Why Did Jones Abandon the Nautilus Duo Squat?

I got a chance to use the Duo Squat when I was in the Marine Corps during the early nineties. One of the best nautilus machines ever made in my opinion. Interestingly, every single base gym I trained at during my tour, no matter where I was, always had quite a large number of blue Nautilus machines. And most Marine bases always had multiple well equipped facilities on base. I would guess that Nautilus in its heyday probably had contracts with the Dept of Defense to furnish branch bases all over the world with equipment.

The Nautilus machine I always wanted to try but never encountered, largely due to the rave reviews and championing by Dr. Ken, was the Leverage Leg Press. I remember Dr. Darden utilizing that one when training Eddie Mueller for the Massive Muscles in 10 Weeks book.

I never really liked the Nautilus Leverage range. They had the advantage of a very small footprint and were clearly a cheaper build option but despite being labelled as leverage many were not. They just had had smaller cams than their parent designs and used webbing to link the cam to the weight stack. This got rid of the chain friction but my biggest issues with them were that I was too big (at 220 lbs) to fit in and the smaller cam also didnā€™t feel right - probably because I was used to the cams (and friction) on Gen 1 and 2 machines. Last time I used one was around 1988.

Seems like Dr. Dardenā€™s answer above is essentially the solution, and/or simply stopping even shorter of lockoutā€¦(looking for a way to put a piece of painterā€™s tape or something, somewhere on machine, to keep rep ranges consistent).

From my observations I would have to say the main reason most gym members didnā€™t like the duo sqaut had nothing to do with shoulder pain or discomfort but rather it was just too damn hard.
It was almost impossible to cheat on it and if you were only putting in a half-hearted effort it was very obvious , especially if you were attempting to do infimetric or akinetic work on it.

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You certainly have a point in regards one to one training.
But I would say that in the vast majority of gyms that would not be a factor as most people who actually used the duo squat would not have personal instruction (and the quality of most instructers left a lot to be desired anyway) .

What would typically occur would be that they would set the seat incorrectly (to allow lock out) , then perform the reps too quickly, and finally not come close to failure.

Mark

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He discontinued the duo squat, but the negative cam continued at least thru next gen leg press