McGuff Interview

This month's issue of "Iron Man" magazine had an interview with Doug McGuff from Ultimate Exercise.  I met Doug many years ago and thought he was a very sharp thinker.

The interview in Ironman was a very nice piece (actually it is part 2 of a 3 part interview), and I wanted to comment on some things he said.

"Within reason, all the hair splitting over training theories is probably unnnecessary because, from the organism's standpoint, if the stimulus had to be that perfect for muscle growth to occur, it wouldn't have any survival benefit.  The problem is we want our bodies to respond like the body of someone who has a completely different genetic makeup."

From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes perfect sense.  Why would the body need an exact number of sets or reps to build muscle?  Muscular activities in the wild are "rough" and not nicely organzied.  But the promise of finding a new system that will suddenly deliver muscle is what keeps supplement companies (and many muscle magazines) in business.

You've been working out yet your muscles aren't blowing up like balloons?  Then try Supplement A or Supplement B.  Or a new number of sets and reps, that's the ticket.  This point is highlighted in another quote from McGuff:

"Someone asked Ray Mentzer (a bodybuilder), "What are you doing for your legs?" And he said, "Well, I did one set of squats 30 days ago."  Clearly, genetics are a huge factor in determining the extent of muscle growth.

I think McGuff's biggest contribution is his Dose-Response model (you can find the original article on his website).  The basic premise is that, just like medicine, if you subject the body to a strong dose of exercise, it takes a good while to respond.  McGuff believes that working out intensely with weights should be done once every 7 days (and in some cases 10-12 days).  This is solid advice in my opinion.