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. 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. The Sandwich, ‘Mike Mentzer,’ Ironman, 1 November 2001. https://www.ironmanmagazine.com/mike-mentzer/ I came into this book looking for a comprehensive way to train. Until recently I didn't have a foundation to lose the weight and keep it off after a few knee injuries saw my weight balloon.

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) Mike Mentzer (November 15, 1951–June 10, 2001) was an American IFBB professional bodybuilder, businessman and author. [4] [2] Early life and education [ edit ] 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 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 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.

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. 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 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.

Peter McGough, ‘The Mike Mentzer Story,’ The Barbell (originally published in Flex Magazine, 1995). https://www.thebarbell.com/the-mike-mentzer-story/ 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. In 1985 Workout ceased publishing, Mentzer’s father died, and his near-decade-long relationship with Cathy Gelfo ended. The next several years worsened his mental health. Dealing with personal traumas and a narcotics dependency (he began taking amphetamines in 1979), Mentzer spent a great deal of time in and out of the hospital. It was not until 1990, when he ended his use of amphetamines, that his life slowly improved.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] Mentzer's tips on weight training make a lot of sense, it's difficult to argue with what he says when you can see the results throughout the book, and I've started training using his method - too early to say whether it works or not, though am already stepping up the amounts of weight I can lift.