Five seconds into my first leg-press set at MedX Precision Fitness, I felt like I was one second away from passing out. One minute in, I was sure I was going to puke. At the 90-second mark, I was determined to find any excuse not to do it again. Ever.
This entire time – what felt like an eternity – instructor Blair Wilson talked me through the exercise, coaching and reassuring me as if I was pushing out a baby.
Only afterward, did he reveal that he set the machine at 180 pounds, as in, roughly 50 per cent more than my bodyweight. No wonder it felt so excruciating.
Mr. Wilson opened up his gym last April, although to call it a gym would be like calling a cocktail shrimp dinner. Located on the ground floor of an office building in Toronto’s financial district, MedX Precision Fitness consists of six weight machines (one is solely designated for people with lower-back issues). In addition to the leg press, there’s a pull down, a bench press, a seated row and an overhead shoulder press.
If you’re looking for a treadmill, bike, Swiss balls, dumbbells, yoga mats or any other equipment, you’ve come to the wrong place.
The beauty – and beast – of his no-nonsense program is that it demands a lot from your body, but once complete, you don’t have to do it again for another week.
“The benefit comes from how hard you work, not how long you work,” he says, dressed more like a preppy banker on casual Friday than a trainer. “We make you work harder, so you stand to gain more benefit.”
Mr. Wilson’s approach – intense resistance and low repetition for a brief time (up to 20 minutes but as short as six) – is not new. He’s using principles espoused by such authorities as Arthur Jones, the founder of Nautilus, and Ken Hutchins who pioneered the SuperSlow workout to build a protocol that offers maximum efficiency.
This means skipping a conventional warm-up exercise or aerobic component as well as any cool-down stretches, which may seem unusual, but Mr. Wilson explains that this is actually built into his weight sequence. “Logic would state that the last rep provides the most benefit [because it requires you to work the hardest], so every other rep that comes before is a warm-up,” he says. “As soon as you start flexing, you’re technically warming up.”
I have never taken an intellectual approach to fitness. Not to sound as if I’ve been brainwashed by Nike, but I really have always been one to just do it and ask questions later. Mr. Wilson is exceedingly informed about the science of exercise. Whether as a way of distracting or empowering me, he shares a lot of his knowledge while I’m working through the circuit. The downside to this, of course, is that I’m concentrating too hard on getting through the set to process the info.
What I hear is some broken combination of “compound muscle groups … breathe, breathe … max amount of work per unit of time … contract abs … breathe … hold for 10 more seconds … okay, now slowly release.”
The exercises are always performed in the same order – both as a way to track progress and so that the body recognizes the workout each week (this goes against the theory of muscle confusion, which some fitness professionals advocate).
Numbers don’t lie, so I was surprised to hear that, over seven weeks, I had progressed from 120 to 194 pounds with the shoulder press, and from 66 to 100 pounds on the bench press. But I was also confused. I don’t think I’d ever be capable of doing this on my own.
