A New and Unique Training Method is Here

Sub7

New Member
Dear Fellow Posters,

The Web Site for Accelerated Inroad Training or simply ACIT is now ready for your review. As the co-developer of the technique, I believe that this is a revolutionary method of resistance training and definitely worth taking a look at. As the name implies, ACIT is a means of achieving a tremendous degree of inroading and intensity in an incredibly short period of time and will therefore give the trainee a chance to work very hard with much less risk of overtraining.

please check it out at www.acit-training.com

As you will notice, the site is entirely non-commercial. We offer absolutely nothing for sale, are not hoping to generate revenue via advertising or cross-linking and are only trying to foster intelligent discussion as well as help develop a means that will bring us all a step closer to the greater muscle mass we are looking for.

Further, it is not our intention to compete or prove superiority to HIT, HST or any other method. As experience clearly shows, no method works for all the trainees all the time, no matter how much scientific backing it has. Therefore, we are keeping our expectations realistic and hope that ACIT will prove to be a useful addition to the thinking lifter's arsenal as a potent mass builder.

I would like to thank you for your time in advance and am looking forward to hearing your opinions.

Best regards,

Hunkar Ozyasar
 
I think dkm1987 could give a formal retort here. IMO "The Fundamentals" on your site suffers from all of the fallacies of HIT. More like "Fundamentally wrong."

You make the classic mistake of conflating fatigue with growth numerous times throughout the paper.

As has been said:

The conventional notion is that you must work to momentary muscular failure before all fiber types will receive a growth stimulus. The mechanical load principle, however, states that all muscle fiber types participate when the muscles are exposed to heavy enough loads. Recruitment patterns involved in lifting weights heavy enough to cause hypertrophy activate all fibers, both fast and slow.

Keep in mind that "failure" is an indicator of central fatigue, not muscle strain. If you want to increase your resistance to fatigue, train to failure all the time. If you're only interested in effectively straining the muscle so that it'll get bigger, just focus on that and get past the idea that you have to go all out on every set.

It is commonly misunderstood that muscle failure is the stimulus for muscle growth. Intuitively, it makes sense. How can someone not sustain growth if they are working to the very limits of their capacity? Unfortunately, this is not true! The tension (load) on the muscle is what actually causes growth, especially during the eccentric action of the rep. One can go to failure, yet the load can still be too light to induce hypertrophy.

If progressive load, rather than chronic fatigue, is the primary stimulus for tissue hypertrophy, it isn’t necessary to “train to failure” if hypertrophy is the objective.

HST does not require that you train to failure because that prevents you from training frequently enough. It’s better to train according to the recovery of the muscle (48 hours) than according to the CNS (up to a week or longer).

Failure" is an indication of exhuastion, not activation. A motor unit can be activated without failing. If the weight is heavy enough, all motor units will participate.

Yes, the reason you avoid training to failure and especially using "forced reps" is to avoid undue CNS drain. After all, "fatigue" is not what makes you grow. Taining to exhaustion only delays your next workout, thus slowing your ability to grow. However, if strength is your goal rather than growth, you should "generally" be using a 2/week schedule rather than 3/week anyway. I say general because it changes as fatigue should be periodized.

As for training to "failure" begin required to elevate protein synthesis, it isn't. Training to failure is a neurological issue, not a metabolic issue.

Protein synthesis is elevated simply from loading a muscle either actively or passively. No actual contractions are required, hence my argument that contracting a muscle to failure isn't necessary to increase protein synthesis rates.
 
"You make the classic mistake of conflating fatigue with growth numerous times throughout the paper." I respectfully disagree...

The failure one reaches during ACIT has a very different nature than when fails with a conventional set as I have tried to explain. The main goal in ACIT is not to fail. It is to create an environment where maximal rate coding of all fibers will occur as soon as possible. If one needed to summarize the entire method in one sentence, that would be it.

And by the way, yes the issue of failure has been emphasized on the ACIT web page and yes, I know that this may offend some people, especially here. But if one wanted to ry ACIT without taking the sets to failure, that would certainly work, too. One problem would be to assess how far to go in the set, but with careful calculation one could possibly benefit from ACIT not to failure. The reason I personally think one should go to failure in ACIT is

1) Failure is much gentler on the CNS and other systems when using ACIT, hence it is much less dangerous from an overtraining point

2) The distance between "comfortable" to "failure" is much shorter than usual. One goes from being able to easily lift the weight to failing very quickly, hence the name "Accelerated Inroad Training" since inroading is very accelerated. So, it is hard to know where during that process to stop since the process of deeper inroading is occuring so fast.

Best regards...
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Sub7 @ Dec. 19 2005,6:19)]
"You make the classic mistake of conflating fatigue with growth numerous times throughout the paper." This is not a hard one to give evidence for. Here goes:

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]By the end of such a set, you can be sure that you have thoroughly exhausted and worked all of your fibers, including the large and strong FT fibers which have the most growth potential. This is the reason you grow more from doing just one set of heavy barbell curls to failure than you would from stacking the shelves with bottles for hours.
Sounds like you're equating fatigue with gowth to me. You're saying the heavier weight recruited the FT fibers, but because it "thourougly exhausted" them since the set was done "to failure." Is this why you grow more? Or is it because the barbell produces more tension, regardless of the fatigue?

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]This is also the reason those last few reps are the most important. Doing 3 sets of 6 reps when you could have performed 9 or 10 each time is not going to give you the same growth as doing just one set but performing as many reps as you possibly could because in the first instance you do not get the high rate coding and maximal utilization of the all-important FT fibers. In other words, you will never really work your big and heavy FT fibers hard by stopping short of failure.
Doesn't get any clearer than this. This is exactly what I'm talking about. You make no mention of absolute load, but just talk of failure. If the load is heavy enough, you certainly can work all of your FT fibers without going to failure. And working all of them in 3 sets of 6 reps will expose them to that tension (growth stimulus) for longer than one set of 9 or 10 reps to failure would.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Now that’s all good and fine, but is it good enough? Have the FT fibers really been sufficiently [/b]exhausted[/b]? Will they really grow as much as they possibly could after that one single set of barbell curls?
You're seriously telling me that you're no conflating the two here?

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]When I was able to lift 90 lbs at the beginning of the set and terminate the set when I am able to lift only 75 lbs, the amount of inroading I have achieved is 15 lbs (if I can do an entire set with 80 lbs, my strength during the first rep is likely more than 80 lbs, say 90 lbs for this example). When you think about it, I have not really worked the heavy and strong FT fibers that much then, have I?
Yes, you have. If the load was heavy enough, you worked the "heavy and strong FT fibers" with every rep.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I can simply ask my partner to help me perform 3-5 more reps. He can push the barbell up while I try to lift so that the actual amount of weight I have to move goes down from 80 to maybe 50 lbs. When I can not continue to move despite his assistance, I know that I don’t even have 50 lbs of strength left in me. Good, now I have achieved a deeper state of inroading –namely 40 lbs- and I can be sure that I have worked my muscles even harder. Those dang FT fibers which are lazy and join in only when absolutely required had to join in a great deal more and are more likely to grow now.
Since they were fatigued more, they're more likely to grow? And fatigued with less tension even? Once again, a clear case where you're equating fatigue with growth.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Do you remember what my main problem was with doing only a single set taken to failure? It was the fact that the FT fibers joined in only at the last possible moment and were highly active (to be more accurate, they achieved a sufficiently high rate coding) only during the last 1 or two reps. So they worked hard for just around 5 seconds or so; not enough to make them grow.
Once again, with a sufficient load the FT fibers do not only join in during the last rep or two. All fiber types are recruited from rep one.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]So after finishing such a set, I can put the weight down, rest 1-3 minutes and do another set just like the one before. Now the FT fibers got another 5 seconds or so of good work. Then another set taken to failure and so on. In the end, whether I perform only a couple of sets taken beyond failure or many more sets taken to just failure, I will have worked my FT fibers long enough and hard enough to force growth.
Again, fatigue/failure = growth. Yes, you are saying that. Wrong on two counts here: First of all, you'll work the FT fibers the entire time under tension with a decent load. Second of all, working them doesn't simply "force growth." You can train to failure (repeatedly)with a weight that doesn't produce enough tension to stimulate growth (cause sufficient microtrauma), especially after adapting to the load (RBE).

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]People take recovery-enhancing supplements, refuse to even lift a finger outside of their workouts to conserve valuable recovery resources, refrain from partying, but at the end of the day, very few can avoid the dreaded plateau that comes from overtraining.
Yeah, especially when you take every set to failure (or beyond) because you've been told that that's the only way to "force growth." A good way to fry your CNS. I wonder where people get these ideas.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]When you look at the picture above, you will see that most of the problem comes from the way our muscles were designed. As a bodybuilder, my dilemma is that I wish to work the FT fibers because they are the ones that have the greatest potential for growth. However, those dang FT fibers will not activate until the ST fibers and all other intermediate fibers have been thoroughly worked and I am in a very exhausted state. So each time I want to work the FT fibers, even if it is just a little bit, I must spend a load of time and energy going through all the STs and intermediates because this is just the way we are designed.
The goal of ACIT is to get full recruitment faster... but it's based on a bad premise. Once again, you get full recruitment without going to failure (or using ACIT techniques) with a sufficient load. This obviates the "solution" and means there is no "problem."
 
Why is ACIT/Occlusion preferrable to HST ?

i.e. If I'm going to try this/alter what I do, why should it be this?
 
Sorry, I really don't have a lot to say about it.

IMOO, some of what is in ACIT is very true, mostly the metabolic cost of contraction stuff. I am firm believer that both tension and metabolic stress is needed in humans and I personally don't see how acheiving optimal hypertrophy can be hand without both. Too many things go awry when you remove tension and too many things go awry when you try and remove metabolic stress.
 
Jester, I think the way to implement ACIT with HST is something along the lines of trying the short range of motion with increased tension during the middle of each cycle, preferably where you are around 40-60% of that RM rep range? I have no idea. I got lost through the first page, I'm still trying to understand the concept. Maybe Sub7 can tell us how to add it in while still adhering to HST principles.

pzhang
 
First off I am moving this to a more appropriate forum.

Noobie, if you are performing 15's correctly you are already doing a form of ACIT.

Here's the thing guys, ACIT is really only a means of increasing the metabolic fatigue value in a muscle via a quasi occlusion setup, using the muscle's own tension to occlude bood flow, this in turn gets higher rate coding from type II fibers and, even with the lower weight, get's them activated faster. SO it may be a more joint friendly way of getting hypertrophy.

Sub7 and Ron have a very long post at my forum on the issue, which is supposed to be back up and running today(keeping fingers crossed), and there are also several discussions on KAATSU training as well.

Dan
 
Conciliator,
Full recruitment is one thing and maximal rate coding is another thing. When you are using a heavy weight, all fiber including FTs may be recruited from the very first rep, but they will certainly not reach maximal rate coding until much later in the set. My understanding of muscle phsyiology is that reaching max rate coding is a desirable thing if it can be done without excessive CNS stress and this is why ACIT was developed in the first place.

If it is your conclusion that FT recruitment at any rate coding is as good as FT recruitment at max rate coding, then you may not want to use ACIT or never approach failure in any of your sets. If that is working, fine really. But it appears that a lot of non-meathhead trainees are finding it neccesary to approach or outright reach failure and reap the benefits of higher rate coding. Dan, who is much much more educated about these matters than I am put it very nicely:

"Here's the thing guys, ACIT is really only a means of increasing the metabolic fatigue value in a muscle via a quasi occlusion setup, using the muscle's own tension to occlude bood flow, this in turn gets higher rate coding from type II fibers and, even with the lower weight, get's them activated faster. SO it may be a more joint friendly way of getting hypertrophy."

Also this comment of his says it nicely:

"IMOO, some of what is in ACIT is very true, mostly the metabolic cost of contraction stuff. I am firm believer that both tension and metabolic stress is needed in humans and I personally don't see how acheiving optimal hypertrophy can be hand without both. Too many things go awry when you remove tension and too many things go awry when you try and remove metabolic stress."

perhaps I should use the word "metabolic stress" as he did for greater clarity.

And, yes, you have provided sufficient proof that I am equating fatigue with growth. If this is a crime, I am guilty. In my mind that equation is not all that clear because I personally like to think of max rate coding as a growth stimulus, and FT fibers, recruited at max rate coding do fatigue. So yes, put the two together and I do draw an association between fatigue and growth.

Finally, I don't think I will be able to show "how to add it in while still adhering to HST principles". What I suggest is that those who are open to new ideas try to work a single muscle group with ACIT, as explained in the "HOW TO" section on the web site. Just try it for a single bodypart. With all respect to HST, it is impossible to learn something new without stepping outside the boundaries of a particular "system" first.

Thanks to all for their time

Sub7
 
This sounds like how I'd imagine Brian Johnston's J-reps are supposed to be.

Just out of curiosity, was there any influence there, or do you have any idea what I'm talking about?
 
Btw, I'll give thoughts in general on ACIT training, based on my reading over the past hour or so:

Firstly, I'd ditch the whole inroading angle. The term 'inroading' is a pretty nonsensical term invented by HITers, and if you don't want to be associated with that cult following of cultists, there's no need to use it.

What you are doing, or trying to do, basically, is maximize the amount of occlusion you can generate within normal exercises via some novelty, e.g. limiting ROM to areas of a strength curve of an exercise that present a significant enough tension stimulus, doing so-called 'continuous' sets, and contracting hard during an eccentric.

Your rationale for why this works is that you'll better tap into the FT fibers (or, as you put it, get them (along with all the other fibers) to experience increased rate coding as quickly as possible). That's probably true, though I'm not sure you even need to explain it like that for it to make sense. What you're doing, really, is exaggerating oxidative/metabolic stress within a normal set, which studies like the occlusion ones you cite demonstrate to be quite effective, in principle.

On paper, this is an interesting idea, and all you're really advocating is a new way of performing a set to maximize the growth stimulus within the context of a given set. Even so, you're still writing about this as if you're selling something, and it come across that way, and is going to turn a lot of people off imho.

The problem you face is the leap you're making between 'studies have shown that clinically controlled vascular occlusion seems to produce a lot of effect' to 'by sort of increasing the amount of occlusion you experience by doing a few tricks, you will experience some degree of success as if you were providing occlusion as the researchers did.'

The problem is that you're not providing occlusion as the researchers did, and there's really no way to quantify or even particularly guess how much more effective this is in the short run. The other problem is that for all the focus on vascular occlusion, you're still going to run into all the problems everyone faces in terms of growth in the long run. And agreeing with Bryan about the overall dominance of tension in growth, what will ultimately cap your potential growth is the amount of (increase in) tension you experience on your musculature over time. Stated less like a nerd, lifting heavier #### over time.

So in the least I'd still make sure people need to understand that, first and foremost, success should be gauged by how much they're increasing how much they're lifting, even within the context of these ACIT reps.

That's all my thoughts on the topic for now. :p
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (mikeynov @ Dec. 21 2005,2:58)]That's all my thoughts on the topic for now.
Great to see you posting, Mikey.  I always appreciate how well you are able to express sometimes complicated stuff in simple terms.  Thanks!
 
I would have preferred to just have a link for explanation in lieu of taking it onto the HST boards. We've got enough stuff to deal with...just HST, much less some "new way" of doing some "old thing" that didn't appeal to me back then. LOL

Build a website..."they will come".

worship.gif
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (domineaux @ Dec. 21 2005,6:09)]I would have preferred to just have a link for explanation in lieu of taking it onto the HST boards. We've got enough stuff to deal with...just HST, much less some "new way" of doing some "old thing" that didn't appeal to me back then. LOL
Build a website..."they will come".
worship.gif
What I put up on the very first post on this thread is a web site, no? Here it is again:

www.acit-training.com
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (mikeynov @ Dec. 21 2005,1:33)]This sounds like how I'd imagine Brian Johnston's J-reps are supposed to be.
Just out of curiosity, was there any influence there, or do you have any idea what I'm talking about?
I've heard the term "J-Reps" a few times but have no idea what it is or for how long it has been out. However, I and Ron have been discussing ACIT for quite a while on other boards. I certainly have not received any input/inspiration from J-Reps while developing ACIT as I am not in the least aware what it is and to the best of my knowledge neither has Ron...

Hunkar
 
what i can tell u jreps are amazing after 2 sets the muscles are worked extremely without failure the best i have used since 15 years .have never experienced it.you can implement it with the principles of hst .it is not about frquency sets etc it is to work the muscles through the least amount of sets for me and otheres after 2 sets your muscles explode without any drain on cns .there is no intensity tecniques in there
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Sub7 @ Dec. 21 2005,11:43)]
[b said:
Quote[/b] (mikeynov @ Dec. 21 2005,1:33)]This sounds like how I'd imagine Brian Johnston's J-reps are supposed to be.
Just out of curiosity, was there any influence there, or do you have any idea what I'm talking about?
I've heard the term "J-Reps" a few times but have no idea what it is or for how long it has been out. However, I and Ron have been discussing ACIT for quite a while on other boards. I certainly have not received any input/inspiration from J-Reps while developing ACIT as I am not in the least aware what it is and to the best of my knowledge neither has Ron...
Hunkar
I'm a fan of the Ron, if you could point me towards any in-depth discussions of all of this at some forum(s), I'd enjoy playing too :p
 
Michael, there is a long thread at my forum but unfortunatley my forum is still down, once it's up again I'll point you too it.
 
Back
Top