The intent of the original thread was to make aware those on the Dr Darden forum with an interest in Nautilus/HIT and it’s history of Mike’s re-creation of the original experiment using pretty much the same workouts and machines.
Whilst questions would inevitably arise from the post , that was not the primary purpose of it.
Hence my use of the word hijacked.
Mark
== Scott==
I assume this is a dig at hitters as no one from your group, whatever that is , could ever say such a thing! This is a fine example of an unwarranted attitude against people who employ HIT on this site. The sad thing is HIT employs many different methods many of which I’m sure a lot of you folks use. HIT is High Intensity Training, nothing more. HIT isn’t Nautilus only or Jones or Darden only, it’s roughly anything where the intensity is high .
I don’t think any of the posters here really have anything against HIT. Echo chambers are silly though, and silly stuff gets called out.
So is Westside style conjugate HIT? Or Deep Water?
I
== Scott ==
I don’t know why I waste my breath on here?
It’s almost like a nature of man meets modern communication thing.
Like this:
Group 1: Here’s something we hold sacred and take very seriously!
Group 2: draws a dick on it
Group 1: Hey! This is very serious!
Group 2: draws a dick on that too
And so on.
I’m not trying to be a dick, you seem like a good guy with plenty to contribute.
I’m just pointing out that HIT is a very, very, very niche style of training, in a hobby filled with niches. Its definitely not “anything that uses high intensity”. Notice i mentioned nothing about its efficacy.
Because we are all going to die one day. Why not have some laughs along the way?
I know I don’t speak just for myself on this, but I remember buying bodybuilding magazines and being given workout advice from so-called experts and from champion bodybuilders then following that advice and getting little if any results. I was told to drink this or eat that. Use these pills and powders. If in the end you fail, blame genetics or maybe, you just didn’t work hard enough or follow the advice correctly. As a kid I believed that these guys were drug free (why would they lie to me?) and were simply genetic freaks.
Well, now we know it was all Weider sponsored BS. The point being, we all have good reason to be skeptical of any claims regarding bodybuilding. A guy puts on over 60 pounds of muscle in a month and, lost fat? In order to make it believable the claim of muscle memory being responsible is the caveat? There is one way to counter the skepticism: repeat the experiment under verifiable, transparent conditions. Why hasn’t this been done already?
Isn’t that what Petrella and company just did? 3 ordinary guys repeated the workout program in the Colorado experiment, and nobody came close to gaining 60lbs of muscle, thus demonstrating that Viator’s exceptional results were unique to his particular situation, and unlikely to be replicated by ordinary people.
You and others have written that off, but I don’t really think Mike suffers from a lack of experience.
Being reviewed/published by a University, turned into the topic of podcast appearances, and likely being turned into an ebook.
Agreed. I think it’s bonkers that all three guys handled their own nutrition differently.
This would be a very interesting rabbit hole to go down in a thread of its own - the difference between ‘high intensity training’ and High Intensity Training. Might hopefully clear up some issues, miscommunications, and whatnot.
That is a very interesting and somewhat whimsical conclusion.
Unfortunately I don’t believe in superhumans, or magical programs.
I’ll tell you what I did though. A friend/lifting buddy was wanting to move more weight. So I showed him a broken/dirty version of a thing called “The Waterbury Method” where you take like 75-85% of your max and do 10 sets of 3 reps, as hard and fast as possible.
In 3 months he was a lot stronger.
Just like that. 
I’m not, and no one else should either. It is unbelievably easy for people to retake photos again and again in today’s day and age to get the same conditions as before.
The “before” photos should’ve had every detail meticulously recorded — stance, time of day, location of photograph, clothing, distance from subject, etc etc, and the “after” photos should’ve repeated those parameters to an absolute T. It was said they took the photos with their phones. How hard is it to look at the two photos and say, “Hey dude, you’re not standing the same, refer back to your original photo and take it again.”
I can’t comment on the actual experiment because I haven’t read it and thus have no criticisms aside from the photos, so don’t misconstrue this as an attack on HIT or Darden or Jones or whatever. But when you include before and after photos, and they are SO glaringly different — and not in a way that presents success — it comes off as, at best, lazy, or at worst, deceitful.
No. But I think his interests lie more with strength training, athletic performance, and power lifting. Physique photos are more of a bodybuilding thing. His name is not one that I associate with bodybuilding.
If a University publishes it, I expect to see a lot more detail. Then more critiques would be warranted. This was a Facebook post that got re-posted here by someone else, not an article that Petrella drafted for T-Nation or some other publication.
Its interesting you feel any negative feedback isn’t warranted because of the lack of detail provided. Do you feel the same about any positive feedback they’ve received?
Minus the transparent and verifiable part but…
This might assure the non-believers but I’m sure that the believers will find some flaws using the same argument I made about verifiable and transparent.
I should add that unique to Casey isn’t just muscle memory/genetics but some pharmaceutical help as well.
I haven’t disagreed with any of the critiques of the photograph. I haven’t endorsed any of the positive conclusions. I am suggesting that the criticisms of the photographic evidence, and the inferences about motives are overblown, given that this was a fairly short Facebook post that someone else re-posted here, and not an attempt by the author to provide a detailed report on the experiment.
The way Kevin Levrone used to shrink into a regular dude and then grow into a Mr Olympia competitor every year and then doing it again as an old timer is even more impressive to me than the Colorado Experiment.
Yep… but no magic training protocols, just tons of PEDs after a few months completely off.
S
I guess we will know how transparent they are if/when a more detailed report gets published. Maybe that happens, maybe not…
As for verifiable: how exactly is that accomplished? How much of what appears on T-Nation is verifiable in any real way?
If you find anyone who is taking the results of that Facebook post and using it to oversell HIT, maybe address your concerns to them directly.
Pharmaceutical help would certainly be part of Viator’s particular situation.