NET Method · The Science Behind NET

NET Method

If you want to exercise, there are many different types of workouts you can try. You can walk or run, do some weight lifting at the gym, or take popular high-intensity interval training (HIIT) classes. But we believe that, if you want to build strength and health, our science-based form of slow strength training is the safest, most efficient, and most effective choice.  

We specialize in a form of exercise known as high-intensity strength training, which has decades of research to back it up (much of which you can find in the book Body by Science). According to that research, after less than six months, high-intensity strength training is proven to help you improve strength, cardiovascular fitness, cognitive function, and more. 

The key difference between high-intensity strength training and what you might do at a normal gym is that each exercise is performed to muscular failure—until you can’t lift the weight anymore. This ensures that you train your muscles to their full capacity, and they respond by becoming stronger over time. 

In our case, high-intensity doesn’t mean high-risk, though. In fact, the training we offer is one of the safest forms of exercise. You won’t be doing any fast, explosive movements; instead, our exercises use a slow and controlled speed to protect your joints at any age—and get you results you won’t see with conventional exercise. 

Since 2013, we have been guiding clients through these workouts, and we’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. In order to help you avoid injury and get the best results, we’ve developed our own in-house NET method that centers on three key principles: 

1. Muscle first, movement second: It doesn’t matter how many repetitions you perform; what’s important is that you’re using the right muscles. Unfortunately, many of us have lost the connection in our brains to certain key muscles, like the rhomboids and latissimus in the back. We can rebuild that connection over time by focusing intently on contracting the muscle during our workouts. 

2. Move weights slowly to build strength: The NET method involves lifting and lowering weights slowly, about 6-24 seconds per repetition. This is much slower than you might be accustomed to. By avoiding the momentum that comes with fast movements, you ensure that your muscles are worked to their full potential and reduce the risk of injury. 

3. Train to muscular failure: The way to stimulate muscles to grow is to push them beyond what they’ve experienced before, and that’s what happens when you reach muscular failure. The upside of this approach is that it means you only need one set per machine for the most efficient results.

Together, we call this workout MSTF: mindful strength training to failure. The purpose of an MSTF session is to safely stimulate adaptations in your body for an increase in strength and lean tissue, re-wire your neurology so your brain is more connected to your muscles, and trigger a cascade of metabolic processes that are beneficial to your health—all to an extent that can't be achieved if you only train at moderate intensity.

World-class machines

NET is machine-based training. We are a home to around 30 medical-grade machines that are different from the ones you’ll find at a regular gym. The first time you try one, you’ll feel the difference. 

Created by MedX and Delphex, these machines are based on hundreds of millions of dollars of R&D and optimized for safety and effectiveness: 

• Settings can be adjusted to fit each individual body, protecting your joints

• Low friction, so you can more effectively build strength

• Increase the weight in small increments to make smooth progress over time

• Resistance that adjusts dynamically throughout the range of motion, based on the biomechanics of your muscles, working each muscle fully and helping correct imbalances

NET workouts are backed by scientific research and our years of experience. Read what our happy clients have to say.

Why perform slow strength training to muscular failure?

Our workouts at New Element Training draw on cutting-edge science to support your lifelong health. This research suggests that you can:

1. Build strength and manage weight by tapping into type-2B muscle fibres

2. Achieve total-body health by activating myokines 

3. Prevent injuries with high-tech, medical-grade machines

For more background, read the latest studies on resistance training, health, and longevity.

Skeletal muscle is comprised of different fibres that are bundled together: 

• Slow-twitch fibres: used for endurance.

• Intermediate-twitch type-2A: used when moving a semi-heavy object. 

• Fast-twitch type-2B: the largest fibres, called into action when all-out effort is required (fight or flight). They contract many times faster than slow-twitch fibres and with much greater force, but they fatigue quickly. 

Fast-twitch type-2B fibres are responsible for producing high force, strength, power, and speed. With the largest glycogen storage capacity in the body, they play an important role in processing the carbohydrates that we eat. Lose them, and you become more susceptible to developing insulin resistance, which often results in weight gain and potentially serious health complications. 

Fast-twitch type-2B muscle fibres can only be accessed and maintained through all-out physical effort, which is seldom required in our daily lives—even during regular gym workouts. As a result, we start to lose these fibres in early adulthood. New Element Training sessions, where muscles are trained to failure, are designed to access the entire muscle (including type-2B fibres) to rebuild crucial muscle mass.

Until recently, muscle was considered in purely mechanical terms. But we now know that when muscles contract, they produce hormone-like chemical messengers or “myokines,” generating exponentially more when bigger muscles and more intense contractions are involved. 

Myokines allow muscle to communicate with many other tissues in our body. For example, the receptors of myokines are found in fat, liver, pancreas, bone, heart, immune, and brain cells. Myokines are responsible for tissue regeneration and repair, maintaining healthy bodily functioning, and cell signaling. 

This represents a new way of looking at muscle: as one of the most active endocrine (hormone-producing) organs in our body—when they are contracted intensely.

For this reason, a brief New Element Training session can deliver more health benefits than hours of conventional exercise.

The research-based benefits offered by myokines (and hence strength training in general) include: 

• Builds muscle tissue mass. For example, it downregulates myostatin, a gene responsible for inhibiting muscle growth. It also upregulates decorin, a myokine associated with gene expression that promotes muscle growth. 

• Decreases fat, including visceral (organ), intramuscular (within muscle), and subcutaneous (under the skin). 

• Increases resting energy expenditure.

• Prevents bone mineral density loss. 

• Improves insulin sensitivity by increasing cellular glucose uptake. 

• Decreases chronic, systemic inflammation. For example, the exercise-induced interleukin-6 myokine (IL-6) increases circulating levels of potent anti-inflammatory ­hormones, such as IL-1RA and IL-10. 

• Inhibits mammary cancer cell growth. For example, SPARC and OSM myokines have an anti-tumorigenic effect. 

• Improves pancreas, liver, and gut function. 

• Aids learning and memory. For example, it upregulates the expression of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) myokine, which has been identified as a key factor in controlling body mass and energy homeostasis, as well as cognitive function. Read more scientific research about myokines.

Safety is paramount at NET. Unlike many other types of exercise, we do not use explosive force. The NET method is specific; movements are slow, deliberate, and machine-guided to prevent injury to muscles and soft tissue.  

By moving weights slowly and continuously against resistance for approximately 90-120 seconds, a muscle is kept under constant tension until it is impossible to complete another repetition while maintaining perfect form. This is extremely safe, because you do not have the strength at the end of each exercise to produce the explosive force that can cause injury to joints and connective tissues. 

After all, force = mass x acceleration. When you move weights slowly—with very low acceleration—the force is also low.  

Why the machines we use at New Element Training are safe and effective: 

• The machine’s “resistance curve” is matched to the muscle’s “strength profile curve,” by design. This ensures that the muscle remains under proper tension throughout the entire motion, from full stretch to complete contraction. This builds well-balanced muscles and corrects imbalances. 

• Multiple settings can be adjusted to fit the machine to your body for proper muscle-joint function, regardless of your body type or height. This is an important safety consideration for lifelong joint health; it’s harder to do the movement “wrong,” and therefore the risk of injury is extremely small. 

• The padding, support, and structure of the machines serve to better isolate the targeted muscles and provide a proper stimulus to them. 

• Because the machine is so well-designed, our brains don’t have to go through a long learning curve to figure out how to perform the exercise; the movement is relatively straightforward. This allows you to start building pure strength from the first few sessions onward.

• There is very low friction, enhancing the negative (eccentric) phase of strength development. Strength training is more effective when it properly stimulates this negative phase, which produces about 35% more force than the positive (concentric) phase. 

• You can progress in incremental steps because of how the weight stack is designed. In physics, work is defined in foot pounds as mass times foot distance. If 100 pounds on the weight stack travels for one foot distance, you’ve done 100 pounds of work. If the same weight travels half a foot, you’ve done 50 pounds of work; if the same weight travels two feet, you’ve done 200 pounds of work. All NET machines are designed to offer no more than one foot of travel distance. This means that when we increase the weight by 2 pounds, we are increasing the work by 2 foot pounds or less—a small increase that’s not possible on many traditional machines. This allows clients to make micro progress on their training.

The scientific research on strength training is continually evolving. Here are some of the fundamental, peer-reviewed studies that inform our approach at NET:

A research review suggests that training with the highest possible intensity and with one set per exercise is optimal for building muscle (Medicina Sportiva). These results are based on 57 different peer-reviewed journal articles, and they include other guidelines for rest, range of motion, and supplementary endurance training. Read more.  

For older adults, performing five slow, high-intensity exercises twice a week can have significant benefits (Journal of Sports Medicine). People in their 40s through 60s showed significant gains in strength after just 12-19 weeks of exercise. This kind of exercise can help them access all of the many benefits of strength training. Read more.

High-intensity training can improve heart function (PLoS One). 22 weeks of high-intensity resistance training led to measurable, physiological changes in cardiac atrial and ventricular structure and function in men who were new to training. Read more.

Resistance training to failure improves cardiovascular fitness through a variety of mechanisms (Journal of Exercise Physiology Online). Resistance training is known to improve cardiovascular fitness, including VO2 max. This research review suggests that it may do so by inducing a variety of healthy adaptations in the body: an increase in mitochondrial enzymes, mitochondrial proliferation, the conversion of muscle fibers, and vascular remodeling (including capillarization). Read more.

Resistance training can help with the muscle loss that comes naturally with age (Frontiers in Medicine). As we get older, we’re at risk for sarcopenia, the progressive loss of muscle mass, strength, and function—which contributes to falls, disease, disability, loss of independence, and mortality. Sarcopenia is a reliable marker of your biological age (as opposed to your actual age). Resistance training is the exercise strategy usually recommended to counteract sarcopenia and is effective in increasing muscle mass and strength. Read more.  

Resistance training can help make us “younger” at a genetic level (PLoS One). One factor that contributes to sarcopenia—the muscle loss that happens naturally with age—is dysfunction in our mitochondria. Six months of training led to changes in people's genes that indicated better mitochondrial function, as well as gains in strength, effectively making people younger. Read more.

People with higher muscle mass have a lower risk of death (PLoS One). People with low muscle mass had higher body fat, an increased likelihood of diabetes, and higher risk of death, at least for those with a body mass index ≥22. Read more.

People who do strength-based exercise have a 23% lower risk of premature death, and 31% lower risk of death from cancer (American Journal of Epidemiology). “The study shows exercise that promotes muscular strength may be just as important for health as aerobic activities like jogging or cycling,” said associate professor Emmanuel Stamatakis from the University of Sydney. “It may be even more vital when it comes to reducing risk of death from cancer.” Read more.

Resistance training improves cognitive function in people with mild cognitive impairment (Journal of the American Geriatrics Society). These benefits seem to be from building muscle, not from improving aerobic capacity. Read more.

When trying to lose weight, you’re at risk of losing muscle—but resistance training can help (Obesity). The healthiest weight-loss strategies for older adults should maximize fat loss while minimizing muscle loss. According to this study, cutting calories and doing resistance training results in less lean mass lost than cutting calories and doing aerobic training. Adding either type of exercise reduces fat more than simply restricting calories. Read more.

Women can gain upper body strength similarly to men (PeerJ). After 10 weeks of resistance training, men and women made similar gains in upper body strength. "One should not expect to find limitations in upper body strength development in women," wrote a research team led by Paulo Gentil at the University of Goias. Read more.  

Protein supplements can significantly enhance your gains from strength training (British Journal of Sports Medicine). Evidence from 49 studies suggests that supplementing with protein (up to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day) helps build muscle strength and size during resistance exercise training. Read more.