The Golden Era of Bodybuilding was a time in the late 1970s and early 1980s when bodybuilding was at its peak. It was a time of innovation, experimentation and discovery, and the bodybuilders of the time were some of the most muscular and impressive specimens in the sport's history. The key principles that made bodybuilding so successful in this period were high-intensity training (HIT) and periodization. HIT was based on the idea of pushing the body to its limits with hard and intense workouts, while periodization was the idea of breaking the workout up into smaller units and varying the intensity and volume of the training. These principles were the cornerstone of the Golden Era of Bodybuilding and they remain the foundation of bodybuilding today.