Strength Sensei Bookshelf: In Arthur’s Shadow

Strengh Sensei Bookshelf

In Arthur's Shadow

A creative look at the body of work of Nautilus founder Arthur Jones

Charles Poliquin considered Arthur Jones one of the most influential persons in strength and fitness. Although Coach Poliquin dismissed many of Jones’ ideas, especially his view of the amount of volume needed to achieve an optimal training effect, he recognized Jones’ numerous contributions to the industry. One book that discusses the major works of Jones is In Arthur’s Shadow: Daily Musings on Exercise by Gary Bannister, B.A., B.P.E., M.Ed.

Jones was a prolific writer, and many of his books, articles, and videos are available through John Turner’s site: http://arthurjonesexercise.com/home.html. It’s a tremendous amount of material, but Bannister made it easy for us. He collected Jones’ major ideas (and fascinating stories!) and presented them in an organized, step-by-step format.

The idea of “daily musings” is that the book is presented in chapters that correspond to each day of the year, such that you can read one small chapter a day in a few minutes and be finished in a year. Bannister presents the ideas in an easy-to-read manner, written for a general audience.

Another unique aspect of this book is that nearly every chapter is written independently of each other. You could turn to page 251 and read “The Leg Extension – A Case Study,” and then backtrack to page
62 and check out “Chin-Ups and Dips.” But it’s best to start from Chapter 1 and go from there, as some of the ideas presented in the later chapters are more complex and reference ideas presented in the early chapters.

For those unfamiliar with Jones, he was the inventor of Nautilus and later MedX machines. The Nautilus machines were introduced to the muscle building community about five decades ago and put him on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest people. He sold Nautilus in 1986 and MedX in 1996. He died on August 28, 2007, at the age of 80.

Jones was obsessed with the concept of accommodating resistance, such that a machine’s resistance curve should change during an exercise to match the strength curve of the muscle(s) being worked.
Jones tried using chains with his exercise machines to vary the resistance but found that using shell- shaped cams (hence the name, Nautilus) to vary the resistance was more practical and precise.

 

The exercise machine that Jones developed that caught the attention of the bodybuilding community was his pullover machine. Jones believed that the best way to overload the lats was to remove the elbow flexors from the exercise, so his machines had the user pushing against elbow pads rather than pulling with their arms. This machine enabled the user to perform the exercise through a full range of motion and equipped with his Nautilus cams.

Arthur Jones popularized the use of shell-shaped cams to vary the resistance curve during an exercise to match the strength curve of the muscle(s) worked. (Miloš Šarčev photo)

Bannister begins his December section appropriately with these two quotes by Jones:

“Only time will tell just how many of my current opinions about exercise turn out to be correct, but I have at least produced something of great value that never existed previously: the tools required for meaningful and accurate measurement of the results of exercise…

“…I am arrogant enough to believe that my lifetime of interest in the field of exercise has produced developments that can provide great benefits to millions of other people if my discoveries and developments are not flushed down the toilet of history.”

Although Coach Poliquin challenged many of Jones’ ideas, he recognized that Jones was a master salesman who he says “could have persuaded Saudi sheiks to buy sand from him!” Joking aside, Poliquin believes that he “influenced many people in a positive way.” To learn why Poliquin admired Jones, check out a copy of In Arthur’s Shadow by Gary Bannister.

[You can purchase In Arthur’s Shadow: Daily Musings on Exercise by Gary Bannister through Amazon.com.]

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