If you are visiting this page, you may have been directed here from one of our other sites. We have a firm and continuing commitment to the privacy of personal information provided by those visiting and interacting with any website controlled by High Intensity Business and have created this policy to apply across our various websites and apps.
We hold the privacy of your personal information in the highest regard and this privacy notice provides you with details of how we collect and process your personal data through your use of our sites to enable you to make informed decisions about your personal information.
By providing us with your data, you warrant to us that you are over 13 years of age
When we talk about ‘us’ ‘we’ or ‘our’, we mean High Intensity Business or Corporate Warrior Ltd, 11 Ingleby Road, Ilford, Essex, UK, IG1 4RX and we are the operator of the website from which you accessed this privacy policy and any other websites or apps controlled by High Intensity Business (collectively ‘website’). We are the data controller and we are responsible for your personal data.
When we talk about ‘you’, we mean you as a participant or user of this website or services of this website.
‘Personal information’ is information that directly identifies you, such as your name and email address, or data that could be used, on its own or in combination with other data, to identify you.
It is very important that the information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please let us know if at any time your personal information changes by issuing a ticket at support [email protected]
1. Staying Anonymous
You can browse our online services anonymously. However, if you request information, sign up for our communications or podcast or purchase any of our products or services, you will need to identify yourself and at that point we will collect your personal information. If you do not give personal information to us, it will affect our ability to provide you with requested information or to deliver our products or services.
2. Collecting personal information
At all times we aim to only collect the minimum information we need for the services we are providing and to only use the information for the purpose it has been provided. For example, if you sign up to our newsletter, we will collect and use your email address to send our newsletter. As you would expect, the more involved you are with us, the more information about you we will collect.
There are some unusual terms in new legislation that affect how we tell you about the way we manage your personal information. One is letting you know the ‘lawful ground’ for what we do. This just means we are letting you know that there is a provision in the legislation that says it is alright for us to collect or use your information for a purpose that is considered a ‘legitimate interest’ of our business.
The main way we collect information about you is when you give it to us and this can happen in a variety of ways. We may process the following categories of personal information about you:
- Communication data: which includes any communication that you send to us. This might be when you join our mailing list or when you contact us through the contact form on our website, through email, text, social media messaging, social media posting or any other communication that you send us. Communication data may also include geographical data if you enable this within our app so that we can send you communications relevant to your geographical location. We process this data for the purposes of communicating with you, for record keeping and for the establishment, pursuance or defence of legal claims. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interest in replying to communications sent to us, keeping appropriate records and to establish, pursue or defend legal claims.
- Customer Data: which includes data you give to us when you purchase goods and/or services from us including any of our business training programs or events. This will include basic information about you and the information we require for billing purposes such as your name, title, billing address, delivery address email address, phone number, contact details, purchase details and your card details (last digits only). We use third party services for processing payments such as PayPal, EWay and Stripe and we do not receive or store your full card payment information. We process this data to supply the goods and/or services you have expressed an interest in or purchased and to keep records of such transactions. Our lawful ground for this processing is the performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps at your request to enter into that contract and our legitimate business interest of keeping records for accounting purposes.
- User Data: which includes data about how you use our website and any online services together with any data that you post for publication on our website or through other online services. We process this data to operate our website and ensure relevant content is provided to you, to ensure the security of our website, to maintain back-ups of our website and/or databases and to enable publication and administration of our website, other online services and business. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interest in properly administering our website and our business.
- Technical Data: which includes data about your use of our website and online services such as your IP address, your login data, details about your browser, length of visit to pages on our website, page views and navigation paths, details about the number of times you use our website, time zone settings and other technology on the devices you use to access our website. The source of this data is from our analytics tracking system. We process this data to analyse your use of our website and other online services, to administer and protect our business and website, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and to understand the effectiveness of our advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interest in properly administering our website and our business and to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy.
- Marketing Data: which includes data about your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences. We process this data to enable you to partake in our online services, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of this advertising. We may use surveys or contests to request information and you are not required to enter or use these services. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interest in studying how customers use our products/services, developing our products, growing our business and to decide our marketing strategy.
- We may use Customer Data, User Data, Technical Data and Marketing Data to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you (including Facebook adverts, YouTube advertising or other display advertisements) and to measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve you. We may use pixels for retargeting to do this. Our lawful ground for this processing is legitimate interest in growing our business. We may also use such data to send other marketing communications to you. Our lawful ground for this processing is either consent or legitimate interests (namely to grow our business).
3. Collecting information from third parties
As discussed above, we collect personal information about you when you give it to us and when it is collected by our website however we may also collect personal information that is given to us or available to us by a third party (for example, information that is on a publicly maintained record or that you have made available on a public platform).
We may automatically collect certain data from you as you use our website by using cookies and similar technologies.
We may receive data from third parties such as analytics providers like Google, advertising networks such as Facebook, information providers such as Google, providers of technical, payment and delivery services, such as data brokers or aggregators. These third parties may be within the EU or outside of the EU.
This information forms part of the personal information described in this policy. We will not intentionally collect personal information that is unintentionally disclosed.
4. Collecting sensitive information
We do not intend to collect sensitive information about you and request you never disclose information about your health, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs or sexual orientation on our website or any blog or social media account associated with our website or business. If you include your photograph in our online forum please be aware that other forum users may make assumptions about your racial or ethnic background.
5. Children’s privacy
Our services are not designed to be used by minors under the age of 13 and we do not intend to collect information about such minors. We will make reasonable endeavours to delete any details of users under the age of 13 years where a parent or guardian has notified us that any such details have been obtained. By providing us with your data, you warrant to us you are over the age of 13. If you are over 13 but under 18 you may be able to use our services however only with permission and guidance from your parents or guardian and we request that their personal information be used not yours.
6. Testimonials
If you provide us with a testimonial, you give us your consent for the use of your name, likeness and the date of service delivery to be displayed on our website or in our other marketing material, together with the content of the testimonial that you provide. We may edit your testimonial but will only do so where possible without changing the meaning of what you have said. We may store and/or use your testimonial for a period of up to 7 years from the date it is given. We process this information based on your consent which you may withdraw.
7. Marketing Communications
Our lawful ground of processing your personal data to send you marketing communications is either your consent or our legitimate interests (namely to grow our business). Sometimes we may recommend sharing your information with a third party for their marketing purposes. Before we share your personal data with any third party for their own marketing purposes we will get your express consent.
You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or by emailing us.
If you opt out of receiving marketing communications, this opt-out does not apply to personal data provided for other transactions such as purchases.
8. Social Networking Services and links to other websites
You can connect with us via our social media pages on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn.
We may provide links to other websites or use social networking services to communicate with the public about our work. When you communicate with us using these services we may collect your personal information. The social networking service will also handle your personal information for its own purposes and have their own privacy policies. You should become familiar with the privacy policies of any service you use.
9. How we use Cookies and other identifiers
We use a range of tools provided by third parties including our website host, third party service providers and search engine browsers to collect or view access and traffic information for statistical, reporting and maintenance purposes. Third party providers have their own privacy policies. We also may also use tracking pixels, cookies and session tools to improve your experience when accessing our online services.
The data collected by cookies does not usually identify you but may be combined with other information to identify you. If we identify you using information from cookies, we may use that information to track how you use our online services and send you information more specific to your needs, or to invite you to purchase our services.
The kind of information that can be collected includes:
- device specific information such as mobile network information
- server logs including your IP address, the times you use our services and system activity
- location information including IP address, GPS, and Wi-Fi access points
- local storage availability
We use the information to help to track your use of our online services to improve your user experience and the quality of our services.
10. Use and disclosure of personal information
In summary, as a legitimate business interest, the personal information we collect about you is used:
- to verify your identity
- to enable you to use our services
- to process orders, registrations and enquiries
- to provide you with information about events, products and services that may interest you
- to provide you with personalised service or special opportunities
- to allow you to participate in interactive features of our online services
- to run competitions, prize draws, and promotions (if any)
- to facilitate our internal business operations
- to improve our products or services and in planning new products or services
- to conducting market research surveys
- to monitor compliance with our Terms and Conditions.
With your consent or at your request we may:
- share your contact information with third party organisations who offer products or services that may be of interest to you (if you agree to receive such information)
We never sell, lend or lease your identifiable personal information.
We may also disclose your information to:
- Other companies in our group who provide services to us.
- Third party suppliers we engage to provide services which involve processing data on our behalf, for example IT and system administration services. In this case, we will require them to use that information only for the purpose of providing the services we have requested, and in compliance with the provisions of this privacy policy.
- Payment third parties if there is a dispute over a payment. For example if PayPal contacts us regarding a dispute over a payment, we will provide PayPal with user activity information such as IP address and activity linked to the IP address, billing details on our system etc to allow the payment dispute to be resolved.
- Professional advisers including accountants, lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers.
- Government bodies that require us to report processing activities.
- Third parties where we are required to in accordance with the law and reserve the right to fully co-operate with any law enforcement authorities or court order requiring or requesting us to disclose the identity or other usage details of any user of our online services, or in accordance with a properly executed court order, or as otherwise required to do so by law.
11. Security and overseas recipients
We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure to industry standards however no system can be 100% secure and, provided we have acted in accordance with this policy, we are not responsible for loss you may suffer should your personal information be unlawfully accessed. Using the Internet to collect and process personal data necessarily involves the transmission of data on an international basis.
Not all countries have the same level of privacy protection as the country within which you reside. You acknowledge and agree to our processing of personal data across international borders in this way. We will do our best to ensure your data is protected to a similar standard as set out in this policy by using third party providers with similar privacy protections.
We will also take reasonable steps to protect all personal information within our direct control from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, unlawful or accidental destruction, modification or disclosure. To prevent unauthorised access or disclosure we use respected hosting services, firewall and other electronic security procedures and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect from you.
We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach if we are legally required to.
12. Opt-out/ unsubscribe
If we provide you with the opportunity to receive information about products or services from other carefully selected organisations (our business partners) about the products or services they offer, and you elect to do so, you can change your preferences at any time using the unsubscribe function within their emails.
Similarly, our marketing emails/newsletters will also have an unsubscribe option if you would like to opt-out. You can also update your subscription settings if you are a subscriber.
If you continue to receive communications you have unsubscribed from, please contact us by issuing a ticket at support [email protected] and we will remedy the problem.
13. Data retention
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
When deciding what the correct time is to keep the data for we look at its amount, nature and sensitivity, potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the processing purposes, if these can be achieved by other means and legal requirements.
For tax purposes the law requires us to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for five years after they stop being customers.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
14. Third Party Links
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins, applications and advertisements. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements or content. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.
15. Updates
We regularly review and may update our privacy policy from time to time. The updated provisions will apply from the date they are posted on our website, so we recommend that you re-visit this privacy policy when you use our online services.
16. Accessing and correcting your personal information – Your legal rights
Under data protection laws you have rights in relation to your personal data that include the right to request access, correction, erasure, restriction, transfer, to object to processing, to portability of data and (where the lawful ground of processing is consent) to withdraw consent (note: some of these rights only attach to individuals located within the EU).
You can see more about these rights at: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us by issuing a ticket at support [email protected]
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive or refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response. For record keeping purposes, we will record and store all information exchanged during an exercise of your rights under this clause. These records will be stored securely and separate from our main active business systems.
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you.
If you request to have your information erased (also known as the right to be forgotten), we will, if appropriate, delete your personal information from our active business operating system. Your personal information will however continue to be stored within our backup(s) as we are unable to delete specific items from our backup. It will be deleted at the next scheduled backup deletion. We will keep a log of your request to be forgotten so that, should our backup be used to restore our operating system while your personal information is still stored, your personal information will again be removed from our active system upon restoration.
If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office in your country. For instance, in the UK contact the Information Commissioner Office at www.ico.org.uk. We would be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you.
167 – James Steele, PhD – The Problems With Measuring “Effort” In Resistance Training Science
157 – Should I Bulk Up?
61 – James Steele PhD – The Real Truth About Maximizing Muscle Gain
I respect your ability/courage to challenge both the guest and yourself by asking questions you know the anwser opposes your view. I like and follow Menno because he is a smart guy and prevides very interesting perspectives, but these opposing views on training are really outside of my comfort zone, it’s a lot to take in.
A question to you Lawrence:
Have the previous podcast guests managed to convince you to try to up your food intake? up to about 5%(what Menno mentioned), basically doing a very slow and controlled geek to freak experiment? Through your questions I get the feeling you might want to try it.
In terms of question of the day: I started my training a little more than 1 year ago and did HIT all the way. I would like to experiment with higher volumes and frequencies, but I am afraid I will do all of those sets to failure, so I have to unlearn that. So far, 2x week fullbody of ~8-9 exercises has not prevented me from gaining muscle! I gained 20-21 lbs so far(with alternating calorie surplus/deficit phases) and can gain quite a bit more at my 6’3 180 lbs frame. Whether I need higher volume for that remains to be seen still.
Lastly the cunningham equation vastly overestimates energy expenditure for me it seems, but you linked a fun to play with calculator.
Thank you Julien. I definitely am interested in experimenting with a marginally higher food intake. But I don’t believe it would make any difference to my lean mass.
Well done on your progress Julian. So 20lb gain over 1 year of full-body twice weekly?
That is correct, around 8-10 exercises, sometimes as much as 12 exercises to work neck and forearms. Mostly machines.
I don’t think I could have gained this in this time period if I did not also accept some fat gain during my surplus phases as well. I don’t know if higher volume training would have allowed me to gain more quickly, but progress is progress. Also, as I have seen with other people, muscle gain is a slow process.
Hi Menno & Lawrence, – very interesting podcast – Menno clearly knows the science as well as extensive practical experience on the coaching side. As per Julien’s comment below, this does take me out of my comfort zone a bit – I think most of us listening to this blog find the thought of not going to failure each time quite challenging.. But, to be fair Menno did seem to think that doing a full-body routine twice per week of 1 set to failure would still just about be sufficient to move from an intermediate to an advanced stage. Here’s my question to you though Menno: you echoed Brad’s view that the most important factor of all (other than a relatively high level of effort) is the number of sets per muscle group per week. And as per Brad’s recent research you also feel it is a minimum of 10 sets per muscle group per week – regardless of how this is spread throughout the week? But this just does not feel right to me: I currently am only able to workout once per week: so in order to optimise volume for the week surely I would not need to do 10 sets of chest exercises for example? Similarly, if I am someone who wants to do a full body workout every day, and I do 1 or 2 sets per muscle group every day at a relatively high level of effort (but not to failure), and get my 10 sets per week in that way, surely that will not be optimal either? My point is that surely a muscle group if it is worked relatively hard one day (not necessarily to failure) will need a set amount of time to recover and then adapt before you can hit it again? I don’t understand how you and Brad equate potentially hitting a muscle group extremely hard on one day to chronically stressing it every day as long as it works out the same at the end of the week? It makes logical sense to me that there must be a certain minimum number of days that a muscle needs to recover after having been subjected to a certain threshold of stress, assuming proper sleep and nutrition in between workouts? For example, in the book Body by Science Dr Doug McGuff explains that after a ‘big 5’ 1 set to failure workout it takes 7 days for a particular muscle to recover and then adapt before it should be worked again. Is he right or wrong?
Hey Rob – I’ll ask Menno to comment but can’t promise!
If you’re doing 1 workout per week and you want to maximize muscle growth, you’d have to do all that volume in 1 session, yes. In fact, that is precisely what most bodybuilders do with their bro splits, only they do go to the gym much more frequently in total because they only train 1 muscle group per session (or that’s their idea at least).
Thanks for confirming your views on that Menno. I guess like many here, we’ll have to agree to disagree on whether we believe that much volume is required when you are implementing high levels of effort… Lawrence: just FYI I’ve just been listening to a podcast with Dr Keith Baar (former colleague of Stuart Phillips) on Guru Performance (Laurent Bannock), and he is strongly of the view that if you go to failure then 1 set is enough: since it is the signalling effect that is important: https://guruperformance.com/episode-38-nutrition-and-the-molecular-response-to-strength-training-with-keith-baar-phd/
He has also done a very interesting podcast with Danny at Sigma Nutrition about Tendon health & gelatin/ collagen supplementation. He would seem to be a prime candidate for Corporate Warrior: maybe you could ask him his views on Menno & Brad’s 10 sets/ muscle group/ week protocol?
Sounds like he’s ideal! I’ll certainly check out the podcasts. Cheers Rob!
Thank you for contributing Menno!
Your absolutely correct about the need to recover from your workouts but remember that recovery and growth are distinct processes that don’t occur simultaneously , and each must be given adequate time to manifest . I just don’t buy this 10 sets per bodypart minimum to maximize muscle development for a very simple reason . When you perform the first set of an exercise and take it to utter failure and then perform a second the performance ( number of reps ) will be reduced by a significant extent and so on it will be with further sets performed . The energy costs are going to be very significant with that first set if truly taken to failure and energy reserves are limited as well , intense muscular work with slow reps will fatigue you very rapidly ! This is the reason why a high number of sets 10 or more per bodypart can’t be performed unless you’re not taking the sets to complete failure .
That was an interesting episode. I find the minimalist lifestyle that he describes to be strangely fascinating and yet something I could never follow myself. A nice change of pace to hear from someone else that is way out on the spectrum of volume. I wonder, Lawrence, if you are even a little bit tempted to up the volume and back away from failure?
Hey Greg – thank you. I LOVE minimalism! Not yet. Still doesn’t quite make sense to me to back away from failure. I’m not sure if it would make the least bit of difference. Perhaps I’ll add that to the N=1 project list :D.
Firstly great podcast really enjoyed it. Lawrence your a great host and Menno definitely knows his stuff!
Do you think you can get close to your genetic potential without ever eating in a surplus? It seems to be me like for someone like me who doesn’t want to be huge but in relatively good shape should probably just eat at maintenance or below, would you agree with this?
What’s your view on cadence when lifting? Would you say those who lift with a slower cadence can get away with less volume?
Thanks Matt. Well define “huge”, because I certainly don’t want to be fat. I do agree with you that a calorie surplus doesn’t seem to be essential to optimise muscle gain though I open the door to people to show me evidence to the contrary. At least when I think about myself, I just noticed that the smallest calorie surplus just leads to fat gain for me.
Cadence is just one variable. Volume tolerance is based on genetics, intensity, volume and frequency. I personally do not use a preset cadence. I let my cadence be a by-product of smooth turnarounds and good form. My first few reps on most exercises are probably 4/4 and get longer as I fatigue. See my article here on this: https://highintensitybusiness.com/health-fitness/11-things-ive-learnt-about-high-intensity-training/
However, using a slower cadence, in most cases, especially in the difficult range of motion, will increase the intensity of the exercise and make you fatigue faster and thus necessitate less volume. I think you can get away with less volume as long as you’re still training to momentary muscular failure. Hopefully that makes sense?
Sorry ‘Huge’ is a little vague I basically meant bodybuilder like physique not that I have the genetics for it! Goal for me is more middleweight boxer like physique.
Yes that make sense thanks for the reply.
Did I hear correctly that Menno is writing a book? Could we get some more details on that?
Hi Slim, are you referring to his work on happiness and APEX living? I don’t think his book is out yet. I would follow him on his website and social media (above in post) to stay abreast of his latest work.
Book suggestion related to the philosophy topics you’ve covered: Infinite Moral Compass.