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January 15 - January 15, 2020
The Q&D protocol was designed to maximize your performance at a lowest biological cost—and to leave you fresh and able to perform at a high level, physically and mentally, at any time.
“Metcons” ravage your system with acid, free radicals, and toxic ammonia. They deplete your muscles’ energy pool in a manner similar to chronic fatigue syndrome and leave your carcass sore, tired, and injury prone. They burn you out mentally, wreak havoc with your hormones, and make you feel like hell. Are you willing to pay such a high price for getting “in shape”?
Max power is expressed at a third to a half of maximal strength[[2]] and is typically trained with resistance just slightly heavier than that.
light weights stimulate fast fibers; the faster the movement, the less force it takes to recruit them.
“High power resistance exercise protocols…produce acute increases of testosterone…[that] may partially explain the muscle hypertrophy observed in athletes who routinely employ high power resistance exercise.”
Beefing up one’s mitochondria and fast-twitch fibers with power training is a great prescription for turning back the clock.
“The ‘game’ is a slight acidosis to enable the cell to renew but not self-destruct. Overly active lysosomes can lead to cellular death.”
Leave metcons, exhaustion, stiffness, and soreness to prey. Stay fresh to hunt another day.
As it turns out, the state of one’s mitochondria determines much more than the outcome of a rowing race or a judo match. The mitochondria are, in Dr. Nick Lane’s words, “the masters of life and death.”
This is exactly how the CP system was designed. The emptier the CP tank gets, the more the throttle is closed. This feature has profound implications on performance and adaptation.
In other words, once your CP system has flamed out, you are suffering for nothing.
Today, I am convinced that many of the benefits of a 30-second effort are derived during the first 10–20 seconds. There are reasons to occasionally push to 30–45 seconds, but they are outside the foci of this minimalist program.
If the emergency continues and the MK reaction is allowed to run too long, another reaction, deamination, kicks in. It demolishes the “A-frames” in some AMP molecules, leaving the phosphates with nothing to attach to.
Patients suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome have reduced ATP pools. If you choose to feel that way, metcons are right for you.
Three minutes is a perfect compromise between effectiveness and efficiency, the point of diminishing returns. Within that time frame, CP is rapidly refueled; after that mark, it gets replenished drip by drip.
The 5/4 protocol is aimed at maximizing the rate of fuel burn and the 10/2 at a deeper depletion. Higher acidity in the latter is also supposed to deliver a hypertrophy WTHE.
With most explosive exercises, even very fine ones like depth jumps and jerks, you are limited to 1G of downward acceleration—Earth’s gravity. Not so with kettlebell swings and snatches. An experienced SFG instructor routinely pulls over 10G with a 24kg kettlebell. For comparison, a fighter jet pilot may momentarily experience up to 9G when pulling out of a dive.
Sure, you could do some other stuff right after—strength, aerobic endurance, etc.—but you are done with speed and power for the day.
Q&D was meant to be practiced for months and years, not weeks.
In many types of training, twice-a-week frequency is the minimal effective dose, with four times a week being the point of diminishing returns. Hence, the Q&D choice is three times a week, where effectiveness meets efficiency—the timeless Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule.
Given the brief and energizing nature of Q&D sessions, it is easy to fit it with other types of training. Just remember not to do anything right before it. Fast first.
Kinetic energy carried by an object in motion is directly proportional to its mass multiplied by the square of its velocity. Double the mass of a bullet and you will double its destructive potential. Double its speed—and its lethal energy will quadruple.
The Soviet weightlifting national team head coach Robert Roman knew that, “Everything else being equal, an increase in the training volume facilitates a large increase in muscle mass.”
