After 40 Years of Doing Aerobic Exercises, Why Did I Switch to “High Intensity Exercise?”

The Premise of High Intensity Exercise: When you tax your muscles to the maximum, they tear themselves down and rebuild as larger muscles. This rebuilding process takes a minimum of 7 days to complete. According to Doug McGuff, MD, in his book Body by Science Question and Answer Book, maximum muscle growth occurred when he did a 12-minute intense exercise routine every 12 days, rather than every 7 days, as he had recommended in his earlier book Body by Science. So once every 12 days, you do an intense body workout where you tax five major muscle groups to the maximum, completely exhausting each muscle group by doing 5 - 8  repetitions of very slow movements (i.e. 10 seconds up and 10 seconds back down for each rep) with very heavy weights. No resting between reps. The entire process takes about 12 minutes. No warm up is necessary.

Which Exercises Do I Do?

The Big Five Exercises Include: seated row, chest press, pull-down, overhead press and leg press. Doug McGuff even reduced this to three exercises performed once every 12 days. He divided it up into an “A” workout and a “B” workout that consisted of leg press, pull-down, and overhead press (Workout “A”) and then a calf raise, a deadlift and a chest press (Workout “B”). His conclusion, “Every time I’ve reduced the volume and the frequency of my workouts I’ve gotten bigger muscles, am healthier and happier." (pg. 157 Body by Science Question and Answer Book)

Reversing Aging

High Intensity Exercises Are a Fountain of Youth. In addition to building stronger muscles, this process removes all stored glucose in your muscles (since you work your muscle groups to “failure” or complete exhaustion), and this has been shown to increase glucose uptake by 23 percent after only four months (Body by Science, Doug McGuff, M.D., pg. 102). High intensity exercise also reverses aging, lowers cholesterol, speeds up your metabolism, optimizes cardiovascular health, improves flexibility, builds bone density and sheds fat. All in 12 minutes, once every 12 days!

Delayed Muscle Soreness is the pain and stiffness felt in muscles several hours to days after strenuous exercise. The soreness usually increases in intensity in the first 24 hours after exercise, peaks from 24 to 72 hours, then subsides and disappears after about five to seven days after exercise. After 7 - 12 days the muscle is restored and rebuilt and you are now ready for another high intensity workout.

The Three Outstanding Resources Below Give Complete Detail on Doing High Intensity Exercise

Power of 10 by Adam Zickerman (order book here)

• A free video showing how to do the exercises is available here.
• Here is a free video with testimonies from those who did the exercises, including two identical twins (Kelly and Venessa) who tried two kinds of exercises for 5 weeks and experienced the following results:

o   Kelly lost 15 pounds and 8 inches at 20 minutes per week of high intensity exercise

o   Venessa lost 4 pounds and 4 inches in 5 hours a week in typical cardio exercise

o   Summary: Kelly lost 4 times more weight and twice as many inches on a fraction of the exercise time. As I think about it, animals don’t jog, they sprint, and children don’t jog, they sprint, yet both grow tremendous muscles. So I am switching from jogging to high intensity exercise (i.e. we could call it “sprinting to exhaustion”).

• The book also contains pictures and descriptions of how to do these exercises on home exercise equipment. Excellent for getting you started with High Intensity Exercise.

Body by Science by Doug McGuff, M.D. (order book here)

Excellent free videos available here. (This book explains the science behind high intensity exercise.)

Avoid This Popular Exercise - Dr. Joseph Mercola

Free Interview with Dr. Doug McGuff available here.

• Download FULL Interview Transcript (Excellent interview which gives a really complete understanding of Dr. Doug McGuff’s 12-minutes-per-week program.)

My Summary

I may continue some aerobic exercise for the enjoyment of it (endorphin release) but realize that my real health benefits are coming from the "Maximum Contraction" exercises.

Additional Blogs by Mark Virkler on the Topic of Health

• MSG Caused My Headaches - by Josh and Charla Virkler
• HCG Weight Loss PLUS Ideas for Healthy Living
• Deliverance from Demons Through a "Revelation-Based Power Encounter"