have no effect on music performance. Basically, there are three types of transfer: positive, negative, and indifferent.

• Positive transfer occurs when the activities of practice and performance are identical.
• Negative transfer occurs when the activities of practice are almost the same as those in performance.
• Indifferent transfer occurs when the activities of practice are totally unrelated to what happens in performance.

For the most positive transfer between the practice session and the performance, what is done in practice must be exactly, precisely, accurately, and specifically the same as the performance. Great care must be taken by high-proficiency performers to practice the identical passages that they intend in a given performance.

It seems obvious that a rehearsal should be exactly the same as the performance itself. Yet such positive skill transfer is often ignored by artists who do not truly understand the confusion caused by negative transfer. To make practice almost the same as a performance situation is a mistake and often preventable. If a violinist is to perform while standing, he should not practice seated. If a key-boardist intends a harpsichord concert, he is making a mistake to offer a piano accompaniment the day before. If the vocalist expects a full house on opening night, he errs by practicing in a chilled room.

To make practice almost the same as the performance is a mistake, a big mistake often made by top-notch performers. Certainly, all environmental factors of a performance cannot be laboratory controlled. But all factors that can be reasonably and practically controlled should be controlled to insure the best possible performance at all engagements.

Unless a performer is able to discriminate precisely among similar but different skills—only very rare, exceptionally and genetically-endowed individuals have this ability—he should always use the same instrument, the same music stand, the same posture, the same mouthpiece, the same bow, the same stage position, and the same clothing that he intends to use in performance in order to achieve the greatest success.

Such slight changes in practice may cause only a slight, barely noticeable disturbance in a good performer’s concert. But it certainly would confuse his neuromuscular patterns enough to make the difference between a good recital and a great recital.

It is the negative transfer that makes the basketball shooting contests at carnivals so frustrating. The prize seems so easy to win. Three tries at shooting the basketball through the hoop cost 50 cents. Two balls through the hoop win a teddy bear.

Almost any day during Easter vacation at the Daytona Beach boardwalk, numerous college basketball players lose $5 to $10 before they finally win. Yet the man who is running the side show hits the basket consistently to demonstrate that it can be done.

The secret of the side show’s success is directly related to the principle of specific practice. The standard basketball goal is exactly 10 feet above the floor and has a diameter of 18 inches. The baskets at the side show are either higher or lower, usually 11 or 9 feet, and the hoop’s diameter is slightly smaller than standard. The situations are almost identical, and this is what causes the confusion.

Skilled shooting at a 10-foot basket requires a specific set of motor memories which are different from those required to shoot an 11-foot basket. Certainly, successful shooting at an 11-foot basket can be learned through practice. Doing so, however, will probably confuse the player when he goes back to the 10-foot basket.

The closer the 11-foot basket gets to 10 feet, the more confusion there will be because the motor memories and patterns will be even more similar. A highly skilled basketball shooter who learned to shoot a 10-foot, one-inch basket and then tried to shoot a 10-foot basket would be more confused than if he had learned to shoot an 11-foot basket.

This is not to say that some positive transfer will not occur. Most practice sessions contain both positive and negative transfer. Nothing is likely to be 100% positive or 100% negative. There are varying percentages of both in all practices. Musicians, however, should examine closely all their practice sessions for activities that contribute more negative than positive transfer to the actual performance situation. The objective is not to practice better but to practice to perform in the most proficient manner.

An extreme case in point: For nearly a century, football coaches have imposed the practices of running through tires, performing agility drills, and doing monkey rolls. While these practices achieve high proficiencies in the specific skills of running through tires, agility drills, and monkey rolls, they have little positive transfer to the skills required to play football in full uniform and headgear. Reflect to discover any similar parallels in your music or athletic career. Mentioned later, an obvious parallel among brass performers are the practices of mouthpiece buzzing and lip buzzing.

Specific motor patterns are of particular importance to mature, highly skilled musicians. Beginning pianists, for example, will profit at first from all types of keyboard activities. They learn the layout of the keyboard from any keyboard—be it a harpsichord, organ, or a synthesizer. But very soon in their careers they are noticeably affected and frustrated by any slight differences in changing between pianos of different touch and sound. The more skilled they become, the more important it is that their activities in practice are the same as the activities in concert. Clavichord, harpsichord, or organ practice most definitely will not efficiently contribute to a piano recital or vice versa.

The Importance of Indifferent Transfer

Not just for athletes, muscular strength is the foundation of music skills, and strength plays its part in performance by indifferent transfer. Strength, flexibility, and cardiovascular efficiency are best-developed, not by skill practice, but by meeting the physiological requirements of the human body. The most effective exercises for attaining maximum strength, flexibility, and heart-lung endurance are totally unrelated to developing musical skills. If it were possible to design a strength-building exercise in such a way that it simulated a music skill, the use of such an exercise would harm rather than help the musician. The more it resembled the skill itself, the worse it would hurt a performance.

A common example of such an attempt to mimic a music skill in order to build strength is the mouthpiece buzzing and/or lip buzzing performed by many brass performers. Yes, at a fundamental level this concept promotes an understanding of proper lip position and function to the beginner. But to a seasoned performer, buzzing represents a source of negative transfer that can and should be totally avoided.

Another example: Note that performance proficiency declines over a series of daily practice sessions that are continued to the point of extreme fatigue. From one session to the next, performance deteriorates because of negative transfer. At each practice the musician repeatedly rehearses the same passage, each time growing more and more fatigued. Each pass represents a slightly different perception of skill by the nervous system. The first pass is performed with a fresh and rested body and mind. The next is closely identical, but with a subtle adjustment for slight fatigue. The third is adjusted more and so on. The net result is that each daily practice session contains skills that are almost identical—hence sessions will demonstrate progressively poorer skill, not improvement.

Two Kinds of Conditioning

There are two major categories for conditioning. There is skill conditioning—exact rehearsal of the skill required in performance. And there is physical conditioning. Physical conditioning is for the purpose of increasing strength, endurance and resistance to injury. It is performed according to muscular function, totally indifferent to the exact skills involved in any particular performance. SuperSlow exercise fits this requirement perfectly.

An Instructional Scenario

Analyze the possible actions taken by a keyboardist who is preparing for the ultimate performance of his career. Suppose his concert debut is slated for July 4. For months he practices the exact material on the exact piano in the exact concert hall at the exact temperature with whatever audience he can assemble to listen critically each day.

Not wise. But suppose that a week before the performance he substitutes for a wedding on a pipe organ. Although this causes severe negative transfer, his behavior could be worse.

Worse. Suppose he plays a harpsichord (more like a piano than an organ) recital on July 1.

Worse yet. Suppose that he participates in a jam session on a different make of piano at home the night before.

And worst of all. Unbeknownst to him, the stage crew replaces his concert grand on the day of the concert with another instrument of the same make and model. It is different from the one he has practiced for months, but the differences are extremely subtle. This causes maximum skill confusion.

Summary

The concepts for maximizing the learning of music skills are so misunderstood that a summary for quick reference is helpful. Notice that these principles also apply to the acquisition of athletic skills.

• Mental rehearsal will positively influence learning, particularly when the performer can mentally practice a skill perfectly
each time.
• Most novices should have frequent, short practice sessions rather than infrequent, extended practice sessions.
• Practice does not lead to perfect performance unless it is practiced perfectly to begin with.
• Knowledge of results is a form of encouragement extremely important to the learning process. Higher levels of proficiency
are reached when knowledge of results is specific and immediate.
• There is little interrelationship between motor performances. Performance of a given activity is composed of highly specific
factors unique to that activity.
• Transition from practice to performance is a result of three types of transfer: positive, negative, and indifferent.
• Positive transfer takes place when the practice is exactly, precisely, and specifically the same as that to be done in concert.
• Negative transfer results from practice almost the same as actual performance. It confuses skill and wastes time.
• It is the indifferent transfer of physical conditioning exercises that contributes to every music practice and performance.

Conditioning exercises for strength, flexibility, and cardiorespiratory endurance should be the foundation for every performance. But physical conditioning should differ from skill practice as much as possible in content, meaning, form, method of execution, and environment.

Editorial
This chapter originally appeared as a chapter in Conditioning for Football and then later in Power Racquetball by Ellington Darden, PhD. With Dr. Darden’s permission I paraphrased it for musicians. These are the only comprehensive discussions of motor learning in any of Dr. Darden’s books and articles.

Dr. Darden earned his doctorate at Florida State University under Robert N. Singer, PhD. Singer is one of the two most popular textbook authors regarding the subject of motor-learning discipline. Another is Dr. Bryant Cratty.

Motor learning is usually required as an undergraduate course for all physical education majors. Darden states that interest in the subject is waning and that fewer students major in the subject each year.

Disinterest in motor learning is a tragedy. Today, students seem to express more interest in the dubious research of exercise physiology. Poorly disciplined and inadequately informed researchers in exercise physiology make sweeping conclusions with little or no consideration of skill acquisition.

Skill acquisition is often the major variable that provides statistical significance to studies purporting to measure physical conditioning phenomenon. What they truly measure is skill improvement, not the physical improvements indicated on many of their measuring devices. This commonly occurs in measurements of strength, cardiovascular assessments, skin fold, and flexibility.

Example: A classic example of this shortsightedness in research revolves around the six-week syndrome. Pretend that a researcher sets out to study the effectiveness of an exercise program—using SuperSlow protocol perhaps. Commencing the program with a novice, it requires about six weeks for the following factors to come together to impart the total effect of SuperSlow:

• Learning the basic movements and techniques to safely enter and exit the exercise equipment
• Mastering the skills to avoid the various technical discrepancies of proper SuperSlow protocol
• Acquiring adequate pain threshold and will to work adequately intense
• Reducing the rest interval between exercises
• Focusing the records to find the correct resistance to meaningfully load the muscles but permit gradual perfection of form.

Of course, maximum increases in strength and muscularity will occur in this six weeks with a novice, but most of the performance improvements quantified by the researcher are the result of skill acquisition and learning, not physical improvement. Note that most research projects in exercise physiology last only 6-8 weeks.

References

Brace, David K. Measuring Motor Ability, New York: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1927.
Brace, David K. Studies in Motor Learning of Gross Bodily Motor Skllls, Research Quarterly, 17:242-253, 1946.
Brace, David K. Studies in the Rate of Learning Gross Bodily Motor Skllls, Research Quarterly, 12:181-185, 1941
Fleishman, Edwin A. A Comparative Study of Aptitude Patterns in Unskilled and Skilled Psychomotor Performers, J. Appl. Psychol., 41:263-272, 1957.
Fleishman, Edwin A. A Dimensional Analysis of Motor Abilities, J. Exp. Psychol., 48:437-454, 1954.
Fleishman, Edwin A. Dimensional Analysis of Movement Reactions, J. Exp. Psychol., 55:438-453, 1958b.
Henry, Franklin M. Dynamic Kinesthetic Perception and Adjustment, Research Quarterly, 24:176-187, 1953.
Henry, Franklin M. Reaction Time-Movement Time Correlation, Percept.Motor Skills, 12:63-66, 1961.
Henry, Franklin M. Specificity vs. Generality in Learning Motor Skills, Coll.Phys.Educ. Assoc. Proc., Washington, D.C., 126-128, 1958.

The message SuperSlow Zone® feels imperative to send women everywhere is that being strong…and I mean average woman of ALL ages – not just female athletes…is essential to our self-accountability. Strength is critical to a female’s health, beauty (inner and outer), and grace. By ‘grace’ I don’t mean being ‘Princess Grace’ I mean the grace embodied in our functionality – through living our daily lives, by caring for ourselves and for others.

If you don’t believe in or understand the importance of functionality, just try having your ability to move compromised or taken away from you…or think of a fragile person _ someone you have seen or someone you know …then you will recognize what I am saying about functionality. By ’self-accountability’ I mean what we pro-actively do NOW to invest in our strength, health and grace.

Allow it to sink in…’grace = strength = ‘functionality’; allow this notion to grow through you and guide your self-care. SuperSlow® strength training is a 20 minute work out, two times a week…and in your street clothes, if you prefer. For 26 distinguished years, SuperSlow® has been the leading and most viable option in safe, effective strength training protocols. SuperSlow® will positively impact your bones, heart, metabolism, neuro-muscular control, functionality and…of course, your physique. You get the most bang for your exercise buck in the shortest amount of time with SuperSlow Zone®. Period!

Americans already spend an astronomical $2 trillion dollars annually for health care…that is 16 cents out of every dollar; by 2016 it is expected to double to more than $4 trillion annually with the government share of the tab reaching 50 percent according to economists with the National Health Statistics Group. Translation: In 10 years, the total spent will be nearly 20 cents out of every dollar. Out-of-pocket consumer spending on health care will rise to $440 billion. Add that figure to the $50 billion Americans already spend on beauty alone, and it is clear that we each are going to reach deeper into our pocketbooks for our health and beauty costs. So I ask you, “What would you rather do, ’spend more later’ or ‘invest wisely now’ in your strength for health, beauty and grace?” Click on this link and listen to Strong SuperSlow Zone® Women.

Madeline Ross
Passionate SuperSlow Zone® Client
Founder & CEO
SuperSlow Zone, LLC®

P.S. And by the way, don’t forget about the men in your life (and even the boys!). SuperSlow Zone® is also perfect for them, but we won’t tell them that I chose to focus on you this month. I know Mother’s Day was in May, but hey, isn’t every day Father’s Day?!

By Tim Rankin, SuperSlow Level I Certified Instructor
and owner of SuperSlow Zone centers in
Sterling, Virginia and Gaithersburg, Maryland

As a beginning SuperSlow client, you will progressively become more confident and competent in “how to exercise,” noticing results as weeks and months go by. First you may experience improved energy levels and “feeling stronger” in every day life. Soon, you may start to notice increased strength, improved definition in your arms, legs, shoulders, back and torso, and perhaps you may experience better endurance when you are out skiing, playing tennis, or just climbing the stairs, or just your dialing living. You are starting to achieve maximum results in minimum time.

Rapid Improvement Levels Off
After those first few months of rapid improvements and increased resistance levels each workout, gradual but continual gains level off and come more slowly over time. The cumulative effect, however, can be very dramatic. Strength improvements are possible of up to100% or more, other enhancements may include better balance, stability, and injury resistance, measurable increases in cardiovascular efficiency, improved pain-free performance in sports or other activities, and easier functioning in your day-to-day life.

Never Forget Your Pre-SuperSlow Condition
It is important at this stage, however, not to forget your pre-SuperSlow state of fitness, or rather lack of fitness like how weak you used to be, how injury prone and even flabby you were, and what your energy and stamina levels were. Without this reflection you may tend to discount some of what SuperSlow has done for you and how far you have come. The truth is, unless you experienced a vivid demonstrable change like losing a considerable amount of weight, it is easy to forget improvements you now take for granted.

Important Regular Check-Ins
Making sure you remember your pre-SuperSlow starting point and your reasons for beginning SuperSlow is one very important reason we perform regular check-ins with you – to track your fitness goals and objectives as well as subjective improvements over time. There are many reasons for initially trying SuperSlow exercise. Some of your motivating reasons may be on the following list:
1. Out of shape.
2. Look and feel better.
3. Overweight.
4. Exhausted at the end of the day.
5. Never quite recovered from that old sports injury to a knee or elbow.
6. Plagued with a weak back that goes out occasionally.
7. Just diagnosed with osteoporosis or osteopenia (beginnings of osteoporosis).
8. Aging … slowing your aging process.

Aging S-L-O-W down
It is not unusual at this stage to question if it is necessary to continue this challenging workout for what appears to be maintaining status quo, but consider first its true meaning. Status quo literally means “the condition that currently exists.” Pay particular attention to the word currently, which underscores that results are not a permanent state, but rather something that needs to be sustained. Why? Your body is in a constant state of change called aging! SuperSlow exercise is demanding physical work done for the sole purpose of stimulating fitness and health benefits. Without the continued stimulus the body slowly returns to the state from whence it came. Your aging process accelerates. Much like brushing your teeth to maintain those pearly whites, if you would like to keep your results or perhaps even more improvement, supervision by your SuperSlow certified instructor is even more important than ever to increase your focus and motivation.

SuperSlow Lifetime Benefits
In addition to lifelong strength and fitness, research is finding many other reasons to continue a safe and effective progressive weight training program like SuperSlow for a lifetime. The following is a partial list of possible benefits derived from strength training:
• Improved memory in older adults.
• Reduction of blood pressure in hypertensive individuals.
• Improvements in blood lipid profile in the elderly.
• A decrease in abdominal fat.
• Significantly improved insulin sensitivity in those with type 2 diabetes.
• Reduced risk factors for Coronary Artery Disease.
• Increased bone mineral density.

Strength Fitness Focus
According to the SuperSlow philosophy, clients should look for safe, efficient and effective workouts from their exercise program and save entertainment value for their recreational or leisure pursuits. Do not be distracted by enticing ads that you promise maintaining or even improving your level of fitness with emphasis on fun and enjoyment. Focus first on your effort that then makes the recreational activities you enjoy safer with your stronger, more-enduring body.

SuperSlow – Better at Every Age
SuperSlow exercise is an essential tool, not just for building up your fitness level, but for keeping your body at its best for an entire lifetime. Aging is a fact of life – unavoidable. SuperSlow helps you be better at every age. The benefits to strength, cardiovascular fitness, and many health related measurements are very clear. So, not only can you get to the top with SuperSlow exercise, but you can stay there and enjoy the view for a long time to come!