High-Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer Way (NTC SPORTS/FITNESS)

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Mike Mentzer was a revolutionary in the bodybuilding world because he was the first to introduce concrete science. Even with a heart condition he was the only person to ever get a perfect 300/300 score at the Mister Olympia. He wrote the series to put an end to the ridiculous three hour workouts most people were doing at the time. This is why he advocated for taking every exercise to failure because it meant you only had to do one set not five. Fellas, I'll level with you. I'm utterly Mentzerpilled. The first three quarters of this book is Mike Mentzer systematically deconstructing every broscience myth you learned from the kid who "taught you lifting" at the field house. https://youtube.com/watch?v=BIEGhiEHc48 Video can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Fat Loss vs Muscle Gain Macros: How to Eat for Your Goals (https://youtube.com/watch?v=BIEGhiEHc48)

From a 167-pound barely heralded middleweight when he turned pro in 2002 to a 212-pound legend in the Pro League (2004-2020), David Henry dramatically transformed himself by Doggcrapping. DC places a primacy on continuous strength gains (typically in the 11-15 rep range). It shares with the high-intensity training of Jones and Mentzer minimal workout volume (one working set for most exercises) and an emphasis on journeying beyond failure, in DC’s case with rest-pause, drop sets, and static contractions. But it also diverges from the HIT of the previous decades by prescribing a greater training frequency (hitting bodyparts three times every 14 days) and the use of features like continuous exercise rotations. Why is Mentzer not an automatic legend in the eyes of some fans? His retirement and early death at the age of 49 meant that his contributions were limited. Mentzer won the heavyweight division at the 1979 Olympia and was tapped by many to become the sport’s next legend. Mentzer's training courses (books and audio tapes), sold through bodybuilding magazines, were extremely popular, beginning after Mentzer won the 1978 IFBB Mr. Universe contest. This contest gathered a lot of attention, because at it he became the first bodybuilder ever to receive a perfect 300 score from the judges. Some time later, Mentzer attracted more attention when he introduced Dorian Yates to high-intensity training, and put him through his first series of workouts in the early '90s. [8] Yates went on to win the Mr. Olympia six consecutive times, from 1992 to 1997. Dorian Yates typically did only one (all-out, beyond failure) working set per exercise, but this would sometimes be preceded by as many as three warmup sets, and his warmups, though of moderate intensity and (for him) weight, could resemble the hardest sets of others. This spawned a persistent myth, for many have watched him train in a video or in person and declared he did a normal amount of volume. (Similar gotcha declarations have been made about most HIT notables.) In fact, it only highlighted the gulf between his intensity and that of most bodybuilders, for when he trained at their level it was for him mere preparation for the one set that mattered. LOWER WORKOUT FREQUENCYHe counted his calories and did not feel the need to deprive himself of food he enjoyed. A full three decades before “If It Fits Your Macros” became a common mantra in the fitness industry, Mentzer wrote the following: Like Arthur Jones, Mike Mentzer emphasized the eccentric (negative) half of reps. One or more partners help raise the weight and then the HIT-trainer lowers it slowly to push sets beyond failure or for sets of eccentric-only reps. There was a negative training movement in the ’80s, with people doing entire workout routines of concentric-only reps. MIKE MENTZER’S FALL Mentzer was an Objectivist and insisted that philosophy and bodybuilding are one and the same, stating that "man is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of mind and body." His books therefore concern themselves equally with philosophy and bodybuilding. [4] Despite all of this, Menzter’s name is still held respectfully within the bodybuilding community. He is a legend despite never winning an Olympia title. Becoming Mike Mentzer What isn’t communicated in the workout above is the intensity Mentzer brought to his training. Typically he did only one or two sets per exercise. Using pre-fatigue and forced reps, Mentzer’s philosophy was simple — obliterate the muscles and then move on. His workouts were often 45 minutes in duration.

Modifying Jones’ principles somewhat (Mentzer used fewer reps), Mentzer became a high-intensity disciple. One of his earliest intensity routines — later dubbed his Heavy Duty routine — was as follows: (10) Day 1 (Chest, Shoulders, Triceps) In 1965, Mentzer traveled to the first Mr. Olympia contest with his dad’s old workout partner. ( 3) At the Olympia, two things happened. First, Mentzer encountered Larry Scott (the man who won the first two Olympia titles). Second, Mentzer decided that he, too, would one day become a Mr. Olympia. Mentzer advocates doing only 1 set of each exercise and training that set to failure with maximum intensity. But why is 1 set more rational than 2? If 1 is better than 0, why is 2 worse than 1? While Mike Mentzer served in the United States Air Force, he worked 12-hour shifts, and then followed that up with 'marathon workouts' as was the accepted standard in those days. In his first bodybuilding contest, he met the winner, Casey Viator. Mentzer learned that Viator trained in very high intensity (heavy weights for as many repetitions as possible, to total muscle fatigue), for very brief (20–45 minutes per session) and infrequent training sessions. Mentzer also learned that Viator almost exclusively worked out with the relatively new Nautilus machines, created and marketed by Arthur Jones in DeLand, Florida. Mentzer and Jones soon met and became friends. [11] Your final moderate-intensity warmup set should also be pushed to near-failure but with a lighter weight and higher reps (12-15) than your working set.For more than ten years, Mentzer's Heavy Duty program involved 7–9 sets per workout on a three-day-per-week schedule. [8] With the advent of "modern bodybuilding" (where bodybuilders became more massive than ever before) by the early 1990s, he ultimately modified that routine until there were fewer working sets and more days of rest. His first breakthrough became known as the 'Ideal (Principled) Routine', which was a fantastic step in minimal training. Outlined in High-Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer Way, fewer than five working sets were performed each session, and rest was emphasized, calling for 4–7 days of recovery before the next workout. [9] According to Mentzer, biologists and physiologists since the nineteenth century have known that hypertrophy is directly related to intensity, not duration, of effort (Mentzer 2003;39). Most bodybuilding and weightlifting authorities do not take into account the severe nature of the stress imposed by heavy, strenuous resistance exercise carried to the point of positive muscular failure. [8] One of the great lessons of this books is the importance of process and valuing small victories. We are trying not to be perfect but to constantly work at perfecting our process. We aren’t competing with anybody in the gym, we are competing with history and that narrative of our ego that makes us doubt ourselves. Mentzer, along with Jones and Viator, helped push a generation of bodybuilders to try high-intensity training. The best-known example of this was undoubtedly six-time Olympia winner Dorian Yates who entirely changed his approach after reading HIT works. Yates’ later ‘blood and guts’ routine was, in effect, a modified Mentzer approach. Nutritional Protocols With gyms re-opening I wanted to find a new way to weight train, while moving away from standard "bro" splits but something familiar enough that I could supplement my knowledge of weight training with it. It doesn't disappoint I came in looking for good advice from a legend, and was left with more knowledge and a new outlook on how I train. Jones wrought a fundamental change in how I thought about training, but an even greater influence was the one he had on my thinking,” Mentzer told the late bodybuilding journalist Peter McGough. “While my parents and teachers had paid what amounted to, in retrospect, only superficial lip service to the values of thought, logic, and reason, Arthur Jones was absolutely passionate about those values.” ( 6)

Mike Mentzer won the Mr. America in 1976, and, through the remainder of the decade, he wrote of increasingly more advanced techniques. In 1979 the rookie professional won a pro contest and the heavyweight class of the Mr. Olympia (there were two classes then); his brother, Ray, won the Mr. America, becoming the third HIT man to win the title in the ’70s; and their training partner Casey Viator finally made his pro debut. Mike Mentzer had coined a new term for his workout philosophy, “Heavy Duty,” and he was writing two booklets espousing his beliefs. High-intensity training seemed on the verge of transforming bodybuilding. Mike Mentzer crunches a Heavy-Duty most muscular. MORE ISN’T ALWAYS BETTERIn 1983, ace inventor and entrepreneur Arthur Jones recruited Mike and brother Ray (1979 Mr. America) to work with him on research projects he was undertaking at his Nautilus headquarters in Deland, Florida. However, things didn’t progress the way Mike had hoped, and after six months, he and Jones severed their business relationship. Joe Weider rehired Mike in the fall of that year, but after six months, Mentzer left to assume the editorship of workout , a newly launched magazine. ( 16) Like Darden and Leistner, Ken Hutchins was a protégé of Arthur Jones and employee of Nautilus. In the ’80s, he developed a high-intensity program of very slow reps (10 seconds down, 10 seconds up); and in the ’90s brief workouts of 2-8 sets of SuperSlow reps became a minor exercise fad. PARTIALS AND STATIC CONTRACTIONS The irony is, of course, that Mentzer did not come to believe in HIT by rational thinking, but he is driven entirely by empirical data. He saw buffed people train in a certain way, and he got buff training this way. Mentzer came to believe in a bodybuilding approach by observation and then stumbled upon Objectivism later on, then tried to justify his belief. He talks about how so much of bodybuilding training amounts to folklore, and how the idea "everyone responds to different training methods" doesn't make sense from a medical standpoint. He also took issue with people taking successful bodybuilders' words as gospel, but had the class not to point out that the primary authority on bodybuilding lore, Arnold Schwarzenegger, lied compulsively and for fun all the time.

Now for those who doubted Mentzer’s seriousness in making these claims, he reminded them of his 1979 Olympia diet: According to David M. Sears, a friend of Mentzer and an editor and publisher of his Muscles in Minutes book, he stated that: [4]Mike Mentzer was a complex and gifted man who left an indelible mark on the bodybuilding landscape,” McGough wrote. ( 17)