Your HIT Method Training Isn’t Helping You on the Field of Play

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HIT not HIIT

What is the HIT Method? I don’t mean HIIT Training, I mean the HIT Method. I know it can be confusing as these two terms sound very similar however they’re very different in both how they’re performed and the outcomes of training. HIIT Training, or high intensity interval training is a method that’s more cardiovascular in nature, while the HIT Method, or high intensity training is a training method designed for hypertrophy (muscle growth) and strength gain. Today we’re going to focus our efforts on the HIT Method.

History of the HIT Method

The HIT Method was popularized in the 1970’s by two men named Arthur Jones and Ellington Darden. You may have heard of these two men as they’re somewhat fitness royalty in the sense that they created Nautilus exercise machines. Nautilus was groundbreaking at the time and offered people a way to exercise at home and still have a challenging session with real resistance. It was further popularized in the sports training world when they outfitted Penn State’s weight room with Nautilus machines and some in the strength and conditioning world attributed a lot of their on field success to the machines. Arthur Jones is also the creator of something called an advertorial. You’ve probably seen an advertorial if you’ve ever opened a fitness magazine as they tend to be littered with them. An advertorial is an advertisement disguised as an article within a magazine. Owners of a particular product or service can buy a couple of pages within a magazine to peddle their product while making it look like an article written by the publication. Honestly, it’s genius and in the beginning they weren’t even required to display anywhere within the “article” that it was a paid advertisement. You could peddle anything you wanted under the guise of science backed writing. Muscle Tech used these advertisements to help grow their Cell Tech creatine and Nitro Tech protein lines back in the early 2000’s with great success, they really work. This development would become incredibly important in selling Nautilus machines down the road as they were able to write advertorials pushing both their machines and the HIT Method.

Their first step was to create Nautilus machines, now they had to create the demand for the product and what better way to do that than to create a training method designed specifically for the machines. Enter the HIT Method. The HIT Method on its surface is high volume training done pretty much to failure. It’s perfect for the majority of average gym goers because it’s quick and yields strength and size gains. It’s a slam dunk for anyone wanting to look better with minimal time invested as you’ll hit 10-12 exercises to failure and you’re done. The thought process behind this way of training deals with the Henneman Size Principle. In layman’s terms this principle dictates that your body will recruit the smallest muscle fibers first, and as the effort level increases as those fibers become exhausted the body will start to recruit larger and larger fibers to accomplish the task. As you near failure those larger fibers will become exhausted as well. Basically no matter how heavy the weight is, your body will eventually recruit every fiber possible if the volume is high enough. What this principle basically states is that no matter how heavy the load is, you can grow and get stronger with high enough volume. In theory this is correct, however in practice it’s not quite that easy, and there is also another principle that dictates adaptation. Enter the SAID Principle.

The SAID Principle

The SAID Principle should be the basis for the majority of your training and programming choices. The acronym SAID stands for “specific adaptations to imposed demands.” What this means is that if you want a specific adaptation, you’ve got to create an environment within your training that will yield those adaptations. For example if I want to get stronger I need to lift weights and not run for miles and miles in my training. Now this is an over exaggerated example where the two adaptations are on completely different sides of the spectrum but it helps to drive the point home. If you want to run marathons you need to prepare to run marathons, if you want to get stronger you need to get under the weights, and if you want to get better at the 100 meter sprint you should probably focus your efforts on exercises that increase your output for those 10 or so seconds.

Now how does this factor into the HIT Method and getting bigger and stronger? The science is there to show we can indeed get bigger and stronger because of the size principle, right? Sort of yes, but also sort of no. Confused yet? Try not to be! There are actually two different kinds of growth that take place within the body. One is called sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and the other is called myofibril hypertrophy, and while both cause an increase in the size of the muscle cell, they’re very different in how they contribute to strength.

Functional vs Nonfunctional Hypertrophy

Often times one of the goals of weight training is to increase the size of your muscles. Thats actually one of the goals of the HIT Method and why it was designed around the size principle in the first place. There are two different types of growth from a physiological standpoint called hypertrophy (increase in the size of the muscle cell), and hyperplasia (increase in the number of muscle cells). We’re going to focus on hypertrophy as hyperplasia is mostly still a theory and has really only been demonstrated in rats. Hypertrophy can be divided into sarcoplasmic and myofibril hypertrophy, or nonfunctional and functional hypertrophy respectively. We’re going to break down what that means here:

- Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy

• Increase in mitochondria

• increase in sarcoplasm volume

  • Sarcoplasm includes ATP, glycogen, creatine phosphate and water

• Product of high volume training. Typically 8-15+ reps

• HIT Method training increases this kind of growth

• Nonfunctional Hypertrophy

This kind of growth increases the energy substrate volume within the muscle cell and is considered nonfunctional hypertrophy as it doesn’t really contribute to increases in strength, but does increase work capacity. This kind of growth is an adaptation from high volume training environments as the body will adapt to be able to handle all of the volume or reps. The reason this high volume training will never lead to any real strength gains is because the lighter loads required for higher volume won’t create enough tension to cause enough damage to the cell for growth of the protein structures.

- Myofibril Hypertrophy

• Increase in the size (and possibly number) of actin and myosin contractile proteins within the muscle cell

• Higher loads create higher tension which creates more damage which leads to more growth of the protein structures within the cell

• Functional Hypertrophy

The contractile protein structures (actin and myosin) of the muscle are what create muscle contractions. For example when you flex your bicep, these structures contracting are what cause that to happen. Damaging these structures via training is what causes the body to send more proteins to the muscle cell thus increasing their size AND strength capacity. The SAID principle tells why this happens. Train in a high volume environment and your body will adapt to be able to train in a high volume environment by increasing energy substrates. Train with heavier weights and your body will adapt to become stronger by laying down protein structures to be able to deal with the increased load.

As you can see these two different mechanisms will both increase the size of the cell however this sarcoplasmic hypertrophy won’t contribute to gains in strength. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy can best be described as “all show and no go”, while myofibril hypertrophy is really the workhorse for strength development.

Why HIT Method Training Doesn’t Transfer to the Field of Play

Larger muscles are absolutely a desired adaptation in pretty much every physical preparation program. But how we obtain that size, and more importantly what that size entails matter quite a bit. Muscle size that doesn’t contribute to strength can be thought of as carrying around extra weight, and while mass moves mass why not have more mass that helps us run faster, jump higher and hit harder as opposed to what could be considered dead weight that’s aesthetically pleasing? If we can’t deliver AND accept more force, what are we even doing?

A lot of proponents of the HIT Method swear by its ability to increase both strength and size and they’re dead set on it even though the science doesn't support that to be the case. The problem is that many of these coaches work with individuals who have a relatively low training age, and whether it’s at the high school or even collegiate level a lot of their clientele don’t have a ton of REAL training under their belts. Those with low training ages will have positive results from ANY kind of training early on due to mostly neural adaptations and these athletes getting any stronger is merely a byproduct of doing any training at all regardless of the method. That strength will eventually top off and continuing to train in this manner will lead to increased rate of injury and decreased performance down the road.

All that said I still believe higher volume training has its place and I absolutely utilize the repeated effort method and AMRAPS in my programming. The problem comes in when the HIT Method is the BASIS of your programming. Oddly enough the I in HIT stands for intensity and when it comes to training intensity is merely a reflection of your one rep max. HIT training isn’t even training with a high intensity, and it’s not beneficial to your development as an athlete.