HighIntensity.net View Mike Mentzer Bodybuilding Topic

hi guys,

hope you all enjoyed the holidays.

I′ve been thinking about the issue of high-intensity techniques, and the fact that I believe they are unnecessary and are a contradiction, as in fact they reduced the intensity of a set, evidence of this is they allow the set to continue past failure, so there as to be a reduction in intensity for the set to continue, but the main reason for writing the post is the example below.

If you used a sunbed and every time you used the same bed someone increased the power of the tubs to increase the uv stress/stimulus, then every time you used the bed your adaptation would be even greater and so on, but as the stress grow frequency and exposure need to decrease, the same thing happens with weight-training every time you train to failure the body responds by growing a little bigger/stronger, so the next time you return to the gym your muscles are able to produce more power and lift a little bit more weight, and as it is the muscle working against the weight which is the stimulus the more powerful the muscle the greater the stimulus/stress, so you see there is no need for high-intensity techniques, as the muscle grows it needs a greater stimulus to keep growing even further, but because it is bigger it can produce the extra stimulus needed with no need for any change in the training system, the only thing that needs to be change is as above, as the stress grows so does the need for shorter exposure times and lengthened adaptation times. As we are already very strong at advanced levels and we produce very high levels of stress, to add high-intensity techniques or as I think they should be called high-intensity set extenders would be a big mistake, they only cause unnecessary inroad because as you hit failure you have reached 100% intensity, you cant train at 110% you have give every thing in the set and if you use 80% of your 1RM you should have inroaded as much as needed to fatigue all necessary fibers in a muscle, if you then get your training partner to help, by taking some of the resistance away by lifting the weight with you, all you have done is reduce the intensity, evidence of which is the fact that you then can continue with the set, you can extend the time at 100% effort by continuing to try and lift the weight (NOT HOLDING), but give every thing you have got to continue to try and lift, its all about the effort you produce in the set with only a small amount of inroad, or we all would train with drop sets till we could not lift the weight of our own arms, then we would have inroad in to our strength levels near to 100%, but that′s not the case its overload training to failure with small increases in the stimulus as we progress i.e. a extra rep or a little more weight here and there to increase our level of functional ability. Its simple a bigger muscle needs more stress to grow even bigger, as it is bigger it can produce that extra stress, as it is the muscle working against the weight which produces the stimulus, a bigger muscle more stimulus if you are willing to take that muscle to 100% failure. Every time you use your bodies reserves by training to failure the body ups its defensive barrier by producing new muscle, you now train to failure with this new level and the body is forced to adapt again and so on, but it has to be true failure with enough rest for the response to accrue, because remember a bigger muscle can produce more stress, and this then effects the whole system.

cheers…HIT

Hey Hit, glad you′re still with us. What are your thoughts of Mike recommending pre-exhaust in the Ideal routine?
jim

I TOTALLY agree with your observation HIT as a matter of fact I′ve arrived on the same conclusions as you have ! Advanced Techiques like Pre-Exhaust Supersets doesn′t INCREASE the intensity of the set but merely extends it . As I also emphasize one CANNOT train beyond 100 % Intensity !!! If a car has a TOP SPEED of 250 m /hr . no matter what you do to the ACCELERATOR you will not increase the SPEED beyond the Maximum speed !!! The LOGIC (sorry but I think it′s flawed) behind pre-exhaust SS was that to do an isolation exercise first to pre-fatigue the TARGET muscles so that as you go to the second exercise which is a compound exercise you will be able to generate more INTENSITY thereby hitting MORE fibers on that target muscle !!! Well at first it may sound logical but if you really look at it OBJECTIVELY you would see the FLAW in the Rationale ! First if you Pre-Exhaust the chest for example (to failure) with pec-deck performing a pressing exercise would NOT increase the recruitment rate of fibers in the chest but rather because the pecs are temporarily weakend from the first exercise the majority of the LOAD from the pressing exercise would be distributed to the other MUSCLES involved in the lift (delts and triceps) thereby reducing the actual load on the pecs !!! My analogy is when one of your leg has an INJURY and in pain when you stand up or walk the other (good leg) would take MOST of your weight or load . The body always COMPENSATE to maintain EQUILIBRIUM !!! PEACE .

Great posts!
I agree to….after failure, all you do is damaging the muscle but you don´t stimulate it more….but the question is how far you should take it.
Should you stop where you cannot do another rep….or should you continue to do a few partials…i understand that you(NeuroMass and HIT) think that static holds after failure only extends the set to…….damn that thing you said that you should only stimulate growth with as little damage to the muscle as possible is great…..i guess thats why overlap is so bad….time to drop that bicepscurl

Hi JP,

I agree with NeuroMass, when you go from doing a set of peck deck to failure and move to the bench the delts and the triceps are doing most of the work, so you are only retracing muscle fibres which have already been worked in the first set (peck deck), it is the same as a drop set, or a forced rep, only you have reduced the resistance on the pecks not by dropping weight, or getting help from a training partner, but by the fact that the triceps/delts have take most of the resistance away from the chest, so it ends up working longer not harder, it is a set extender, just like drop sets are and for the same reasons they should be avoided, all you are doing is taking the pecks to failure again which you did in the first set, yes you will cause more inroad but it is unnecessary and works against you, if you train to failure you have flicked the switch to ON, no need to do it again, why hit failure twice with the same muscle, remember it only takes one blow from a hammer to set off a stick of dynamite!.

Hi Buffed,

I personally just push/pull for a few seconds after failure just to make sure I send a clear massage to my system that more muscle is needed, but don′t push to long or you will find it hard to recover from, I would say no more than 5 seconds after failure, on days when I′m less fresh I just stop at failure. Just give it a try and see how you recover for continuing to push at 100% intensity, if you respond well then try applying it for a little longer, some people try to fight the weight for up to 10sec, but that is to long for me!! and remember that you should reduce the time as you become more advanced, as you will be stretching your recovery to the max at this point anyway.

hope this helps.

cheers……HIT.