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

Product Information

Mike Mentzer was born on November 15, 1951, in the Germantown section of Philadelphia and was of German descent. In grammar school and Ephrata High School, he received "all A's." He credits his 12th grade teacher, Elizabeth Schaub, for his "love of language, thought, and writing." In 1975, he started attending the University of Maryland as a pre-med student where his hours away from the gym were spent in the study of "genetics, physical chemistry, and organic chemistry." After three years of study at the University of Maryland he dropped out. He said his ultimate goal during that period was to become a psychiatrist. [4] [5] Bodybuilding career [ edit ] Amateur [ edit ] High-intensity training. What started as the mere musings of an eccentric inventor blossomed into a worldwide revolution. Motivated by the success of its most prominent adherents, multitudes of bodybuilders have tried high-intensity training through the decades, but few followed HIT’s strictest tenets for long. And yet from its origins in the early ’70s to the Heavy Duty ’80s to Dorian’s domination in the ’90s to the neo-HIT philosophies of the ’00s, high-intensity training has evolved, expanded, and influenced. Spanning a half-century, the story of high-intensity training features visionaries, zealots, sages, and cranks—and some who were all of the above. HIT men. It’s a story of triumphs and tragedies, the greatest victories and the most dispiriting defeats, of science and reason but also commerce and hyperbole, and, above all, the enduring quest to build a better way to build better bodies. (left-to-right) Casey Viator, Mike Mentzer, Ray Mentzer, HIT men. ARTHUR JONES His retirement in 1980, following Arnold’s controversial victory, disrupted these plans. Mentzer may have placed fifth in 1980, but there is no reason to believe he would not have finished higher, or even won the entire thing, in later years. In the late 1980s, Mentzer returned to training bodybuilders and writing for Iron Man magazine and spent much of the 1990s regaining his stature in the bodybuilding industry. Mentzer had met Dorian Yates in the 1980s and made an impression on Dorian's bodybuilding career. Years later, when Yates won Joe Weider's "Mr. Olympia", he credited Mike's "Heavy Duty" principles for his training. Mike, his brother Ray, and Dorian formed a clothing company called "MYM" for Mentzer Yates Mentzer, also known as "Heavy Duty Inc", in 1994. MYM was based on the success of Don Smith's "CrazeeWear" bodybuilding apparel. The three principals wanted to capitalize on the physically fit lifestyle, which today has gone mainstream. With the blessing and promotion of Joe Weider, the trio manufactured and distributed their own line of cut-and-sew sportswear. [4] Look at the evidence (as Mike would no doubt implore you). Pumping Iron is a video confessional of Arnold Schwarzenegger gaslighting his friends. Arnold excelled at bodybuilding, at acting, at governating, ESPECIALLY at PR, but his first and truest love was always recreational psyops.

As wonderful as it may be to have a well-developed physique, without the ability to think logically and effectively about a subject to which you have been passionately committed, you are, in effect, consigning yourself to living as one half of a human being." 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 Dom Mazetti is not an empiricist, or even a bodybuilder. He's technically not even real, and everything he says is satire. So you can't treat him as a source of lifting knowledge. Muscle and Fitness magazine is actually a worse source, because, like Mike Matthews said in Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, if they told you the truth you'd never have to buy more than one magazine.

Developed by Paul Delia, Maximum Overload Training prescribes moderately low volume (six to nine sets per bodypart), 30-40-minute workouts, and low-reps with basic exercises. Max-OT advocates using weights so heavy that failure is reached in no more than six reps but diverges from high-intensity training in cautioning not to go beyond failure. This system peaked in popularity when its most prominent practitioners, drug-tested bodybuilders Skip LaCour and Jeff Willet, won the overall IFBB Team Universe Championships in 2002 and 2003, respectively. When doing working sets, aim for complete failure at 6-8 reps and extend beyond failure with 2-3 forced reps, rest-pause reps, or drop set reps. 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 Mentzer helped revolutionize bodybuilding training when, along with Jones and later Dorian Yates, he promoted an all-out intensity approach in training. Mentzer was a man unconcerned with what others expected of him. His books on bodybuilding, like Heavy Duty, were littered with philosophical passages and encouraged readers to think deeply.

Note: Mentzer worked up to one all-out set of failure, typically lasting for six to nine reps for each movement listed above.The result? Even though he placed second, Mentzer was generally considered to be the most defined competitor in the contest.( 15)

In 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) Mike Mentzer, Heavy Duty (originally published 1993). Available from Mike Mentzer.com. http://www.mikementzer.com/hdchap1.htmlMentzer followed the bodybuilding concepts developed by Arthur Jones and endeavored to perfect them. Through years of study, observation, knowledge of stress physiology, the most up-to-date scientific information available, and careful use of his reasoning abilities, Mentzer devised and successfully implemented his own theory of bodybuilding. Mentzer's theories are intended to help a drug-free person achieve his or her full genetic potential within the shortest amount of time. [8] Dove head-first into this book along with Mike Mentzer's audio tapes, thinking that I would only become more knowledgeable about the body, training, and bodybuilding. A high-intensity trainer, bodybuilder Mark Dugdale competed in the IFBB Pro League from 2005-17. Dugdale did anywhere from four to nine sets per bodypart, some of them rest-pause, some low-rep (six to eight), and some Doggcrapp widowmakers—a final blow-out set of 20-30 reps. For a week in 2007, he trained under Dorian Yates’ supervision in Temple Gym. Hammer Strength pulldowns: Yates trains Dugdale in Temple. / YouTube DOGGCRAPP TRAINING If you’re skeptical [of Heavy Duty’s low volume], your subconscious child is telling you that more is better. In some cases, that’s true. More money is better than less. But you can’t take that principle and blindly apply it to exercise and expect to get anything out of it.” — Mike Mentzer HEAVY DUTY WORKOUT BASICS Mike Mentzer menade på att det fanns tre olika typer av styrka: den positiva kontraktionen, statisk styrka och negativa repetitioner. Om man faktiskt ärligt tränar till failure innebär det oftast enbart att den första och svagaste styrkenivån – positiva kontraktionen – inte klarar mer påfrestning. Om du klarar 70kg i benspark, klarar du antagligen att hålla 100kg i toppositionen ett tag, och du klarar antagligen att med någorlunda kontroll den excentriska delen av rörelsen. Dessa siffror är påhittade men summan av kardemumman är att för att uppnå äkta muskulär failure måste även den excentriska styrkan vara slutkörd.

Just as Casey Viator was introduced to high-intensity training at the ’70 America, Viator introduced it to fellow 19-year-old bodybuilder Mike Mentzer at the ’71 America. Within days, the latter teen had phoned Arthur Jones and revamped his workouts. While a collegiate pre-med major, Mentzer used himself as the subject for workout experiments. Returning to the stage in ’75, he impressed magazine publisher Joe Weider and was soon penning articles for Muscle Builder & Power on his own high-intensity workout tenets (his first article was on “Contraction Control Training”). Mentzer started bodybuilding when he was 11 years old at a body weight of 95lb (43kg) after seeing the men on the covers of several muscle magazines. His father had bought him a set of weights and an instruction booklet. The booklet suggested that he train no more than three days a week, so Mike did just that. By age 15, his body weight had reached 165lb (75kg), at which Mike could bench press 370lb (170kg) [ citation needed]. Mike's goal at the time was to look like his bodybuilding hero, Bill Pearl. After graduating high school, Mentzer served four years in the United States Air Force. It was during this time he started working out over three hours a day, six days a week. [4]Why did people listen to Mentzer? He wrote clearly and coherently. More importantly, he was phenomenal during his bodybuilding career. In 1978 he achieved a perfect score at the Mr. Universe contest. He turned professional the next year and won the heavyweight division of the Mr. Olympia contest. He only lost the overall to Frank Zane. So he's a dork, but he's credentialed. Let's give it a try. I'll hop on High Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer way for a few months, and if I'm shredded to the bone and 5'8" by June, we'll know it worked. Rest-pause is another method of transcending failure. Mike Mentzer had a unique method of doing rest-pause. He advised doing a set of four to six maximum reps with rests of 10-15 seconds between reps (and a 20% weight reduction near the end), so, in essence, the set would be a series of all-out singles. 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.