HIT

High Intensity Training. Originally popularized by the founder of Nautilus equipment Arthur Jones, HIT went on to receive even more acclaim after Mike Mentzer became the first and only person to attain a perfect score in the Mr Universe competition. Mentzer was a huge advocate of HIT, and was later thought to be one of Arnold's toughest foes in the 1980 Mr Olympia had he not injured himself right before the competition.

High Intensity Training is a workout centered around brief, intense and infrequent workouts as opposed to the "traditional" long workouts consisting high reps and sets. A good analogy is to relate weightlifting to running. HIT advocates say that the long bodybuilding workouts are like running a marathon or a cross country race. Whereas HIT is more like running the 100 meter sprint. With HIT, you get to the gym, do your highest weights possible for one set per exercise, and get out. Eight-time Mr Olympia Lee Haney always said to "stimulate, not annihilate" your muscles. And that is exactly what HIT does.

The latest highly successful bodybuilder to employ the high intensity method is Dorian Yates. Dorian got first place in 15 out of his 17 professional competitions - 88 percent overall! The other two that he didn't place first in, he placed second, and they were his first two professional competitions ever. This is a man who seriously impacted the bodybuilding scene the moment he came into it, being the one to usher in the freakishly huge era of bodybuilding. Yates set a new bar for what bodybuilders should look like, with his mammoth frame and unbeatable back. Even with being six-time Mr O, he would only workout four days a week, for 45 mins to an hour per session, and only one work set per exercise. Don't get me wrong though, this one work set was to absolute failure, employing everything possible for that one set - rest pause, drop sets, forced reps and negatives to ensure that his muscles were sent to complete failure. And Dorian's definition of failure is different from most peoples' definition. For example, whenever you see a someone performing bench press, he'll get his normal 10 reps or whatever, and struggle on the last few, with needing help from a spotter on the last final pressing movement. To him, he went to failure. However, what you need to remember is there are three parts to a single lift: the positive (in the case of the bench press, the pressing motion), the negative (the lowering of the weight to the chest) and the static (the holding of the bar at the extended top position). The body is weakest doing the positive, and strongest in the negative. So, back to the example of the bench presser, he actually didn't go to complete failure on his set. Even though he couldn't have got another positive motion out of the set, he still could have got a negative or two with the help of a spotter. Only when you cannot control the bar down to your chest have you gone to complete failure. And the last part is rest. Since you're putting your body through so much, it needs rest (hence why Yates lifted only four days in the week).

That's what HIT is about. One set. Complete failure. Then rest.