[Written 1/1/2006]

Principles of HIT

High Intensity Training (HIT) was introduced originally by Arthur Jones, and later taken up by Mike Mentzer and others. It has always been a controversial movement in bodybuilding, since the total work volume is drastically lower than that which has been used since the early days.

The logic behind HIT is based on the theory that a muscle is stimulated not by endless repetitions of a movement with weight, but by reaching an extremely high level of contraction - and that it only needs to reach this level once to stimulate growth. All work after that is considered wasted effort which just makes the recovery time longer before the muscle can be effectively worked again.

Here are some of the characteristics of HIT as espoused by Mike Mentzer:

• One Working Set (ONLY!) Per Exercise - Once properly warmed up a single set of a given exercise is done to stimulate the intended muscle(s).
• Always Lift "To Failure" - Each set is done to a point of "momentary muscular failure", meaning that, at that point in time, the muscle is incapable of completing another repetition with good form.
• Advanced Techniques for Greater Intensity - Since each exercise only gets one set, it had better be intense. Advanced techniques such as forced (assisted) reps, supersets, negatives, static holds, pre-exhaust, and rest-pause lifts are used to make the work very intense.
• Low Volume, Short Workouts - The total number of working sets in a workout is low; certainly less than 10 typically. The workout duration should not be more than 45 minutes, maybe 60 minutes at the very most.
• Long Rest Between Workouts - Mentzer advocated very long durations between workouts: 4-8 days, even longer sometimes. This is not even between "like" workouts in a split routine, but between any consecutive workouts. This may be the most controversial part of HIT.
• Isolation Exercises - As a bodybuilder, Mentzer emphasized a lot of isolation exercises rather than the typical compound exercises of powerlifting and olympic lifting. Still, he did single out the deadlift as the single most productive exercise for the body.

Incorporating HIT Into My Workouts

My first concern was in making sure I was lifting to failure. This posed a problem for bench press given that I lift alone and don't have a power rack with safety bars. Initially I started by benching until near-failure and then immediately doing pushups to failure. Later on I did away with bench press entirely(!). After my HIT phase, I began benching again and had lost a lot of strength. It did come back quickly, however.

My early HIT approach (Feb-Mar 2004) was to do a (roughly) full body workout in each session. I was taking 4-5 days off between workouts. The exercises were Bench + Pushups, Dumbbell Arnold Press, Wide Grip Lat Pulldowns, Seated Rows, Standing Barbell Shrugs, EZ Bar Curls, Tricep Cable Pushdowns, Situps + Leglifts. Note that I was not doing any lower body training at this time, which had been a long-term weakness in my training regimen.

Results? I did not see much progress during this time. However, I did find it very interesting that I achieved the same results I had been seeing before (stagnation) while spending about half the time lifting that I previously did.

Splitting the Routine and Adding Deadlifts

Around mid-March I decided that I wanted to incorporate deadlifts into my routine for its overall benefit, plus as a way to bring my legs into my workouts (lacking a power rack and leg machines in my basement!). I also split the routine into A (Chest, Back) and B (Arms, Shoulders, Abs) days. Routine A contained DB Flyes, Barbell Shrugs, Straight-Arm Lat Pulldowns supersetted with Palms-Up Lat Pulldowns, Seated Rows, Barbell Deadlifts. Routine B contained DB Lateral Raises, DB Bent-Over Lateral Raises, Barbell Curls supersetted with Palms-Up Lat Pulldowns, Triceps Cable Pushdowns supersetted with DB Military Press, Situps + Leglifts.

I was resting 3 days between workouts, 6 between "like" workouts. Of course I mixed some cardio in on intermediate days. Rep ranges were always targetted at about 8-12, with little variation. I was working as intensely as I could and taking long rests between sets. I kept up this routine until around July. Of course I saw good progress on exercises that were new, such as deadlifts and the pulldown supersets. Overall, the progress was still quite slow, especially on long-time exercises like barbell curls.

2-Set HIT?

At this point (July 2004) my progress had been slow to stagnant for some exercises, and I felt like changing things up. I felt like I wasn't training enough, and I had read about some post-Mentzer proponents of HIT (Ellington Darden?) talking about 2-set routines, so I decided to add a second working set to most exercises, with the first set being a hard set but not necessarily to failure. It felt like maybe I could push harder on that second set if I got a bit more pumped by a harder first set (as opposed to just a warmup).

In August I started timing my rests between sets of the same exercise, settling on 2.5 minutes for most exercises. I still was not progressing much during this time on my old lifts. Time for more changes.

Around September I received my custom built trap bar from Piedmont Design Associates. I also split my routine into 3 different days. Routine A (Back) was Trap Bar Deadlifts, Trap Bar Shrugs, Straight-Arm Lat Pulldowns supersetted with Palms-Up Lat Pulldowns, Seated Rows. Routine B (Chest, Arms, Shoulders) was DB Flyes supersetted with DB Incline Press, Barbell Curls supersetted with Palms-Up Lat Pulldowns, Concentration Curls, Triceps Pushdowns w/Rope supersetted with DB Military Press, DB Lateral Raises. Routine C (Legs, Glutes, Abs) was Trap Bar Squats, Romanian Deadlifts, Calf Raises, Situps + Leglifts. Now I'm doing each routine about once a week, repeating the cycle every 7 days or so. We're moving away from HIT here. Now we have 2 sets per exercise and more frequent workouts.

Throughout this period I made some small amount of progress. Again, nothing too notable, but a couple of incremental improvements. The data is a bit muddy, however, in that I started supplementing with creatine in summer 2004, then going off the supplement and back on in October. It is possible that the slight energy boost from creatine supplementation was responsible for my improvement. Still, I was liking this direction a bit more than the pure HIT that I started the year with.

The Move Away from HIT

In late October, I took my final step away from HIT to a workout that could not be called HIT any longer by any stretch. I now had a 4-day split routine that repeated each week, which means two of my lifting days were actually back-to-back! In addition, I started doing 3 sets of each exercise. At this time I was reading Tudor Bompa's periodization book, and getting ready to abandon HIT in the new year for a periodized approach which incorporated volume training (at times).

My routine was divided thusly. Routine A (Legs, Glutes, Abs) was Trap Bar Squats, Calf Raises, Romanian Deadlifts, Situps + Leglifts. Routine B (Bench, Arms) was Bench Press (it's back!), Barbell Curls, Triceps Pushdowns w/Rope, DB Concentration Curls. Routine C (Back) was Trap Bar Deadlifts, Straight-Arm Lat Pulldowns, Seated Rows, Wide-Grip Lat Pulldowns, Palms-Up Lat Pulldowns. Routine D (Chest, Traps, Shoulders) was DB Military Press, Trap Bar Shrugs, DB Flyes, DB Incline Press, DB Lateral Raises. Through the end of the year I did this, also experimenting with a few other exercises. Reps were still up around 10 most of the time. I started decreasing my rest times to around 2 minutes.

Did I progress? Perhaps, incrementally. It's difficult to measure when you keep changing the workout, yet changing the workout is essential to progress! Perhaps just picking 3-4 key lifts in a given rep range and tracking them only is the best way to measure specific progress. In any case, there was some small progress over the year, including some big new additions to my routine - leg work, deadlifts (of course progress here was huge since they were new exercises).

HIT Wrap-Up

Was HIT effective? Perhaps a little, but I don't think it lived up to my expectations overall. You can see the slow steps I took moving away from HIT in the second half of the year, and 2005 sees a new start with periodization.

However, I did learn some things and the experience was rewarding. Here are a few points I want to make about HIT:

• Real Intensity - The most important point I took away from my HIT experience was in learning to train at a new intensity level. When you only have 1 set to work a given muscle group, and you will be resting 4 days until you hit it again, you have to work damn hard. I gained new appreciation for how hard one can push oneself.
• Time Factor - Here's another point: If you don't have much time to train, you can still have a meaningful workout that at least prevents detraining. HIT is very time efficient.
• Superset Training/PreExhaust - Mentzer's pre-exhaust and superset training is demanding and probably effective when not overused. My subsequent training has moved away from these techniques and I'm thinking that I may again want to incorporate some of this into my workouts.
• Mental Fatigue - A lot of training books talk about general fatigue, or CNS (central nervous system) fatigue. It is kind of ironic that a low-volume protocol like HIT made me realize how real CNS fatigue can be. In this case, it's the concept that every set is so important because it's the ONLY set. The mental preparation before each intense set was demanding and, ultimately, fatiguing. I don't think it would be a good idea to stay on a HIT program indefinitely for this reason alone.

As a final thought, I would recommend trying 1-2 months of HIT as a change and as a way of rediscovering intensity. I would recommend judicious use of supersets and other advanced techniques for raising intensity. I would not recommend a permanent switch to HIT, however. I think periodization offers a better approach to training for specific effects and can mimic HIT for short periods of a larger overall training plan.