61: The REAL Fountain of Youth with Dr. Doug McGuff

The InForm Fitness Podcast

This is one of our most important episodes. A must listen!

Dr. Doug McGuff and I met back in 1995 at an exercise conference and we have stayed in touch ever since. He is such a brilliant thinker and teacher. I cannot emphasize enough how important Dr. McGuff has been to our understanding of the mechanisms and benefits of high intensity exercise Dr McGuff is a full-time emergency room physician and owns, Ultimate Exercise, a high intensity, personal training facility in South Carolina.

In 2008, Doug released the ground-breaking book, Body By Science, and is considered one of the top high-intensity training experts in the world. I highly recommend that you follow Doug for his incredible insights and findings via DrMcGuff.com and his YouTube channel.

We kick off this episode discussing that the measurement of an individual’s muscle mass should be included as an important vital sign, similar to one’s blood pressure and hemoglobin A1-c. Strength, we are learning, is a great indicator of overall health; including being a good predictor of system inflammation and physiologic reserves.

Doug does a fantastic job explaining the concept of S-O-R (Stimulus – Organism – Response), helping us to understand the relationship between exercise, genetics and our expected (and unexpected) results.

Did you know that muscle is the most powerful endocrine organ in the body? High intensity exercise and healthy muscle mass dictates and signals for:

• the reversal of the aging process
• how energy is utilized in the body
• the conversion of white fat to brown fat (a good thing).
• the partitioning of nutrients
• how glucose is regulated

It will be practically impossible for you to listen to this episode and not feel compelled to hit the weight room ASAP. Enjoy!

Adam Zickerman – Power of 10: The Once-A-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution:

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Inform_McGuff 1_August 9 Transcript

Arlene [00:00:01] The Inform fitness podcast with Adam Zickerman and co-host Mike Rogers is a presentation of Inform fitness studios a small family of personal training facility specializing in safe efficient high intensity strength training. On our bi monthly podcast Adam and Mike discuss the latest findings in the areas of exercise nutrition and recovery with leading experts and scientists. We aim to debunk the popular misconceptions and the urban myths that are so prevalent in the fields of health and fitness. And to replace those sacred cows with scientific based up to the minute information on a variety of subjects. We will cover exercise protocols and techniques nutrition sleep recovery the role of genetics in the response to exercise and much more. On this episode Adam and Mike welcome Dr. Doug McGuff, one of today's leading high intensity experts. This is a must listen as they discuss that there's a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to all the benefits we reap from high intensity training. If you're still looking for some more motivation to stick to your exercise program well this episode is for you.

Doug [00:01:21] If you want everything bad that can happen to a human to happen immobilize them and overfeed them. Movement is life. And I believe that movement against resistance is life elevated.

Adam [00:01:36] Hello. Welcome to the show. Adam and Mike here I have known today's guest Dr. Doug McGuff now for over 20 years. We both caught the weight training bug as young men in our teens, we are about the same age. And we've been geeking out on it ever since. He's a doctor he's a practicing E.R. doctor in South Carolina and Doug is one of those few doctors who actually happens to run his own gym. It's called Ultimate exercise and it's in Seneca South Carolina. In 2008 Doug co-wrote the groundbreaking book Body by science along with John Little and let me tell you it is required reading for all my staff and even many of our clients. Why. Well honestly it was and really is a really important book because it comes from a theoretical understanding of basic physiology and for the first time properly applies it to high intensity exercise. I can't emphasize enough what his book has done to our industry and bringing high intensity exercise to the mainstream. So anyway it's my great pleasure to introduce a guy who I really consider a mentor. Welcome to show Doug.

Doug [00:02:45] Yeah Adam it's my pleasure. I've been looking forward to it.

Adam [00:02:47] I just saw you recently at the conference, what was it... a resistance exercise conference in Minnesota.

Doug [00:02:53] Yeah.

Adam [00:02:54] And your keynote speech was fantastic by the way.

Doug [00:02:57] Thanks. Appreciate it.

Doug [00:02:59] You said something I really rang true in me because we come from similar backgrounds experiences and the timing because we're similar ages and we got introduced to high intensity training the nautilus principles relatively around the same times. We we go back a few years with this high intensity training at this point and you end you said that for the last 20 30 years that we've been lifting weights primarily to get big and strong, swoll as they say you know maybe to give us an edge in sports and if we were on an unusually perceptive day we might have actually also thought that it might protect us from injury but really is about getting big and strong. Now we're finding out so much more that we were getting from these workouts than we ever thought. You know the health benefits of exercise that go beyond just getting strong which quite honestly if you told me that just getting strong is all we got from strength training I'd be happy with that.

Doug [00:03:53] That would be awesome. Yeah.

Adam [00:03:54] I mean that's why we were doing we didn't think we were getting anything more from it. But, so Doug this is what I want to speak to you about the health benefits of strength training beyond just getting really strong. So Doug the paper you brought up was titled muscle should be the new vital sign. Something like that right.

Doug [00:04:11] Yeah. Yeah I think that that's probably accurate. I mean at least it should be you know not on a visit by visit vital sign but in terms of someone's health history I think that ought to be recorded as a health parameter body mass index is being used a lot now. But that's not truly accurate. But I think if there was some sort of measure of muscle mass or strength that could be included as ...