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.
High Intensity Training Interview – Patrick Diver of Greyhound Fitness Inc.
Posted by Teodor Lazar on August 27th, 2009
High Intensity Training Results Revisted
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.
Is High Intensity Training Right for You?
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?
The Science Behind High Intensity Training – Part 3
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.
The Science Behind High Intensity Training – Part 2
Posted by Teodor Lazar on August 11th, 2009
The Science Behind High Intensity Training continued…
Motor Units
Now each group of muscle fibers work in association with one nerve and together they make up a motor unit. The motor unit can be a Type I or a Type II motor unit. The type of motor unit formed depends on the muscle fibers that make it up. So a Type IIAB motor unit would be made up of Type IIAB muscle fibers.
The main difference between the motor units is that the Type I motor unit has only 100 muscle fibers connected to it, while the Type II motor unit has around 10,000 muscle fibers connected to it. Since they are more compact, the Type I motor units are more abundant than the Type II motor units. In fact, the Type I motor units make up the majority of any given muscle.
Regardless of the type, the motor units are the ones that are recruited when you want to perform an activity. The two types can be recruited at the same time or sequentially. The same time scenario is not what we are looking for. It leaves most of the Type I and quite a few of the Type II muscle fibers unstimulated. How?
Imagine yourself going to the gym and picking a weight that is too heavy for you to lift. You try lifting it and can only perform a single repetition – you fail when attempting a second one. If you read article one, you’ll remember that your central nervous system quickly assesses which type of fibers it needs to recruit to help your body perform an action. Due to the heavy weight you are attempting to lift, your central nervous system recruits all the available motor units at once. So Type I, Type IIA, Type IIAB, and Type IIB are all called upon in the same instant.
This is where the problem comes in. As I stated in article one, the Type IIB muscle fibers are the ones with the most power, but they are also the ones that fatigue the fastest. So even though they will be worked thoroughly and fatigued, the majority of your muscle fibers – the Type I, some of the Type IIA and a few of the Type IIAB – will not have had a chance to be thoroughly fatigued because they fatigue slower than the Type IIB muscle fibers. So how do you fatigue all the different types of muscle fibers in order to get them all to grow?
Sequential Recruitment
Sequential recruitment solves the problem by fatiguing the muscles in a progressive order, starting with the Type I muscle fibers and working to the Type IIB muscle fibers. This is done by performing one exercise under a moderate load over a continued period of time. Instead of picking the heaviest weight and then trying do to one rep, you pick a medium weight and proceed to do anywhere from 5-9 reps under a constant load. This guarantees that the Type I muscle fibers will go into action first. Once they fatigue, the Type IIA muscle fibers kick in to help you continue, after they fail, the Type IIAB, and then finally the Type IIB. Sequential recruitment is part of the reason each rep is performed with a 10 second cadence (5 on the positive and 5 on the negative side of the exercise).
Ideally, you are aiming for a time frame of 50-80 seconds to do one set of one exercise. This gives you plenty of time to progressively fatigue both the Type I and Type II muscle fibers, while at the same time keeping the time interval short enough so that Type I muscle fibers don’t recover. By keeping the time frame short, you keep the Type I muscle fibers from jumping back into the contraction. You don’t want them to recover because that will keep you from reaching the higher-order muscle fibers.
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