I think people are afraid of Mike Mentzers routine.

Originally posted by PNIG Im glad some of you guys had had sucess with HI... I personally think it sucks...whats the point of working out for only 20 minutes a week? You MIGHT be able to build some muscle, BUT as far as taxing your CV system like a regular workout, the one hour type workouts 5-6/week are better...right? Research conducted by a Japanese man named "Tabata" a while ago demonstrated that an aerobic exercise protocol consisting of 6 to 8 reps of 20 sec hard followed by 10 second easy significantly improved V02 max ... which has a big genetic base and therefore is difficult to improve ... so lets say a 5 min warmup + a 3 min (6 x 20/10) protocol + a 5 min cooldown ... total 13 minutes ... therefore 20 minutes is plenty of time to overload your cardiorespiratory system ... the problem is the frequency ... 1 x 20 min workout will not be enough to consistently improve.

You MIGHT be able to build some muscle, BUT as far as taxing your CV system like a regular workout, the one hour type workouts 5-6/week are better...right? This is not meant as a flame Just to clarify this nonesense people are spewing about HIT being "wrong": This total point of HIT: Are you increasing your poundage, or reps or both workout to workout on the exact SAME exercise? That will cause muscle hypertrophy and strength increases. If you are NOT...the muscle is not being overloaded. You will not get any bigger, stronger muscles without increasing weight. How is this done? By fully increasing up to a max weight/rep range until you can go no further workout to workout. Then backing off and attempting to blast through the last plateau after a few weeks. In a single 1 hour workout you can provide enough overload for your chest and shoulders to last well over a week if you are working it with max reps/weights. Most people will not grow off ANY system. There is a plateau point. Upping the juice can sometimes break a plateau. Most of the time its all bloat. I even plateaued naturally at 150lbs on too high a volume, naturally..with HIT, I went to 195lbs and much stronger, by continually overloading the muscle by increasing weight. 4X/week training often makes this worse, because you work the same joints over and over again (shoulder) without proper rest, and they don't properly hypertrophy. I've been in this pit for months. (The shoulder joints and arms are sore all the time, and no growth occurs. Overtraining is much easier that people think, even with 750mg/test per week!) The only way to recover is to cut back, and attempt to blast your max again when your body is FULLY RESTED and recovered. This is the point of HIT. And it works. The theory is correct. Now there are some freaks out there who use rediculous amouts of juice, and are genetically gifted, and can get stronger faster, and their muscles balloon. But there is a direct correlation between muscle size and strength. Just look at the top genetically gifted bodybuilders...these guys dont piss around with small weights...look at Coleman, D. James, Yates, Cutler, the lot....They are *extremely* strong. Most people like to beat the shit out of their muscles with no gain for years, and wonder what ta fuck is going on 4x/week!! They are often in a state of *constant* overtraining: they are not increasing their max weights! If You are not growing of HIT...you are not doing it right...plain and simple. It will work every time, if done correctly, without even any juice. Its the principle of proper overloading put into practice. Period.

The problem with Mentzer and guys like Arthur Jones is they loved to talk about philosophy and logic but never applied any basic muscle physiology to their books,articles, and arguments. Like Haycock says in his interview you never hear Jones or Mentzer quoting medical/scientific research or using terms like Golgi tendon organs, myokinase, or IGF-1 etc. Mentzers rountine is as good as any other routine for a certain amount of time. What people need to take away from guys like Mentzer is that the overhyped training of bodybuilders is bullshit. Less is more basically. Later!

Originally posted by PNIG Im glad some of you guys had had sucess with HI... I personally think it sucks...whats the point of working out for only 20 minutes a week? You MIGHT be able to build some muscle, BUT as far as taxing your CV system like a regular workout, the one hour type workouts 5-6/week are better...right? MOST people will grow at least a bit off of any system...2 sets, 32 sets whatever. The thing is to change it up. MM failed to realize this... And my God..his diet tips?? Hilarious. He wrote something insane like since a pound of weight equals 3,600 cals, you have to increase your cals like 112 a day every day for a year and you will gain 85 odd pounds a year of muscle...just absurd logic. And by the way, what was the biggest he ever competed at? 205, maybe?? Nowadays, that could not even win a state championship. Not even close... You have got to be fucking kidding me? I've been to many a state championships and let me tell you guys even at that caliber don't even come close to Mentzer's build. 205 or not the guy had a fucking awesome physique. No one on this board can rival his physique from what I've seen. First off if your goal is to tax your cardiovascular system then why the fuck are you working out with weights? Read any exercise physiology books and you'll realize that you cannot do very much if any cardio and expect to build muscle. They are two very different physiological systems. Doing cardio on a treadmill or doing some light aerobic work is fine. Also if you are working out 5-6 times a week you are most likely overtraining or not applying yourself correctly. Even if you think your are when was the last time you saw any significant gains? Later!

lats,"mikes program always gives the person using it great strength gains.. mostly due to the neuro-connection..strength does not always translate into muscle" your comment about "neuro-connection" is off base. you become more "efficient" at an ex. the MORE you perform it so a higher set workout will lead to more "fake" strength (more efficient). If you get stronger you WILL get bigger, just a FACT. now I am NOT talking about your ability to lift a wt. I am talking about the STRENGTH of your muscles. one study I remember showed that after performing curls for 6 wks (3xs a week) the subjects used 20 percent LESS muscle. data you said,"Unfortunately, consistently exceeding previous levels of demands will eventually lead to over training in the long run" then you said, "At some point, a single all out balls to the wall set will not be enough to stimulate growth. Sure its stressful, but not stressful enough. A second, third, fourth set will be necessary (hence the value of cycling demands because you could go on forever) to “overload”." well what is it? too stressful or not sressful enough??? hey, not ripping anyone just haveing fun!!

The reason that very abbreviated training (1-2 sets every week or two) causes significant gains in strength without significant muscle mass improvements is due to the central nervous systems primary purpose which is to conserve energy. Muscle is metabolically expensive tissue. When you challenge your functional abilities through weighted lifting**, it’s not as costly to increase motor skills as it would be to pull the resources necessary to assemble and maintain more muscle tissue. Thus, very high intensity very abbreviated training is stressful enough to disrupt homeostasis and cause an adaptation (reaching failure gives your body reason to adapt) but its not so stressful that your central nervous system sees the need to spend the resources compiling muscle tissue. Of course this is just a hypothesis that is verified only by my own observations and pre-existing knowledge on physiology. Could you elaborate more on your last post? I don’t know what you are asking. ** EDIT ** Sorry that should read ... When you challenge your functional abilities through weighted lifting very infrequently, its not as costly ... If I can add that the high intensity of effort is stressful enough to require an adaptive responce from the body ... but its not frequent enough to require a muscular adaptation.

Originally posted by Rockice The problem with Mentzer and guys like Arthur Jones is they loved to talk about philosophy and logic but never applied any basic muscle physiology to their books,articles, and arguments. Like Haycock says in his interview you never hear Jones or Mentzer quoting medical/scientific research or using terms like Golgi tendon organs, myokinase, or IGF-1 etc. Yeah okay, Mentzer wasn't big on hormones, and his understanding of muscle physiology may not have been the most comprehensive, but how can you say that it wasn't based on solid info? The guy had 2000 clients. And he made them all grow. And as far as hormones and physiology go, i think a heck of alot more importance is being put on that stuff then proper training. Thats why pro-hormones sell so well, as do all the steroid bibles and encyclapedias. They are interesting sure, and that stuff is important, but bodybuilding is more than just drugs and hormones. People are so worried about their damn hormones being insufficiant it's sickening. "I think i have a Testosterone deficiancey." my training partner says. Im like "Dude, you wouldn't have been able to put half that weight up that you just did if you had a deficiency." That's why I think he laid off that stuff in his book. He wanted to get people back to getting their "fundamentels" down. Hormones are cool, and it's fun and interesting to learn about them, and they look pretty in their glass vials with their amber color. It gets me excited and gives me a boner, but I think maybe we wouldn't need so much of that stuff if we trained like Mentzer said.

[i]mentzer bases his training routines on rational thinking.. since when did rational thinking translate into muscle gains.. if we were truly rational we would not train at all...rational thinking and training due not go together just for the fact that one can not be a factor for the other.. they do not go together.. period. [/B] "rational thinking and training do not go together" ? How do ya figure? Being rational could apply to getting the most successess and happines out of your life. Having a good body is a factor in making you more attractive to the oposite sex. You will get more sex and be happier from having a good body.The biological urge for a male to have sex cpnstantly is so strong, that fulfilling it regularly will alow him to focus better on other things in his life and not walk around horny and frustrated all the time. It is also rational to say that having strong muscles will help you to move larger objects without getting hurt while doing it, and less exertion will result as well. Their are plenty of rational reasons to train.

data, "If I can add that the high intensity of effort is stressful enough to require an adaptive responce from the body ... but its not frequent enough to require a muscular adaptation. " what is the "adaptive responce" you are speeking of????? you SEEM to be saying that you can get stronger without getting bigger, NOT!!! if your muscles get stronger they WILL get bigger! this is a fact that too many people ignore or choose not to believe. now if you are speeking of a neuro-muscular adaptation or "learning" I hate to tell ya' you are wrong. SCIENCE shows that the MORE frequent you do something the more efficient you will become at it (i.e., olympic lifters training 2-3x's a day, power lifters doing a large # of sets of their comp exercises) within reason. THIS is from your body wanting to maintain its current state. your body LEARNS how to lift a certain wt. over and over again more efficiently. it also MUST learn because it does not have the ability to recover from alot of work. therefore by being more efficient it does not have to work as hard.

Originally posted by dunhill data, "If I can add that the high intensity of effort is stressful enough to require an adaptive responce from the body ... but its not frequent enough to require a muscular adaptation. " what is the "adaptive responce" you are speeking of????? you SEEM to be saying that you can get stronger without getting bigger, NOT!!! if your muscles get stronger they WILL get bigger! this is a fact that too many people ignore or choose not to believe. now if you are speeking of a neuro-muscular adaptation or "learning" I hate to tell ya' you are wrong. SCIENCE shows that the MORE frequent you do something the more efficient you will become at it (i.e., olympic lifters training 2-3x's a day, power lifters doing a large # of sets of their comp exercises) within reason. THIS is from your body wanting to maintain its current state. your body LEARNS how to lift a certain wt. over and over again more efficiently. it also MUST learn because it does not have the ability to recover from alot of work. therefore by being more efficient it does not have to work as hard. The adaptive responce of high intensity training, according to Hans Selye theory of stress, would encompass most/all systems of your body. From your muscular system, central nervous system, cardiorespiratory system, endocrine system, etc. The adaptive responce towards exercise depends on the nature of the system. However I am talking mostly about strength above. If I understand your position, you are suggesting that a stronger muscle is a larger muscle independent of your central nervous systems involvement in movement? If I understand your position correctly, thats not entirely true. Strength is defined in a context. Its meaning depends on other concepts and contexts. Think about strength, at the most general level its the ability to exert force. You couldn't exert force without innervation. Its a mistake in your thinking process, a logical fallacy (perhaps a fallacy of your definition being to narrow) to eliminate a part of a concepts meaning and still use the concept in the same context. I don't know if that will help you understand my argument. Your ability to exert force depends on your nervous system, they are linked, therefore its not entirely true to talk about 'fake' strength.

performing an exercise is a skill (a simple one but still a skill). skills are specific, they do not cross over to another skill in any appreciable (sp?) way (ex. in baseball for ex. developing the ability to swing a heavier bat faster will NOT increase your ability to swing the bat you normaly use, now if as a result of swinging a heavier bat you got stronger in the muscles used it could increase bat speed, but that would be far from the most effective way to do this, and could ruin your swing). I'm rambling I define strength as your muscles ability to exert force, ahh EXERT FORCE. what you seem to not appreciate is that the reason that a "skill" becomes easier is in the largest part do to the bodies ability to relax the antagonistic muscles. the ability to recruite fibers is largly genetic, it does not seem to change much with training exp., it may FEEL like it does but that is mostly do to an increase in the fiber size (on a side note, the better of a "natural athlete" you are the more of a need to change exercise selection, but thats because of muscular coordination but I'll get to that next). see when you do a curl your tri contracts and relaxes, now the more you do the curl the more relaxed the TRI gets which in turn gives you the ability to DEMONSTRATE strength but the muscle itself may not have increased its ability to exert force. easiest example I can give is pic an exercise that you don't do for a body part, an ex. you don't have a high "skill" level in, lets say its chins. now on next back day perform chins, maybe you got say 11 reps. don't do them for 3-4 months, now try them again, if you get more reps at the same bdy wt. I PROMISE you that the muscles you use to perform chins got bigger (because you have no "skill" level in it you can use it as an accurate measure of strength increases AND MUSCLE increases). I hope you understand what I am saying, I type like shit.

Its not clear to me how you are proving that an improvement in strength guarantees a gain in muscle mass. I am aware that adaptations are specific to the demands imposed, the various ways your body improves economy of movement, and the fiber recruitment principles. It would appear to me that you are pointing out facts but not logically connecting them to your conclusion (that a stronger muscle is always bigger) ... perhaps I don't see the connection. A larger muscle is always a stronger muscle, but a stronger muscle isnt always a larger one. Strength indicates an improvement of muscle mass, but its not a guarantee, you have to use other tools of measurement to conclusively determine if you are gaining size. Lastly, I wanted to point out that your baseball example is not true. Developing your ability to swing a heavier bat faster must improve your ability to swing a lighter one. One event in heavy athletics is to throw a big stone, sort of like the shot put. As the novice gets stronger and is able to throw most massive stones, certainly the now advanced stone thrower would be able to throw his lighter stones further. As the stone thrower improves his economy of motion and builds larger muscles he improves his ability to exert force (thus enabling him to throw lighter stones faster). Perhaps you have noticed that when you near failure (and your ability to exert force decreases) you start to move slower. Originally posted by dunhill performing an exercise is a skill (a simple one but still a skill). skills are specific, they do not cross over to another skill in any appreciable (sp?) way (ex. in baseball for ex. developing the ability to swing a heavier bat faster will NOT increase your ability to swing the bat you normaly use, now if as a result of swinging a heavier bat you got stronger in the muscles used it could increase bat speed, but that would be far from the most effective way to do this, and could ruin your swing). I'm rambling I define strength as your muscles ability to exert force, ahh EXERT FORCE. what you seem to not appreciate is that the reason that a "skill" becomes easier is in the largest part do to the bodies ability to relax the antagonistic muscles. the ability to recruite fibers is largly genetic, it does not seem to change much with training exp., it may FEEL like it does but that is mostly do to an increase in the fiber size (on a side note, the better of a "natural athlete" you are the more of a need to change exercise selection, but thats because of muscular coordination but I'll get to that next). see when you do a curl your tri contracts and relaxes, now the more you do the curl the more relaxed the TRI gets which in turn gives you the ability to DEMONSTRATE strength but the muscle itself may not have increased its ability to exert force. easiest example I can give is pic an exercise that you don't do for a body part, an ex. you don't have a high "skill" level in, lets say its chins. now on next back day perform chins, maybe you got say 11 reps. don't do them for 3-4 months, now try them again, if you get more reps at the same bdy wt. I PROMISE you that the muscles you use to perform chins got bigger (because you have no "skill" level in it you can use it as an accurate measure of strength increases AND MUSCLE increases). I hope you understand what I am saying, I type like shit.

data, lets go over some of this; first you say "I am aware that adaptations are specific to the demands imposed, the various ways your body improves economy of movement, and the fiber recruitment principles... " then you say, "Lastly, I wanted to point out that your baseball example is not true. Developing your ability to swing a heavier bat faster must improve your ability to swing a lighter one..." well you seem not to be "aware that adaptations are specific to the demands imposed..." because the FACT is that the only way swinging a heavier bat would increase bat speed is if the muscles involved increased in strength (negligable at best and far from the most effective or efficient way to improve strength in the muscles involved). the recruitment paterns of the muscles involved swining a 50 oz bat and a 32.5 oz bat are so different it is not even the same "exercise" you also said, "A larger muscle is always a stronger muscle, but a stronger muscle isnt always a larger one. Strength indicates an improvement of muscle mass, but its not a guarantee, you have to use other tools of measurement to conclusively determine if you are gaining size." you are not understanding that I am not talking about your ability to perform a skill or demonstrate strength, I don't know how many times and diff. ways I can try to explain it. Let me try this way, nothing, I repeat NOTHING in nature can become stronger without increasing in size and/or density, NOTHING (an increase in density, which does not really happen to muscle cells, means an increase in wt. thus size). try to think of ONE thing that can increase in strength without an increase in size.

Yes I think that we are in agreement about the swinging bat example. The only way to improve your performance in swinging a bat is to develop the strength of the muscles involved and practice the movement. However, you said "... in baseball for ex. developing the ability to swing a heavier bat faster will NOT increase your ability to swing the bat you normaly use ... " which is not true (and you indicated that by stating) ".... now if as a result of swinging a heavier bat you got stronger in the muscles used ..." If you can swing a heavier bat faster THEN you could swing the lighter one even faster Second, your statement "... NOTHING in nature can become stronger without increasing in size and/or density ..." could very well be true. You did not mention density before hand. However, what I am suggesting is that strength and performance are conceptually linked, they are conceptually bonded together, and to divide them into seperate identities yet still apply them to the same context (strength gains = size gains) is an error. You seem to be scientifically minded ... an analogy would be potassium iodide. Both K and I have very different properties as elements ... but when chemically bonded into a molecule they assume new properties. Strength is a skill. So its logically sound (and true) to state that a stronger muscle isn't necessary a larger one. I understand what you mean ... you are suggesting that a stronger myofibril is larger ... its larger due to mechanical reasons (a greater cross section) ... but as a general theory (guideline for resistance trainers) strength gains do not indicate a size gain.

I didn't read every response but i thought i'd jump in :-). I trained in a HIT fashion for a number of years, mainly as i believed that if i got stronger i would get bigger, especially on the basics. For a time i was only training 3 days out of 10, each bodypart every ten days. I mainly saw strength increases and i did see some growth but it definately wasn't as good as when i was training with a higher volume approach. With what i know now, i don't believe going all out on a set is the best way to train for maximum muscle growth. When i train chest, i will do 3 exercsies with 2 work sets on each, and with each set i will slowly lower the weight, pause at the bottom, and purposely push the weight back up, concentrating on feeling the muscle, not how many reps i'm getting or just getting the weight from point A to point B with whatever means possible (which most tend to do with strength the sole purpose in mind). I'm not lifting as much as i have but i have never felt the muscle more and been sorer after a workout since i started training this way. I get burnt out less as well, and my nervous system isn't a wreck like it was on HIT. I don't think MM's approach to muscle building in his first book is the best way to go. I know i could grow off it but i do think the body is better off feeling the muscle work with a higher volume, not putting 100% intensity into every workout and every set. Just my opinion, jumping in late :-).