Hardcore High Intensity - The Only Way to Grow

Hardcore High Intensity - The Only Way to Grow - by John Romano

High Intensity Training is a form of strength training popularized in the 1970s by Arthur Jones and was also the backbone behind the success of Mike Mentzer and six-time Mr.Olympia winner Dorian Yates.

In short.... train intensely to failure to ensure that optimum growth has been stimulated and keep your training is brief and infrequent, followed by as much rest as possible.

Perhaps it's time for you to go oldskool with your training?

The only way to train is to go all out and push yourself to the limits. It's the only way to get bigger, better, and progress.

Good article!

This was a good article. I always like reading stuff John writes.

I disagree.

Why is that it seems nobody can write a fitness article without the hype and hyperbole smeared all over it?

Starting with "the only way to grow"... do me a favor... people have been getting results from anything under the sun: HIT, one set to failure, two sets to failure, 3 sets of 8, 5x5, Texas method, rest-pause, max-stim, frequent training, infrequent training, German volume, Dogcrapp, whatever...

So writing about the only True(tm) way is just laughable. I bet John Romano knows a lot about training, and this thing just degrades the article.

Second, the arguments attacking the "don't train to failure" camp are pretty weak. The assertion is that because there's no God-given cue to finish the set, they must choose some rep to stop on arbitrarily and we all know this is BS - do a linear 5x5, adding weight every week and you WILL get the stimulus and as long as you eat accordingly you will see progress. Plain and simple, it really doesn't matter as long as you up the weights (of course you'll need to switch that at a more advance level but my point is that you don't NEED failure to stimulate growth).

Next, talking about steroids and pro-bodybuilders routines which I tend to agree on but let's not forget that HIT had it's share of drug users over the years as we now know that many (most?) of those competing during the 70-90s were on something.

I'm not attacking HIT or training to failure, although some do. It might have merits and might not but the way the article is written gives me the vibe that of a sales pitch.

Hey, I appreciate the feedback.

And..... personally I agree with you

You're correct there is a bit of hype in the title and article itself, I think we can probably agree that HIT is not the ONLY way to grow but we also like to publish a good variety of articles and often some will contradict themselves and actually sometimes that is good because it gets discussion going as it has done this time

I also think that people read articles and often come away with a few concepts rather than all the detail. I am hoping some of the younger or less experienced trainees read this and just come away with the concept that they should be training harder or shooting for a few more reps closer to failure. And perhaps those that have never trained to failure and beyond will give it a try.

Great feedback though and it serves as a reminder to me that we have to balance the hype and also making sure we're not too misleading.

Stick around, be great to see you posting a bit more

You both make good points.

I admit I felt a little like asafg when I read this article. Although I really appreciated the message about training with intensity.

I guess the only thing that surprised me was the focus on the - admittedly impressive - high-rep dropsets he did. Its a good example of hardcore training, but are you saying that the average trainer should be doing 15, 20, then 30 rep dropsets? It seems to fly in the face of the generally low-rep sets recommended these days. Then again, I don't suppose many of us could do 15 reps with 315 and then do more straight away!