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What's So Great About High Intensity Training?
HIT Training is a form of strength training advocated relentlessly by Arthur Jones, the founder of Nautilus in 1970s. This approach works scientifically to build muscle and strengthen it. It focuses on quality weightlifting where the intensity is given preference over number of reps. A high intensity short period exercise with defined pauses tends to cause temporary muscular failure (for very short period of time).
HIT Training has been successfully publicized by many great body builders like former Mr. America, Mike Mentzer, Ellington Darden and Bill Phillips, the author of "Body for Life".
High intensity training is based on the concept of pushing the body to its limit. Mentzer calls this the "break over point" and Phillips terms it as "the high point". At this point the muscle is stressed to a level that muscle growth is stimulated, below it nothing happens and according to HIT Training advocates, any training which does not reach the high point is useless.
When exercising according to the HIT Training principle, you will focus on reaching a state where you cannot lift the weight again. Rather you cannot lift anything due to tiredness, this is the point Mentzer & Phillips were talking about. Your muscles are designed in a way that they don't grow unless they are pushed to their limits. So you should completely exhaust your muscles because only then will they start to grow.
According to the books written by both of the above writers, there are two possibilities, either you will grow muscle or not. It means your training can be a huge success or a bad failure, it cannot happen that your training sometimes give you results and sometimes doesn't. According to Mentzer, the body is like dynamite and strength training is a hammer. If you keep hitting dynamite repeatedly with a hammer but without the required force, nothing will happen. But if you hit it once with the required force, the dynamite will explode. Hence, you should alway shoot for the high point in high intensity training.
For performing some strength training according to the HIT Training principle you will have to train from the heart and soul. Usually when you think you are tired and stop training, you actually aren't tired yet; you can do a rep or two if you try hard. This is where break over point is reached and you start building muscle!
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