Limitations of high intensity training
 

I don't come across too many intelligent discussions on high intensity training so I thought maybe Muscle And Brawn would be a good place.

I just finished reading Gordon Lavelle's book and he advocates a Dorian Yates style of muscle building. While it sounds very interesting I am left wondering what the limitations are of high intensity training are?

I don't care for training to failure. I've never found it necessary.

I don't discount it altogether 'cos it obviously works for some, but the problem I have is with it being 'THE WAY' people train. It's a decent thing to do every once in a while with exercises you are comfortable in. But like any change in training, it's usually the change and not the method that is the catalyst for growth/strength. Especially peaking strength by going from high to low volume.

When we began to explore the Steve Reeve's style approach I was struck with how close it was to HIT. Not exactly the same, obviously, but it had only one top end heavy set for reps, and a couple ramped sets ala Dorian Yates.

I don't believe Reeves advocated failure, but I could be wrong.

I read an account someone gave of Mentzer training back in the 70's, he said he saw him do a heavy warm up of 15 reps, another heavy warm up of 12, another at 10 and then his final set of 8 which he took to failure. The guy approached Mike and said "hey, that's what everyone else does around here; 4 sets with decreasing reps! What happened to your HIT stuff??!" to which Mike replied "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THEY WERE WARM UPS TO THE FINAL SET!".

Sure looked like a regular drop pyramid to me. :confused:

Exactly. Great story.

I tried that exact approach last year at one point and the warmup sets were no joke. We had more than a few people fun the Reeve's routine, and they quickly found that "one working top end set" was much harder than it looked when preceded by high rep warmups.

Reminds me sort of Grimek...I believe he used to do 20 rep sets of squats with "lighter" weight as he worked up to 400-500 with reps.

Are you a Seinfeld fan Btb?

Newman: "I Nautilus of course!" *puffs out his chest* :)

Labels become very popular.

Yes. :biglifter:

Yeah, I think labels become very popular with some crowds of people anyway, perhaps those who HIT reaches out to. Maybe? Getting a bit psychosocial there.