Q & A With Dr. Doug McGuff

I have been reading "Body by Science" by Dr. Doug McGuff and John Little.  The book is awesome, but it left me with some questions.  Doug was kind enough to answer them on his blog and I am reposting here.  My questions were more application specific and avoids all the other questions that have already been discussed elsewhere with interviews with him.  I buy into the high intensity stuff and now "get it" that slower is more intense.  One workout showed me that.  Many thanks to Doug for responding.  The responses really are going to help me integrate this training method into my life and I look forward to the benefits.

Q1) What are appropriate activites for recovery period(during the week). I am interested in doing a few functional skills. I am getting that doing somewhat similar activites to something “real world” may not translate, but I want to be able to do these types of things well(tennis, sprinting, & climbing). How can I work these things into my recovery so as to not ruin the recovery? I am ok if the anwer is “don’t do it, just rest and recover”.

A1) Whatever activities you have the urge to do. Your really intense workout is to give you the desire and capability to pursue these interests with greater performance and safety. Because brief/infrequent is required it is not a big deal to fit in other things. I love BBS-type workouts, but I encourage everyone to fit the workout around your activities/skills rather than fitting your activities around your workout. The only consideration is to allow enough days to pass so that you can perform well. Most skill activities are not of such high intensity that they will significantly erode into recovery. If so, an extra recovery day or two (or three) will compensate and will introduce a more stochastic pattern to your hard BBS workouts.

Q2) Variation/Intermittancy. Every week seems very regular. Does it make sense to have some variation?
A2)Yes, that variation will occur in conjunction with your other sports/activities and normal disruptions of life (see #1 above).

Q3) Other regions of the power law? Super Slow HIT is no doubt the highest intensity spot, as I now know. How to integrate other areas of the power law? Is it needed?

A3) See page 158, this is an example of how you can tweak this kind of workout to have some power law variation. If you want to truly make it random, you can draw these variations from a hat. More importantly, I think of the BBS-type workout as the very peak of the power law continuum, with your other activities (sport and daily life) as the random peaks and valleys below this sharp spike. Think of this really hard workout as a kind of “positive black swan” that leaves a favorable metabolic footprint. With this archetype in mind, I wonder if the frequency might need to be even less. John is collecting BodPod data on subjects after a Big 5 workout and is finding an initial lean mass peak at 6-7 days, then another larger peak around 26 days…just grist for the mill.

Q4) Fasting. What are thoughts on fasting during recovery and before/after WOW? I usually fast 2x/wk for 24 hours. Will this hurt recovery? Should I save the fasting for certain times for optimal results?

A4) I like the concept of fasting and I personally like to go into my WOW in a fasted state. Our ancestors likely did their highest intensity exertion during a hunt which was likely to be in a fasted state. This theoretically augments glycogen emptying and enhances amino acid turnover. Since most cell regeneration occurs during fasted low energy states, I think IF should enhance recovery.

Q5) Is there any way to speed recovery? I have heard contrast showers of hot and cold may help. I am skeptical, but I thought I would ask.

A5) In my experience the best enhancers of recovery and response to any program are as follows: Belief in your approach. If you feel confident about your plan, it will work much better. If you look at the therapeutic effect of the most powerful drugs, 40% of that effect is attributed to the placebo effect. Next, getting adequate sleep and being well-hydrated go a LONG way. Also, not being under significant stress elsewhere (work, financial, relationships) improves recovery. Finally, not cultivating training angst by ruminating about your workouts. Get in, focus and work hard, then get on with your life. I’ve heard the hot/cold shower thing from Tim Ferriss (www.fourhourworkweek.com), but I’ve not tried it or seen any literature to support or refute it.

Q6) Does it make sense to kick start gains by doing 2x/wk until plateau then drop to 1x/wk?
A6) If you go to the recommended trainers section and look at the graph that Ryan Hall has posted (it didn’t turn out right in the book) you can see the curve of 2X vs 1X training. Initially 2X is a steeper rate of improvement, but it quickly trails off. With the other functional skills you wish to pursue, I think your workouts might crowd out the fun stuff.

Q7)  Opposite of the “gym rats” problem. Some may be relcutant to employ this method of super slow intense exercise since it clearly is hard to do and “extremly tiring”. Not me, but others feel that way. Is there benefit in doing slow reps but not to full failure? Would you change the exercise frequency in that case?

A7) The safety benefits of slow reps are always an advantage, particularly with those with less gifted “protoplasm”. Further, even if not going to failure, it will be so much more intense than anything else such a person would do, it is still a quantum leap in the right direction for this kind of person. With lower intensity, a higher frequency can be tolerated, but 2 times per week is probably adequate and all that such a subject would want.

Q8) Have you looked into movnat? Any thoughts on how to work those “skills” into a regimen without compromising recovery?

A8) I have seen the movnat website and the old movies of its originator. It is cool looking stuff. Being Tarzan has its dangers though, but I would like to cultivate those kind of skills. They are like carrying a gun…you may never need them, but if you ever do you will REALLY need them. WRT its effect on recovery, see my answer to question #1.

Q9) Did a Big 5 to full positive failure(maybe negative…) on Saturday. On tuesday, 3 days later, I am finally feeling back to baseline. I was pretty weak for about 48 hours or so. Is this common? Should I expect this as a pattern for future WOWs?

A9) As your metabolic condition improves, you will begin to feel normal by day 1 or 2. Then you will get stronger and may get back to the 3 (or more) day window. When this happens you need to modulate volume/frequency/intensity. There is no need to feel hammered for 3 or 4 days. I used to perform deep inroad (pushing as hard as possible at failure for 10-15 seconds until the movement arm drags you through failure), now I stop immediately at failure and recover much better and have better results.