I will never forget my first experience with Nautilus. The entire football team was brought to the Nautilus room and each machine manned. The remaining athletes stood in line waiting their turn to jump into the circuit. The instructions where that on the coaches whistle everyone was to work as hard as they could on the machine they were on, for only one minute. When the minute was up the coach blew the whistle again and everyone hurriedly moved forward to the next machine, and the whistle blew again immediately.
When I finished my ten minute workout, as described, I ran out of the building and did what just about every other well-conditioned athlete did -- threw up!
Many years later I stepped out of professional football and into a sedentary job. I went from pushing weights to pushing pencils! My playing weight as an offensive tackle in the NFL was 285. This, coupled with my lack of desire to exercise (I felt like I had exercised enough for two lifetimes), along with a serious back injury from a parachuting accident produced a fitness crisis.
I was thick and tired of it! Remembering my Nautilus circuit training experience, I went to work on figuring out a way to do a series of exercises that could be done in the convenience of my own home, at a very high level of intensity. I was determined to recreate my unforgettable Nautilus experience but in such a way that would allow me to get the same results without big expensive machines. The conventional approach of exercising 2 to 3 times a week for 30 to 45 minutes, was not working for me, and for that matter not working for most of my friends who were also busy professionals with families. I had an idea. Instead of working out a few times a week for long periods of time, what if you could get the same results by working out every day, but in only ten minutes?