The New High Intensity Training: The Best Muscle-Building System You’ve Never Tried
3The New High Intensity Training: The Best Muscle-Building System You’ve Never Tried
Certain to become the bible of HIT-the training that revolutionized lifting with shorter, far-more-intense workouts-this impassioned guide is the last word on how to achieve explosive growth safely, without steroids!
For many dedicated bodybuilders, the weight-lifting theories of Arthur Jones are gospel. It was Jones, the inventor of Nautilus exercise equipment, who first discovered that short, intense workouts could produce better results than the long, high-volume workouts then in vogu
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Robert Spector
Not really new,
I think I’ve read every single book Ellington Darden has written, and there really isn’t anything “new” in this book. I preface this review by saying that I credit Darden with helping me realize over 20 years ago that “less is more” and I do thank him for that. The general principles he has espoused – “train less, work harder” – have definitely helped me over the years.
However, I’m a little put off by the book description here where it states: “there still are no major HIT books in stores”. Huh? That’s a false statement. Other authors have written excellent HIT books. For example, “Maximize your Training”, by Matt Brzycki, contains advice from the most prominent HIT advocates in the world including Dr. Ken Leistner, Dr. Ted Lambrinides and a plethora of other strength coaches and other strength training experts. Stuart McRobert’s books have been around for quite awhile. Others have also written books on HIT. Yet Darden would have you think that there’s nobody else out there in the HIT training world other than him (and Mike Mentzer). I’m also surprised that when he mentions internet resources he makes no mention of the most popular HIT site on the web – Cyberpump – which has been around for over 10 years.
But back to this book. I enjoyed the historical tidbits that I had never read before. In my opinion, however, the author goes into a bit too much detail about Arthur Jones’ non-training endeavors. Perhaps this interests others, but not me. I have zero interest.
As far as the training advice goes, I couldn’t find a single piece of advice – excluding the part on creatine which I’ll get to in a bit – which hasn’t been published in one of Darden’s previous books. The “NTF” (Not-To-Failure) workouts are detailed in his Nautilus book back in the 1980s. This isn’t anything “new”. In my opinion, they are completely unnecessary. If you haven’t recovered from your workouts, you don’t need to go back to the gym for a “maintenance” workout. Just rest. You don’t need to go back to the gym every 48 hours to prevent atrophy. Plenty of folks train intensely every 72-96 hours or so, and enjoy great gains.
I’m also taken aback by the advice on creatine. First, Darden has consistently maintained over the years that the bodybuilding supplements being peddled don’t have any legit scientific support for their effectiveness. He’s maintained the line that supplements are a waste of money. But NOW he condones creatine. Huh? The scientific evidence behind creatine isn’t exactly compelling. There are several prominent strength training authorities who feel that creatine is a waste of money, and can have some dangerous side effects including muscle cramping and dehydration. For example, here’s a quote from Mark Asanovich, coach of the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars discussing the use of studies that shed a positive light on the use of creatine by athletes:
“You have to take a look at the paper trail,” he says. “It’s skewed. Small numbers (of test subjects) were used … and it tested football players, who were told that at the end of the study, they’d be given a free can of Creatine.”
I’m also surprised at the dosages Darden recommends. They are quite high. In my opinion, this is not good advice at all and certainly not healthy. What happened to his old refrain that weight training should be about HEALTH first?
Back to the training routines. Every “advanced” specialization routine can be found in one of Darden’s previous books. Absolutely nothing “new”. I would also add that in my opinion some of these routines are far too much for the average trainee to handle. It’s not so easy to go to “regular” concentric failure. I thought Darden points this out with his anecdote on how you’re not working “hard” on a set of curls unless you end up on the floor afterwards and/or vomit. So then how likely is it that a trainee can work to failure on THREE exercises back-to-back with no rest? You’ll have to lower the intensity if you know that you’re doing three exercises back to back. Only very advanced and well-conditioned trainees can do three HARD sets back to back, and be able to tolerate (and recover from) that kind of intensity. And besides, even if you could recover, there’s zippo evidence to support the notion that you need to utterly *destroy* your muscles as he suggests
Then there are the usual claims that Darden makes about gaining an unbelievable amount of muscle mass in a very short period of time. I will only say this: the ONLY circumstances you can gain extremely large amounts of muscle mass in a very short period of time (weeks) is any combination of:
1. you are regaining lost muscle mass (like Casey Viator in the “Colorado Experiment”)
2. you take steroids
3. you have been following a training regime that is stupid and useless (muscle magazine nonsense), you are overtrained, and now you start doing proper…
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|Seppo Vesala
Aimed mostly for beginners on HIT training,
This book presents information and training programs using high intensity training (HIT). This book follows Arthur Jones’ HIT training principles, as opposed to Mike Menzer’s way. This translates to 2-3 whole body training sessions each week, using slow rep cadence.
The book starts with history of HIT training. Although this information is interesting, it takes some 75 pages, before the stuff on actual training starts. The training information is presented as a complete training program that is intended for beginners on HIT training. It takes about one year to go through this training program, and after that you are considered as an advanced trainer. This approach is the book’s major strength and weakness at the same time. For a beginner, it is very easy to start training, as you have a complete training program ready for use. For a more experienced trainer, however, it can be somewhat difficult to find all the information to construct your own training program. For example, all of the core principles of HIT training are collected in a box, that is for some reason hidden in the middle of section that covers the correct form of some key exercises.
The main question is, does HIT training work? Well, I have been training with weights for almost 15 years, and I have reached a long-lasting plateau in bench press. I trained using the workouts in this book (although I trained only two times each week instead of three) for less than 4 months. After that, I went back to my conventional training program. At the beginning of the renewed conventional training, I noticed that I had lost quite lot of explosive strength I had prior to HIT training. However, I continued the conventional program using lighter weights. Now, after two months of conventional training, my weights in every exercise have exceeded the weights I used before HIT training, including bench press. The conclusion is, HIT training increases your strength level, but at the same time you lose some of the explosiveness. But you regain the explosiveness by using explosive movements, and you’ll see that your strength levels have markedly increased.
HIT training is both mentally and physically very demanding (much more so than conventional high volume training). It takes very much dedication to be able to push yourself from workout to workout to constantly improve. Therefore I feel HIT is best used as a way to boost your more conventional training. Use HIT principles for a few months before returning to your regular workout schedule, and you will see that the improvements are significant!
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|Brian D. Johnston “www.ExerciseCertification.com”
The New HIT is a HIT,
This latest book, by Ellington Darden, who has written more than three dozen books, including The Bowflex Body Plan, is perhaps one of his best. It is a unique treatment in that it provides a provacative background (with many surprising stories and insights) of high intensity training (HIT), a term that he coined about thirty years ago, together with training direction that is unparalleled in the philosophy and discipline of HIT. Dr. Darden begins by explaining the training methods that Arthur Jones established, to help revolutionize the exercise industry, his initial machine creations that led to the advent of Nautilus, his work with Casey Viator, The Colorado Experiment, the West Point Study, and Jone’s experiences with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Franco Columbu, Boyer Coe, Frank Zane, the Mentzer Brothers, and Sergio Oliva. Apparently some of these “hard core” bodybuilders were not so hard core (Mike Mentzer and Arnold fans may be surprised)!
Dr. Darden provided this entertaining and educational background to explain Jones’ reasoning and the HIT philosophy (relative to the then current dogma) that then merges nicely into the fundamental principles and how they support HIT, including intensity, lifting form, progression, duration, frequency, and exercise order, as well as issues of recovery, layoffs, and sleep. As a side note, it may surprise the reader as to how many strength and conditioning coaches actually apply HIT training with their athletes, including Superbowl winners. As Dr. Darden explains through experience, explosive, ballistic training is unnecessary to develop a strong, muscular body in the average person or a star athlete, although it is ideal if you want to increase the risk of injury.
Thereafter, Dr. Darden provides the “usual” exercise photos and descriptions for purposes of education and cohesion, then breaks from tradition (insofar as books go). He provides beginner and intermediate routines, followed by advanced techniques and specialized routines (for the focus of select muscle groups). These may sound “typical” for a bodybuilding/strength training book as well, but what he has done next is completely original and much needed. He has provided a six-month, four phase plan that can be applied from beginner to advanced trainee, in a step-by-step process. Whether a person is new to HIT, new to the methods provided, or even an advanced HIT disciple looking to re-establish him or her self with structure and direction, the routines provided are the ticket!
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