Pro Natural High-Intensity Training Bodybuilder, John Heart
John Heart (@MrAHeart and Insta: @mraheart) is a renowned bodybuilder, trainer and teacher within the fitness industry. He has won the title of Mr. America and Natural Mr. Universe. His primary platforms used for training/teaching include in-gym, YouTube, and all forms of social media including Facebook.
John currently trains in-gym clients in Los Angeles, California and manages his online presence through MrAmericaHeart.com. He is also the official online trainer of Mike Mentzer’s Heavy Duty Training System.
Listen to my Part 1 with John HERE
John’s Athletic Achievements/Highlights:
- 2013-present – Worldwide: Competed as WNBF Natural Professional Bodybuilder in 4 professional events, usually placing between 2nd – 6th
- 2013 – Secaucus, New Jersey: Won the Light Heavy & Overall title of INBF Mr.
America - 2012 – Secaucus, New Jersey: Won the Light Heavy class of INBF Mr. America
- 2001 – Los Angeles, California: Won Tall class of ABA Natural Mr. Universe
In this episode we dig into many of the questions you submitted regarding all of the nuances of high intensity training. We get into a lot of detail and address many of the hair splitting debates and questions within the industry.
In this episode, we cover:
- High Carb vs High Protein Diets
- Is SuperSlow less effective than other exercise protocols?
- Is time under load important for muscular failure and muscle reactivation
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- Listen to it on iTunes
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This episode is brought to you by VitalExercise.com, a one-of-kind personal training facility in the UK owned and run by world-class personal trainer, Ted Harrison. For over 30 years, Ted has been very successful in helping people achieve great results, and, if you’ve seen the blog posts for his episodes on this podcast, you’ve seen that he walks the walk. For 57, he looks amazing!
Operating from a HIT base, Ted uses an eclectic mix of training styles to optimise results for his clients. Ted put me through one of the best workouts of my life and is someone I go to for advice often.
To book a free consultation either at his facility in Essex in the UK or to find out more about his virtual coaching, which includes personalised training, nutritional and motivational advice, go here where you can fill in a contact form or phone Ted directly for more info.
Selected Links from the Episode
- Mr. America’s Shape-Up Series: The entire 5-part series here in one collection! ( Amazon US / Amazon UK )
- Physique 101: YOUR ideal physique in the shortest time possible! ( Amazon US / Amazon UK )
- HCL + Pepsin ( Amazon US / Amazon UK )
- Digestive Enzymes ( Amazon US / Amazon UK )
- Paleo Diet
- MyFitnessPal.com
- CalorieKing.com
- Katch-McArdle Formula
- Super Slow
- MedX Exercise Equipment
- Pistol squat
- Mr America Heart (John Heart YouTube)
- High Intensity Training
People Mentioned
- Dr Doug McGuff (Listen to my episodes with Doug here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4)
- Arthur Jones
- Mike Mentzer
- Drew Baye (Listen to my episodes with Drew here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7)
- Simon Shawcross (Listen to my episodes with Simon here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
- Jay Vincent (Listen to our episodes here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3)
- Skyler Tanner (Listen to my episodes with Skyler here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6)
- Joanne Sharkey
484 – Is SuperSlow the Holy Grail of HIT or an Overhyped Myth? Featuring Dagoberto Vila
107 – John Heart on How He Won Mr America At 48-Years-Old
Muscle Fibre Typing: Are you Training the Right Way?
Sanctimonious Jesus hater here but fellow deadlift fan. it’s great to hear that John uses pretty much exactly the same protocol on these lifts as me.
If it’s of any interest to listeners that train HIT at home I’ve come up with a pretty good system for squats. I follow Drew’s instructions for body weight squats but load up with a sandbag. It’s much more comfortable on the back than a bar and crucially you can dump it backwards at failure without annihilating the floor/furniture/yourself. Obviously you’re not going to be using really heavy loads that way, save that for the deadlift!
One other thing, although John’s diet has/is/seems “low protein” I think in terms of grams per day it’s probably pretty high compared to the general population. Obviously genetics play a huge role too, if I can share an anecdote, a good friend of mine is jacked without doing any formal exercise. He’s also pretty much a vegetarian, I wonder how his body maintains his muscle mass on what is essentially a bread based diet!
Great conversation, guys! The comments on deadlifts and your opinion on how to incorporate them into our workouts were great. I’ve just started adding these in and appreciate the info.
“Kind of fun to pursue mastery” – love that!
Also, good job clarifying the meaning of the words you were using when you talked about “unloading” v. “resetting.” There are many stupid arguments people get into because they’re using the same words, but mean different things by them, and fail to make sure they understand each other.
Man am i confused more than ever! I was basically doing a real slow cadence with tut no more than 3 min. If it went passed 3 min i would have to make the exercise harder. If tut isn’t important do you Lawrence still keep your workouts 15 minutes? I watched your youtube video of the pushups and other exercises, the cadence looks pretty slow. Are you still doing a slow cadence but not worrying about tut?
Interesting comments on squats and deadlifts. I enjoy both exercises. I prefer squats to the leg press because they hit more muscle, and I can use a little bit longer range of motion. But I will not do either exercise to failure, avoid grinding reps like the plague, and am not even a fan of slow tempo/constant tension reps for those exercises. The problem with the fatigue to failure approach is that the low back is a weak link in the chain (for me). Can’t afford to fatigue the spinal muscles and tweak the back. For me, it feels safer to use a traditional lifting tempo, and then do multiple sets, not to failure.
Last work out for example, I did 6 sets of 5 reps with 220-LBS, 3 minutes rest between sets. It sure takes longer than a single set to failure on the leg press. I do this once a week. Can’t say for sure that this higher volume approach has lead to any further muscle gains (though my legs look a little more defined than before). But what I can say is that after using this sub failure, higher volume approach for several months, my legs just feel a lot more ‘springy’. Really noticed it when I do get on the elliptical for some occasional cardio. I feel more like sprinting than plodding along.
As for slow, controlled turn-arounds and paused squats: These pauses and starts from a dead stop do make the exercises harder, you can’t move as much weight. That does make the exercise safer. But I think the reason the exercise feels harder is because you can’t take advantage of the stretch-reflex response when changing direction from the eccentric to the concentric. And what the stretch reflex response does is to allow you to do a better job of recruiting muscle fiber. That is why you can use more weight. So safety considerations aside, the argument could be made that a dynamic turnaround is actually better for purposes of recruiting and fatiguing muscle.
Nice read! Thanks for the information.