HIT Training...

[Milford Jenings]

Guys,
Never realized this before but after reading some threads and visiting a ton of sites regarding HIT training I have been doing it since high school football. Our strength coach always had us do heavy weights at low reps in good form until positive failure. It never seemed that we spent much tmie ni the gym but we always made progress. I started out a 185# butterball lineman in 9th grade and came out a 248# 10% bf bone breaker after four years of this philosophy.

Over the next few four years I continued to train in the same way continually adding weight and spending a whale of a lot less time in the gym than the folks that never got anywhere until sidelined with some wedged vertebrae and torn spinal muscles after an accident. So now nearly 10 years after high school (I'm dating myself here) I am back in the hunt for big thick strong mass. When I looked into it I knew it sounded familiar. Try it out for and eight week cycle. You'll like the feeling of truly digging in deep for the last two controlled reps!

MJ

 

[muscledog95]

what exactly is a hit cycle? Ive heard a lot about it butnever new what it is

thanks

 

[gymtime]

I've only ever heard of HIIT in reference to cardio trianing. Sprints, that kind of stuff. How does it work in the weightroom?

 

[Bigsatan13]

Do an internet search, there are alot of sites that are based strictly around HIT training. There are also plenty of books on this subject. To explain it all here would take way too much time.

 

[DaCypher]

HIT stands for High Intensity Training. You can read about exactly what it involves here. The basic philosophy behind HIT is doing each rep relatively slowly (2 seconds on the positive, and 4 on the negative). You do each set to concentric muscular failure (when you can now longer complete another rep without sacrificing form). The idea here is that you should be spending about a whole minute doing the actual set (6 seconds per rep for, say, 10 reps = 60 seconds). It is also believed that by working this slow and so intensely (to failure), you should not have to do more than 1 or 2 sets (nor should you want to). This is the basic idea anyways, read more from the link, cyberpump.com is all pretty much based on this philosophy.

Personally I've been using HIT for about 2 months now and I've just exploded. It could simply be due to the fact that its such a different way of doing things that my body is reacting because its not used to it. Whatever the reason, I love HIT. Anyways, if you guys have any questions about it just post a reply or PM me.

 

[Milford Jenings]

DaCypher,

You beat me to it and you said what I was going to say. The philosophy is to do it Hard, do it right, and do it slow...most of all do it infrequently. I go to the gym three times a week to lift. I run almost every day, but I only lift three times a week. The trick is to use what is available. I try to get to one body area each tmie I lift, and by keeping in strict form (and I am still learning even after all these years) you will hit all the muscles you want to build. By not cheating you force the stabilizer muscles to work along with the ones doing the real lifting and therefore nail everything pretty good. I would say that I feel a workout for several days...and that is a good thing.

If you continually progress in weight (like one to two pounds per week) you will always be working your muscles to failure. That failure is what causes the body to say "hey I'm not big enough yet" and you build muscle to keep up with what you are doing, except you don't accept status quo, you progress in weight. I am fortunate that I am an employee at a University with one of the largest Co-recreational facilities in America and have access to very nice equipment, but I stick to the basics. And this mindset does not require expensive machines or fancy rubber coated cookies with handles molded in. In the last few months I brought my 8 rep set of flat bench back up from a dismal 185 back to 235 by doing this. My progress will slow once I get past the initial "getting back into lifting" memory phase, but I will progress. That means next year this time I will be up to 300+ for an 8 rep set if I add only 1.5# per week.

I'm pumped are you?

MJ

 

[DaCypher]

Thats a good point. I forgot to mention the infrequent aspect of HIT. I only train twice a week now, where before I started HIT I was going to the gym 4-5 times a week. I spend about an hour each time I go. Its funny that because I don't train very often, when I do go I'm incredibly pumped. I make each rep count because I know I'm not going to be back for a few days. I remember before HIT I would sometimes skip sets or even whole exercises thinking that I could just do them the next day. Whether its a mental game or if theres a chemical reason, I find that the less frequent I go the more intense the workouts.

 

[Milford Jenings]

Absolutely true. If I go to the gym too often I get too comfortable and start to talk or rest too much or think...ahhh I can just do it later. But when I have only one chance to get it in I make it count. Dedication becomes second nature and intensitythe rule.

 

[TAGMAN]

HIT is the only way to go. I only lift once per week using compound exercises. Only one set to failure and around 4-5 exercises per workout. I have made great gains using the program. It is very important to get the proper rest between workouts to let your muscles recuperate. I guess everyone is different, but lifting more than once a week sounds a bit much. I'm older, so I may need the extra time as opposed to you younger dudes. I participated in a master's thesis where HIT was compared to a volume routine. We blasted them out of the gym after 8 weeks. In between HIT workouts, I do HIIT cardio training. I'm only in the gym about 45 minutes and I'm completely hashed when done!

 

[Beleriand_K]

Thank you very much! It has been a sheer pleasure for an old man (36 yrs of age ) reading the stories above after having just read another thread about a 17 year old kid complaining that he hadn't made any sizable gains for the past two weeks!

He had gained 30 lbs in the four (four!) months he had been training, and now he was worried, because he hadn't gained anything significant for two weeks.

My initial thoughts was "What the hell am I doing in a forum like this?" If that's the level of experience and wisdom to be found here, I better be getting my fat butt outta here. This kid is destroying his own body by not knowing even the simplest thing about his own body and the simplest rules about weight training.

I started on an answer to him a few times, but I didn't feel able to formulate the right answer to him. (Maybe one of you experienced guys with english as your main language should give it a try).

Well, back to the point. I'm doing HIT training myself, and I recognized Milfords statement about adding 1,5lbs/week for a year. That's exactly the way I do things.

Having been in this game for a long time, I know, that you can not expect to add 5 or 10 lbs every week. First of all it just doesn't happen unless you're on drugs, and I respect my own body too much to do that, and secondly, if it should happen, every experienced lifter would know, that injuries were knocking on the door.

I'm the only one in my gym training the HIT-way (doing one set to failure, only one hour of training per session, and only training twice a week), so I'm looked upon as being a little weird. Nice, but weird Well, when you reach my age, you can live with that, but it's still nice to see, that there are guys out there sharing my point of view.