High intensity training
Encyclopedia
High Intensity Training (HIT) is a form of strength training
popularized in the 1970s by Arthur Jones
, the founder of Nautilus
. The training focuses on performing quality weightlifting
repetitions to the point of momentary muscular failure
. The training takes into account the number of repetitions, the amount of weight, and the amount of time the muscle is exposed to tension
in order to maximize the amount of muscle fiber recruitment
.
are performed with a high level of effort, or intensity, where it is thought that it will stimulate the body to produce an increase in muscular strength
and size. Advocates of HIT believe that this method is superior for strength and size building than most other methods which, for example, may stress lower weights with larger volume (sets x reps).
As strength increases, HIT techniques will have the weight/resistance increased progressively where it is thought that it will provide the muscles with adequate overload to stimulate further improvements. There is an inverse relationship between how intensely and how long one can exercise. As a result, high intensity workouts are generally kept brief. After a High Intensity workout, as with any workout, the body requires time to recover and produce the responses stimulated during the workout, so there is more emphasis on rest and recovery in the HIT philosophy than in most other weight training methods. In any workout, not just HIT, training schedules should allow adequate time between workouts for recovery (and adaptation).
While many typical HIT programs comprise a single-set per exercise, tri-weekly, full-body workout, many variations exist in specific recommendations of set and exercise number, workout routines, volume and frequency of training. The common thread is an emphasis on a high level of effort, relatively brief and infrequent (i.e. not daily) training, and the cadence
of a lift, which will be very slow compared to a non-HIT weight training routine.
Most HIT advocates stress the use of controlled lifting speeds and strict form, with special attention paid to avoiding any bouncing, jerking, or yanking of the weight or machine movement arm during exercise. Variations of HIT will vary in advice from lifting the weights smoothly but at a natural pace, others will time the lift, peak hold and descent. In extreme cases, it may take up to 30 seconds to complete a single repetition. While high intensity training is strongly associated with Nautilus exercise equipment
, advocates vary in their equipment recommendations.
Also emphasized when near exhaustion, doing static holds for periods of time, and negative reps (lowering the weight) are all methods to further exhaust the muscle or muscles exercised. This will stimulate further growth and strength because muscles are weakest in positive/contracting movements (sometimes referred to as first stage failure of a muscle). Although you may not be able to lift a weight for another rep you will almost certainly be able to hold it statically for a further period (second stage of failure) and finally lower a weight at a slow controlled speed (third stage of failure). Until all three (lifting, holding and lowering) parts of an exercise can no longer be completed in a controlled manner a muscle cannot be considered thoroughly exhausted/exercised.
Aerobic exercise In addition to weight training, an overall exercise program may include elements of aerobic (cardio) and anaerobic training. Aerobic training is what you will recognize as treadmill jogging or walking, cycling or swimming at a low to moderate pace up to a point at which you can still carry on a conversation, even if you are breathing a little heavy. You should be able to keep this up for 30 minutes or more.
Low to moderate intensity aerobic exercise is at a heart rate of approximately 50 to 70% of your maximum heart rate. At this intensity, and with reasonable fitness, you should be able to supply the exercising muscles with sufficient oxygen to keep them contracting and performing for some time. Aerobic means “with oxygen.”
Anaerobic exercise In contrast, anaerobic exercise is at an intensity at which your muscles’ requirements for oxygen exceed the amount you can supply by breathing and via your blood supply. At this exercise intensity, you will stop sooner rather than later because the muscles will fail to function. At this level of intensity, your heart rate may be at 90 to 100% of your maximum heart rate. This is clearly high-intensity exercise. Weight training for strength with heavy loads is usually anaerobic exercise for short bursts of effort.
There exists also a controversy related to the development of HIT and its originality. Near the close of the 19th century, a medical doctor by the name of Gustav Zander
developed a complete set of machines similar to Nautilus and also a workout method remarkably close to that promoted by Arthur Jones in the early 1970s. Jones stated:
Regardless of who originally developed the systems (and machines) it is clear that through Arthur Jones and his company and a crew of HIT advocates, the principles and concepts of HIT became popularized.
HIT will target a single body part with one or two exercises
, and generally a single set of 6-10 reps for upper body exercises and either 8-15 or more commonly 12-20 reps for lower body exercises, done to momentary muscular failure. Deadlift
s usually have a rep range of 5-8 reps, and calves are sometimes trained with 1-2 sets of failure. Older HIT workouts consisted of whole-body workouts which later changed to split-body routines. Opposite of HIT, a conventional routine will target a single body part with 1-3 exercises, with 3-5 sets of 6-12 repetitions.
Cadence
for a HIT workout is supposed to be smooth, but not always Super Slow
. A standard HIT cadence is usually 3-1-4-1. For clarity, here are two examples of how the cadence would be for an exercise. On the Lat Pulldown exercise the cadence is as follows: 3 seconds pulling down (Positive movement), followed by a 1 second pause & squeeze (at full contraction), followed by a 4 second return (Negative movement), followed by a 1 second rest. This completes 1 rep.
On the Barbell Squat the cadence is as follows: 4 seconds lowering the bar (the Negative movement), followed by a 1 second pause (at the bottom), followed by 3 seconds raising up the bar (the Positive movement), followed by a 1 second rest at the top. This completes 1 rep.
HIT stresses intensity over repetition. Many weightlifters will use a HIT routine to help break a 'plateau' - meaning they will use HIT temporarily when another routine stops giving desired results. Some HIT trainees will use HIT exclusively as well - Arthur Jones believed HIT was all that was required.
, the late Mike Mentzer
achieved his lifetime best condition from performing rest-pause, an old system of lifting involving single-rep maximums interspersed with brief (10 second) rest periods. Rest-pause has the advantages of old-school power training while also allowing for enough overall reps to be performed for hypertrophy
and cardiovascular exercise purposes.
Strength training
Strength training is the use of resistance to muscular contraction to build the strength, anaerobic endurance, and size of skeletal muscles. There are many different methods of strength training, the most common being the use of gravity or elastic/hydraulic forces to oppose muscle contraction...
popularized in the 1970s by Arthur Jones
Arthur Jones (inventor)
Arthur Allen Jones was the founder of Nautilus, Inc. and MedX, Inc. and the inventor of the Nautilus exercise machines, including the Nautilus pullover, which was first sold in 1970...
, the founder of Nautilus
Nautilus, Inc.
Nautilus, Inc. , located in Vancouver, Washington, United States, is the marketer, developer, and manufacturer of branded health and fitness products sold under such names as Bowflex, Nautilus, PEARL iZUMi, Schwinn Fitness, StairMaster, Trimline and Universal.Nautilus and its corporate...
. The training focuses on performing quality weightlifting
Weight training
Weight training is a common type of strength training for developing the strength and size of skeletal muscles. It uses the weight force of gravity to oppose the force generated by muscle through concentric or eccentric contraction...
repetitions to the point of momentary muscular failure
Training to failure
In weight training, training to failure is repeating an exercise to the point of momentary muscular failure, i.e. the point where a repetition fails due to inadequate muscular strength....
. The training takes into account the number of repetitions, the amount of weight, and the amount of time the muscle is exposed to tension
Muscle tone
In physiology, medicine, and anatomy, muscle tone is the continuous and passive partial contraction of the muscles, or the muscle’s resistance to passive stretch during resting state. It helps maintain posture, and it declines during REM sleep.-Purpose:Unconscious nerve impulses maintain the...
in order to maximize the amount of muscle fiber recruitment
Motor unit recruitment
Motor unit recruitment is the progressive activation of a muscle by successive recruitment of contractile units to accomplish increasing gradations of contractile strength....
.
Principles
The fundamental principles of High Intensity Training (HIT) are that exercise should be brief, infrequent, and intense. ExercisesExercises
- 30th Anniversary Bonus Tracks:-Band members:*Dan McCafferty - vocals*Darrell Sweet - drums, backing vocals*Pete Agnew - bass guitar, acoustic guitar, backing vocals*Manny Charlton - guitar, 12-string guitar, backing vocals-Additional musicians:...
are performed with a high level of effort, or intensity, where it is thought that it will stimulate the body to produce an increase in muscular strength
Physical strength
Physical strength is the ability of a person or animal to exert force on physical objects using muscles. Increasing physical strength is the goal of strength training.-Overview:...
and size. Advocates of HIT believe that this method is superior for strength and size building than most other methods which, for example, may stress lower weights with larger volume (sets x reps).
As strength increases, HIT techniques will have the weight/resistance increased progressively where it is thought that it will provide the muscles with adequate overload to stimulate further improvements. There is an inverse relationship between how intensely and how long one can exercise. As a result, high intensity workouts are generally kept brief. After a High Intensity workout, as with any workout, the body requires time to recover and produce the responses stimulated during the workout, so there is more emphasis on rest and recovery in the HIT philosophy than in most other weight training methods. In any workout, not just HIT, training schedules should allow adequate time between workouts for recovery (and adaptation).
While many typical HIT programs comprise a single-set per exercise, tri-weekly, full-body workout, many variations exist in specific recommendations of set and exercise number, workout routines, volume and frequency of training. The common thread is an emphasis on a high level of effort, relatively brief and infrequent (i.e. not daily) training, and the cadence
Cadence (gait)
Cadence in sports involving running is the total number of 'revolutions per minute' , or number of full cycles taken within a minute, by the pair of feet, and is used as a measure of athletic performance. It is very similar in respect to cadence in cycling, however it is often overlooked in its...
of a lift, which will be very slow compared to a non-HIT weight training routine.
Most HIT advocates stress the use of controlled lifting speeds and strict form, with special attention paid to avoiding any bouncing, jerking, or yanking of the weight or machine movement arm during exercise. Variations of HIT will vary in advice from lifting the weights smoothly but at a natural pace, others will time the lift, peak hold and descent. In extreme cases, it may take up to 30 seconds to complete a single repetition. While high intensity training is strongly associated with Nautilus exercise equipment
Exercise equipment
An apparatus or device used in any given physical activity for shaping and forming muscle groups for specific areas of the body. A mechanism or machine that is intended to promote health and fitness by using motion with varying degrees of resistance either fixed or adjustable.-Exercise...
, advocates vary in their equipment recommendations.
Also emphasized when near exhaustion, doing static holds for periods of time, and negative reps (lowering the weight) are all methods to further exhaust the muscle or muscles exercised. This will stimulate further growth and strength because muscles are weakest in positive/contracting movements (sometimes referred to as first stage failure of a muscle). Although you may not be able to lift a weight for another rep you will almost certainly be able to hold it statically for a further period (second stage of failure) and finally lower a weight at a slow controlled speed (third stage of failure). Until all three (lifting, holding and lowering) parts of an exercise can no longer be completed in a controlled manner a muscle cannot be considered thoroughly exhausted/exercised.
Aerobic exercise In addition to weight training, an overall exercise program may include elements of aerobic (cardio) and anaerobic training. Aerobic training is what you will recognize as treadmill jogging or walking, cycling or swimming at a low to moderate pace up to a point at which you can still carry on a conversation, even if you are breathing a little heavy. You should be able to keep this up for 30 minutes or more.
Low to moderate intensity aerobic exercise is at a heart rate of approximately 50 to 70% of your maximum heart rate. At this intensity, and with reasonable fitness, you should be able to supply the exercising muscles with sufficient oxygen to keep them contracting and performing for some time. Aerobic means “with oxygen.”
Anaerobic exercise In contrast, anaerobic exercise is at an intensity at which your muscles’ requirements for oxygen exceed the amount you can supply by breathing and via your blood supply. At this exercise intensity, you will stop sooner rather than later because the muscles will fail to function. At this level of intensity, your heart rate may be at 90 to 100% of your maximum heart rate. This is clearly high-intensity exercise. Weight training for strength with heavy loads is usually anaerobic exercise for short bursts of effort.
Controversy
There are a large number of skeptics who dispute the methodologies and results claimed by HIT advocates. Some of the criticism asserts that HIT violates much conventional "wisdom" in weight training, by always using a weight that one can lift 8-12 times, using 4 second negatives, and so on, it has flown in the face of the exercise establishment.There exists also a controversy related to the development of HIT and its originality. Near the close of the 19th century, a medical doctor by the name of Gustav Zander
Gustav Zander
Jonas Gustav Vilhelm Zander was a Swedish physician, orthopedist and one of the originators of mechanotherapy. He is known for inventing a therapeutic method of exercise carried out by means of a special apparatus...
developed a complete set of machines similar to Nautilus and also a workout method remarkably close to that promoted by Arthur Jones in the early 1970s. Jones stated:
So, in attempts to improve my exercise results, I designed and built a total of about twenty very sophisticated exercise machines, then believing that these were the first exercise machines ever built by anybody. But many years later, I learned that a doctor named Gustav Zander had designed and built a number of exercise machines in Europe nearly a hundred years before I built my first one; I did not copy Zander's work and learned nothing from him, was not even aware of his work until long after I had made the same discoveries that he had made. But if I had known about, and understood, Zander's work, it would have saved me a lot of time and a rather large fortune in money, because the man was a genius; his only problem was that he lived about a century ahead of his time, at a time when very few people cared about exercise and even fewer knew anything about it.
Regardless of who originally developed the systems (and machines) it is clear that through Arthur Jones and his company and a crew of HIT advocates, the principles and concepts of HIT became popularized.
HIT and other training routines
Exercises
- 30th Anniversary Bonus Tracks:-Band members:*Dan McCafferty - vocals*Darrell Sweet - drums, backing vocals*Pete Agnew - bass guitar, acoustic guitar, backing vocals*Manny Charlton - guitar, 12-string guitar, backing vocals-Additional musicians:...
, and generally a single set of 6-10 reps for upper body exercises and either 8-15 or more commonly 12-20 reps for lower body exercises, done to momentary muscular failure. Deadlift
Deadlift
The deadlift is a weight training exercise where a loaded barbell is lifted off the ground from a stabilized, bent over position. It is one of the three canonical powerlifting exercises, along with the squat and bench press.-Overview:...
s usually have a rep range of 5-8 reps, and calves are sometimes trained with 1-2 sets of failure. Older HIT workouts consisted of whole-body workouts which later changed to split-body routines. Opposite of HIT, a conventional routine will target a single body part with 1-3 exercises, with 3-5 sets of 6-12 repetitions.
Cadence
Cadence (gait)
Cadence in sports involving running is the total number of 'revolutions per minute' , or number of full cycles taken within a minute, by the pair of feet, and is used as a measure of athletic performance. It is very similar in respect to cadence in cycling, however it is often overlooked in its...
for a HIT workout is supposed to be smooth, but not always Super Slow
Super Slow
Super Slow is a form of resistance training popularized by Ken Hutchins. The term SuperSlow and derivative terms are registered by Hutchins as trademarks...
. A standard HIT cadence is usually 3-1-4-1. For clarity, here are two examples of how the cadence would be for an exercise. On the Lat Pulldown exercise the cadence is as follows: 3 seconds pulling down (Positive movement), followed by a 1 second pause & squeeze (at full contraction), followed by a 4 second return (Negative movement), followed by a 1 second rest. This completes 1 rep.
On the Barbell Squat the cadence is as follows: 4 seconds lowering the bar (the Negative movement), followed by a 1 second pause (at the bottom), followed by 3 seconds raising up the bar (the Positive movement), followed by a 1 second rest at the top. This completes 1 rep.
HIT stresses intensity over repetition. Many weightlifters will use a HIT routine to help break a 'plateau' - meaning they will use HIT temporarily when another routine stops giving desired results. Some HIT trainees will use HIT exclusively as well - Arthur Jones believed HIT was all that was required.
Rest-pause
A former Mr. UniverseWorld Amateur Bodybuilding Championships
The World Amateur Bodybuilding Championships is a male bodybuilding contest organised by the International Federation of BodyBuilding & Fitness and first held in 1959. The name was changed in 1976 to avoid confusion with the NABBA Mr...
, the late Mike Mentzer
Mike Mentzer
Mike Mentzer was an American IFBB professional bodybuilder, businessman, and author.-Bodybuilding career:...
achieved his lifetime best condition from performing rest-pause, an old system of lifting involving single-rep maximums interspersed with brief (10 second) rest periods. Rest-pause has the advantages of old-school power training while also allowing for enough overall reps to be performed for hypertrophy
Hypertrophy
Hypertrophy is the increase in the volume of an organ or tissue due to the enlargement of its component cells. It should be distinguished from hyperplasia, in which the cells remain approximately the same size but increase in number...
and cardiovascular exercise purposes.
Famous HIT Bodybuilders
- Shin Ohtake
- Dorian YatesDorian YatesDorian Andrew Mientjez Yates , is an English professional bodybuilder, winning the Mr. Olympia title six consecutive times beginning in 1992. He is fourth on the list of most Olympias won, and out of the seven in which he competed, he won six and placed second in his debut...
- Sergio OlivaSergio OlivaSergio Oliva is a bodybuilder known as "The Myth". This sobriquet was given to him by bodybuilder/writer Rick Wayne. Wayne had begun calling Oliva "The Myth" ""....
- Casey ViatorCasey ViatorCasey Viator was the youngest ever AAU Mr. America - gaining the title at the age of 19 in 1971....
- Marcus Reinhardt
- Lee LabradaLee LabradaLee Labrada is a former IFBB professional bodybuilder winning 22 major titles and a former Mr. Olympia competitor, published author and current CEO of Labrada Nutrition. Labrada was inducted into the IFBB Hall of Fame in 2004...
- Mike MentzerMike MentzerMike Mentzer was an American IFBB professional bodybuilder, businessman, and author.-Bodybuilding career:...
- Ray MentzerRay MentzerRay Mentzer was the brother of Mike Mentzer and winner of the 1979 AAU Mr. America competition. Mike won the rival IFBB Mr America in 1976. Ray also won the 1976 Junior Mr. America and the 1978 IFBB Mr...
- Aaron Baker
- "BarbarianBarbarian (film)Barbarian, also known as Kane the Barbarian, is an American sword and sorcery action direct-to-video film released in 2003. It can almost be considered a remake from the 1983 film Deathstalker...
Brothers" Peter and David Paul - Joshua Trentine
See also
- Anaerobic exerciseAnaerobic exerciseAnaerobic exercise is exercise intense enough to trigger anaerobic metabolism. It is used by athletes in non-endurance sports to promote strength, speed and power and by body builders to build muscle mass...
- Body for LifeBody for LifeBody for Life is a 12-week nutrition and exercise program, and also an annual physique transformation competition. It was created by Bill Phillips, a former competitive bodybuilder and owner of EAS, a manufacturer of nutritional supplements. It has been popularized by a bestselling book of the...
- High-intensity interval trainingHigh-intensity interval trainingHigh-intensity interval training or sprint interval training is an exercise strategy that is intended to improve performance with short training sessions. HIIT is a form of cardiovascular exercise which is beneficial to burning fat in a short and intense workout. Usual HIIT sessions may vary from...
- Stuart McRobertStuart McRobertStuart McRobert is a writer on strength training, best known as the founder and publisher of Hardgainer magazine. McRobert lives in Nicosia, Cyprus with his wife and two daughters.-Biography:...
- Super slowSuper SlowSuper Slow is a form of resistance training popularized by Ken Hutchins. The term SuperSlow and derivative terms are registered by Hutchins as trademarks...
Further reading
- Joanne Sharkey; Little, John B. (2006). The Wisdom of Mike Mentzer: the art, science, and philosophy of a bodybuilding legend. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-145293-1.
- Little, John B.; Mentzer, Mike (2003). High-Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer way. Chicago, Ill: Contemporary Books. ISBN 0-07-138330-1.
- Heavy Duty 2 by Mike Mentzer
- LaVelle, Gordon (2006). Training for Mass. Romanart Books. ISBN 978-1604024388.