HIT theory is applied by extreme logic. Lots of things in this life are based on extreme logic. Problem is, life isn't based on logic. It works of some things and not others.
None of these bastards built their solid muscle by starting off with a 100%, non-waivering, exclusive HIT program. They already had their base. At that point, with the right amount of "assistance" just showing up to the gym would work. I don't give a shit what rep scheme you worked out.
There are so many, and they all work to some extent. Ironically enough, nobody can prove anything objectively, hence, the un-ending, un-exhaustible subjects and books.
Get u dumbass to the gym. Do it consistently. Stop flappin your lips and faggin off. Eat, sleep and shit. It will all work out, eventually.
Mentzer and his Jones-like theories are great for reading entertainment. For everyone of his logical factoids, there is someone in direct opposition to him and his "theories" that is huge and ripped.
STFU on this conversation already. He's dead. He's not even here to change his fucking mind.
Mentzer saw what a deload could do for people. For rank beginners, anything works since any workout will cause overload, thus the strength remarkably improves. Mentzer got it to where people were still getting this by his 1993 version, and by his 1996 version, he was tapering his clients again, but he thought he was finding out something enormous with constantly needing to reduce volume and frequency.
This is dead wrong. Like mentioned previously, he saw a tapering effect each time for the vast majority. He never supervised people training for long periods, and most guys that were success stories ended up coming on the net later talking about how they do more frequency now, something like DC training.
Now, the points are not all bad, you always want to do the minimum required for the best result at all times in just about everything in life. You would not tip someone 300 bucks for a 50 dollar meal would you?
Anyway, you would not do 100 sets if maybe 5 were getting you good results. It would be stupid in our case, because you would need to deload quicker than happening on the right volume for overload.
So, for our purposes, Mike was certainly right about doing what is minimally required and thinking about overtraining. Not OCDing about it, but at least understanding that diminishing returns will occur.
So, if you do, say, 12 sets for chest, why not 40 or 50? Thinking like this is applying HIT thinking, which lines up with just about every trainer in existence now, but it did not per the writings of the pre Jones era.
The biggest mistake I ever made with training was thinking that if a program was flawed, there was nothing else to get from it. Like, if Mentzer's split failed to work, I would go to Arnold's. If that did not work, I kept searching until I realized the objectives and what was happening with the body turned out to be exactly the same when any program worked.
