Has anyone here ever tried a proper high intensity approach? I mean 2-3 times a week 1-2 sets per exercise, whole body work outs of 8-12 sets?
Yes, at least three times and each time I lost size and strenght. I even had a phone consultaion with Mike Mentzer himself to fix the problem. He had me train even less…I think I was training once every 5 days for about 15-20 minutes. This type of training may work for some people but most folks with decent recovery abilities just can’t make progress on this type of training program.CP’s stuff works great though. I have made very good gains over the last 2 years with his stuff. BTW…when is his arm training book coming out.
When I first started to train I used usual Weider approach.The next phase was HIT.Since it was so different from everything I did before,I really made an excellent progress. However,I quickly discovered that the secret wasn’t in the HIT itself, but rather in such huge change. So, give it a try, but keep reading T-mag, because you will probably be forced to change it soon.
I’ve posted about this before on another thread… but here goes again. Yes, I’m on a HIT routine now, and yes, its working pretty well. I do a full body routine (takes 1 hour) on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
Now I almost didn’t try this because I had tried a HIT routine before (after reading some material from Mike Mentzer) and I lost both size and strength. So I gave up and dissed HIT like most of the bodybuilding world.
Then recently I came upon some old writings of Arthur Jones. He made a LOT more sense than Mentzer, so I designed my own routine using some of his principles. One exersize per bodypart.. maybe two for complex ones, with only one set. BUT the big thing is never doing less than 6 reps. Always record what I did in that max set. Next time, must beat it, increase reps and when reps get to 10+ then increase weight next workout. It works for me. But I think a lot of people that might try this won't do it like it really should be done and then say, no, it doesn't work. Anyways... if you don't try it yourself you won't know.
I tried HIT for 6 weeks or so but gave it up. I gained strength in the exercises I was using, but was losing size. Plus, I quickly started adding sets to the routine, because its damn near impossible to walk into a gym and hit your top weights with out doing several warm up sets. And from what i’ve heard and read, even Mentzer wasn’t really doing 1 or 2 sets. He just didn’t count his warm up sets.