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

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lb of body weight? That's arbitrary. Use reason. Use Objectivism. A muscle is 22% protein. Eat 22% protein, and 63% carbs, and 15% ice cream." From 1990 until 2001, Mentzer once more became a recognizable expert on high-intensity training. He wrote multiple articles, created several training videos, and in part helped influence Dorian Yates’ Olympia training. According to David M. Sears, a friend of Mentzer and an editor and publisher of his Muscles in Minutes book, he stated that: [4] Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bill Dobbins. The new encyclopedia of modern bodybuilding (Simon and Schuster, 1998), 205.

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]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)

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.The last 25% of the book he talks about being a bodybuilder, likening it to being a warrior, and an Olympian, and reading Nietzsche for five hours precontest to get himself pumped up. 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. 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) This was a problem. During the 1950s and 1960s, workouts in fitness magazines were often high volume, high-frequency training programs that neglected to consider the genetic (and later chemical) advantages elite bodybuilders had.

Mentzer cut the number of sets he used and upped his intensity. The results were transformative, but life prevented Mentzer from truly showing them off. Due to both a shoulder injury and increasingly more responsibility in the Air Force, Mentzer was virtually inactive from bodybuilding until late 1974. (7) In their 1997 book Power Factor Training, Peter Sisco and John Little created a HIT program which utilizes partial reps. The following year, their book Static Contraction Training explains how to workout by holding a heavy weight steady. They advocated incredibly low volume: one workout per week lasting less than five minutes. Little’s Max Contraction program later topped SCT with even scanter workout time—10 seconds per week! We’d reached peak low volume, but was anyone growing from such little work? It was time to focus less on low volume and more on high intensity. BEYOND FAILURE TRAININGDiet has always been as important, if not more, than weight-training for bodybuilders. However, in his book Heavy Duty Nutrition, Mentzer demonstrated that nutrition for athletes did not need to be nearly as extreme as the bodybuilding industry would lead one to believe. His recommended diets were well balanced, and he espoused eating from all four food groups, totaling four servings each of high-quality grains and fruits, and two each of dairy and protein daily, all year-round. [10] Mentzer's empirical answer? Go balls-to-the-wall in the gym to the point of absolute muscular failure. If muscle increases size through repairing these microtears, make as many microtears as you can by pushing yourself to your physical limit. This is the premise of high-intensity training. Then, once you've done your whopping 25 minutes of 2 agonizing sets to failure per body part? Go home for a week. Don't come to the gym for 7 days. Read a book. A philosophy book. Start a salsa company. Hug your dog. Get a hobby that doesn't involve having the fellas oil you up. Cultivate your mind. 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. Note: Mentzer worked up to one all-out set of failure, typically lasting for six to nine reps for each movement listed above. Recent studies have vindicated Mike Mentzer, of course. A man who trains regularly can coast on three or more weeks of complete inactivity without any loss in muscle or strength.