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

Product Information

Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bill Dobbins. The new encyclopedia of modern bodybuilding (Simon and Schuster, 1998), 205.

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] 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. While in school, Mentzer's father motivated his academic performance by providing him with various kinds of inducements, from a baseball glove to hard cash. Years later, Mike said that his father "unwittingly ... was inculcating in me an appreciation of capitalism." [4]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. This book changed the way I train substantially, but not only that, also my philosophy towards it, everything makes so much sense and follows logic, I don't overtrain anymore, 2 days a week is all I need, no stress about having to go 4 times a week, just true hard work and plenty of rest to let the muscles repair and grow. 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) According to David M. Sears, a friend of Mentzer and an editor and publisher of his Muscles in Minutes book, he stated that: [4] If you feel you can attempt a second set, then you couldn’t have been pulling out all the stops during the first set.” — Dorian Yates DORIAN YATES’ HIGH-INTENSITY WORKOUT BASICS

Mentzer's book inspires to put one's mind into full use in bodybuilding. The part of the book that I enjoyed the most was the analogy with NASA: putting a man on the moon was a result of careful preparation and planning - so should also one's attitude be towards bodybuilding. 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. I seem to be reading some very counterintuitive stuff at the moment...suits me, that's the way forward. When Mentzer first began training, he had a simple goal in mind — to look like five-time Mr. Universe Bill Pearl. ( 8) Doing what anyone else did in a time before the internet, he turned to fitness magazines for advice.Mike Mentzer was a complex and gifted man who left an indelible mark on the bodybuilding landscape,” McGough wrote. ( 17) For modern trainees, Mentzer’s life and writings should act as a call to arms to question everything, discover what is best for one’s body, and, more importantly, train with purpose and intensity. That alone makes Mentzer a worthy bodybuilding legend. References Mentzer retired from competitive bodybuilding after the 1980 Mr. Olympia at the age of 29. He maintained that the contest results were predetermined in favor of Schwarzenegger, and held this opinion throughout his life. While Mentzer never claimed he should have won, he maintained that Schwarzenegger should not have. Nevertheless, the two eventually had an amicable relationship. [6] [4] Legacy [ edit ]

Jones pioneered the principles of high-intensity training in the late 1960s. He emphasized the need to maintain perfectly strict form, move the weights in a slow and controlled manner, work the muscles to complete failure (positive and negative), and avoid overtraining. Casey Viator saw fantastic results training under the direction of Jones, and Mentzer became very interested in this training philosophy. [11] Eventually, however, Mentzer concluded that even Jones was not completely applying his own principles, so Mentzer began investigating a more full application of them. He began training clients in a near-experimental manner, evaluating the perfect number of repetitions, exercises, and days of rest to achieve maximum benefits. [8] Until his retirement in 1980, Mentzer was one of the sport’s most controversial and fascinating stars. In a five-year period, he won Mr. America and Mr. Universe titles, won the heavyweight division at the Olympia, and, perhaps most importantly, stood out against the typical bodybuilding approaches of his age. Heavy Duty Training Around the time Dorian Yates made his pro bodybuilding debut, a rehabilitated Mike Mentzer returned to the bodybuilding scene. Over the next few years, as Yates validated Heavy Duty, Mentzer launched a personal training business, revised and expanded on his high-intensity theories in bodybuilding magazines, and published Heavy Duty II: Mind and Body. Even as his legacy, bound to Yates, grew, his writings, bound to Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, grew more arcane and his recommendations, no longer bound to his own training, grew more extreme, such as working bodyparts with only one or two all-out sets every two weeks. SUPERSLOW TRAINING 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] After years of essentially starting and stopping again and being bored with weight training reading this book reignited that love I had for weight training and the allure of bodybuilding. The book at first is what you expect from a weight training guide. For the most part its a book about lifting advice and principals. But unexpectedly the book then morphs into an almost philosophical insight into the mind of a bodybuilder.

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) Since every title winner was training six days a week for at least two hours a day, who was I to question such practices? These guys were my heroes, so I followed suit,” Mentzer wrote in his book Intensity, Insights and Insults: How Mike Mentzer Changed Bodybuilding.“For a young man of 15 with no real responsibilities and a superabundance of energy, such training didn’t seem all that demanding.” ( 9)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=oG_aCnrVeuI Video can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Mike and Ray Mentzer train Boyer Coe (HIT) (https://youtube.com/watch?v=oG_aCnrVeuI) Mentzer died on June 10, 2001, in Rolling Hills, California. He was found dead in his apartment, due to heart complications, by his younger brother and fellow bodybuilder Ray Mentzer. Two days later, Ray died from complications from his long battle with Berger's disease. [2] See also [ edit ]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. At that time, Jones was first beginning to promote his high-intensity training protocols. Viator was one of Jones’ most famous “guinea pigs” and won that year’s Mr. America by a handsome margin. Impressed, Mentzer approached him and asked for help. Viator put him in touch with Arthur Jones, who transformed Mentzer’s thinking. 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. He disregards the belief that people are different and get better results from different methodologies. He says no, there is an objective truth. Human beings' muscles are fundamentally the same and they all obey the same laws of nature. Therefore his approach should only be practiced since it's the only approach that's rational. First, he neutered the Junior Mr. America and earned first place at 190 pounds. Then, he took third at the 1975 Mr. America, stepping on stage cut at 195. He placed behind Roger Callard and Robby Robinson.