The vast majority of people who join the gym want to get the maximum result with the minimum effort or time. If you are one of those who attends the toughest group classes in the gym, you will have noticed that few decide to repeat. It seems that the effort and sweat is out of style.
Today I intend to discover some truths and lies about high intensity training, but for this you need to know how this type of training arises.
The origin of high intensity training
Arthur Jones and Ellington Darden were the creators of Nautilus and the HIT (high intensity training) method. HIT began by advertising in magazines as an informational article, and we already see that today there are many companies that take advantage of this space to sell supplements. Although the reality is that Jones just wanted to provide information on how to exercise correctly.
HIT has a pretty strong hook: why are we going to train for a long time when you can achieve the same result in shorter periods? Perhaps for any mortal, this type of routine can work, but how many Olympians practice it? That is to say, these types of athletes stand out from other competitors due to quite small differences; so you have to know how to differentiate between conditioning, technique and strength.
Is HIT for strength training or hypertrophy?
One of the biggest problems that still deceives when it comes to fitness is the lack of distinction between size and strength. Some still think with the bodybuilding mentality created in the 70s, where it was thought that the volume of a muscle is directly correlated with its strength.
HIT often forces people to not just go to failure, which is beneficial for growth, but there are many other high-intensity techniques like negative sets.
A 1963 study, carried out by Richard Berger, ensures that loads that are too heavy or too light do not favor the increase in strength. He concluded that training with a heavy weight does not allow for the optimal number of repetitions needed to increase strength. Like training with light weights and high repetitions, it only provides a weak stimulus that fails to significantly improve maximum strength.
The problem with any training program is that it sustains a lot of results at first and then stops. Dan John says that everything works, "but for about 6 weeks." Surely you have noticed an increase in muscle size at first, but as time goes by, growth slows down and will stop. And it's normal.
I think the initial increase is due to the body going into a super compensation process after overtraining. We could say that the strength can start to appear three weeks after starting the training, and that you can reach the maximum depending on how fatigued your body is. So if we want to focus on hypertrophy, HIT will fail to sustain growth in the long term.