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John Robert Cardillo

John Robert Cardillo

John travelled the world to learn the best training and nutrition principles and trained alongside top pro bodybuilders at Gold's Gym California. He was a student of Arthur Jones, inventor of Nautilus and Medx Fitness machines, and the pioneer of hi-intensity training. John developed the HIT3 Training System, which transformed his physique to win countless bodybuilding competitions at just 18 years of age! He was also the first bodybuilder to utilize Faradic Electric Muscle Stimulation in his training and intermittent fasting during his competition prep. John’s SHREDDED Nutrition Diet helped him build one of the most shredded physiques of all time. His diet program incorporates fasting and nutrient timing to help athletes build lean muscle while losing body fat.

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How many Sets per Exercise vs How Many Exercises Per Body part are recommend for Hi-Intensity Training? By John Robert Cardillo

You must use a weight that is heavy enough to allow you to perform 8 strict repetitions within your strength ability. Then through sheer determination and motivation you must push yourself to perform several more repetitions where you attempt to complete a total of 10 or more. 

One would naturally ask, “Wouldn’t resting a few minutes and doing a second set or more sets of the same exercise be more beneficial?” The answer is “NO”. Resting for even 10 seconds would allow the muscle fibers used in the first set to recuperate and by doing a second set you would be in essence injuring the already stimulated myofibrils causing overtraining. For example, if you were out in the sun for a period of time and got a severe sunburn, the worst thing you could do would be to rest for a half hour out of the sun and then go back in the hot sun to burn some more. The stimulus of the sun’s rays could cause serious 2nd degree burns. However, had you not gone in the sun again that day and stayed out of the sun for the next 72 to 96 hours, your skin would have time to recuperate and start forming a tan as a response to protect itself from more sun stimulation

How Many Exercises?

The size of a particular body part and it’s biomechanical attachments dictate the number of sets required to fully stimulate the muscle fibres for growth. For example, the large quadriceps muscles can be stimulated from 3 positions. The first is a direct isolation movement on a leg extension machine. The second is a compound movement on a 45 degree leg press machine. The third is the back squat; a compound movement which brings into play strong auxiliary muscles, namely glutes and spinal erectors. The logic for starting with the leg extension, followed by the 45 degree leg press, is to thoroughly pre-exhaust the quadriceps before doing squats. This is because, had we started with squats first, the lower lumbar and glutes would have failed (reached painful exhaustion) before the stronger quadriceps muscles. Therefore, the set of squats would have had to be terminated before the quadriceps were thoroughly stimulated and reached muscular failure. By doing squats last, having pushed the quadriceps to momentary muscular failure by doing the first 2 exercises, it hits the quadriceps harder because of the fresher auxiliary muscles.

Smaller body parts such as biceps or calves can be worked from 2 or 3 angles, performing 2 or 3 sets in total to stimulate the greatest amount of growth. For more on recovery and the anti-aging process, visit this link.

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