From High Intensity Training to Blood and Guts

The Genesis of a Legend: Arthur Jones

It all started with billionaire Arthur Jones. Jones was one of those strong characters that was unlike anyone else. In fact, if you cast him as the lead bad guy in a movie, he wouldn't have been out of place. The man imported crocodiles and elephants he personally caught in the wildest parts of Africa, on his personal Boeing, back to his estate in Florida, for fun. He described himself as being politically 64,000 miles to the right of Attila the Hun. Others described him as the last free man in America. He always packed a gun but never showed it, remarking, "If you see my gun, you've already committed suicide." His favorite motto was, "Younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles." But Jones wasn't always a rich man. In fact, he was so broke at one point that he didn't have a place to stay or anything to eat. He said, "You only learn from mistakes, and being homeless is the kind of mistake that gets your attention."

From High Intensity Training to Blood and Guts

Having grown up in a family of physicians, Jones read all his parents' medical literature and was always interested in bodybuilding, which he practiced on and off for a long period. Wanting to learn everything he could about the sport, he went out to California where "the experts" supposedly were. After spending some time with "the experts," he found out that they did not know any more than he did, so he developed his own style of training based on his scientific knowledge and general observations of nature.

Legend has it that Arthur formulated the High Intensity Training (HIT) theory while watching a gorilla do a one-arm pull-up with ease in the jungle, on one of his many trips to Africa. How could this animal be so strong? He concluded that in nature, animals don't exercise, but when they do, they use 100% of their power, in short, intense bursts.

His great insight was that it is not the volume of activity or work you are engaged in, but rather the intensity of it, and the resistance you encounter while doing it. One could not apply the same terminology used in physics to the human body. The term power, for example, is meaningless when applied to a human being. Power is the rate of work. Work involves movement. A muscle can work without moving, and therefore without producing power. But if you take a barbell and curl it to the mid-range position, can you stand and hold it there forever? Obviously not. According to the definition of work, you're not working. But that muscle is sure working. You'll find out very soon, as your muscle will get tired. So it isn't really the amount of work you do, but the resistance to it that causes the most stimulus. If you lift a pencil, you will move fast and do a lot of lifting, but if you lift a heavy, challenging weight, you will move slow.

Some of his most famous disciples were Casey Viator, winner of Mr. America and 3rd place in Mr. Olympia, Eddie Robinson, Mr. USA and long-time career powerlifter and bodybuilder, Mike Mentzer, Mr. America and Heavyweight 1st place at Mr. Olympia, and most famous of all, Dorian Yates, the best bodybuilder of all time and 6x Mr. Olympia.

The Colorado Experiment and Beyond

The first to try Jones's theory was Casey Viator. Together with Arthur and under the supervision of a doctor, they both went through the Colorado Experiment, a one-month-long training program using only Nautilus machines Jones invented himself and performing only the HIT method. Both Jones and Casey were coming from a period of inactivity, so muscle memory was involved in their gains, but still, results were impressive: Casey gained 63 pounds of muscle, while Jones gained 15. After hearing about these results and studying the technique, even some professional football players from the Denver Broncos, Buffalo Bills, and Miami Dolphins incorporated HIT into their training with great results.

As one of the top bodybuilders in the '70s, Mike Mentzer also adopted HIT as his method of choice. He met Arthur Jones after fellow competitor Casey Viator introduced the two in 1971. Mentzer took HIT and applied it to his regime, going on to win Mr. America in 1976 and Mr. Olympia in 1979 in the heavyweight class. He later had an enormous influence on the young up-and-coming Dorian Yates, convincing him that growth stimulus is not related to the volume but rather to the quality of the workout. Later Mentzer was quoted as saying, "If more training is what produces results, then those who train the most would have the biggest muscles, but that is simply not true. If 20 sets are good, 40 would be even better, 80 even better, and 100 even better still. Just work 18 hours a day and in 3 months you'll look like Dorian Yates... well... we all know that's not possible!"

Dorian Yates and the Blood and Guts Revolution

Starting his professional career in 1982, Dorian Yates studied every material he could lay his hands on to improve his results. Through continuous research, he found out about Arthur Jones's High Intensity Training and Mike Mentzer's application of it in competitions. For him, it all seemed logical. The cause-and-effect relationship of intensity to results and also, critically, letting the muscles recover and rebuild before damaging them again, made sense to Dorian.

Dorian took the information and applied it to his own training, and as expected, it worked. If he trained more often or did more in the gym than Jones and Mentzer recommended, his progress would slow down or it would stop. As soon as he would cut back on the workload and made the workout shorter and more intense, he progressed. So it was pretty early on in his career that he learned to train. This helped him enormously, as with this method, he was able to compete professionally in a World Championship after just a year and a half of preparation, a time span that was never achieved before.

Slightly adapting HIT to a competitive regimen to cover all muscle groups, Yates morphed it into the infamous Blood and Guts program, the insane training method that was immortalized in the 1-hour documentary. Dorian incorporated Jones's key insight that the exercise movement consists of not just one phase - lifting - but three different phases: lifting (the positive), holding (the static), and lowering (the negative), and that each of these phases required different levels of power. If you can't lift it, you can still probably hold it, and if you can't hold it, you can still probably lower it. By emphasizing all three movements with flawless technique and with the help of a training partner to push him beyond his normal capacities, he achieved 100% failure and maximum intensity.

The Legacy of High Intensity Training

Dorian's hunger for success, combined with his razor-sharp focus and fixation on results, allowed him to present to the world a physique that was never seen before, unmatched in its mass and definition. His Blood and Guts regimen produced results that truly revolutionized the sport. By his own admission, looking back, Dorian is to this day impressed by what he was able to achieve using the High Intensity Training philosophy.