Brad C

In many ways Q1 of this year was a total write-off fitness wise. Thanks to the wonderful hobby of grappling I spent a few weeks doing nothing while recovering from an eye injury and later an ankle injury. Throw in getting sick, a sick toddler, a sick wife, a vacation, and the next thing you know it is halfway through May and I've lost 6 weeks and never really got going. What I've been getting into, and what has been sticking, has been Mentzer-style HIT lifting. A couple warm up sets, then one set to absolute failure for every exercise scheduled for the day. And when I say failure, I mean that you need to put in such a high level of effort that it is almost a religious experience. You need to push to the point that you can't even conceive of attempting another rep.

There's a horde of people online who would read that and yell “Hell yeah brother, Mentzer knew what was up! You're in for the best gains of your life!” Another horde will read that and scream “You're leaving gains on the table! Research shows 2 RIR is just as effective! Only one set only delivers 50% of possible muscle stimulus!” And to both sides, I say you're missing the forest for the trees.

Why am I using HIT when there's tons of Ex-Phys research suggesting it is suboptimal?

• It is fun.
• It is really time efficient. Even when I dick around in the gym I'm done in 40 minutes max.
• I tend to sandbag my lifts. Saying “lift 70% of your max” isn't super useful when I'm bad at grinding reps to really establish my max. Telling me “Go to 2 RIR” isn't useful when I'm bad at estimating how far I am from failure.
• The logbook aspect gives me immediate targets to try to hit. Beating last time by 1 rep is a very clear, very close target.
• I can recover from it. I have a toddler at home, so 6 hours of sleep in a night is a good night. I'm running 4-6 times a week trying out the Norwegian Singles method. Above that I'm also doing jiujitsu 2 – 4 times a week (usually 2 unfortunately.) Combined with 40 looming ever closer, my recovery capacity is best described as “constrained.”
• I know from experience that as my lifting volume creeps up I feel increasingly worse. A few years ago when I did the nsuns CAP3 program, I was lifting 6 days a week and maxing at least one lift every day. I got real strong and noticeably buff really quickly. Unfortunately I also ached constantly, all the time, especially my knees. So to not feel like ass, lower volumes seem to be my friend.
• It is working.

So why do I say both sides are missing the point?

Globally optimal is not synonymous with optimal for me.

I am really confident that I could lift more and get stronger/bigger faster. BUT to do so would require finding more recovery capacity (unlikely) or taking more time away from other things that bring me joy. To lift more may also make me feel worse. So if I am getting bigger and stronger (albeit slowly) AND it fits with my life, and experience tells me that trying to do more will not fit with my life as nicely, why would I ever do anything different? To paraphrase Jim Wendler, why would I race to a red light?

(And, also, in defence of HIT it isn't as low-volume as detractors tend to say. I'm following one of the programs from Marjan Stojkoski's HIT book. Full body 3x a week, with warm-ups counted, is a far cry from “just one set.”)

I'm sure in 2027 I will try something different, but for right now what is “locally optimal” doesn't look very similar to what is “research optimal.” So for now I'm going to keep hitting just a handful of extremely hard sets a week.