EMBRACE CHANGE: VALIDATION FOR SUCCESS HEALTH & FITNESS PRACTICES

About 2 weeks ago I received an email from Jessica (if you don't know Jessica yet, click on our TEAM tab here: www.successfitnessreno.com . It was an interview with Dr. Doug McGuff, a long-time exerciser and present emergency room physician in South Carolina. During this interview, Dr. McGuff discussed the benefits of high intensity training, a method of exercise he believes is practiced by fewer than 2% of the people working out in gyms. And in my 3-4 decades of experience, I think his estimate is spot on.

You see, most people exercising today fall into 1 of 2 categories. The first are those people doing a traditional bodybuilder-format workout, focusing on isolating individual muscles. I call this a "body for show" workout--it's all about the outward appearance. And that's a great way to train if looking fit is your goal. Unfortunately, there are way too many sports coaches and personal trainers still using this approach to train team sports athletes, as well as those people who simply want to improve their overall health. These people, which honestly is everybody, need a "body for go".

The second category is the cardio crowd. This includes those exercisers who are just taking classes like Zumba or spinning, as well as the masses of people jogging on the treadmill or going nowhere fast on the elliptical machine. Dr. McGuff notes in his interview that the majority of people focusing on cardio are in pretty poor shape, and are not getting any better.

Dr. McGuff also makes a comparison between doing High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), and what he terms High Intensity Strength Training (HIST), which he strongly advocates (hey, a pun!). HIIT is a form of cardiovascular exercise where a person alternates between short bursts of hard work, like all-out sprinting for 20 seconds, followed by a recovery period. He lists the following benefits of HIIT:

• Releases the fight-or-flight hormone epinephrine, aka adrenaline
• Releases glucose from the muscles to be used as energy
• Brings fat to the muscles, where it is also used as a fuel source
• Increases insulin sensitivity that helps reverse the effects of metabolic syndrome (a combination of abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high blood glucose, and elevated triglyceride levels)

Then he lists the benefits of his HIST:

• All the benefits of HIIT, plus
• Increased muscular fatigue, and therefore growth
• Triggers the production of more contractile tissue and all of the metabolic components to support it
• Increased glycogen storage and utilization (more fat burning)
• Triggers the release of myokines, a protein produced and released in muscle fibers that have specific positive effects on body composition, decreases systemic inflammation, and lowers the risk for chronic disease and possibly some forms of cancer
• Better cardiovascular results than HIIT

At our facility, Success Health & Fitness (www.successfitnessreno.com), once our members have completed their base phase training, we slowly introduce them to our form of HIST, which we call MART, or Metabolically Accelerated Resistance Training. We utilize several different exercise methods in our MART programs, including complexes, escalating density, and Tabatas. In addition to burning a bunch of body fat, our MART sessions also increase cardiac output, which is the amount of blood volume circulating through the heart every minute. Look at it this way: MART workouts eject more blood from the heart, known as stroke volume, with each beat, and increases the blood supply to the heart via your veins. You're improving your coronary artery blood flow, making your heart stronger.

With HIIT, a person's heart rate (beats per minute) will usually be somewhat higher compared to a MART session, but the utilization will be lower. This is because, with HIIT, the heart is beating too fast to take in maximum amounts of blood with each beat, and therefore releases a lower amount into the arteries for circulation throughout the body.

So if you are presently your gym's cardio king or queen, or you're still using traditional pumping iron methods from the 70's and 80's to improve your overall health and fitness, don't you think it's time to embrace change? And stop thinking that all you have to do to get healthier and fitter is walk around the Marina 2-3 times a week. It's not going to happen!! And in another 7 weeks or so, it's going to be dark before and after work, so what are you going to do then? Wait, I know...elliptical machines: get ready!

If you want to read the full article or watch the interview, just go to this link:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/08/10/high-intensity-strength-training.aspx


Move better. Eat better. Live better!