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AnimalMass1
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Well, I didn't ant to come on this board and start fights, becase I know there are alot of different views out there on HIT. I will give you some scientific background on it, (most of which has come from a good friend of mine - I want to give credit where credit is due - but like they say, someone has already said it better than I ever could...)
Ok, first of all in simple scientific terms HIT training violates the following universally accepted principles of training science:
1. Principle of individual differences - violated. 2. Principle of overcompensation - may / may not depends on the lifter. 3. Principle of overload - usually violated in HIT programs. 4. SAID (specific adaptation to imposed demand) - Violated. 5. Use / Disuse - Violated. 6. Specificity Principle - Violated. 7. GAS (general adaptation syndrome) principle - Violated.
In short the HIT guys are so concerned with pushing what they incorrectly call "intensity" (what they call intensity is actually correctly referred to as RPE or Rating of Perceived Effort) as the means to gains in size / strength that they blinker themselves to factors such as rep speed, load, volume, density, intensity (correctly defined - the % of a 1rm at which one works), rest times between sets, specificity of adaptation to different means of stimulation etc.
In their anti-olympic lifting, anti-speed , anti-specificity of adaptation stance the HIT crowd alienate themselves not only from modern scientific rigour but from the respect of athletes who have even a gross knowledge of muscle function.
A few quick examples...
At a gross level, adaptation occurs in response to load. So, squat 140 for 2 sets to failure of 5 reps each = 1400Kg load. Or you could squat 125 Kg for 6 sets of 6, never going anywhere near failure and squat a load of 4500Kg.Which do you think has the greater potential for causing adaptation? Is fatigue accepted as a primary driver of adaptation? Nope. It's almost irrelevant. Onwards to more personal issues...
HIT Jedi calim that Olympic lifting or any other lifting involving "fast" bar speeds preclude development as the lifter relies on "momentum" to "carry" the bar and that there is "insufficient muscular tension" to illicit an adaptive response. 1 Question...where did the momentum come from? Did the lifter pull it out of thin air? Or did he create it by exerting so great a force on the bar that its speed increased greatly...the latter right? So if the lifter applied this huge amount of force to the bar then isn't that a stimulus for further adaptation? Yup! The super-slow idiots are the worst for this, but the HIT Jedi get a close second place. The relationship between bar speed, length of moment arm and mechanical stress is a complex and ever changing one. To simply state that fast bar speeds preclude adaptive stress from being placed on tissues is moronic.
The 2nd point they make on Olympic lifting totally contradicts the first one. Some HIT Jedi like to say that OL and "fast" bar speeds put such a massive magnitude of stress on muscles, tendons etc that they will inevitably rip or tear...ie Olympic lifting is "dangerous". So lets get this straight - moving a bar fast reduces muscular stress...but it also increase musculotendonal forces so much that injury MUST eventually occur ? Riiiighhhht ! My response to this 2nd piece of anti - olympic lifting babble is simple. Anyone with a force plate can show you that the forces experienced by a human being jumping, running and rapidly changing directions are of similar (sometimes greater) magnitude than those experienced by an Olympic lifter. So if your going to stop OL coz the forces involved make it dangerous then you better stop running, jumping and rapid changes of direction - along with every sport that involves such things. Does this seem sensible? Once again objective analysis of HIT claims renders them open to mockery. Onwards..
HIT guys are now working a lift once every 7 - 10 days, with each workout usually involving training to concentric "failure" for 1 set. They claim that this allows them to "fully recover" from the miniscule workloads they put themselves through. They also talk of how "sore" they get after every session and so forth. I hate to be the one to poop on the parade but training a muscle group once in 10 days absolutely ensure you will be sore every time you train because you will be so detrained by the time your next session comes along. Secondly, delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) has sweet fanny adams to do with gaining size or strength. By ten days post workout you will have lost much of the tiny adaptive response offered by 1 set to "failure" and be almost back to where you started.
This is why it feels "hard" every time you train...because you are detrained and have lost the benefits of your previous training session by the time you reach the next one. Train a muscle group every 48 - 72 hours. If you "cant" do this then its probably because you are not in sufficient condition and will need to SLOWLY increase your volume and frequency in order to raise your work capacity to the point where you can train each muscle twice a week at least. Incidentally, most world class track athletes, powerlifters, weightlifters, throwers and strongmen train between 4 and 30 times per week. On high loading microcycles I myself will train a single lift up to 5 times a week. I don't treat this as a "macho" thing, it just happens to be what is currently required for me to further increase my strength. This leads me to another point. Fatigue is specific to the means by which it is induced. HIT guys like to ignore this one coz to admit it is to admit the possibility of training more than 3 times in your lifetime.
To take an extreme example, say you had a very heavy leg training session on Monday, how does this impact on your pectoral training session on Tuesday? Very little if at all. In a similar way, differing motor qualities can be trained very effectively even if they affect the same muscles. For example it is possible to train jumping and bounding exercises 2 days after squatting with near maximal weights with little or no decrease in performance despite their utilising the same muscles. However, if you were to attempt a maximal squat on this day you would obviously find that your performance would drop substantially. This specificity of fatigue allows an athlete to train one motor ability whilst still fatigued from the training of another. It is this factor that allows for the frequency of training that is often seen in strength training circles. Most bodybuilders baulk at training a body part more than once or at the most twice a week, but if they realised that fatigue is specific then they would realise that it is perfectly possible to train most muscles several times a week as long as the workouts utilised are not overly similar in terms of motor qualities utilised or neural patterns of activation used. This enables the athlete to more or less simultaneously train several qualities ASSUMING that enough attention is paid to monitoring residual fatigue effects, avoiding overtraining and keeping tabs on total training volume. This kind of thinking gives us the heavy - medium - light train the whole body 3 times a week type bodybuilding programs that old schoolers make use of and many others that allow for several different means (a means is just a specific "type" of training - for example o given rep range or a given intensity of 1 RM or whatever combination of factors might be used) to be used. HIT doesn't allow for different means to be used - it demands the means is the same at all times and only allows for changes in load.
These facts alone tell us that HIT will not be a particularly effective training means but they do not render HIT "useless". Nothing that provides a training stimulus is "useless" it all depends on the context that it is utilised. What pisses me off the most about Mentzer and the "HIT Jedi" is they insist on HIT being the "best" way for all people to train, all the time. That is nothing short of moronic. There is no one best way to train. At each given instant in time there may be a best way for each individual to train but the chances of that being the same means, all the time, for all people, is practically non-existent. It is like betting on the same horse every time - even when it is isn't running in that particular race - sure it might win eventually but you are going to lose out big time in the long run.
HIT can be utilised at times WHEN IT IS APPROPRIATE but it is POINTLESS to use HIT as an exclusive system of sports training or bodybuilding. Some say a "medium" level of volume will be most suited for most athletes seeking hypertrophy.
Id rather state that most athletes will get the best results by making use of the widest possible variety of stimulus over a long (many years) period of time - one of these stimuli might well be very low volume work taken to the point of muscular fatigue with low frequency of training ie HIT. Equally one of the stimuli might be very high volumes of work with very high training frequencies. So rather than say a "medium" level of volume used at all times will be most appropriate to maximise gains id rather say that most time should probably be spent with a medium level of volume. Almost all levels of volume / intensity / fatigue should be utilised but never at the total exclusion of one another from the overall training plan. Following HIT protocols as laid out by Mentzer automatically excludes all other set / rep / bar speed / frequency / rest period etc combinations and why would anyone want to do that? So why is it that so many folks like HIT (at least for a while) ?
I think the gains made by HIT converts are down to a few factors that can be found in any training methodology as follows:
Change in volume / load / fatigue / some other parameter which results in temporary progress (hypertrophy here - we are talking BBing after all) by change of means.
Change in work rate through mental change. "This is it! I've finally found the secret - now I am going to work my ass off" and Voila - the belief gives rise to hard work which in turn brings the progress via change in WORK ETHIC. Suddenly all is good in the world and you eat better, train stricter, sleep more etc.
HIT is good for generating both of these things. Low volume training is an unusual stimulus for most athletes.
Most athletes will work pretty hard on something they believe in... HIT, like all other marketed "systems" of BBing is well hyped, slickly marketed and well backed by anecdotal evidence...which generates belief before it is even tried so the trial is "biased".
After a while of this particular stimulus the athlete will become stale and HIT "stops working". At this point if you believe Mentzer you need "more rest" or you must "call on reserves of deep energy" or some other BULLSHIT. What you need is a different training means...Duh!
Now I wanna get on to a subject that probably wont cause any hassle at all on this board but whenever I talk about this someone always says " I could do that (e.g. train several times a week / use different means / whatever) if I took enough drugs" and I always use this example in reply;
Take a look at this little list of statements and find a difference in the logic of each....
If I took enough steroids I could keep up with lifters like you who train more often and make big lifts.
If I paid attention to my recovery better I could do more workouts.
If I ate better food I could build more muscle.
If I took those supplements I could do anything I wanted.
IF I GOT MY 330LB ASS OFF THE COUCH AND TOOK SOME EXERCISE, I COULD LOSE WEIGHT.
You guessed it, there is no fucking difference. They are all pathetic excuses of the "if...then" mode. If you believe that steroids will magically allow you to do X, Y and Z then you have 2 options.
1. Take them. 2. Don't take them.
If you choose 2 then you have no right to say "if I took steroids I could" because, hey, you made the choice, no one else made it for you. If you believe your drug free status is holding you back soooo much then get yourself some fecking roids and get on with it....just dont cry at me coz I dont have any time for your pathetic whining.
Nothing irks me more than hearing someone say "I might suck, but at least I don't take drugs". Big WooHoo...just keep right on sucking. "I'm doing OK, for a natural" OK is shit, get better. How do I rate my own performance in my last comp? It was shit. Why was it shit? Cause I didn't win. Why didn't I win? Cause other people had trained longer / better / smarter / harder than me. Cause someone else wanted it more. Cause I wasn't good enough. See where I'm coming from? People make the difference, not drugs.
If you for one minute believe any old lifter could keep up with (for example) Westside Barbell lifters on poundage and volume basis if they took enough steroids then be my guest to try...lol. I'll stand back from the sidelines and watch as you realise how frickin hard it really is and fall apart mentally...not to mention that fact that you will be crushed by your first max effort Squat if you try to hold your own on a poundage: bodyweight basis with these guys and gals. Why are they stronger than you? Cause they take drugs? Or maybe it is because they don't make excuses...ever...about anything. Nuff said. Stop making excuses. If your training is working, great - keep doing it. But don't tell me you can't train more often because you don't take drugs...that's pathetic. Don't tell me you train HIT because you are drug free - just admit that you train HIT coz you don't know any better or you aren't willing to work any harder or you don't want to have to accept that X years of your training life have been pissed away cause you couldn't see past the emotive dogma put before you by others with even less ability to reason objectively than you.
Now if only HITters would take their cardiovascular training to "failure" eh !
Thanks, here endeth the rant.
AnimalMass
Ok, first of all in simple scientific terms HIT training violates the following universally accepted principles of training science:
1. Principle of individual differences - violated. 2. Principle of overcompensation - may / may not depends on the lifter. 3. Principle of overload - usually violated in HIT programs. 4. SAID (specific adaptation to imposed demand) - Violated. 5. Use / Disuse - Violated. 6. Specificity Principle - Violated. 7. GAS (general adaptation syndrome) principle - Violated.
In short the HIT guys are so concerned with pushing what they incorrectly call "intensity" (what they call intensity is actually correctly referred to as RPE or Rating of Perceived Effort) as the means to gains in size / strength that they blinker themselves to factors such as rep speed, load, volume, density, intensity (correctly defined - the % of a 1rm at which one works), rest times between sets, specificity of adaptation to different means of stimulation etc.
In their anti-olympic lifting, anti-speed , anti-specificity of adaptation stance the HIT crowd alienate themselves not only from modern scientific rigour but from the respect of athletes who have even a gross knowledge of muscle function.
A few quick examples...
At a gross level, adaptation occurs in response to load. So, squat 140 for 2 sets to failure of 5 reps each = 1400Kg load. Or you could squat 125 Kg for 6 sets of 6, never going anywhere near failure and squat a load of 4500Kg.Which do you think has the greater potential for causing adaptation? Is fatigue accepted as a primary driver of adaptation? Nope. It's almost irrelevant. Onwards to more personal issues...
HIT Jedi calim that Olympic lifting or any other lifting involving "fast" bar speeds preclude development as the lifter relies on "momentum" to "carry" the bar and that there is "insufficient muscular tension" to illicit an adaptive response. 1 Question...where did the momentum come from? Did the lifter pull it out of thin air? Or did he create it by exerting so great a force on the bar that its speed increased greatly...the latter right? So if the lifter applied this huge amount of force to the bar then isn't that a stimulus for further adaptation? Yup! The super-slow idiots are the worst for this, but the HIT Jedi get a close second place. The relationship between bar speed, length of moment arm and mechanical stress is a complex and ever changing one. To simply state that fast bar speeds preclude adaptive stress from being placed on tissues is moronic.
The 2nd point they make on Olympic lifting totally contradicts the first one. Some HIT Jedi like to say that OL and "fast" bar speeds put such a massive magnitude of stress on muscles, tendons etc that they will inevitably rip or tear...ie Olympic lifting is "dangerous". So lets get this straight - moving a bar fast reduces muscular stress...but it also increase musculotendonal forces so much that injury MUST eventually occur ? Riiiighhhht ! My response to this 2nd piece of anti - olympic lifting babble is simple. Anyone with a force plate can show you that the forces experienced by a human being jumping, running and rapidly changing directions are of similar (sometimes greater) magnitude than those experienced by an Olympic lifter. So if your going to stop OL coz the forces involved make it dangerous then you better stop running, jumping and rapid changes of direction - along with every sport that involves such things. Does this seem sensible? Once again objective analysis of HIT claims renders them open to mockery. Onwards..
HIT guys are now working a lift once every 7 - 10 days, with each workout usually involving training to concentric "failure" for 1 set. They claim that this allows them to "fully recover" from the miniscule workloads they put themselves through. They also talk of how "sore" they get after every session and so forth. I hate to be the one to poop on the parade but training a muscle group once in 10 days absolutely ensure you will be sore every time you train because you will be so detrained by the time your next session comes along. Secondly, delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) has sweet fanny adams to do with gaining size or strength. By ten days post workout you will have lost much of the tiny adaptive response offered by 1 set to "failure" and be almost back to where you started.
This is why it feels "hard" every time you train...because you are detrained and have lost the benefits of your previous training session by the time you reach the next one. Train a muscle group every 48 - 72 hours. If you "cant" do this then its probably because you are not in sufficient condition and will need to SLOWLY increase your volume and frequency in order to raise your work capacity to the point where you can train each muscle twice a week at least. Incidentally, most world class track athletes, powerlifters, weightlifters, throwers and strongmen train between 4 and 30 times per week. On high loading microcycles I myself will train a single lift up to 5 times a week. I don't treat this as a "macho" thing, it just happens to be what is currently required for me to further increase my strength. This leads me to another point. Fatigue is specific to the means by which it is induced. HIT guys like to ignore this one coz to admit it is to admit the possibility of training more than 3 times in your lifetime.
To take an extreme example, say you had a very heavy leg training session on Monday, how does this impact on your pectoral training session on Tuesday? Very little if at all. In a similar way, differing motor qualities can be trained very effectively even if they affect the same muscles. For example it is possible to train jumping and bounding exercises 2 days after squatting with near maximal weights with little or no decrease in performance despite their utilising the same muscles. However, if you were to attempt a maximal squat on this day you would obviously find that your performance would drop substantially. This specificity of fatigue allows an athlete to train one motor ability whilst still fatigued from the training of another. It is this factor that allows for the frequency of training that is often seen in strength training circles. Most bodybuilders baulk at training a body part more than once or at the most twice a week, but if they realised that fatigue is specific then they would realise that it is perfectly possible to train most muscles several times a week as long as the workouts utilised are not overly similar in terms of motor qualities utilised or neural patterns of activation used. This enables the athlete to more or less simultaneously train several qualities ASSUMING that enough attention is paid to monitoring residual fatigue effects, avoiding overtraining and keeping tabs on total training volume. This kind of thinking gives us the heavy - medium - light train the whole body 3 times a week type bodybuilding programs that old schoolers make use of and many others that allow for several different means (a means is just a specific "type" of training - for example o given rep range or a given intensity of 1 RM or whatever combination of factors might be used) to be used. HIT doesn't allow for different means to be used - it demands the means is the same at all times and only allows for changes in load.
These facts alone tell us that HIT will not be a particularly effective training means but they do not render HIT "useless". Nothing that provides a training stimulus is "useless" it all depends on the context that it is utilised. What pisses me off the most about Mentzer and the "HIT Jedi" is they insist on HIT being the "best" way for all people to train, all the time. That is nothing short of moronic. There is no one best way to train. At each given instant in time there may be a best way for each individual to train but the chances of that being the same means, all the time, for all people, is practically non-existent. It is like betting on the same horse every time - even when it is isn't running in that particular race - sure it might win eventually but you are going to lose out big time in the long run.
HIT can be utilised at times WHEN IT IS APPROPRIATE but it is POINTLESS to use HIT as an exclusive system of sports training or bodybuilding. Some say a "medium" level of volume will be most suited for most athletes seeking hypertrophy.
Id rather state that most athletes will get the best results by making use of the widest possible variety of stimulus over a long (many years) period of time - one of these stimuli might well be very low volume work taken to the point of muscular fatigue with low frequency of training ie HIT. Equally one of the stimuli might be very high volumes of work with very high training frequencies. So rather than say a "medium" level of volume used at all times will be most appropriate to maximise gains id rather say that most time should probably be spent with a medium level of volume. Almost all levels of volume / intensity / fatigue should be utilised but never at the total exclusion of one another from the overall training plan. Following HIT protocols as laid out by Mentzer automatically excludes all other set / rep / bar speed / frequency / rest period etc combinations and why would anyone want to do that? So why is it that so many folks like HIT (at least for a while) ?
I think the gains made by HIT converts are down to a few factors that can be found in any training methodology as follows:
Change in volume / load / fatigue / some other parameter which results in temporary progress (hypertrophy here - we are talking BBing after all) by change of means.
Change in work rate through mental change. "This is it! I've finally found the secret - now I am going to work my ass off" and Voila - the belief gives rise to hard work which in turn brings the progress via change in WORK ETHIC. Suddenly all is good in the world and you eat better, train stricter, sleep more etc.
HIT is good for generating both of these things. Low volume training is an unusual stimulus for most athletes.
Most athletes will work pretty hard on something they believe in... HIT, like all other marketed "systems" of BBing is well hyped, slickly marketed and well backed by anecdotal evidence...which generates belief before it is even tried so the trial is "biased".
After a while of this particular stimulus the athlete will become stale and HIT "stops working". At this point if you believe Mentzer you need "more rest" or you must "call on reserves of deep energy" or some other BULLSHIT. What you need is a different training means...Duh!
Now I wanna get on to a subject that probably wont cause any hassle at all on this board but whenever I talk about this someone always says " I could do that (e.g. train several times a week / use different means / whatever) if I took enough drugs" and I always use this example in reply;
Take a look at this little list of statements and find a difference in the logic of each....
If I took enough steroids I could keep up with lifters like you who train more often and make big lifts.
If I paid attention to my recovery better I could do more workouts.
If I ate better food I could build more muscle.
If I took those supplements I could do anything I wanted.
IF I GOT MY 330LB ASS OFF THE COUCH AND TOOK SOME EXERCISE, I COULD LOSE WEIGHT.
You guessed it, there is no fucking difference. They are all pathetic excuses of the "if...then" mode. If you believe that steroids will magically allow you to do X, Y and Z then you have 2 options.
1. Take them. 2. Don't take them.
If you choose 2 then you have no right to say "if I took steroids I could" because, hey, you made the choice, no one else made it for you. If you believe your drug free status is holding you back soooo much then get yourself some fecking roids and get on with it....just dont cry at me coz I dont have any time for your pathetic whining.
Nothing irks me more than hearing someone say "I might suck, but at least I don't take drugs". Big WooHoo...just keep right on sucking. "I'm doing OK, for a natural" OK is shit, get better. How do I rate my own performance in my last comp? It was shit. Why was it shit? Cause I didn't win. Why didn't I win? Cause other people had trained longer / better / smarter / harder than me. Cause someone else wanted it more. Cause I wasn't good enough. See where I'm coming from? People make the difference, not drugs.
If you for one minute believe any old lifter could keep up with (for example) Westside Barbell lifters on poundage and volume basis if they took enough steroids then be my guest to try...lol. I'll stand back from the sidelines and watch as you realise how frickin hard it really is and fall apart mentally...not to mention that fact that you will be crushed by your first max effort Squat if you try to hold your own on a poundage: bodyweight basis with these guys and gals. Why are they stronger than you? Cause they take drugs? Or maybe it is because they don't make excuses...ever...about anything. Nuff said. Stop making excuses. If your training is working, great - keep doing it. But don't tell me you can't train more often because you don't take drugs...that's pathetic. Don't tell me you train HIT because you are drug free - just admit that you train HIT coz you don't know any better or you aren't willing to work any harder or you don't want to have to accept that X years of your training life have been pissed away cause you couldn't see past the emotive dogma put before you by others with even less ability to reason objectively than you.
Now if only HITters would take their cardiovascular training to "failure" eh !
Thanks, here endeth the rant.
AnimalMass
