Diana Hsieh (of Paleo Rodeo fame) recently shared why she’s switching from CrossFit to SuperSlow.
As she says, her reasons are her own, but now that I have three months of Body by Science under my belt, most of them resonate with me, particularly:
- short workouts, once a week
- low injury risk
- workouts you feel, but that don’t leave you debilitated
And most importantly (see embedded video below), this type of exercise totally supports health by helping increase or maintain lean body mass and enhancing insulin sensitivity.
However, mentioning SuperSlow or BBS is likely to elicit a comment from a hard-core exercising type about it’s “superficial appeal” to non-experts or that “no respected strength coach” would recommend such a program.
Sigh.
I think Keith Norris illustrates the disagreement — and reason for it — in his post on chasing performance at the expense of health.
Those of us who want to get to (or maintain) point A are different from the folks arguing the details in the “heady land of peak performance in the C-zone.”
Meanwhile, back over on Diana’s post, Drew Baye sums it up this way (emphasis mine):
While there are many effective training methods, not all of them are equally safe over the long term or as time efficient, both of which are advantages of the type of high intensity training in Body by Science. The goal of exercise shouldn’t just be to improve fitness, but to do so without undermining your long term health or functional ability, and while you can’t argue the conditioning benefits of CrossFit, it is a lot harder on the body than a program needs to be for good results.
Back when I was in my 30s, I was happy to work out hard like the CrossFitters. Now? Not so much.
BTW, this seems like a good place to embed Doug McGuff’s presentation that Drew also mentioned in his comments (I’ve tweaked the embed so it skips the evolutionary dating stuff geared towards the 21-year-old male conference attendees ;).
There are good reasons why exercise — especially chronic cardio — may not make you thin. And for a while, I thought focusing on diet was sufficient. But now I’ve come around and realized that doing the right exercise is well worth it for both health and weight loss.
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health, & food policy. And cats! 
I was actually having a thought today. I wonder if any epidemiological evidence shows that injury from resistance training/sports outweighs the risks for muscle atrophy and such for inactivity.
I agree with your stance on the issue. Unfortunately people see long hard workouts as some holy grail of fitness. While I myself average about 35-40 minutes at the gym 3-5 days a week, I don’t feel I over-train. A lot of guys I know are going for hours at a time, and they aren’t on roids to my knowledge, so they’re most likely doing more than is required.
Have you seen http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20573741 for reasons why we may be living on a reversed causality with exercise in lots of cases? On a cut I usually just eat less (particularly carbs).
Jordan, thanks for the comment and especially for the link to the inactivity study. I don’t track exercise research the way I do nutrition, so I’m not aware of any risk/benefit studies.
But just off the top of my head, I’m not sure I’d guess that injury risks would be greater than risks for atrophy. Part of the problem is that injury is an acute issue vs atrophy being a chronic one. Neither is good!
Re amount of fitness, I think the Yoni Freedhoff’s rule applies: you want to do what you love, not what you’ll tolerate. One of the early problems I had with BBS is that I was bummed I only got the endorphin rush once a week! I also think that exercise is a great way to alleviate stress, so could see it beneficial that way.
But the real issue is where you are when you start. As someone pointed out on Diana’s post, if you’re middle-aged and slightly (or more) overweight, CrossFit is awfully intimidating. Robb Wolf pointed out that if you’re at the right gym with a good trainer, CrossFit can be adjusted for different levels, but I can see how it can appear that CrossFit is really for younger folks who want single-digit-ish bodyfat percentages. And of course, it’s not just CrossFit … it’s the same concern in most gyms. A big plus for me for BBS is being able to work out in private.
Another question is balance. I spent a year or two in the 90s being essentially exercise bulemic. It was a great way to keep the weight off and enable me to eat, but had I been able to keep it up, I suspect the cortisol load would have not been healthy either!
BTW, forgot to mention that I really did find your study link interesting. I don’t totally agree with Taubes on all of his perspective re obesity, but I always liked his theories that people aren’t fat because they are inactive; they’re inactive because they are fat. Your study supports that big time. Hope it’s being replicated, as their conclusion is telling:
Many people in wheel chairs remain thin or nonfat, which might support the theory about fatness resulting in lower activity (in some–not all–people), not the other way around. I would prefer to exercise but cannot at this time (recovering from surgical procedures). I will eventually add (back) walking and a bit of strength training.
My point though is that we cannot separate out any single factor in weight loss or maintenance success. It’s simply not possible to control for variables such as external sources of stress and the impact of hormones related to sleep, activity, hunger, energy, mood, and so forth. Even stress constructed by the individual to challenge oneself (such as exercise) may have different result from externally induced stress (such as unemployment), or chronic stress (such as daily cardio) vs periodic (3-4 gentle walks per week). All variables may influence other variables.
Don’t quite know where this leaves me. Weight loss was not hard. Maintaining is not hard. (Some would say I just haven’t arrived at rough part yet. Maybe.) Not being able to exercise (daily walking) has been a pain in the you know what, as far as feeling deprived. But living life with all its uncertainties? That is very challenging indeed.
Oh, I am so with you on the “any single factor” thing! Re the not hard or hard part, it’s funny the way that works. I quit smoking in my twenties with no trouble. Go figure!
Beth, I’m pushing 50. One of my goals is to work on building muscle/strength. I’m concerned about losing muscle mass as I age.
Are you doing BBS on your own at home from the book?
Maggie, I’m doing BBS with a trainer I found on the BBS directory.
I think you can do BBS on your own. After all, the basic 5 exercises are done on machines you can generally find in any reasonably-equipped gym.
However, based on my experience, I’ve found that the trainer provides two major benefits: 1) to help push you to failure (your mind often wants to give up before your body does) and 2) for safety — he or she can offload some of the weight if necessary. (Mine changes up the order of the exercises and occasionally swaps one — not sure if that’s for performance or to ward off boredom).
Alas, it’s clear from the directory there aren’t enough trainers to go around (and in some cases, the costs are high). I think the next best thing to having a trainer is to have a partner to do BBS with. But I’d still do it on my own if that wasn’t a possibility either.
Maggie, see this post by Matt Metzgar. I think if I were gonna do this on my own, I’d consider doing the low and slow by stopping just short of failure.
Hi Beth, thank you. I found a place nearby that does Super Slow, but it’s out of my price range. There’s another gym that is a possibility, to work on my own, but on machines vs. free weights at home.
Weight training, even a small amount, is something I want to add into my routine this year.
Baby steps! So much I want to do! That’s a good sign, though, isn’t it?
It’s an awesome sign! And Elenor’s comment below should be good inspiration for doing it on your own. Someone should tell Doug McGuff — we need a club for 50ish ladies doing BBS ;).
I’ve started a BBS workout (on my own, at the local Y) and find I’m no longer dreading going to the weight room, and in fact anticipate it happily! When I did the ‘system’ arranged by the staff trainer (12 or so machines, low weights, lots of reps {eye roll}), I was pretty hit-and-miss about actually making it to the gym (easy to let myself skip). (I also do water aerobics there twice a week.) Since finding BBS, every week by Sunday mid-day I’m starting to anticipate my Monday morning workout.
Even though, when I get home, I can’t lift a glass without my arm shaking — I am psyched to go do my quick hard workout. I do Doug’s “Big Five” — plus the ab machine and the back extension (cause I like them). I’m a 56-yr-old, 285-pound fat lady with bad hips — but I’m loving the effect of this way of working out! Heavy, heavy weights, only 6 reps on most machine (10 on the leg press and ab/back machines) and I’m outta there! Love it!
Elenor, am *so* with you re the arm shaking! My drive after BBS is in rush-hour DC traffic. I hope I never have to make any sudden turns of the steering wheel ;).
Thanks Beth;
At 55, the idea of training to real failure is repellant; especially when I see how few people can sustain their coordination in the last reps. Form almost always seems to give out–one of the main criticisms of Crossfit as well.
While a ‘paleo mindset’ can be a great stimulus to new activity and thinking, it is the very UNNATURALNESS of Super-Slow anc co. that makes the most sense. Why not build health in ways that are safer and simpler than chasing buffalo (or doing olympic lifts with less than enough coaching)?
While a set to failure is a good litmus test of intensity. What would be wrong with stopping short of failure as long as you are progressing?
John, my understanding is that the point of training to failure is to maximize response; i.e., the bulk of the benefit comes from that last rep. I do know that my trainer is insistent that form be maintained.
Did you see the comment above re Matt Metzgar’s post on this? I suspect that stopping short of failure (e.g., at loss of speed or control) would work well. And the tradeoff in terms of cost is certainly something to consider!
Hi Beth,
Great that you’re doing it too. I started BBS almost 2 years ago. I bought a Smith machine, with the bar on rails, so I can even do squats to failure: when I grow so weak that I can’t lift the bar at all, I decline (slowly as possible) until the bar rests on the safety stoppers (or rotate the bar so the attached hooks catch the postholes and relieve me of the weight). Absolutely safe to do a squat to failure this way. Never had an accident or a strained back.
Even though I’m not very muscular, I think I’ve gotten to the point where I have to slow it down. I was having to rest from 10 days to a full 2 weeks, and even then didn’t feel totally recovered. I now break it up into 2 one-half sessions a week. Otherwise, a full Big 5 routine leaves me totally debilitated (even deeply depressed) for at least 2 days. Classic overtraining symptoms. I’m following the discussions at the BBS blog and concentrating more and more on good form and ignoring the push to constantly increase weights.
Loved your comment about “evolutionary dating stuff geared towards the 21-year-old male conference attendees”. Talk about your confirmation bias! God, how horny we were when young (I’m 58).
LOL … yeah, by the time you realize “youth is wasted on the young” is true, it’s too late ;).