The Colorado Experiment

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ironKid

Guest
Have you read about 'The Colorado Experiment'. Aparently a guy called Casey Viator gained 63 pounds in just 4 weeks.  
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http://www.bodybuildingfanatic.com/coloradoexperiment.htm

Ok, I have to say that I don't trust much the results,  
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but  Casey Viator is for real. He was (and still is) the youngest ever person in winning Mr America at just 19 years of age. Outstanding genetics (and likely steroids) were involved. However there are some points that caught my attention:

- w/o lasted less than 30 min
- w/o were every 48 h
- an average of 10 sets per w/o

So there are some points common to HST. Did you know about this experiment?
 
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(Totentanz @ Nov. 18 2007,10:56)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Big deal, I gained 90 lbs in a month doing HST.</div>
did you grow a third tit during this time?

what was your bf before and after?
 
If I remember correctly the &quot;experiment&quot; took place after a long layoff for Casey due to an accident or something like that. So a lot of Casey's gains can be most likely be attributed to &quot;muscle memory&quot; as well.
 
Ellington Darden writes about the experiment in some of his books, the latest being The New High Intensity Training. Darden was a student and friend of Arthur Jones, the man who trained Casey Viator. Jones recently died this past August. He is responsible for the advent of weightlifting machines (Nautilus and MedX) and introducing the practice of low-volume workouts (1 to 2 sets), which spawned some of the research that HST rests upon. Before Arthur Jones most bodybuilders used multiple sets per bodypart. To give you an idea, Franco Columbo, another bodybuilder from that era and a friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger, did as many as 60 sets for his arms. Arthur Jones experimented with one to two sets usually done to complete failure and concluded that one set was as good or better than the high-volume approach of multiple sets. Ellington Darden was his student as were Mike and Ray Mentzer. Mike Mentzer went on to become a professional bodybuilder. He took Jones' ideas and began turning them into a system now known as High Intensity Training (HIT). There are several variations of HIT and most of them look like the workout Casey Viator used to get back in shape. A lot of people don't like HIT largely because of how dogmatic some HIT users are in expressing their views. The truth is that HIT and the people surrounding it - Jones, Darden, Mentzer - have been a major influence on how bodybuilders and scientists think about exercise. If it weren't for these three we might all still be doing 15 sets per bodypart and wondering why we won't grow.

Casey Viator performed HIT-like training. As did Sergio Olivia (defeated Arnold Schwarzenegger), Mike Mentzer, Boyer Coe, and at some point in his career, Dorian Yates (responsible for the current super freak era). While HIT does work it is an older system and not as research based as HST and Max-Stim.

Arthur Jones died this summer from natural causes. Mike and Ray Mentzer both died from a genetic heart deformity. Ellington Darden is the last one. He runs a small website forum dedicated to HIT thinking. Here is the link:

http://www.drdarden.com/
 
The take home point is that there is no point in considering this &quot;Colorado Experiment&quot; when doing your own training. Even if his results were genuine, there are still a ton of other things to consider: coming after a very long layoff, muscle memory from all the weight he had lost and the tons of drugs he would have to be on to do this.
Not only that, but to gain 63 lbs in 4 weeks would require an enormous amount of food. You would not be able to have a job or any kind of life, you would just eat all day long.

Looking at his before and after photos does NOT look like 63 lbs. Yeah, it's a pretty impressive transformation, but that AIN'T NO ****ING 63 LBS.
 
HIT Contributions to Bodybuilding:

1. Whole body routines - training the entire body in one workout.
2. One to two sets per body part.
3. Training to failure.
4. Brief workouts lasting less than an hour.
5. Eccentric lifting for hypertrophy (also known as &quot;negatives&quot;).
6. Doing repetitions at a prescribed cadence. Doing a two second positive with a four second negative, for example.
7. Periodical lay offs from training.

You'll recognize that some of these contributions are present in HST today. The following are taken from the Official HST Method:

1. One to two sets done to failure: &quot;Sets will be limited to 1-2 per exercise. There is no problem with a single set per body part as long as it is a maximum effort and/or the rep tempo and form is strictly controlled or the weight is extremely heavy preventing further sets.&quot;

2. Whole body routines: &quot;Each muscle group should be loaded 3 times per week.&quot;

3. Use of negatives: &quot;HST utilizes, when practical, eccentric workouts for 2 consecutive weeks. &quot;

4. Occasional lay offs: &quot;Following each 6-8 week cycle, a one-week period of Strategic Deconditioning should be taken during which no, training should be performed.&quot;

The above components are all part of HST because they are backed by research. However, in most instances the research was validating what HIT had already been prescribing for years before studies confirmed them. To give you a sense of contrast here is what bodybuilding routines typically looked like, pre-HIT:

1. Working out one or two bodyparts per workout, often doing 4 - 6 workouts per week.
2. Multiple sets per bodypart from 5 to 15, sometimes more.
3. Workouts often lasting more than an hour.
4. Eccentric lifts were unheard of.
5. Periodic lay offs were also unheard of. Bodybuilders often did more when results were not forthcoming.

Many people still lift like this. Some of them successfully, others not.

Know your roots.

-QP
 
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Looking at his before and after photos does NOT look like 63 lbs. Yeah, it's a pretty impressive transformation, but that AIN'T NO ****ING 63 LBS.</div>

I'd have to agree. The website is exaggerating perhaps as self-promotion or just misinformed (the telephone game effect, if you will). I was checking a different source just now. Darden puts the weight increase at approximately 45 lbs. And it was a bodyweight increase, not a lean body weight increase - though he does look pretty lean. According to Darden, Casey did mostly negative and negative-accentuated lifts. Darden also attributes much of the gains to the muscle memory effect as Casey was gaining back previous muscle. According to hearsay Jones was very much against the use of anabolics and didn't tolerate his trainees using them. He even kicked a few out for using them, supposedly. The one exception, according to Darden, was Sergio Olivia who was already using them when he asked for Jones' help in preparing for a contest that was only a few weeks away.
 
The whole thing was a genius promotional stunt orchestrated by Arthur Jones.

Casey was at his lightest bodyweight in years after an injury and layoff. He had shrunk from his former size dramatically. Arthur knew Casey had near-perfect genetics for bodybuilding and put on muscle better than 99.9% of the population and had won the Mr. America and Mr. Universe at an incredibly young age.

He was the perfect candidate to 'demonstrate' how HIT would put on tons of muscle. Of course he was on steroids and Mike Mentzer has publicly admitted this, being a close friend of Casey Viator, although Mentzer admits that Arthur Jones may not have known about the steroids, or (imo) chose to 'look the other way' and play ignorant for the experiment's sake.

Anyway, given the above background:
a)Casey had already shown he was gifted genetically by winning major bodybuilding contests at record-breaking age.
b)Casey had lost a ton of muscle prior to starting the experiment.
c)Casey was taking anabolic steroids.
d)He ate and slept like a king every day and trained like mad under Arthur Jones coaching.

It seems fairly obvious given the above factors that Casey would gain back all his previous muscular bodyweight very quickly following just about any non-retarded training routine.
 
I'll be posting a B&amp;A pic in a week or two: evidence of the strength of MM - I definitely shrunk in the two months away and am definitely almost my former size in ONE HST cycle, eating at maintenance only and not on AA's. (although I'm taking OTC Eblockers for a bit)
 
anecdotally, I gained 68lbs in 5 wks &amp; 6 days when I was 17.

in-patient rehab forced me to stop using meth &amp; simultaneously I hit puberty. the facility did have a weight room &amp; I ate like crazy. started that wrestling season competing @ 119 and finished it in the 171 class. still have the stretch marks...
 
hey quadancer, let us know when you post those pictures.

Thanks for the info guys, this confirm the relation between HIT and HST as I thought. I'm new at this and trying to learn as much as I possibly can.
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