Posted by Teodor Lazar on September 9th, 2009
Today I was laying down on the grass in my back yard, looking up at the sky, thinking back to a time I’d felt incomplete. It seems so distant now, like it happened in another life. One that I’d moved on from years go.
In my past life, I remember being skinny and wanting to be bigger and more muscular. Wanting a new sports car, when I already had a great car. Wanting the latest clothes and cell phone, when I had a decent wardrobe and phone to begin with. I remember feeling really incomplete without “the new stuff.”
But even after I attained the new things, the things I “thought” I wanted, I still felt incomplete. So I kept chasing the next new things I was “supposed to have” in order to be happy. Until one day, I realized a big secret that the world didn’t want me to know.
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Posted by Teodor Lazar on August 27th, 2009
Patrick Diver is the founder of Greyhound Fitness, a company that provides the fastest workout in Orlando – Florida. He has years of experience and extensive knowledge involving High Intensity Training. He was also my trainer during the High Intensity Training Experiment and gave me some top notch advice on how to maximize my results. I decided to interview him so you could benefit from his knowledge on the subject.
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Posted by Teodor Lazar on August 25th, 2009
I combined the before and after pictures of the High Intensity Training Experiment into just one image and posted it below. I wanted to show you the results you can achieve with High Intensity Training.
If you are used to seeing the dramatic changes achieved on TV, where a 300 lbs guy gets lean and muscular over a period of a six months, then my results may not be that impressive. However, I can guarantee you the guy in the TV advertisements was sweating away in the gym for hours on end trying to lose weight for those commercials. I, on the other hand, achieved my results in 1 hour, 17 minutes, and 32 seconds total. That’s the total for the whole month! To me that’s pretty amazing, considering that I worked out less in one month than your average person works out in one day.
On top of that, I gained 6.7 lbs of muscle and as you can see from the pictures, I’m bigger and leaner after just 9 workouts – the majority of them lasting less than 10 minutes.
Edit 01-17-10: Since posting the results of the HIT Experiment, my picture has appeared on a few forums and blogs. Some of you can’t believe I got these results from only 9 workouts over 30 days and have insisted that the results are askew due to the second picture being a little bigger than the first. I want to reassure everyone that’s simply not the case, so I’ve posted the before and after pictures with matching symmetry. Red lines were also added in order to help the skeptics who still have problems differentiating between the two pictures.
Posted by Teodor Lazar on August 22nd, 2009
A few of you have sent me e-mails asking if High Intensity Training (HIT) would be a good fit for you. I wish I could respond with a simple “yes” or “no,” but it’s not that easy. I don’t know enough about your lifestyles to give you the right answer. It is something you have to figure out for yourselves. That being said, I do want to help you figure it out, so I’m going to share my thoughts on High Intensity Training.
If you don’t have the discipline to commit to an exercise program on a regular basis, be it running, swimming, working out, etc. you probably won’t have the discipline to stick to High Intensity Training. Although HIT involves working out only 1-2 times per week, you need plenty of mental fortitude and discipline in order to stay committed. Why?
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Posted by Teodor Lazar on August 15th, 2009
The Science Behind High Intensity Training continued…
Recovery
Now that you understand how the muscle fibers function during exercise, we will talk about how they recover. If you followed the High Intensity Training Experiment, you noticed that I only worked out 2 times a week. This was done on purpose, as I continue the experiment on my own, I will go down to one workout a week. Why would I work out less rather than more? It can be summed up in one word – recovery.
As you recall from reading The Science Behind High Intensity – Part 1, Type I motor units use little energy when they operate and they also fatigue slowly. The slower a muscle fatigues, the faster it recovers. This makes sense because the Type I motor units use little energy, so it’s easier to replenish their energy supplies. The same can not be said of the Type II muscle fibers.
The Type II muscle fibers produce a higher force output, but in order to produce that output they need to consume lots of energy (glycogen). This especially true for the Type IIB muscle fibers. Although these units are only tapped for a short period of time, usually seconds, they need anywhere from 4-5 days of rest before they can fully recover. If they are called upon any earlier than that, they tend to fail long before the previous failure point. It is recommended that the rest period between workouts be anywhere from 7-11 days. This gives the muscles not only time to recover, but also to grow beyond their previous capacities.
According to some trainers, there is no advantage to working out more than once a week after the initial 8 weeks. And after the 12th week it can actually cause your results to regress.
