Casey Viator was a young body builder who was trained directly by Arthur Jones.  Casey attributes the development of his physique to H.I.T. and his sessions with Arthur Jones.  Casey won Mr. America using this training regimen.

Casey's workouts consisted mainly of full body H.I.T. workouts where he started with the lower body and worked his way outward to the smaller muscles.  He  would lift 3 days a week.  He used an extremely low volume of exercise to gain his magnificent physique.  In a way, Casey was the poster child for H.I.T.  Arthur Jones personally trained Casey. 

Casey was the youngest body builder to ever win Mr. America.  He was one of the thickest body builders in history.  He did his training in the Florida training facility of Arthur Jones.

Casey continued to use H.I.T. even after leaving the Florida training facility.  He states that the H.I.T. principles got him the body he competed with, so why would he stop using a system that worked so well for him?

As has been my habit lately, I am going to bring you into the gym with me for my workout.  First, my log is incorrect.  I loaded 540 lbs. on the sled and hammered out 20 (not 10) repetitions.  My legs were quivering at the end of just the very first exercise of this workout.  Now, lately some people online have been making fun of this workout that I am doing and I'd challenge them to do it the way I have with the intensity that I have.  My bet is they wouldn't get to the upper body work because they would not be able to walk after finishing the lower body work with the intensity I've been using.  The standing thigh curl machine I use has you do one leg at a time.  I loaded 105 lbs. on that thing and cranked out 12 repetitions on each leg.  Yes, that's 105 lbs. with just one leg!  I then loaded 160 lbs. on the seated calf machine and hammered out 11 repetitions.  I hit 9 repetitions and I could feel the fire in my calves, but I pushed out 2 more repetitions.  My calves were cramping and stinging from the final 2 repetitions as I moved into the front squat.  I have been keeping the weight low on this exercise so that I can master the form and I'm glad that I have done that.  Today I got a nice burn in the front of my thighs as it should be.  I cranked out 10 repetitions at 125 lbs.  At this point my lower body was shakey at best.  I strapped myself into the Quad Blaster and grabbed a 50 lb. dumbbell.  I held that dumbbell up under my throat and cranked out 12 grueling repetitions.  On number 12 I had to drop to my knees from pain.  That's what this kind of intensity is all about.  You want a body builder's body without using drugs you have to work hard and with alot of intensity.  From this point forward I managed to either increase the weight or repetitions on every single exercise.  Between my bench dips and my skull crushers, my triceps were on fire by the time I was done.  My delts were ablaze after finishing the dumbbell overhead presses and bent over laterals.  My deadlifts continue to get better.  I am now doing 275 lbs. with no straps or belt and I'm getting 9 nice repetitions.  I actually think I could have gotten 10 but my lower back was getting very tight, so I stopped at 9 to be safe.  I don't need an injury after making the progress I've made.

Dave Draper never did exclusively use H.I.T.  Instead, he incorporated H.I.T. cycles into his training schedule.  He was a big believer in volume training.

Dave would use H.I.T. to increase his strength, but did not believe he could increase size properly using this type of training.  Dave has alot of interesting takes on H.I.T.  One of the major components of H.I.T. is continuous progression.  As a H.I.T. trainee myself, I can tell you that my mindset is to continually increase the weight on every single exercise during every single workout.  This causes me to continually seek progression.

Draper contends that the relentless pursuit of progression will eventually lead to poor form.  Dave says that the trainee, in the pursuit of progression, will push the poundage or reps before they have actually mastered a particular weight with good form. 

While I find Dave Draper's take on H.I.T. to be interesting, I also note that he, himself, used H.I.T. as part of his training regimen.  Unlike other body builders I recently profiled, he never used H.I.T. exclusively.  However, because he did use it, I have to believe he saw some results, otherwise why would he have used it at all?

Mentzer liked H.I.T. because he felt it made it possible to avoid over training.  When challenged by others about his approach and how it was not the norm, Mike liked to quote Victor Hugo, who once said "Nothing in this world is so powerful as an idea whose time has come."  Mentzer took the H.I.T. principles espoused by Arthur Jones (inventor of the Nautilus line of equipment) and spelled them out very carefully.  If Mike Mentzer was anything, it was passionate about H.I.T. and the scientific approach to explaining it.  He broke things down into seven principles as follows.

First Principle: Identity

Mike states that your body and mind are unique to you.  This is your identity.  Because everyone is different there is no reason for everyone to train exactly the same way.  H.I.T. allows for this individuality by having you pick weights and intensity levels that give you enough stimulation for you to grow.  I may deadlift 300 pounds, but you might only deadlift 200 pounds.  It doesn't matter as long as we both find the intensity level that causes growth in our muscles. 

Mike taught that you use your mind to determine reality.  By using your reasoning powers you can determine what is right and what is wrong.  Logically training 3 sets on every exercise is just over doing it.  It is extremely easy to understand that taking 1 set to failure is far less training than taking 3 sets to failure.  Thus, when trying to avoid over training, it is clear that 1 set is going to keep you further from over training than 3 sets.

Second Principle: Intensity

This principle states that the harder a person trains, the less time s/he will be able to spend in such training.  Intensity and duration of training exist in an inverse ratio to one another.  You can either train hard or you can train long, but you cannot really do both.  We have already discussed how we can increase the intensity of our workouts.  Using those techniques and hitting your body with high intensity will cause growth.  That's what H.I.T. is all about.

Third Principle: Duration

This is the point where most weight trainers screw up.  They do too many sets and they workout too often.  When you are lifting with intensity you need time to recover.  Mentzer states "With a truly scientific, theoretical approach to exercise, there is no room for the traditional or the arbitrary."  (High Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer Way, p. 45).  The point is clear–don't just stick to the old sacred cows, but be prepared to try some new and different ways of training.  That's how you will achieve results.

Fourth Principle: Frequency

The body can only cope with a limited amount of stress.  Training causes stress on the body.  Once you have used enough intensity to stress the body sufficiently, you need to then leave it alone to recover.  This is why H.I.T. proponents recommend starting out at 3 days a week and if over training signs pop up, back off to 2 days a week.

Fifth Principle: Specificity

"As a rule of thumb, the level of stress must exceed 50 percent of the individual's existing capacity.  The more the stress exceeds the 50 percent level, the greater the rate of improvement.  Therefore, if you wish to achieve the greatest and most rapid improvement that your genetically predetermined capacity will allow, you must exercise at the 100 percent level of your existing functional capacity."  (High Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer Way, p. 60)  In order to induce specific changes you must hit 100 percent intensity and you must use very specific plans of attack.

Sixth Principle: Adaptation

Muscle growth is the body's way of adapting to the stress you are putting on it through exercise.  At the same time, the body will "get used to" the workouts you throw at it unless you do something to force it to continue to adapt.  This is done (in H.I.T.) by continually increasing the load pushed during a specific exercise.  Progression is the concept that helps keep the body growing.

Seventh Principle:  Progression

In order to continually grow something in your workout must progressively change.  If it is the repetitions or the weight lifted, something has to be changing constantly.  Mentzer was a huge believer in this concept.  He spent alot of time teaching on this concept. 

Conclusion

Mentzer preached the H.I.T. concepts to everyone that would listen.  He is partially responsible for Dorian Yates training using the H.I.T. methods.  He took a very scientific approach to H.I.T., studying it from many different angles.  He practiced H.I.T. principles until the day he died of heart disease (genetic in his family).

Dorian only trained for 45 minutes a day, but it was brutal training.  He would use 3 exercises per body part and 3 sets each exercise.  He would take the first 2 sets just short of failure, but the final set was always to complete failure. 

Dorian prescribed to the Mike Mentzer style of H.I.T.  He definitely took things to the limit.  Where Yates was different was that he didn't believe in training the entire body in one session.  He took what he learned about H.I.T. and created a hybrid.  His hybrid obviously worked as he won the Mr. Olympia contest 6 times, with 5 of those being consecutively.

What Yates realized while training with Mike Mentzer was that intensity is great for building muscle.  Yates would use H.I.T. during his building phases to gain mass quickly.  He felt that he had to modify the intensity as he got closer to the competition because of the reduced caloric intake he would be under.  He felt that only with alot of calories could you sustain this type of training.

If H.I.T. was good enough for 6 time Mr. Olympia, Dorian Yates, it should be good enough for you!

OK, so this was a particularly brutal workout.  I need to describe it to you for you to get the full effect.  I had been adding 5 pounds to the thigh extensions each workout, but I came to the gym feeling like a caged animal ready to explode, so I added 10 pounds to my previous weight.  I managed to crank out 10 repetitions.  My legs were quivering and my quads were on fire.  I moved over to the Thigh Curl machine and proceeded to bang out 10 repetitions with 150 lbs.  It had my legs screaming.  I then loaded up 360 lbs. and cranked out 27 repetitions of standing calf raises.  This was particularly brutal because my calves were on fire by the 10th repetition and I just kept on going.  I managed to go to complete and total failure on the 27th repetition.  I racked up 225 lbs. on the squat rack and proceeded to crank out 9 very nice repetitions.  I do not take squats to full positive failure for obvious reasons, but I was about 1 rep shy of that.  At this point I could feel my body was already wasted from the effort I had already put in.  I got on the Quad Blaster, grabbed a 47.5 lb. dumbbell and proceeded to ride the Blaster for 13 intense repetitions.  I went down for the 14th repetition and just fell to the ground.  I literally had to crawl to the bench to do my dumbbell pullovers.  I managed to keep the intensity extremely high for the rest of the workout until I hit deadlifts.  I stuck with the "mistake" from the last week and worked on 275 lbs.  I managed 8 repetitions, but as soon as I was done, I had to run to the trash can to vomit.  The intensity of the workout had pushed my body over the limit.  I finished off like a warrior with my shrugs and forearm curls.