I’ve worked out with Rich Neville for 33 years. We met at the Lawson Y. We joined as charter member of the East Bank Club. We’ve been pursuing health/fitness Nirvana the whole time.
My conversion started in 1998 when I read an article about high intensity training in an airport. I decided to do some research which led me to SuperSlow. The concept of moving weights very slowly vs ballistically made sense. I liked the idea because I thought it would be harder. Therefore I wanted to incorporate it in my regular workout routine. Fortunately, Rich, was open minded enough to go along with me.
We created our own set of exercises and acted as each other’s trainers.
One last anecdote: We would take turns being the trainer. I would usually go first. I was very diligent about counting to 10 PROPERLY. When it was my turn to exercise, he would always count like it was a sprint. I couldn’t get him to slow down.
This really p—ssed me off. Therefore I decided to do something about it.
I went to a local music store and bought a metronome. It clicked loudly every second. I showed up at the next workout with it and it forced him to count slowly. The attention we got at the health club was rather humorous. We were known as the metronome twins.
Below are his comments regarding the odyssey:
Keith Morton
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I am a lucky guy in many ways, but none more important than learning about Super Slow weight lifting from my workout partner of 33 years, Keith Morton. Yes, the same guy who writes this blog every now and then.
Over the years we have run long distances and 3-4 days a week. Now I don’t run at all and in fact I don’t perform any “aerobic activity” for the last 5-6 years. I do swim once in a while, I climb the stairs in my high rise when I’m getting prepared for a mountain climb, I ride a bike along the lake front in the summer, and I take a walk most days. But, no more monitoring my heart rate to decide if I was at the correct stimulus for health. I do a Tabata protocol workout (for heart health) on an airdyne bike once or twice a month and it takes about 13 minutes, but that explanation will have to wait for another day.
As for super slow, the metamorphosis from lifting weights 3 to 4 days a week with many different exercise methods took from the early 1970s when I started serious weightlifting to a change in information and beliefs that took 5 years of experiment for me to buy into the concept.
Originally, I did a pyramid workout that had a 12 week cycle and I used nautilus equipment and free weights. I loved it and I thought I looked great as a result and I couldn’t imagine ever stopping the regimen. I never was big and bulky but I was trim and toned (as we used to say about ourselves) and running was a major complimentary workout that we did sometimes on the same day and sometimes on different days.
Anyway, I ran myself into a knee operation in 1998 and told my surgeon that I needed to run to keep my sanity at work (at that time I was a Judge on the Criminal Court bench in Chicago) and of course he said—“if you have to, then go ahead” he did add that “if you do keep running, you’ll be back for that knee or the other or a hip. This is your body alerting you to the wear and tear and your age”. I stopped running and after a year or so I was able to get up in the morning and not miss running along the lake at sunrise.
But, at the same time Keith was busy reading and studying the nature of weightlifting and the different ideas about strength, health, body shape, the mental part of exercise, diet, and the bodies reaction to overtraining and under training.
You can imagine that this research journey took a while.
In fact it took years. I was Keith’s guinea pig and his partner in the search. I didn’t do any research I just trusted him. I was lucky, he stayed with it and convinced me to stay with it until he and I found the answer to staying healthy and strong and injury free.
I thank him every time I hit a golf ball farther than my contemporaries, every time I climb a mountain, every time I still fit into my clothes, but most of all when I don’t have an injury that comes from my old weightlifting techniques.
If I had diet discipline, which I’ve been working on for the past 33 years, I might almost be perfect. But, don’t worry for me, that struggle goes on. I still have the same suit size from 20 years ago and not as much body shifting as would have occurred without weightlifting.
I think as we age, and I have, and as we look for life’s enjoyments, and I have,
that self image enhances everything we do. SuperSlow has enabled me to keep active and look forward every week to that 20 to 30 minutes that I exert to the max because I know the results are worth the effort.
I still on occasion wonder how can this be! And I still remember when Keith and I used to bring a metronome into the free weight room at the East Bank Club so that we wouldn’t cheat on the count. 10 seconds positive, 10 seconds negative, no rest, no lockout. The rest of the guys and girls thought we were nut cakes.
But, after a few long months of heckling, the fact we were so serious about the technique, changed to respect for giving a new method a try.
I don’t need a metronome any more, I’ve got the count in my system and I know its as important as the rest of the technique for each machine to get the maximum benefit
I have my family and many friends using this system. It has benefitted all who tried.
Richard Neville
