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Weird science? The Ultimate Human Experiment is poised to unleash the ultra-fast, super-strong perfect athlete that lives inside each and every one of us. Or is it?

Men's Fitness, April, 2004 by Jeff O'Connell

DEEP IN THE HEARTLAND, an icy wind buffets the walls of a warehouse inside of which the course of human evolution will forever be altered. Or not. Electricity hums, powering a laboratory jammed with gym equipment, computers, and high-tech gadgetry. A young woman with electrodes stuck to her toned thighs works a leg-press machine. With a grunt, she drives her feet upward, jangling the 45-pound iron plates, two on a side.

Another shapely woman--built like Jessica Rabbit--hovers nearby, videotaping the scene. Peering down, a technician in a white lab coat presses a button. The woman working her legs groans as if she is being tortured. It's a strange noise, but you'd expel similar sounds if your quadriceps were zapped with 200 millivolts of electricity midway through your set.

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This rough-hewn space, located just outside of Columbus, Ohio, houses Dr. Sciocchitano's Elite Training Lab, home of the Ultimate Human Experiment, and these people are its creators, scientists, subjects, and full-time inhabitants.

"The Ultimate Human Experiment is designed to prove that man's power to become all he can be doesn't lie within some advanced technology but within himself," says D.J. Wallis, one of the experiment's principals and the woman with the camcorder. "The day someone says, 'I'll do whatever it takes to be the best'--and means it--is the day the 'ultimate technology' has been found." This seemingly contradictory jargon is confusing, but the theory, principles, and application of the U.H.E. are surprisingly simple.

You know that feeling you got the first time you grabbed the rim? The first time you pushed further than you thought possible and came out on top? You felt anything was possible, you were unstoppable, and, for the moment, that confidence would lead to success in every aspect of your life. Achieving and harnessing that feeling is what the Ultimate Human Experiment is all about. Quite simply, the U.H.E. seeks to elicit the perfect fulfillment of human potential--mentally and physically--in its subjects. To achieve this, the U.H.E. staff employs machines like the Stim, which fires the electrodes connected to the young woman on the leg press.

"When most people exercise, they only contract about 30% to 40% of their muscle," explains Wallis. "By shocking it, this number shoots up to around 90%." The result: You move more weight than you thought possible, inspiring confidence, and your muscles learn what it's like to perform at peak levels.

But the quad-shocker is just one small component. Those in the program are tested extensively, allowing for the creation of custom-built workout and diet regimens that "Dr. Mike" Sciocchitano (actually a chiropractor, no M.D. here) guarantees will enable one to reach his goals. If at this point a subject isn't successful, he can only blame himself, says Dr. Mike. But, the "doctor" claims, if one gives himself over and believes wholeheartedly in himself--he just might be capable of achieving "ultra-human" feats he once dreamed impossible. This all seems to make sense. In theory.

For the testing, Dr. Mike uses "every technique known to mankind." An exaggeration, obviously, but the lab, like D.J. Wallis and the electrode lady, is stacked. The machines--including a setup that analyzes breath to calculate calories burned in a 24-hour period, a womb-like apparatus that measures muscle-to-fat ratios, and devices intended to improve focus by monitoring brain waves--are state of the art.

Next, subjects begin training, which includes workouts using the dreaded Stim, weight training, and saunas that warm the body's core with infrared heat. All this seems legit. It's the people turning the knobs and reading the charts who appear slightly ... awry. Currently, they number just three. There's Dr. Mike, whose business card labels him a "pioneer of human ultragenics." D.J., the Bond-girl look-alike who says she's working toward a doctorate in neuroscience via e-mail. And the 24-year-old leg-presser, Amanda Turboughe, a former fitness model who wandered in with just a bag of clothes and a giant blue teddy bear. Spartan, a Doberman pinscher, works security. Together, these truth searchers live and work in the warehouse--U.H.E, subjects and researchers by day, asleep in a row of oxygen tents by night.

THE TEAM IS FORMED

Dr. Mike first met Julie Wallis--nicknamed D.J., for "Doe Julie"--in 1998, in Atlanta. A demure 27-year-old who, at the time, was trying fitness modeling, D.J. had a combination of brains and body that appealed to Dr. Mike, a research scientist who had studied at Hofstra University, graduated from chiropractic school, then competed in bodybuilding contests before blowing out a pec. No longer able to compete, Dr. Mike needed a new obsession. He found it in D.J. and in the science of performance.

For months, Dr. Mike acquired all the human-advancement technology he could. Once equipped, he says, he and a group of like-minded "scientists" set up a performance lab in Worthington, Ohio, and began building a weight-loss program. By controlling every variable, they theorized they could devise exact programs for individualizing diet, cardio, and resistance training. It would be revolutionary. "We figured everyone would lose weight," he recalls. But it didn't go as planned--the results of their "new system" were less than inspiring.

Weird science? The Ultimate Human Experiment is poised to unleash the ultra-fast, super-strong perfect athlete that lives inside each and every one of us. Or is it?

Men's Fitness, April, 2004 by Jeff O'Connell

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