[b said:
Quote[/b] (NWlifter @ Dec. 31 2005,10:15)]Give Hunkar the credit
He perfected this, I just helped him with some of the muscle pressure/ occlusion stuff
Captain (nickname for Ron), me = (Blush)^2006
Needless to say, Ron's contributions have been tremendous. I probably spent a great deal more time playing around with different ways of trying to replicate occlusion, but without Ron's scientific input, it would have been more similar to a caveman trying to make fire; sure you can make one by accident but chances are very slim indeed. Actually, let me share with you the background of ACIT in a historic post (insert drums and fireworks here, a few ladies in bikinis won't hurt either).
ACIT: A MAD JOURNEY IN THE ACIDIC OCEAN...
I have been training for almost exactly 15 years now and, since very early on, I felt that I got better results when I "went for the burn". This took on many different forms over the years, ranging from forced reps to drop sets to ending sets with static holds. Then over 3 years ago, I had a phone consultation with Dr. Doug McGuff (
http://www.ultimate-exercise.com/) and he mentioned the occlusion studies to me for the first time. He mentioned that these techniques I was employing were perhaps creating an acidic environment inside the muscle, and that was probably one of the reasons they were working for me. He suggested that I read the Kaatsu studies, which I promptly reviewed.
The next year was spent trying to replicate occlusion by a variety of crazy techniques. The first idea was to raise the limb above the head so blood would not flow there so effectively. I tried stuff like doing cable biceps curls as high above my head as possible and other bizarre stuff but got nowhere. Keep in mind that there is no way I can accurately -and without external assistance- measure blood pressure while doing all this, so I am relying on the burn as a guide. Then it occurred to me that the exact opposite, i.e. lowering the limb as much as possible, creates a better burn. So I went from doing overhead curls to concentration curls, which did give a little better burn. Next step was combining the lowering of the limb with pressure around the major arteries by contorting yourself. In concentration curls for example, imagine curling with your right biceps but turning your upper body towards the right arm so that your right biceps is pressed against your right chest. Another way of doing this is resting your right elbow not on the inside of your right thigh as you normally would but on the outside of your left thigh. This produces an even better burn by making blood flow less efficient.
Now this was all burning a bit better than regular reps, but having also done sprints, I knew that no form of weight training was burning my legs the way uphill sprints were. So, I had a looong way to go to achieve the same kind of acidity. After another 3 months of experimenting, I realized that there was only one way of getting the same kind of burn that I was getting from the very fast, non-stop contractions produced by sprinting: the same kinds of very fast, non-stop contractions...
So I settled on what I described to Ron as "quick reps": I would do one set of 8-10 reps on the leg presses in conventional manner, then I would strip enough weight to be able to do another 10 reps and then I would reduce the weight again to do another 10 reps. Then I would jump of the machine and do the middle 10-15 inches of squats with just my own bodyweight as quickly as I possibly could. I mean really really fast... Also, I am keeping the quads under constant tension here. I would continue doing this until I would collapse to the floor. The burn this produces is out of this world and must be experienced to be believed. ACIT does NOT produce this kind of burning sensation, nothing comes even close (including ACIT). BTW, the reason I was first doing a regular set is that when moving fast you cannot hanle a lot of weight even if you are fresh. SO I did not want to completely give up the ability to use heavy weights...
One interesting aspect here is that you can literally feel some kind of "fire" being trapped inside your muscles and burning your muscles. Then when you stop moving, you can feel this fire traveling through your veins. If anyone had a surgery and was given an IV anesthesia, you know what it feels like to feel something going through your own veins. Outright spooky and proof that intense contractions really do occlude the muscle as it is only when you stop contracting that the "fire" starts traveling through your veins. Also, this suggests that even relatively light loads may be enough to occlude the muscles, as long as the load used is close to the maximum that can be handled at that fatigue level. Bodyweight squats are not heavy for a guy like me (I weigh around 172 pounds). But by the time I move to bodyweight squats, my legs are so tired that I can only squat my own weight, so I am trying as hard as possible.
After doing this for a while, two reasons made me add an additional quirk. First, I started thinking: "I am increasing acidity inside the muscle, but I am placing very light loads on the muscle while it is exposed to acidity. Do I not have to force a high load on it to take advantage of the acidic environment that I am creating?" Also, work commitments were getting pretty time-consuming. Plus, I knew from earlier experience that I could train each muscle very infrequently and still force growth. In earlier experiments, I had worked each muscle as little as once every 3 weeks and still gained size (provided that the workouts were brutal). So I thought: "OK, my sets are already very long and they are killing me but to make sure I take maximum advantage of the acidic milieu that I am creating, I can afford to extend them a bit more and reduce the training frequency to once / 3 weeks per muscle as I used to do before".
So in the end, here is what my leg training looked like. Set 1: Leg press 8-10 reps to failure, drop weight to do 10 more reps to failure, followed by "quick reps" using bodyweight squats until the legs absolutely gave up. Set 2: Exact same thing as set 1, immediately followed by 10 regular reps on the leg press with 10 second rest between each rep. Why 10 second rest between each rep? Due to the very scientific reason that otherwise I could not do any leg presses, I was just spent. Those two sets were all the quad training (I also trained claves) I did, but it was disgusting. I was barely able to move for the next 24 hours. The equivalent was done for other muscle groups. I would the same thing for biceps with barbell curls and finish with very quick reps by using 5 lbs dumbbells but moving them very fast throughout the middle ROM of the curling motion. Then I would do 10 reps, rest pause style again, with barbell curls...
Doing this for every muscle group once every 3 weeks, I grew muscle. I am absolutely certain of that as this is around the time I had the hydrostatic bodyfat analysis done. So, next time someone tells me they are doing HIT and training only once a week (which is what I did since I had divided the body into 3 workouts and was training once every week, i.e. each muscle once every 3 weeks) I don't question the validity of their training. However, I do not think that this is the optimal way to train...
At that point I started talking to Ron and little by little I started to experiment with other ways of achieving the same effect. The goal was to find a more humane and less brutal method. At first, I tried tying a band around the arms and legs, but very soon, I realized that this was a bad idea. It is impossible to apply the right amount of pressure and the skin gets very uncomfortably hot. Besides, you cannot do this to deltoids, chest or back muscles anyway. In legs, it is possible in theory but almost impossible for me in practice. The shape and size of the quads changes during movements such as squats and leg presses and the band either comes off or breaks or slips as you are descending. In any event, I soon tossed the idea and started to experiment with the much simpler but healthier and more effective method of jus contracting the muscles and limiting ROM during exercises. After another lengthy period of experimentation with that, the result is ACIT.
Thank you very much for reading and once again, a million thanks to Captain Ron for his help during this crazy journey...
Hunkar
