I'M A H.I.T. MAN NOW

D'ya ever hear about H.I.T. and the Nautilus machines? I bet you did. The Nautilus weight training machines were introduced to the fitness world in the early 70s by a guy called Arthur Jones. This man was quite a character, to put it mildly... combat pilot, crocodile hunter, filmmaker, inventor of exercise machines.  Some people call him genius, while others think him stark raving mad. I like that.The fact of the matter is, Jones turned the whole bodybuilding business upside down.Arthur Jones, the mad scientistAccording to Jones, machines are superior to free weights, 'cause barbells and dumbbells do not keep your muscles under tension throughout the entire range of motion. In other words, with free weights your muscles will always have some short rest either at the beginning or the end of each movement... which obviously impairs the efficiency of the whole exercise. Well, machines and free weights both have their pros and cons... and most athletes -- when they're smart like me -- incorporate either in their training.To cut a long story short, Nautilus machines are in my opinion still the best exercise machines on the market, and all the stuff that followed had simply copied the unique Nautilus technology. Jones also invented a new training concept along with his machines. With High Intensity Training or H.I.T. you perform only one set per exercise (as opposed to the three sets or more in other weight training methods), but you do each set until you reach muscular failure. Don't get confused by the term "failure"... this does not mean that you actually failed at performing the exercise, it just means that you have to do each exercise up to the point when -- no matter how hard you try -- you can't perform another rep. This can be brutally hard, and I keep running into people who shy away from this experience. Yeah, it's not for everyone, I give you that... but I wouldn't have it any other way. If I don't go to failure in my sets, I feel like I haven't done my best. Once you're hooked, you don't want to go back to the old pansy way of working out.This is animal.And this is me and my buddy Chris, a recreational MMA fighterAs with anything new, H.I.T. was discussed quite controversially when it hit the scene (pun intended). Arnie, yup... the governator himself, was a real hater of the H.I.T. concept, back in the day (he actually trained with Jones for about two weeks, but then threw in the towel early, because he couldn't stand the grueling intensity of Jones's workouts). Although opinions are still divided on the subject, there are tons of scientific studies around today that prove the great efficiency of high intensity training (when done correctly).More and more athletes incorporate H.I.T.principles in their training schedule nowadays, and no matter which type of training you prefer... H.I.T. is here to stay.