EXPERIENCES AND RESULTS FROM THE 3-MONTH HIGH INTENSITY TRAINING METHOD

So I’ve been training with the High Intensity Training method (abbreviated HIT later in this article) for a few years in irregular periods and I’ve always gotten good results with it.

Since I usually haven’t found a training partner to do the same program at the same time on the same days, the reason for stopping the previous HIT episodes has been either a lack of inspiration or the fact that there hasn’t been that training partner writing down the repetitions and used weights and “going to the gym on the agreed days”.

Now, however, I was contacted by an old friend with whom I hadn’t trained before, but who wanted to get a new perspective on his own training, so I was able to “sell” him the idea of ​​HIT training.

Since this training buddy wanted to keep a training diary, it suited both of us “like a fist in the eye”.

The HIT training period started on 28 June 2022 and we decided to try dividing the genuine HIT program into two parts, i.e. chest, upper back, shoulders and arms on the first training day. On the second day of training, only deadlifts.

At the end of both days, in addition, for the vata muscles, 1 set of static grip on the front + sides for a total of 3-4 minutes.

In short, HIT training means that the training starts with the big muscle groups and moves towards the small ones, so that you move from one movement to another optimally in about 2 seconds and all movements are done with full range of motion and at a slower speed than usual. There is 1 movement for each muscle group, which is one set to the absolute end without an assistant. In this case, the workout lasts 5-12 minutes.

In the beginning, chest, shoulders, arms, the results increased after 3 training sessions (3 times, because the training was once a week) in different movements, and the deadlift with 150 kilos from 8 repetitions to 175 kilos and four repetitions in 5 weeks (5 training times in each 1 serie to absolutely failure).

I noticed that I didn’t recover like in HIT training you have to recover completely before the next training session, so there were two possibilities: Either add rest days or shorten and change the training session.

I chose the last one because I wanted to stick to the usual training days and times of Tuesday and Friday at 12:00.

Now on July 22, 2022, the entire upper body workout was and is the following at the time of writing:

On Tuesdays Nautilus dip machine, scott on the machine and HC Pro sitting bench press with a narrow grip.

The results started to rise so that the Nautilus dip machine that was and has been included since 26.06 already had the entire weight stack in use on 30.08, development from 22.07 to 30.08 of about 25%. 20% in Scott biceps curl. It is worth noting that every workout has been done and continues to be done without rest pauses, without changing the position, in full range of motion and at a slower speed than usual, so no external factor can explain the development other than the fact that now the muscle has had time to recover and the muscle innervation and the size of the muscles grow even with such short workouts .

The second training day of the HIT program changed so that the deadlift was replaced by Nautilus’ weight-stacked leg press, and on top of that, without rest breaks, a raw squat to the very bottom and finally a pull-up in a pulley machine with a narrow grip. And all without rest breaks from start to finish.

Why leg press before raw squat?

I used to do HIT and I started with raw squats and ended that training session when I did 5 repetitions with 170 kilos. Now I wanted to tire my legs in advance so that the squat weights wouldn’t get too big right away.

I started the Nautilus leg press on 12 August 2022 with a weight of 159 kilos (comes through the lever arm and corresponds to maybe three hundred kilos in a normal leg press, and yesterday it was a whole weight stack), and yet I also added more weight to the squat and upper back. Development of about 10–15% depending on the movement in three weeks and therefore in three such workouts.

For the sake of the test, I took one movement after the upper pulley, i.e. the deadlift, and I will monitor how it affects the recovery for the next time.

I guess I have to start agreeing with Arthur Jones when he stated that “Some of our trainees have become Stronger than olympic lifters” 😊 .

If you feel that those percentages are not strange, then compare them with your own increase in results in the last 3 months, and you will get a point of comparison with something concrete. And remember that my results are still increasing and those movements where a full weight pack has already been achieved must either be changed to other exercises of the same muscle group or changed to their place towards the end of the workout.

It’s nice to move on from this.

Timo

HC GYM