VOLUME: By Fred Hutchinson

Hi Ellington, absolute honour you asking me Sir. After 40 years of reading your material, it completely made my day.
However sorry I’ll have to decline right now… simply too much on

what is the link between 'cortisol-training to failure-insulin" and preserving CNS ? thank you

Overtaxing the CNS increases cortisol and decreases insulin sensitivity (both are very negative and opposite of what you want). Training one set to failure serves no beneficial purpose. It overtaxes the nervous system and isn’t required for muscle growth. (Muscle tissue recovers relatively quickly, whereas the nervous system takes much longer.)

Our goal is to stimulate the most muscle growth with the least CNS stress. Training three times per week – layering specialized techniques for each body part – is ideal for beginner and advanced trainees. Pump a muscle with performance-enhancing, buffering, and growth-stimulating nutrients, then train on the pump.

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Is this similar to how John Meadows trained? His Reactive Pump program was set up somewhat like that I believe.

The workout nutrition part, yes, for sure.

John similarly trained on a pump. And from our conversations, it was a significant focus of his system. But his volume was beyond insane and nothing like what we’re doing or recommending. I’ve never seen anything like it (with or without gear). One day, he trained for three solid hours in our gym.

John was indeed a volume “savant.”

Ellington, Christian Thibaudeau, and I have observed a particular type of lifter whose innate CNS potentiates and thrives on volume. It gives them a natural advantage in avoiding overtraining, but it’s not required to achieve rapid growth.

Most of us aren’t wired for extreme volume – even most elite athletes – and cannot adapt to the stress.

If you’re a volume savant, you’d most likely know it.

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Where does that 15% number come from?

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And can a few exercises for a muscle group with only one work set to stop shortly before the failure.

Thank you for the question. I need to prevent a potential misconception. The number came from a discussion I had with Christian Thinbaudeu and had to do with nuances relating to fast-twitch fiber recruitment. It’s complicated and I don’t want to get us off track. I should’ve said: Failure overtaxes the nervous system and isn’t required for muscle growth. I’ll edit the primary post to reflect the change.

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the “set to failure” is monumental and basic to every HD , HIT training variation/system in past 50 years ?! volume is wrong,failure is wrong ,frequency is wrong… what is right?

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Much information is to follow. Stay tuned.

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Thanks for the clarification. I agree with your more concise restatement (i.e., it is consistent with my understanding of the current research on the subject).

The only nuance I was going to offer on your earlier post is that going to failure is beneficial when training with light loads because it allows you to recruit (some) higher threshold fast twitch fiber. But there is a downside to this style of training, both in terms of recovery, and with regard to how high levels of fatigue might limit the recruitment of the highest threshold FT fibers.

As of today, I started training as I like: 2-3 warm-up sets and one last set to failure. 3-4 exercises for a muscle group that is trained once a week.

I’ve been training in a similar way for a long time now , but no warm after the first exercise - I’ll do two or three exercises per muscle with two really hard sets instead of three and those sets are ‘enhanced sets’ like Zones, break downs, clusters, stop and start , held contractions and stretches, Muscle Rounds , etc.

This is on a three way split and has been the best ‘system’ I’ve ever used. Hate full body routines though I stuck with that for 15 years. Some guys might say what I’m doing is more than two sets but it all depends on what you call a ‘set’. Short rest between sets of 15-20 seconds and no workout goes longer than 35 minutes and that’s only when I have to load a Trap Bar or Belt Squat. So if you see my routines as 16 sets or 24 sets , what’s the difference … they still are around 30 minute workouts , three days a week.

All the ways training has been re-invented over the years and it seems to always circle back to a few good, hard sets on a couple exercises per body part giving the best results … the way it’s been done for a thousand years .

I understand your frustration. I’m not sure what HD means unless it’s Mike Mentzer’s Heavy Duty system. (I knew Milke well and even produced his Heavy Duty logo and T-shirts.) But I’m very familiar with HIT and was one of its early adopters in the 1970s.

What drew me to HIT was its overarching philosophy that underpinned its principles. That philosophy was hammered into me by Arthur Jones, Ellington Darden, and Mike Mentzer. They all agreed on one all-important governing law of muscle. Here’s what they taught me:

Do only the exercise required to produce the most significant gains. Adding more work is counterproductive (by definition), yielding less than optimal results. It can also hinder exercise recovery, potentially leading to a decrease in performance and loss of muscle mass.

There were differences between Jones, Darden, and Mentzer. But no one ever harped on going to failure. The focus was on effort intensity, exercise performance, rep quality, workout pace, and efficiency. They trained no less than three times per week. There was a lot of experimenting with methods and techniques for effect and to hit body parts better.

I’ve learned that you often discover the best solution to a problem by asking yourself the best question. And that the genius is not in seeing the solution; it’s in asking the question.

A few HIT community members continue asking better questions, especially about neuromuscular physiology, leading to breakthroughs.

I can tell you this for sure:

  1. It doesn’t take much of the right training system to make impressive, consistent gains.

  2. Going to failure is unnecessary, unmanageable, and counterproductive.

  3. Three times per week works best for almost everyone, including elite athletes.

  4. The “secret sauce” is in the layering of methods and techniques, and methods and techniques dictate the volume.

  5. Exercise machines, equipment, and devices are tools, not solutions.

  6. Specialized nutrient support DURING a workout can significantly enhance muscle growth, strength gains, exercise performance, work capacity, and recovery.

Getting any more specific would require designing a workout. A properly designed workout embodies all of the above.

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I think we now know what is right now, but I agree, all the HIT books from the past (Mentzer, Jones, Darden, etc), did talk a lot about why we must go to failure. Some people do not seem to be hampered by training to failure, they must have a really robust nervous and adrenal system. But many of us do not have that luxury. I’ve mentioned that issue in my articles for almost 20 years now, so I’m glad to see this finally being talked about.

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Books, yes, but books are written specifically for a discrete purpose.

Arthur frequently would say something like this: “I don’t care what you can do. I only care what you will do.”

You’d be surprised to see the differences in what people write about and what they do in practice. You must watch trainees in action to know what they’re doing.

I don’t understand the obsession with failure. There are so many more productive things to discuss. Most people get it wrong, anyway. Ellington and I have met countless trainees who claimed to go to positive failure every workout. But when observing them, they were deluded and nowhere near positive failure and hit “fake failure.” To prove the point, I would sometime yell, “PUSH!” as a trainee hit fake failure, and they’d pump off several more reps.

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All true for sure
The only reason I mention ‘books’ is that is the only place 99.9% of people learned and were able to receive information from El, AJ or Mentzer. Like El’s stories in his books about how he trained people and how A.J. trained people etc. Agree that how people actually did it successfully of course is the most important thing, but when we all read stories about this stuff, in those books, we believe them.

I agree, and I myself don’t get the obsession with failure either, somehow it seemed to take on some mystical quality… where pushing ourselves to the point of having a brain hemorrhage was a good thing, that it would induce some kind of magical muscle gain… it didn’t… it won’t … it can’t…

I totally respect Ellington for saying in one of his more recent books, that he ‘changed his mind about failure’ (meaning he used to teach we should go to failure, but now he doesn’t).

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Thanks for this, Tim! This may be the shortest, most basic explanation on successful training strategies I have seen. I couldn’t agree more.

A wise man once said that you really know your stuff - if you can explain something complicated in a simple manner. You just did.

Your sentiments mean a lot to me. Thank you.

My sole motive is to help people achieve success in their elite-training pursuits. And I’m trying my hardest to provide the best information and expand our thinking without creating divides among members.

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I am not aware of many sports in which partcipants train to failure on a regular basis. Mostly you will hear of training at say 95% of max speed/heart rate/duration … whatever, as being the ceiling.

Even these levels are only achieved say twice a week.

I dont see why there is such an obsession about it here. Endless debate about anything indicates a lack of objective evidence one way or the other.