About this blog

After I had read Body by Science by Doug McGuff, I felt I had to try high intensity training. I started reading more about high intensity training on the internet, and watching talks on youtube by him and also Drew Baye from baye.com. Can it really be the case that I can train only once per week to put on muscle? Not only maintain, but actually put on muscle at least close to as fast as the body allows? Hey, I would be happy with just achieving a decent growth, considering the little amount of time per week spent in the gym!

This blog is a pseudo-scientific attempt to try this kind of training out. It's meant to help keep me disciplined and document results for myself as well as other people that are asking themselves the same question as I did. I'm also think it can be beneficial to receive comments from other people reading the blog.
Of course, this is only one persons results with this kind of training, so as a scientific study it's absolutely worthless, on top of the fact that I vary several parameters at the time. One big such parameter is the diet; I follow a paleolithic diet, so there might also be some talk about that.
The initial drop in weight (body fat) is due to the diet, not to the training. And for me at least, it's not clear how this diet, which has much less carbs in it, affects training and muscle growth potential.
Another aspect is the other training I put in, besides the gym. Now, I try to keep it moderate so as not to affect the weight resistance training. I train some MMA, and some running (4 kilometers jogging, or sprint interval training). This activity does not show in the workout graph. Sometimes I wait one or two more days before going to the gym, to let my body recover if I feel a run has taken its toll.

However, it might still be interesting for others, not only me, to see what kind of results one can get from HIT. It might also motivate others to do the same as me, showing their results in a blog!

Im terms of exercises, I train "the big five" as suggested in BBS:

• Squats (in smith machine)
• bench press (in smith machine)
• front pulldown
• cable row
• overhead press

One set each until positive failure, about a minute rest in between.

I'm a small guy, and I'm not the kind that easily puts on muscle mass, so this should be an interesting experiment.

The workout graph plots the amount of work performed on each exercise for each workout. The work is usually measured in number of reps. But perhaps I'm using super slow reps, I felt it's more telling how much time my muscles are under tension. So the formula I use for work is W = 'time under load' (minutes) * weight (kg) ^ 2.
This implies that the weight used impacts the Work performed more than the time under load, as discussed in this post.

The points are clickable, so you can get the weight and time for that exercise on that workout.