High Intensity Weight Training with Jim Flanagan
On my last trip to Florida, I made a new friend who I’ll never forget.
Meet Jim Flanagan.
Meet BIG Jim Flanagan.
Here’s how the friendship started, I was dining at a steak house restaurant in Orlando that had been recommended to me by the concierge at the Peabody Hotel. The restaurant was called Del Frisco’s and it is a well known chain of steak restaurants on the East Coast of the USA.
While dining there, a very large, very tall gentleman came to ask how our dinner was. He introduced himself as Jim, the Operations Manager at Del Frisco’s. Had we been eating outside, Jim’s physical stature would have surely blocked out most of the day light.
This was one of the biggest dudes I’ve ever met.
What was particularly remarkable about Jim however, was that he was clearly in amazing physical condition for his age.
Jim was incredibly polite, professional and sincerely interested in the service and food quality. Upon Jim’s return, I had to ask Jim how tall he was and how often he worked out. I think the answer was “six foot five” and “once a week”.
Once a week? This immediately got my attention….
Being interested in and committed to muscular development myself, we immediately got into conversation about pushing iron and fitness in general.
As it turned out, Jim was and is a major force behind Arthur Jones’ Medx Corporation. Arthur Jones brought the world the Nautilus Gym Equipment. Jim knew Arther Jones personally and has many great stories to share about his friendship with Arthur. I wish that I had the time to hear more of them when I was in Florida.
Jim told us that he’d been given special clearance to train elite Army, Navy and Air Force personnel in addition to being a trainer for the CIA, FBI and the Secret Service.
Anyway, as the evening came to end and the restaurant emptied out, Jim sat with us at the table talking about his career in physical fitness, running gyms, his martial arts and strength training with people like Chuck Norris, Dick Butkus and Bill Pearl.
It was a terrific evening which ended on an even higher note with a personal invitation to Jim’s home gym for a high intensity work out.
A few days later, Traci joined me in Orlando and we both drove up to Jim’s home in Longwood, Florida for one of the most gruelling work outs I’ve ever had.
Because Jim runs a successful gym equipment and personal training business called Resistance Solutions, in addition to his other professional commitments, he had built a significant addition onto his home to show case all the state of the art fitness equipment used for high intensity training.
When we got to Jim’s home, he greeted us with an incredibly warm welcome while showing us through his superb home gym. (Actually, it was more like a commercial gym…which happened to be attached to Jim’s home!)
We also met Jim’s lovely wife Marcie and their great dogs.
The gym is covered with photos and autographed pictures by people like those I mentioned above and others like Colin Powell, Steve Reeves and Bob Wall (who starred alongside Bruce Lee in both the Game of Death and Enter the Dragon). I spent at least twenty minutes carefully reading and examining each one with great interest. With Jim’s permission, I snapped a few photos as well.
Just being in that gym is inspiring.
Then Jim put me through a chest, leg and back work out that I’ll never forget. Most of the movements were compound, multi-joint exercises, so I was actually working out my entire body. The MedX equipment was strong and very effective.
The whole workout took less than 20 minutes and had very little rest between sets. Jim kept asking me if I felt nauseous. I did not. The reason he kept asking, I later learned, is that the amount of lactic acid one releases into the bloodstream during that kind of intense physical exercise can create a nauseous feeling. People with less than decent cardio fitness don’t have the ability to vacate lactic acid from their blood as quickly as fit people which creates the nauseous feeling. (Thankfully I was in half decent shape).
However, my heart was pounding like a hammer and I was breathing very hard at the end of every set, nearly unable to talk.
This was a damn tough workout and I wasn’t about to let Jim down during one of the greatest fitness learning opportunities of my life. I was going to give this workout my everything.
The basic idea behind High Intensity Training, is that you workout VERY hard, very infrequently (like once or twice a week) to develop muscular growth. You need to make sure that you are well rested between workouts, or you will very quickly over train and begin to lose any gains that you’ve made.
High Intensity training says that you can train hard, not long and never both.
It’s a great way to train and from time to time, I get my “Jim Flanagan” on and do some very brief, intense workouts. Personally, I find that I just can’t train this way all the time…my body just won’t handle the intensity (even though my mind can).
At the end of the workout, I showered up and Jim took Traci and I our for a delicious southern style lunch that included Collard Greens, barbeque beans, okra and pulled pork.
It was an awesome feast following that workout. While I filled up on great food, Jim entertained us further with more stories of his incredible life.
Jim and I still keep in touch and I remain grateful for his hospitality, friendship and knowledge. If you ever want to learn how to train like an animal, how to run a gym or personal training business PROFITABLY, look Jim up.
He’s a wealth of knowledge on all those subjects and a total gentleman.
Here is some video of the workout and a few shots from Big Jim’s world class fitness facility:
A proud moment - I survived Big Jim’s high intensity workout.
It is proven that gritting your teeth does absolutely nothing to help lift the weight.
Jim’s gym.
Jim and Traci
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About the Author: I value good design, growth, effectiveness, simplicity, profitability, lots of sleep, tons of laughter and above all, freedom. If it makes money - it's a business. If it doesn't make money - it's a hobby. Period.
John, Fitness Austin | Jun 29, 2008 | Reply
I met Jim 27 uears ago, and we have remained in touch ever since. He is genuine and sincere, and would give you the shirt off his back. I trained him once many years ago. I remember standing on the weightstack to give additional negative resistance on the leg extension.