High Intensity Training (HIT) – How effective is it?
If you want to reshape your body, weight training is a must. But it takes more than lifting light weights if you really want to make a significant change. It requires high-intensity training, or HIT as it’s often called, and it’s effective. The technique has been widely promoted and publicized by many people over the past two decades, including “Mr. America” winner Mike Mentzer, Bill Phillips (author of “Body for Life”), Art Jones (builder of the Nautilus kit) and Ellington Darden who (some say) wrote the “Bible” at HIT.
HIT is based on intensity (extreme intensity) and it definitely brings results. The magic of HIT according to Phillips is the “highlight”. Mentzer calls it the “breaking point.” Regardless of what you call it, it’s the point in the set (usually the last rep) where muscle growth is stimulated. Under it, nothing happens, so it is, in fact, a “magic point”. The idea is to continue your reps to the point where you can no longer lift the weight, or even move it an inch. failure,” and it’s also the magic point you’re looking for. Only when you completely exhaust your muscles do they grow. It’s that incredible all-or-nothing effort that does it. Mentzer gives a metaphor that I think is quite apt. He says, “Exercise and muscle growth are like a stick of dynamite and a hammer. Hit the dynamite lightly and nothing happens (even if you hit it ten times), but hit it hard enough and… boom! The same situation occurs with muscle growth and weight training. “Easy” weight lifting won’t help much, but hit the “high point” and… boom! The muscles appear suddenly. Phillips describes the situation as: “The stimulus to trigger muscle growth happens fast or doesn’t happen at all.”
How hard do you have to train to stimulate this growth? According to Phillips, you have to train with “heart and soul.” According to Art Jones, you have to train so hard that you “throw up.” (That’s a bit much for me, but I think he gets the message across.) Not only do you have to work hard, but you have to go beyond that. It may surprise you, but when you think you’re completely exhausted, you usually aren’t. You can usually squeeze in one more rep. Basically, this is what you want: push your reps to the limit, and then do one more.
You are no doubt wondering, with a program like this, how long it takes to see results. With high intensity training (and I’m assuming it really is HIT) they’ll come fast, in just a few weeks. What you will see first is an increase in strength. Where you could only do three pull-ups last week, now you can do eight, and so on. In short, first comes an increase in strength, then an increase in muscle size.
Let me end by saying that the key is quality, not quantity. Intensive weight training will give you much more than easy, long duration workouts. In fact, you may not make any gains at all with light, long-duration weights. But of course any exercise is better than none.