High-intensity training

Exercises are performed with a high level of effort, or intensity, where it is thought that it will stimulate the body to produce an increase in muscular strength and size.

Most HIT advocates stress the use of controlled lifting speeds and strict form, with special attention paid to avoiding any bouncing, jerking, or yanking of the weight or machine movement arm during exercise.

Until all three (lifting, holding and lowering) parts of an exercise can no longer be completed in a controlled manner, a muscle cannot be considered thoroughly exhausted/exercised [citation needed].

But many years later, I learned that a doctor named Gustav Zander had designed and built a number of exercise machines in Europe nearly a hundred years before I built my first one; I did not copy Zander's work and learned nothing from him, was not even aware of his work until long after I had made the same discoveries that he had made.

Nautilus inventor Arthur Jones originally recommended a 2/1/4 cadence; a two-second positive movement, a one-second hold at the end point, and a four-second negative.

Different strength training authors from Ellington Darden and Mike Mentzer to Dorian Yates and Gordon LaVelle have called their system HIT, with each individual having credited Arthur Jones for the formulation of its basic tenet principles.

Darden advocated full body routines, while Yates recommended to split the workouts into four different sessions a week.

A former Mr. Universe, the late Mike Mentzer achieved his lifetime best condition from performing rest-pause, an old system of lifting involving single-rep maxima interspersed with brief (10 second) rest periods.

[6] Rest-pause has the advantages of old-school power training while also allowing for enough overall reps to be performed for hypertrophy and cardiovascular exercise purposes.