Support for Ken Hutchins the founder of SuperSlow
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The creator of SuperSlow Exercise needs your support!
In late 2019, my mentor and friend, Ken Hutchins, the creator of the SuperSlow protocol and philosophy and Renaissance Exercise, suffered a mysterious illness that landed him in and out of the hospital for months.
It started in early December 2019 with an easily dismissed on and off again sore throat and some night sweats. But on December 8 2019, after a night of incessant coughing and fever, Ken was admitted to the emergency room.
This first of 3 hospital stays commenced a diagnostic mystery as doctors struggled to nail down what was wrong with Ken. He had very low blood pressure and some other tests including a heart ultrasound that showed that Ken was technically in acute heart failure and was experiencing atrial fibrillation. He struggled with incredible fatigue and weakness, coughing, fits of hiccups and hyperventilation, along with severe pain when breathing in, and fever.
A high white blood cell count was briefly attributed to the discovery of a sick gallbladder, but the count remained high even after the procedure to remove it was well over.
As the mystery of his illness continued, in an attempt to find his issue, two CT scans with contrast dye were performed. But as a result, Ken needed to undergo 13 kidney dialysis treatments (three of which were done as outpatient procedures between hospitalizations) and there was no guarantee that his kidneys would ever return. He was in dialysis treatment on his 68th birthday, on Christmas Day and on New Year’s Day 2020.
He would not be discharged from his first hospital stay until January 10 2020, with a diagnosis of post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis (an inflammation of the tiny fibres of the kidneys).
But Ken would soon be readmitted only 9 days later because of a 103-degree fever and low hemoglobin. In his second hospital stay Ken went through a litany of further tests including a bone marrow biopsy (negative) and chest X-rays daily to monitor water build up in his lungs including, eventually, a procedure to remove the excess fluid. And still, all the tests for bacteria, viruses, and other germs that may cause infections came back negative.
It was clear that along with the mystery of Ken’s medical challenges, both Ken and Brenda would be facing a massive economic obstacle ahead. For the first time, a man who has worked harder and more than anyone I have ever known, was abruptly forced to stop working and without much indication as to when he would be able to return to work again. Without income, there would be mounting difficulties to cover both rent (business and home), and expenses (business and personal).
On January 30 2020, Ken was discharged from the hospital a second time with a new diagnosis of acute Rheumatic Fever which was related to and built upon the previous diagnosis of glomerulonephritis, and it seemed that this all made sense. Ken would be able to return to a fully active and normal life, aside from the need for daily penicillin to ward off new Strep.
But nightly fevers began yet again in early May and by May 19 2020, Ken was readmitted for his third hospital stay.
By this time, things at the hospital were very different due to the COVID19 protocols. Despite prior testing by his infectious disease doctor, the hospital needed a blood antibody test. All tests came back negative.
As Ken’s fevers persisted and some markers of inflammation began to rise, a new test called the KARIUS was mentioned. This is a new blood test that can identify thousands of pathogens. But this test also came back negative.
However, it was noticed that in addition to the fevers, Ken had a puffy left hand, wrist pains, and stiffness in other joints. These factors combined with the spontaneous improvement of symptoms after a course of IV steroids, along with the confirmation of rashes in his previous hospital stays, led to a diagnosis of Still’s Disease: A rare type of inflammatory arthritis that features rash, fever spikes, and joint pain.
Ken was discharged after his third hospital stay on June 1st. He now requires various medications, including Methotrexate, Prednisone, Penicillin and Eliquis. There’s also a possibility that insulin may be required. Plus, there have been recommendations of specialized drugs for his latest diagnosis that would cost hundreds a month, even after insurance coverage.
Ken and Brenda are on Medicare, including a Medicare supplement that has covered most of the medical expenses so far, but every year during open enrollment there is an increase. While they are hopeful to be able to continue to afford that option, the alternative is to go into the HMO system which could be problematic for continuity of care and options available.
This is Ken's 3rd diagnosis since late 2019 and there is no guarantee that it will hold. He was into his 4th month of recovery when this latest assault on his health occurred, further setting back any improvement previously made.
He is very frail and unable to drive due to possible side effects of the medication. And as Brenda is his full-time caregiver, she is unable to seek employment.
Although Ken still has much to do, including numerous writing projects as well as training his cherished clients, we do not know when he will be able to work again which means that both Ken and Brenda are facing a very uncertain future.
I therefore humbly ask for your support to help Ken and his wife Brenda by making a donation to this GoFundMe campaign.
All of your donations will directly go to Ken and Brenda help get Ken back on his feet so that he can get back to doing what he does best: Helping others. This includes rent assistance for home and work and expenses (such as groceries and his increasingly specific dietary needs).
For anyone who needs a refresher on the man who created an exercise revolution, Ken Hutchins is a writer, inventor, philosopher, historian, intellectual, scientist, business owner, theorist, educator, innovator, therapist, lecturer, equipment designer, pioneer, and instructor. He is also a husband, brother, mentor, trumpet player, and dear friend.
But above all of these, Ken Hutchins is a contributor. And the magnitude of his contributions to the field of exercise science is almost beyond comprehension.
In 1966, at the age of 15, Ken was introduced to strength training through a family friend, Philip Alexander. Philip built Ken’s first weight bench and insisted that Ken get stronger to enable him to play trumpet. Philip also introduced Ken to Ellington Darden and through this friendship Ken learned of Arthur Jones and Nautilus Strength Training Principles in 1971.
In 1977, Ken became formally employed at Nautilus as a surgery technician, writer, surgical photographer, rehabilitation specialist, and proof-reader. He also served as inside salesperson and traveling speaker from 1979 to 1982, addressing scores of Nautilus clinics yearly.
In 1982, Ken and his wife Brenda were sent to supervise the exercise program for the Nautilus-sponsored Osteoporosis Study at the University of Florida Medical School.
Given the frail bones of the elderly women who were the subjects of the research study, Ken and Brenda needed to take very special care to reduce the injury risks to the bones of these thin boned subjects. The challenge they faced was how to safely but meaningfully load and inroad the muscular structures of these women with sufficient resistance.
To solve the problem, Ken applied basic physics (Newton’s second law of motion) and soon discovered that what was originally designed to help protect a vulnerable population from harm during exercise was also the most efficient and effective means of stimulating the human musculature, for anyone.
That year Ken wrote the SuperSlow Protocol article which he then refined with over 8000 one-on-one workouts between 1982 and 1986, and he also conceived some of his most important concepts.
He composed his seminal treatise on exercise vs. recreation, rediscovered Zander’s lost principle of the variable counterbalance (applied to human body-torque), identified friction as a key problem in exercise equipment and motor control, evolved the first photographic standardization for comparing results of exercise and diet programs, discovered that all human muscular functions are negative cam effects, identified the conflict between the assumed and the real objective of exercise, and perhaps most daring of all, established the first comprehensive definition of exercise.
In 1986, Ken worked for Nautilus Sports/Medical Industries as an exercise equipment designer specializing in the application of coupled movement arms and, in 1987, he compiled historical developments of Nautilus equipment. He built the first prototype Nautilus Hip & Back machine incorporating a coupled movement arm. His manually derived resistance curve plots are the only existing curves in existence for the Nautilus machines made before 1978. All of this would culminate in ongoing innovations in coupled movement arm technology including the creation of the first coupled triceps movement arm in 2002 and the first coupled movement arm for a knee extension machine in 2013.
Considering the ingenuity of Ken’s equipment designs, it is an astounding fact that Ken is a self-taught mechanical engineer. Ken and Brenda developed the Linear Spine® Machines in the early 90s. For anyone lucky enough to have access to it, this equipment provides crucial exercise for severely debilitated back and abdominal musculatures.
In 1989, Ken wrote the first edition of his technical manual: SuperSlow—The Ultimate Exercise Protocol (expanded in 1992 to a second edition and later revised further and renamed The Renaissance of Exercise, A Vitruvian Adventure) and launched a guild with a quarterly newsletter and a rigorous education and certification program that would welcome countless students hoping to become instructors or open their own facilities.
The technical manual remains a paragon of language sophistication on the subject of exercise. It is at once a diatribe, a call to action, an instructional document, and an axiomatic system, all rolled into one. It is Ken’s unapologetic magnum opus and a challenge to the fitness industry’s status quo.
In the introduction of Dr. M. Doug McGuff’s first book, Ultimate Exercise, he states:
... Mr. Hutchins took the totality of the HIT philosophy and ferreted out almost every inconsistency and produced an exercise protocol that has a degree of precision and grounding in fundamental science that exceeds what I find even in the field of medicine... These newsletters contain some of the most important articles on physical training that will ever be written.
Throughout the 90’s and into the new millennium, Ken also hosted numerous SuperSlow conventions across the United States, including a Medical Symposium in San Francisco in 2003 that saw a growing quotient of medical doctors aligning with Ken’s vision. I met Josh Trentine at that symposium and thus began a great and enduring friendship built on a mutual admiration and respect for Ken.
Then in 2009, Ken and Brenda joined Josh Trentine and me to form RenEx. We shared a common passion and energy to greatly enhance the certification program on new equipment that was uniquely matched to the protocol unlike any other.
From 2009 to 2014, Ken was fiercely productive and RenEx released some of the most inventive equipment anywhere including the Trunk Extension, the Compound Row, and the iMulti machine, to name but a few.
Ken also continued his writing and has followed the Technical Manual with Music and Dance, Critical Factors of Practice and Conditioning, in which he challenges virtually everything we think we know about exercise. And most recently Ken released his latest book, Heart Strong, How We Learned to Condition the Heart.
Ken’s list of accomplishments is as long as it is distinguished but it’s safe to say that what has always mattered the most to him is his clients. Ghandi once said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
Ken Hutchins exemplifies this credo with a level of compassion and tireless devotion to the health and well-being of his clients that is unequaled. To watch Ken instruct a client workout is like watching a Maestro conduct an orchestra. There is nothing like it.
With hundreds of thousands of individual sessions under his belt, he has not only made stronger and fitter bodies, but more importantly he has helped people with pain, debility, weakness, injury, and low self-esteem.
And he has helped hundreds of facility operators and instructors to establish meaningful careers in the fitness and rehabilitation industry with his protocol, philosophy and educational material. Most, if not all, of the studio operators who have built successful training businesses remotely related to the one-on-one model first described in the Technical Manual, have been able to do so because of a path that Ken Hutchins carved.
And there’s something else that many people might not realize. Over the years, Ken has committed himself so fully to his business that nearly 100% of his earnings have been re-invested in his business for the purpose of improvement, innovation, and enhancement. It is very difficult to explain what it takes in terms of time, energy and money simply to prototype, let alone to produce commercial grade exercise equipment at the level of sophistication that Ken has done.
Throughout his illness, as the situation has become more dire, Ken and Brenda have radically downsized their lives. Personal care incidentals are a luxury and currently at a standstill. No money is spent unless it is medically or nutritionally required. Regrettably, Ken has even had to sell half of his collection of prized trumpets, and with more personal items to be sold yet.
Please help Ken and Brenda by donating to this Go Fund Me campaign. The sooner Ken can recover and manage his condition, the sooner he can get back to training his clients, supporting himself and sharing new discoveries with all of us. Every little bit helps.
With utmost gratitude,
Gus Diamantopoulos,
President,
The Strength Room
Toronto
In late 2019, my mentor and friend, Ken Hutchins, the creator of the SuperSlow protocol and philosophy and Renaissance Exercise, suffered a mysterious illness that landed him in and out of the hospital for months.
It started in early December 2019 with an easily dismissed on and off again sore throat and some night sweats. But on December 8 2019, after a night of incessant coughing and fever, Ken was admitted to the emergency room.
This first of 3 hospital stays commenced a diagnostic mystery as doctors struggled to nail down what was wrong with Ken. He had very low blood pressure and some other tests including a heart ultrasound that showed that Ken was technically in acute heart failure and was experiencing atrial fibrillation. He struggled with incredible fatigue and weakness, coughing, fits of hiccups and hyperventilation, along with severe pain when breathing in, and fever.
A high white blood cell count was briefly attributed to the discovery of a sick gallbladder, but the count remained high even after the procedure to remove it was well over.
As the mystery of his illness continued, in an attempt to find his issue, two CT scans with contrast dye were performed. But as a result, Ken needed to undergo 13 kidney dialysis treatments (three of which were done as outpatient procedures between hospitalizations) and there was no guarantee that his kidneys would ever return. He was in dialysis treatment on his 68th birthday, on Christmas Day and on New Year’s Day 2020.
He would not be discharged from his first hospital stay until January 10 2020, with a diagnosis of post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis (an inflammation of the tiny fibres of the kidneys).
But Ken would soon be readmitted only 9 days later because of a 103-degree fever and low hemoglobin. In his second hospital stay Ken went through a litany of further tests including a bone marrow biopsy (negative) and chest X-rays daily to monitor water build up in his lungs including, eventually, a procedure to remove the excess fluid. And still, all the tests for bacteria, viruses, and other germs that may cause infections came back negative.
It was clear that along with the mystery of Ken’s medical challenges, both Ken and Brenda would be facing a massive economic obstacle ahead. For the first time, a man who has worked harder and more than anyone I have ever known, was abruptly forced to stop working and without much indication as to when he would be able to return to work again. Without income, there would be mounting difficulties to cover both rent (business and home), and expenses (business and personal).
On January 30 2020, Ken was discharged from the hospital a second time with a new diagnosis of acute Rheumatic Fever which was related to and built upon the previous diagnosis of glomerulonephritis, and it seemed that this all made sense. Ken would be able to return to a fully active and normal life, aside from the need for daily penicillin to ward off new Strep.
But nightly fevers began yet again in early May and by May 19 2020, Ken was readmitted for his third hospital stay.
By this time, things at the hospital were very different due to the COVID19 protocols. Despite prior testing by his infectious disease doctor, the hospital needed a blood antibody test. All tests came back negative.
As Ken’s fevers persisted and some markers of inflammation began to rise, a new test called the KARIUS was mentioned. This is a new blood test that can identify thousands of pathogens. But this test also came back negative.
However, it was noticed that in addition to the fevers, Ken had a puffy left hand, wrist pains, and stiffness in other joints. These factors combined with the spontaneous improvement of symptoms after a course of IV steroids, along with the confirmation of rashes in his previous hospital stays, led to a diagnosis of Still’s Disease: A rare type of inflammatory arthritis that features rash, fever spikes, and joint pain.
Ken was discharged after his third hospital stay on June 1st. He now requires various medications, including Methotrexate, Prednisone, Penicillin and Eliquis. There’s also a possibility that insulin may be required. Plus, there have been recommendations of specialized drugs for his latest diagnosis that would cost hundreds a month, even after insurance coverage.
Ken and Brenda are on Medicare, including a Medicare supplement that has covered most of the medical expenses so far, but every year during open enrollment there is an increase. While they are hopeful to be able to continue to afford that option, the alternative is to go into the HMO system which could be problematic for continuity of care and options available.
This is Ken's 3rd diagnosis since late 2019 and there is no guarantee that it will hold. He was into his 4th month of recovery when this latest assault on his health occurred, further setting back any improvement previously made.
He is very frail and unable to drive due to possible side effects of the medication. And as Brenda is his full-time caregiver, she is unable to seek employment.
Although Ken still has much to do, including numerous writing projects as well as training his cherished clients, we do not know when he will be able to work again which means that both Ken and Brenda are facing a very uncertain future.
I therefore humbly ask for your support to help Ken and his wife Brenda by making a donation to this GoFundMe campaign.
All of your donations will directly go to Ken and Brenda help get Ken back on his feet so that he can get back to doing what he does best: Helping others. This includes rent assistance for home and work and expenses (such as groceries and his increasingly specific dietary needs).
For anyone who needs a refresher on the man who created an exercise revolution, Ken Hutchins is a writer, inventor, philosopher, historian, intellectual, scientist, business owner, theorist, educator, innovator, therapist, lecturer, equipment designer, pioneer, and instructor. He is also a husband, brother, mentor, trumpet player, and dear friend.
But above all of these, Ken Hutchins is a contributor. And the magnitude of his contributions to the field of exercise science is almost beyond comprehension.
In 1966, at the age of 15, Ken was introduced to strength training through a family friend, Philip Alexander. Philip built Ken’s first weight bench and insisted that Ken get stronger to enable him to play trumpet. Philip also introduced Ken to Ellington Darden and through this friendship Ken learned of Arthur Jones and Nautilus Strength Training Principles in 1971.
In 1977, Ken became formally employed at Nautilus as a surgery technician, writer, surgical photographer, rehabilitation specialist, and proof-reader. He also served as inside salesperson and traveling speaker from 1979 to 1982, addressing scores of Nautilus clinics yearly.
In 1982, Ken and his wife Brenda were sent to supervise the exercise program for the Nautilus-sponsored Osteoporosis Study at the University of Florida Medical School.
Given the frail bones of the elderly women who were the subjects of the research study, Ken and Brenda needed to take very special care to reduce the injury risks to the bones of these thin boned subjects. The challenge they faced was how to safely but meaningfully load and inroad the muscular structures of these women with sufficient resistance.
To solve the problem, Ken applied basic physics (Newton’s second law of motion) and soon discovered that what was originally designed to help protect a vulnerable population from harm during exercise was also the most efficient and effective means of stimulating the human musculature, for anyone.
That year Ken wrote the SuperSlow Protocol article which he then refined with over 8000 one-on-one workouts between 1982 and 1986, and he also conceived some of his most important concepts.
He composed his seminal treatise on exercise vs. recreation, rediscovered Zander’s lost principle of the variable counterbalance (applied to human body-torque), identified friction as a key problem in exercise equipment and motor control, evolved the first photographic standardization for comparing results of exercise and diet programs, discovered that all human muscular functions are negative cam effects, identified the conflict between the assumed and the real objective of exercise, and perhaps most daring of all, established the first comprehensive definition of exercise.
In 1986, Ken worked for Nautilus Sports/Medical Industries as an exercise equipment designer specializing in the application of coupled movement arms and, in 1987, he compiled historical developments of Nautilus equipment. He built the first prototype Nautilus Hip & Back machine incorporating a coupled movement arm. His manually derived resistance curve plots are the only existing curves in existence for the Nautilus machines made before 1978. All of this would culminate in ongoing innovations in coupled movement arm technology including the creation of the first coupled triceps movement arm in 2002 and the first coupled movement arm for a knee extension machine in 2013.
Considering the ingenuity of Ken’s equipment designs, it is an astounding fact that Ken is a self-taught mechanical engineer. Ken and Brenda developed the Linear Spine® Machines in the early 90s. For anyone lucky enough to have access to it, this equipment provides crucial exercise for severely debilitated back and abdominal musculatures.
In 1989, Ken wrote the first edition of his technical manual: SuperSlow—The Ultimate Exercise Protocol (expanded in 1992 to a second edition and later revised further and renamed The Renaissance of Exercise, A Vitruvian Adventure) and launched a guild with a quarterly newsletter and a rigorous education and certification program that would welcome countless students hoping to become instructors or open their own facilities.
The technical manual remains a paragon of language sophistication on the subject of exercise. It is at once a diatribe, a call to action, an instructional document, and an axiomatic system, all rolled into one. It is Ken’s unapologetic magnum opus and a challenge to the fitness industry’s status quo.
In the introduction of Dr. M. Doug McGuff’s first book, Ultimate Exercise, he states:
... Mr. Hutchins took the totality of the HIT philosophy and ferreted out almost every inconsistency and produced an exercise protocol that has a degree of precision and grounding in fundamental science that exceeds what I find even in the field of medicine... These newsletters contain some of the most important articles on physical training that will ever be written.
Throughout the 90’s and into the new millennium, Ken also hosted numerous SuperSlow conventions across the United States, including a Medical Symposium in San Francisco in 2003 that saw a growing quotient of medical doctors aligning with Ken’s vision. I met Josh Trentine at that symposium and thus began a great and enduring friendship built on a mutual admiration and respect for Ken.
Then in 2009, Ken and Brenda joined Josh Trentine and me to form RenEx. We shared a common passion and energy to greatly enhance the certification program on new equipment that was uniquely matched to the protocol unlike any other.
From 2009 to 2014, Ken was fiercely productive and RenEx released some of the most inventive equipment anywhere including the Trunk Extension, the Compound Row, and the iMulti machine, to name but a few.
Ken also continued his writing and has followed the Technical Manual with Music and Dance, Critical Factors of Practice and Conditioning, in which he challenges virtually everything we think we know about exercise. And most recently Ken released his latest book, Heart Strong, How We Learned to Condition the Heart.
Ken’s list of accomplishments is as long as it is distinguished but it’s safe to say that what has always mattered the most to him is his clients. Ghandi once said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
Ken Hutchins exemplifies this credo with a level of compassion and tireless devotion to the health and well-being of his clients that is unequaled. To watch Ken instruct a client workout is like watching a Maestro conduct an orchestra. There is nothing like it.
With hundreds of thousands of individual sessions under his belt, he has not only made stronger and fitter bodies, but more importantly he has helped people with pain, debility, weakness, injury, and low self-esteem.
And he has helped hundreds of facility operators and instructors to establish meaningful careers in the fitness and rehabilitation industry with his protocol, philosophy and educational material. Most, if not all, of the studio operators who have built successful training businesses remotely related to the one-on-one model first described in the Technical Manual, have been able to do so because of a path that Ken Hutchins carved.
And there’s something else that many people might not realize. Over the years, Ken has committed himself so fully to his business that nearly 100% of his earnings have been re-invested in his business for the purpose of improvement, innovation, and enhancement. It is very difficult to explain what it takes in terms of time, energy and money simply to prototype, let alone to produce commercial grade exercise equipment at the level of sophistication that Ken has done.
Throughout his illness, as the situation has become more dire, Ken and Brenda have radically downsized their lives. Personal care incidentals are a luxury and currently at a standstill. No money is spent unless it is medically or nutritionally required. Regrettably, Ken has even had to sell half of his collection of prized trumpets, and with more personal items to be sold yet.
Please help Ken and Brenda by donating to this Go Fund Me campaign. The sooner Ken can recover and manage his condition, the sooner he can get back to training his clients, supporting himself and sharing new discoveries with all of us. Every little bit helps.
With utmost gratitude,
Gus Diamantopoulos,
President,
The Strength Room
Toronto
Organizer and beneficiary
Overload Fitness
Organizer
Beachwood, OH
Kenneth Melvin Hutchins
Beneficiary
