Dumpers

Part I

By Ken Hutchins, Josh Trentine, Gus Diamantopoulos & Al Coleman

What are “dumpers?” Dumpers represent a new class of strength-training equipment designed to hyperload the negative phase of the typical two-phase, dynamic excursion.

Dumpers are manufactured with competing methods to accomplish negative-phase hyperloading. Some, like the X-Force^TM, employ a tilting weight stack that reduces the load during the positive phase by tilting the weight-stack header. Then a motor drives the header into the vertical position to effect a heavier negative.

For instance, if the header is tilted 45 degrees off the vertical orientation during the positive (Sine 45 degrees = .707) 100 lbs. on the weight stack becomes an effective 70.7 lbs. of load (not accounting for friction). And erecting the weight-stack header for the negative phase is a 29.3 lbs. increase over 70.7 lbs. This provides a 41.4% (~40%) resistance increase compared to the positive.

X-Force has devised some interesting mechanics to accomplish the positive-to-negative cycling of the header orientation to provide negative dumping. There are other companies approaching this issue in different ways and we will address those a little later.

The cool-factor of such wiz-bang exercise technology easily blinds most subjects and their instructors to the unnecessary dangers of its implementation. We make these assertions because of two major arguments. The first resides in the history of negative-only loading. This history has inappropriately led to a false dictum that the negative phase of the exercise is more important for muscular stimulation than the positive. The second argument resides in the lack of proper mechanics built into all previously designed exercise equipment, particularly the weight-driven designs. Once these arguments are appreciated, the dumpers really have no place in the market.

The History of Negative-Only Loading

At least within the context of Nautilus Philosophy, negative-only and negative-accentuated loading gained prominence because of what might be termed negative null loading. This null loading was highlighted by the early-1970s advent of isokinetics exercise devices such as the Cybex dynomometers and the Mini-Gym and Leaper products based on the friction-reel principle. Such devices provided positive-only resistance. In fact, they advertised the so-called benefits of positive-only exercise as though the negative phase of the exercise had no benefits—a clever approach to the fact that their products were devoid of negative work potential.

Nautilus founder, Arthur Jones needed a way to combat the popularity of these devices and devised his Ten Requirements of Full-Range Exercise to do so. In his list of the Ten Requirements he included:

1. Rotary Resistance
2. Direct Resistance
3. Variable Resistance
4. Balanced Resistance
5.  Positive Work
6.  Negative Work
7.  Stretching
8.  Pre-Stretching
9.  Resistance in the Position of Full Muscular Contraction
10. Unrestricted Speed of Motion

The Ten Requirements deserve a complete explanation. Also deserved are the arguments showing that most of Arthur’s support for the Ten Requirements is invalid. We provide this in other materials.

Suffice it to say for the benefit of this treatise: Arthur emphasized that, without negative-work potential, most of his Ten Requirements were missing from an exercise, thus leaving the exercise mostly useless. For instance, without negative-work potential rotary resistance, direct resistance, variable resistance and balanced resistance were only partially provided. And negative work (of course), stretching, pre-stretching and resistance in the position of full muscular contraction were totally missing.

Arthur then went on to produce expensive, heavy-duty, negative-only exercise devices then known as the Omni line of Nautilus machines. These upper-body machines provided the subject a way to lift the weights with the legs and lower with the arms. They were termed Omni because they also allowed for the normal style of training whereby the arms both lifted and lowered the weight.

And for the lower-body exercises, negative-only work was provided by heroic measures. At Nautilus headquarters in Lake Helen, Florida, ladders were available in the exercise area to allow instructors to climb onto the weight stacks to ride them down after the subject raised a manageable weight or the weight was raised for him by one or more instructors. Visitors saw this and sometimes incorporated the practice into their own Nautilus facilities. Fingers of instructors so engaged were sometimes severed in the machinery’s sprockets.

And with conventional equipment, such as the barbell, teammates of football teams (and others) would gather around the barbell to lift it for the subject and then attempt to hand-off en-mass to the subject so as to evenly load him. Such was reckless and dangerous.

Nautilus created such a stir regarding the importance of negative work that positive work almost fell into disfavor. The pendulum of favor had swung from the idiotic extreme left to the idiotic extreme right. As part of this, Arthur repeatedly enjoyed telling the 1975 story of the football player who risked his professional contract and the $80,000 bonus paid to him by the Bengals, because the player could not chin himself. The Bengals desperately begged the Nautilus people to enable the player to become able to chin within 12 days. Nautilus put him through a series of negative-only chinning workouts, thus strengthening him to chin himself positively and thus keep his contract. Negative-only chins truly enabled this dramatic turnaround, but this approach is rarely worth the injury risk with the typical workout subjects, much less rehabilitation subjects. There are better approaches.

Another story that Arthur told to the point of ad nauseum was the old gag about the square wheel being supposedly improved by reducing its number of bumps from four to three. He used this to underscore the ignorance of those in the isokinetics camp who removed negative work from the exercise and then pointed to its deletion as an improvement.

What completely escaped all Nautilus people in those years—including Ken Hutchins for a while—was the fact that the Nautilus machines—due to excessive friction—hypoloaded the negative phase. Ken eventually explained this to Arthur Jones, and was fired in 1986, because Ken refused to back down on the subject.

In the early 1990s, Maria Fiatarone and her team at Tufts University conducted a large-scale osteoporosis study. Although the misunderstandings propagated regarding exercise with regard to speed, force, balance and other issues are too numerous to mention in this article, we herein implicate the study’s inappropriate emphasis on negative hyperloading with Kaiser^® Exercise Equipment.

At or about the same time, Michael MacMillan, M.D., produced a line of negative-only equipment, a laNautilus. Ken Hutchins was advised on several occasions by members of the Nautilus old guard that he should investigate these innovative machines. Little did they understand that Ken was already working to correct the mechanical deficiencies that entice the uninformed to embrace such devices.

Within the past year, in an attempt to explain to some of the Nautilus old guard that dumpers are a mistake, his listeners reminded Ken of the immense value of negative-only exercise as if Ken had not been at Nautilus for 10 years to witness it himself. Indeed, Ken was part of the macho nonsense that occurred during the Nautilus heyday and the fever-pitched passion regarding the magic of negative-only exercise. Ken, however, has since learned better. Apparently, many others have not.

Next Time:

In Part II of our Dumpers series, we will explore the mechanical deficiencies in exercise equipment that led to the myth that negative loading is superior to positive loading.