Originally posted by Slickster
Hey Guys,
Just read an article about a workout where you do a fairly light warm up set maybe 20 reps. Then load up heavy and do one set of as many reps as you can (keeping good form).
The article claims that brief intense workouts such as this produce the best results. They give a sample workout that takes 15-20 minutes to complete. They also recommend only working out 2-3 times a week. Sounds great to me as I'm pressed for time usually.
Just wondering if any of you lifters have any thoughts or ideas about workouts such as this.
Thanks
Sounds like good old fashioned Mike Mentzer's and Co HIT work out (the idea is quite old). Except that Mike would have you working out once a week or even once a fortnight (I've read some HIT proponants including mike I think who suggest working out only as often as you get a haircut). I think thats a bit extreme though. I'm sure it will work out to some degree. Is it the most optimum ? - I don't know.
There are guys with big muscles who do HIT (or at least one of them i.e. Mike Mentzer - when he was alive) so it definitley works for some people. There are also guys who do high volumn (Arnold Swarzenegger comes to mind) so it too works. As to what is best, who knows? Both work to some degree I think.
I tried doing only two sets to failure just as an experment for a monht or so. I didn't see any particularly great gains but nor did I loose anything. I didn't like finishing a work out with heaps of energy left though so I went back to my old volumn workout.
I sort of do a cross between HIT and high volumn myself. Like HIT I only workout once a week (for time reasons as much as anything, don't want to spend mylife in the gym). But when I do workout I do a high volumn workout with about 12 sets total for each body part, usually taking about 3-4 hrs.
Personaly my bet is that 2 sets to failure is good for just strength workout but higher volumn is better for size (or so the theory goes) could be wrong about this though. Bottom line is try it for a couple of months and see how it goes. (I think you'll at least retain size and strength on that workout if not increase in strength as well). Once you've tried it for a month or two post back and let the rest of us know the results.
(I wander are there any body builders out there with seriously big muscles who do pure HIT apart from Mike?)