Dr Ben Bocchicchio
Dr Ben Bocchicchio has been an innovator and leader in the fields of fitness, exercise, and health since the 1970s. He founded Sports Conditioning in Staten Island and developed programs for weight reduction, cosmetic enhancement, general fitness, and health and rehabilitation. Dr Ben owned and supervised a number of private fitness and health centers from the early 1970s. He also developed and owned spine and cardio vascular rehabilitation centers, where he used his S.Ma.R.T.-EX™ program.
In the early 1980s, Dr. Ben founded Cardio Management Systems and used resistance training as an intricate part of Phase 2 Cardiac Rehabilitation. This was the first documented and formal use of such exercise and is now commonplace protocol. In the mid-1980s, Dr. Ben became the exercise physiologist for Lehrman Back Centers in Miami Beach, Florida.
Dr. Ben has continued his work in the fields of fitness, wellness, and health to this day. He currently maintains a private fitness and health practice in Arizona. This successful business includes medically managed weight loss programs that combine prescription medication therapy, nutritional counselling, and supervised exercise. Now at 70, Dr. Ben continues to train regularly using his revolutionary S.Ma.R.T.-EX™ training system. This enables him to maintain a high level of strength, significant muscle mass, and low body fat. He continues to be a much sought-after expert and consultant by corporate, educational, and individual clients.
Check out Dr Ben’s book – 15 Minutes to Fitness: Dr. Ben’s SMaRT Plan for Diet and Total Health
Access exclusive content from Ben inside HIT Business Membership
In this episode, we cover:
- The origins of SuperSlow
- Classic tales with Arthur Jones
- Dr Ben’s business success
- High intensity strength training:
- Short vs long workouts
- Bodyweight vs machines
- Potential problems with Timed Static Contraction training
- Maximising hypertrophy
- Workout technique
- … and much, much more
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Enjoy!
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Selected Links from the Episode
- 15 Minutes to Fitness: Dr. Ben’s SMaRT Plan for Diet and Total Health ( Amazon US / Amazon UK )
- Nautilus, Inc.
- Mr America
- SuperSlow
- MedX
- High intensity training
- Resistance Bands ( Amazon US / Amazon UK )
- Jeremy Loenneke on Blood Flow Restriction Training, Periodization, General Adaptation Syndrome and HIT
- Muscle hypertrophy
- Intermittent Fasting
- Gluconeogenesis
- Dr Ben Bocchicchio with Fat Emperor – #Resistance #Training for the win !
People Mentioned
- Arthur Jones
- Dr Ellington Darden
- Ken Hutchins
- Jim Flanagan (Listen to my episodes with Jim here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
- Bob Hoffman
- Rocky Balboa
- Dr Jeremy Leonneke (Listen to my episodes with Jeremy here: Part 1 and Part 2)
- Charles Atlas
- Dr Jason Fung
- Dr Ted Naiman (Listen to my episodes with Ted here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
- Steve D. Phinney PhD & Jeff S. Volek PhD
- Gary Taubes (Listen to my episode with Gary here)
- Ivor Cummins (Listen to my episode with Ivor here)
500 – What I’ve Learned After 11 Years of Interviewing World-Class HIT Experts and Fitness Entrepreneurs (Luke Carlson interviews Lawrence Neal)
499 – The Best HIT Protocol for Strength, Muscle Mass, and Hypertrophy (SuperSlow VS High-Volume HIT Debate with Dagoberto Vila and Dr. James Fisher)
498 – How to Fine-Tune Your HIT Workouts and Design A Great Client Experience (with Luke Carlson)
This was a very interesting interview. I imagine his remarks may have sparked some interesting reactions from some long time members of the HIT community.
Dr. Ben is somewhat unusual among HIT guru’s these days, because he seems to have stayed more faithful to certain of Arthur Jones original ideas, namely that you want to use mostly cam-based isolation exercises in order to be able to target specific muscle groups with a lot of intensity over a full range of motion. In contrast, HIT trainers that come out of the Hutchins/McGuff lineage now seem to favor mostly compound machines (Big 3, Big 5), where isolation moves are treated almost as accessory exercises. The latter training style seems to dominate the HIT community these days. It would be interesting to hear more about how that shift developed, and why it happened. Was it just a matter of cost and efficiency? Perhaps the small studio model just isn’t viable for most potential owners if they need to buy 12 to 15 isolation machines. ARX seems a further step in that direction: you can have a studio with just one, or maybe two machines. But are you making compromises by reducing the exercise selection to mostly compound movements?
With regard to the rowing exercise: the same kind of thing happens with a lat pull down, or body weight pull up exercise. As you reach the top of the movement, leverage falls off. My understanding is that the SS line of row and pull down machines were built with so called ‘radical fall off’ cams to deal with this issue. Also, if you look at videos of Arnold using a cable row machine, you see extreme forward lean before he starts his pull to fully stretch the lats, and then a good deal of lay back at the end, to deal with the leverage issue. There was some method to the technique he used. Another approach taken with barbells is called the Yates row, used to hit the lats will especially heavy loads in the appropriate range of motion.
On the subject of acute hormonal responses after intense exercise: It used to be conventional wisdom that these were significant, and associated with better results. But with further research, that idea seems to be falling out of favor.
As an aside: I am disappointed that some of his interviews will be behind a pay wall. I understand, of course – you have got to get paid, and that is one way of boosting the numbers of paying customers.
The issues you mention with regard to losing tension on the lats and so forth can be remedied with modifying the range of motion to maximize tension on the muscles . For example on a pull down/row not bringing the bar fully into the torso while maintaining a 90 degree angle or so at the forearm/upperarm does maximize tension on the lats & general back musculature .
Great interview. I was fortunate to earn Dr. Ben’s F.I.R.S.T. (Focused Intensity Resistance Slow Training) certification many years ago. He came to the facility I was working for at the time so all of the trainers could further our education with H.I.T. concepts.
Interestingly, in Dr. Bocchicchio’s book, he recommends 2 weekly workouts, AND, 3 weekly cardio workouts, AND, daily stretching. Sadly, Lawrence did not cover this at all?????????????
This is a great interview. I am going to get his book.