Yes, that was another thing that I didn't much like in the two books of his that I read in the 1980s. I have always favored a longer rest between sets to make sure that it was anaerobic rather than aerobic failure that ended the set. I realize that Darden, as well as Jones, liked moving quickly from set to set (as does Doug McGuff, who wrote Body By Science), and I understand that it offers both a cardio and metabolic advantage, but it's a bit much. I prefer doing my interval cardio later to get that part of the health benefit. Going forward, do you see yourself moving from set to set in such quick fashion in your workouts?
Please feel free to share anything else of note that you learned that might be useful info for the rest of us.
" However, he said that you can only build muscle if you're sitting on your ass the rest of the week. If you're filling in your rest days with cardio and/or sports, the most you can hope to achieve is to maintain the muscle you already have." That seems counter intuitive. I wonder what the physiology underlying that is.
Not counterintuitive at all. It suggests that other activity should be minimized to allow for full recovery and overcompensation from the workouts. So my guess is that the frequency has to be less if you also want to engage in other meaningful activity. However, I'm still awaiting Baron's response for clarification. (Perhaps he's still recovering. )
Let's hope Baron is okay. I didn't like reading that he was disturbed how he felt after this workout. Last time I felt "disturbed" leaving the gym I was in the ER and hour later. Yes, I'm a beat up old guy, but anyone can over do it. Hope you're okay Baron
So I went through my next ultra-high-intense workout session yesterday. After the 4th set, I had to stop because I thought I was going to puke. This time he had me start off with legs and then move to the upper body. I did a leg curl set, a leg press set, and a calf set. No rest between sets. At this point I'm breathing deep and uncontrollably like I just sprinted to failure. Once I did a set on the pullover machine for the back, the room started spinning. I had to lay face down on the floor breathing into a paper bag. It still blows me away to think that only 4 sets could do that. This HIT shit is no joke. Ellington said I felt like that because I was literally high on oxygen.. meaning that my body wasn't used to that level of oxygen intake due to the crazy rapid breathing. It's the fact that there's no rest between sets that's killing me. I have no problem pushing myself to the max, but with no rest at all, once my heart rate and breathing get elevated due to something like set to negative failure on the leg press, I feel like I can never catch my breath after that. It's probably just something that takes getting used to.
I'd be interested to know if this is a format that you find sustainable over time. Please keep us apprised. Also, I wonder what the beneficial effect is supposed to be in going from exercise to exercise without resting in between, especially when doing so for different muscle groups. I can readily see the cardio benefit, but I'm not sure how this is supposed to benefit muscle growth.