Q. We have discussed training and, briefly, diet as it pertains to HIT. How would you structure in cardio pre contest while undertaking HIT training?
I think the four biggest training errors made before a contest include increasing the overall volume of weight training, lifting lighter weights, accelerating the pace of weight workouts, and performing excessive cardio.
If you're lifting relatively heavy weights with a high degree of intensity, changes in diet alone will cause your fat levels to diminish. A good idea is to withhold cardio, so that it can be used later as a sort of strategic reserve in case your rate of fat loss tails off. Also, weight training should always be viewed as a far more important component of an overall pre-contest plan than cardio, although I see a lot of people training with an opposite philosophy in mind.
Excessive cardio will cause your weight training efforts to suffer. The result is a smaller, flatter appearance, something that especially many lower-level competitors view as inevitable. It is not. This effect seems to be compounded by the level of intensity some people use in cardio workouts.
Q. You say that training sessions can be radically reduced when training with high intensity. Is there an ideal cut-off limit by which a person can reduce their training time?
The total amount of training time depends upon the individual. For most people, the majority of a training session will be devoted to warming-up. This is especially true for intermediate and advanced lifters.
For any particular exercise, performing a single, highly intense set can stimulate growth. But if you've built up a respectable level of strength, you can't just march into the gym, do the set, and leave. You'll have to warm up.
Depending on the exercise, this might mean doing a few or even several warm-up sets, adding weight with each - but stopping far short of muscular failure. These sets are a requirement if injury is to be avoided. So whereas a beginner can effectively train a few body parts in well under a half hour, an intermediate or advanced bodybuilder might need twice that time due to extra warm-up considerations.
But with HIT, regardless of your level of development, you ought to be in the gym less than half the time of those performing run-of-the-mill workouts.
Q.In Training for Mass, you refute much of what has for many years been accepted bodybuilding training knowledge. What led you to your conclusions as far as your elimination of conventional approaches like "double-split" and "instinctive training" from your training protocols?
"Instinctive" training is a good example of the intellectual carelessness that typically drives workout planning. Lifting weights has nothing to do with instinct.
Relying on illusory "instincts" will get you about the same results as basing other decisions in your life on the perceived power of imaginary forces. Yet humans seem to find some sort of comfort in superstition, in the notion that imaginary forces can influence reality, so the idea has enjoyed no shortage of traction.
Maybe Weider was fully aware of this when he pulled the "Weider Instinctive Training Principle" rabbit out of a hat. If you're looking to optimize your training efforts, there's a whole universe of science and logic to latch onto. Once you take a moment to consider the "logic" behind instinctive training, it should be easy to dismiss it as nonsense.
Most people that train with weights think they have good reasons for what they do in the gym, mainly because they don't think that hard about it. I used to be one of these people, and I committed their biggest error: I never bothered to discern correlation from causal relationship.
I would copy the routines of top bodybuilders from magazines, assuming that anything and everything they did in the gym was the cause of their muscular growth.
It wasn't until I became aware of the high-intensity theory of weight training that I realized that the training routines of these people correlate to their results - but that only part of what they were doing could be classified as a cause. It's easy to fall into this trap. If you see someone that has built a great deal of muscle, it's logical to assume that this person's workout is optimally effective and efficient.
Thank you for this interview Gordon. Do you have any final words?
With cardio, just like everything else you do in the gym - or in life for that matter - resist the urge to blindly follow advice. Don't be afraid to be skeptical, and don't hesitate to pose the ultimate question, which is of course "why."
If someone recommends an exercise, a style of training, or a way of eating, ask that person to explain the logic behind the suggestion. You might find a lot of people who are willing to give advice. Before you follow any, make sure these people have good reasons to back it up.
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