Are you intending to lose weight this year?  Or get a stronger, leaner, fitter body for the summer?  Be careful how you do it – some exercises can actually hinder that process.

I just found this interview that Dr. Mercola held with Dr. McGuff, who explains why so many popular exercise programs don’t work.  It’s always exciting to find medical doctors who really understand the power of exercise, and are ready to share their knowledge. You will be surprised at what I found!

Dr. Mercola‘s interview was posted at http://7minutes2fitness.com/jx on January 6th.,2012. The full title of the post is “Avoid This Popular Exercise – As It Shrinks Your Muscle and Accelerates Aging.” The exercises he talks about avoiding are precisely those that most people who decide to exercise use, so the interview is well worth paying attention to.

(Dr. Mercola used to be a long-distance runner, but he is now pursuing a different path with high-intensity exercise, nutrition and supplements.)

The full interview is two hours long: if you have an interest in exercise, especially for weight loss, this is two hours well spent. It can save you wasting much more than that in futile exercises, as Dr. McGuff explains in detail how muscle physiology works and how to optimize your exercise program to achieve weight loss and build strength. Here is the full interview (if you don’t wish to spend the time to listen to it, a summary and a transcript are available on the above site.)

Comments

Dr. McGuff‘s credentials are impeccable and his advice based on sound theory and clinical experience. In particular, he really explains why most people hate exercise: we overtrain! This stems from the mistaken belief that if a little is good, then a lot must be much better (no gain without pain!)

Dr. McGuff details the mechanism behind building strength through exercise, why some exercises actually work against you and why recovery time is so important, especially for the fast twitch muscle fibers.

I found his description of the difference between slow-twitch, intermediate-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibers helpful. I had no idea of what these terms really meant until I heard his explanation during this interview. It also helped me understand why I can run every day but should not weight train more than three times per week.

However, I have a few reservations about his recommendations for the general public.

Frequency

20 minutes once every week or two at the gym,as he recommends, would seem to me to be difficult to sustain. I believe that most people who have a gym membership would choose to make a regular habit of going two or three times a week. Based on my own experience, any less than that and I will find reasons not to go!
Personally, I prefer to exercise 3 times per week, since it develops more of a habit.

Exercising all muscle groups

In Dr. McGuff‘s program, you exercise all five muscle groups to failure once every week or two. The program I follow exercises one group every two days until all five groups have been exercised. The recovery time for each group is 10-12 days, which agrees well with Dr. McGuff’s estimate of 7-14 days, but does not leave all five groups exhausted at the same time.

Cost-effectiveness

Dr. McGuff does not mention the cost of his program, but since it requires a gym membership it will not be cheap. Gym memberships typically cost upward of $20 per month with an additional initiation fee, although I have seen some as low as $10 per month. The program I use costs less than $10 per month for customized workouts for two people and does not necessitate a gym membership.

You can see the details of my program at http://7minutes2fitness.com/g2f4 .  Take a look and let me know how you think the two programs compare.  They both work, as far as I can tell.