John Jaquish didn’t plan to be an inventor. The Justin-Siena High School graduate was studying Web design at Sacramento State University when he made a discovery that would change his course, launch a career and bring his father, Paul Jaquish — already a successful Napa entrepreneur — into the new business.

Jaquish dreamed up a high-tech new piece of strength-training equipment based on “bringing health, science and fitness together in the same industry,” as he put it. He founded Performance Health Systems and discovered that his Impulse System was drawing interest from doctors seeking ways to increase bone density in men and women, those helping seniors avoid dangerous falls and athletes looking for reliable ways to improve their core strength.

The machine he developed is now being manufactured by the thousands. Earlier this year, SciFit of Tulsa, Okla., agreed to build at least 1,000 of PHS’ Impulse Systems and distribute them to medical and sports fitness clients.

The machines will look familiar to gym rats, but operate on different principals than gym equipment found in weight rooms across the country.

Like other machines, the Impulse System allows users to do a variety of movements — bench presses, dead lifts, etc. — on just one piece of equipment.

Yet the idea is to perform each movement once and only once per session, pushing to muscle “failure,” in Jaquish’s terms. Users can complete their sessions in their street clothes in just a couple of minutes, literally without breaking a sweat. The amount of weight they push is determined by their own capabilities, not a series of levers and pulleys hooked to slabs of metal weights.

The system takes careful measurement of nerve and muscle response to the effort and tracks it over several sessions.

Then, after a recovery period of a few days or more, as dictated by the users’ metabolism, the user returns for another round. The Jaquishes say they have seen strong progress in muscle and bone strength among the 500 Napans who visit the modest facility off Soscol Avenue, and have found interested partners, from high school physical education administrators to those who care for seniors.

Jaquish’s travels to raise the company’s profile have taken him across the country and to Taiwan, and will take him to a major industrial show in Germany later this year. The company is actively working with possible clients in China and around the states.

“I want to see this solution all over the country, all over the world,” he said.

A little light reading

While Jaquish competed in track, swimming and wrestling at Justin, and rugby in college, he said it was an athletic endeavor he didn’t appreciate that got him thinking about fitness.

“I wasn’t a big fan of going to the weight room, because I didn’t see people getting much out of it,” he said.

His real work began not in the gym, but in the library at Sacramento State. He began to look at physiology studies, including those by Nautilus exercise equipment creator Arthur Jones — who had a major impact on popularity and prospects for resistance training instead of traditional weight-lifting — as well as the stories behind the success of athletes such as Russian weight-lifters.

Jaquish picked up on a gap between what people do in the gym and what ought to work. “I saw half of the physical fitness industry based on gym lore, as opposed to scientific fact,” said Jaquish. “People say, ‘We do something because the pros do,’ and that’s not science.”

Paul Jaquish, a successful Napa entrepreneur and John’s father, was impressed.

“The guy probably read 150, 200 or 250 reports and books,” he said of his son, “and finally convinced me there was no science to (popular strength-building techniques). He wanted my help to figure out how we could build a device that could truly engage the neurological system, then the muscles.”

Ten years after plowing through papers at the Sacramento State library, and five years after his father got on board, Jaquish’s work is paying off.

Company leaders also include Lee Guthrie, who is president of Performance Health Systems and helped develop the Nautilus system of gym equipment, and Jeff Gerlomes, who runs Napa Printing and On Demand Direct Mail and Bindery, is currently the president of the Napa Chamber of Commerce and who, like Paul Jaquish, serves on the Performance Health Systems board.

Engineering in the blood

Paul Jaquish may have learned the science from his son, but designing machines and launching a business was old hat.

His career began at General Motors research labs in the 1960s, where he worked on geophysical experiments related to the Surveyor, a precursor to Apollo spacecraft.

“We built vehicles,” said Jaquish, “three of which are sitting on the surface of the moon.”

He later worked for major military and aerospace contractor TRW, where he was contacted by the U.S. Postal Service. They were looking to make their operations more efficient, and Jaquish was the man for the job. He was named postmaster for Salt Lake City, then New York City, and from 1978 to 1981 was Senior Postmaster General for Research and Technology in Washington, D.C.

In 1981 Jaquish left the government and set up shop in Orinda. He put his document-processing skills to work to launch two Napa companies, Quantum Information Corp. and Regulus Group, which specialize in printing and processing invoices, bills and financial statements for corporations.

While none of that may seem a fit for a health firm, Jaquish’s engineering and production background were helping in fine-tuning the Impulse System, which went through two revisions before reaching its current form.

“My father is a scientist and has spent his life solving problems,” said John Jaquish. “I saw a problem, and I just knew we could solve it.”