High Intensity Training
In this article, I briefly want to summarize what High Intensity Training is all about and share some of my personal experiences following this training method.
An overview of HIT Basics
When you are training according to the HIT method, you perform only one set of each exercise and you train each muscle group only one single time per week.
Yes, I am being serious, here. You do 1 set of, say, bench presses right now and then really don’t do any more bench presses until the same day in one week’s time.
The reasoning here is that with high intensity training, you place your muscle groups under utterly severe tension, resulting in a huge growth impulse, and then you give the muscles a great deal of time to recover and build.
How can you get a really strong growth impulse with just one set? HIT has two factors to it, making it extremely intensive:
1. Flawless Execution
You do each and every repetition of an exercise with painstakenly ideal form and you also carry out the repetitions very slowly. Meaning: Zero cheating or pulling your weights, zero excessive tension in any parts of the body not immediately involved in the lifting and lots and lots of pain in the muscle tissue.
2. Going Past the Point of Failure
Following most training methods, repetitions will be done to muscle failure. I.e. you keep pushing right up until you simply can’t move the weights any longer, regardless of how hard you try. That is the point of muscle failure and also the point where a set ends. In HIT, you’re going past that point.
This need some additional explanation, of course. After all, how can you go beyond failure?
How to go Past Failure
There are a number of strategies employed to assist you move over failure in HIT. Here are some of them:
Get Someone to Help Out
For some exercises, this can be quite a simple option. Everyone knows the spotter can help out a little bit on that final repetition, when you’re doing bench-presses. With high intensity training, the spotter will wait until you reach the point of failure and then very softly give you support for the next two to three reps.
Pyramid Training
An additional technique is to quickly lower the weight load right after muscle failure is reached, and complete a few more repetitions while using reduced weight load. When using machines, you could employ a spotter who takes away a few plates for you and when using dumbbells and barbells you can prepare one heavier and one lighter set of weights and then switch between these as quickly as (safely) possible.
Five Second Rest
This final one is a technique you can also work with on your own: As soon as you have reached the point of failure, return into a neutral ( non tension) position, wait for 5 seconds and then start pushing again until you reach failure a second time (usually after just one or two reps).
My Experience With HIT
Doing HIT training is a pleasant experience for around six and three quarters of every week after which it turns into a truly excruciating experience for the rest of the week, starting with the beginning of the workout and ending an hour or two after it is done.
I was pleasantly surprised with how much strength I gained during my time doing HIT. I sort of thought that performing just one set a week would lead to minimal gains, at best, however I made as much, if not more, progress as I did with volume training before. I should also mention that when training HIT, I felt in good, pain-free shape at least five days of the week. With more traditional split-training type of routines, I usually feel sore all over on most days of the week.
The most interesting facets of HIT are actually the mental ones, though. To begin with, it’s just extremely difficult to train as hard as is needed. Without someone spotting for you, and motivating you to keep going, it’s very difficult to push yourself far enough. I also noticed that my attitude approaching each exercise was effected by the fact that I constantly knew this one was going to be the only set for an entire week. You always go in driven to “make this one count”– and you come out wondering why the hell you are doing this to yourself.
My personal conclusion: High Intensity Training is definitely an interesting, advanced workout method.
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