Anyone here follow Mike Mentzer? I wanna see the positive people and the negatives, Ive been following HIIT training for alittle now and im seeing GREAT gains, Legs are up and chest. Ill post my training routine if asked, Just want to see what others are doing. (: THANKS.
Always worked fantastic for me when chasing a strength/hypertrophy hybrid goal.
I will admit I’ve never tried a large volume approach for straight forward hypertrophy only training. HIIT was always good enough. I will say that sometimes I’d do a short 3rd set or go to a variant of 5x5 if I got bored. But usually I train quite similar to HIIT since there is so much efficiency in it. IIRC Dorian Yates used the template to a degree.
HIIT is great when you don’t want to spend an hour in the gym surrounded by wackos. Now I train in my basement at leisure so no issue there thank goodness.
I’ve been saying HIIT since it is the title. Its HIT though isn’t it? No “intervals.”
Awesome! I’ve been following a upper / lower training schedule due to my trainer thinking a regular split is too much for me since I am natural, I usually rest for 1 to 2 minutes between sets but I keep the exercises at a 2 for each body part, what is your split like? Mine is
Lower
- front squat 20,15,10,8,8
- leg extension 3x10
- Romanian deads 3x10
- leg curls 3x10
- donkey calves 4x15
Upper
- incline bench 12,10,8,6,6
- dumbbell flyes 3x10
- barbell rows 3x10
- close grip pull downs 3x10
- barbell shoulder press 3x10
- lateral raises 3x10
- close grip bench 2x10
- tricep push downs 2x10
- barbell bicep curl 2x10
- dumb bell bicep curl 2x10
- crunches 100
your upper day’s a bit mental
Your upper day must take over 2 hours. You’re resting longer than I’m in the gym
My upper takes maybe 55 minutes tops. My lower day yesterday only took 27 minutes. (sore as fuck at the moment).
I exaggerated on the rest, I only rest that long on the big compounds, all the accessorys are maybe 45 seconds tops, If that.
Great video about Mike Mentzer!
I stopped when he said people get injured doing volume training, so they should do HIT. Here are hours of Mentzer’s lecture; - YouTube
Mike was a fan of the scientific process and would be open to the studies done after his passing;
Protocols high in volume, moderate to high in intensity, using short rest intervals and stressing a large muscle mass, tend to produce the greatest acute hormonal elevations (e.g. testosterone, GH and the catabolic hormone cortisol) compared with low-volume, high-intensity protocols using long rest intervals.*…Resistance exercise has been shown to elicit a significant acute hormonal response. It appears that this acute response is more critical to tissue growth and remodelling than chronic changes in resting hormonal concentrations, as many studies have not shown a significant change during resistance training despite increases in muscle strength and hypertrophy. Anabolic hormones such as testosterone and the superfamily of growth hormones (GH) have been shown to be elevated during 15-30 minutes of post-resistance exercise providing an adequate stimulus is present.
Studies show that hormonal spikes are magnified after hypertrophy-type exercise that involves training at moderate intensities with shortened rest intervals as compared with high-intensity strength-oriented training.
If you have some resistance-training experience, using higher training volume, training more regularly while spreading volume over the week, and performing more eccentric muscle actions may lead to greater hypertrophy. If you have little resistance-training experience, lifting heavier loads (>65% of 1RM), training closer to muscular failure, using higher training volume, and performing eccentric muscle actions (when using variable resistance) may lead to greater hypertrophy.
www.strengthandconditioningresearch.com/hypertrophy/#1
A secondary stimulus for hypertrophy is thought to be exercise-induced metabolic stress (see reviews by Schoenfeld, 2010; Schoenfeld, 2013). There is a clear mechanism by which greater numbers of repetitions, as are typically performed during sets with low-to-moderate relative loads could lead to greater metabolic stress and acute cellular hydration than sets performed with high relative loads, as muscular contractions above a certain threshold of maximum voluntary isometric contraction force prevent venous return (the PUMP). Since metabolic stress arises primarily from the prevention of venous return and the consequent buildup of metabolites within the muscle, longer-duration sets with low-to-moderate relative loads would be expected to lead to greater metabolic stress and consequently greater hypertrophy, so long as all other factors remained constant.
www.strengthandconditioningresearch.com/hypertrophy/#1
[quote]Swoleheim wrote:
Awesome! I’ve been following a upper / lower training schedule due to my trainer thinking a regular split is too much for me since I am natural, I usually rest for 1 to 2 minutes between sets but I keep the exercises at a 2 for each body part, what is your split like? Mine is
Lower
- front squat 20,15,10,8,8
- leg extension 3x10
- Romanian deads 3x10
- leg curls 3x10
- donkey calves 4x15
Upper
- incline bench 12,10,8,6,6
- dumbbell flyes 3x10
- barbell rows 3x10
- close grip pull downs 3x10
- barbell shoulder press 3x10
- lateral raises 3x10
- close grip bench 2x10
- tricep push downs 2x10
- barbell bicep curl 2x10
- dumb bell bicep curl 2x10
- crunches 100[/quote]
Try Doggcrap, similar but far superior…
It’s quite common when adapted to higher volume work to see great gains when sharply reducing volume and increasing the intensiveness of the work. Part of the benefit I think is from the change. The high volume work built up a high recovery ability, which resources can now go towards growth.
Working very well for a time after the change doesn’t prove, nor is it the case, that it’s the best long term program.
Longer term, I think it’s much better to incorporate the intensiveness focus on final work set or final 2 work sets, but obtain more substantial volume with ramping up or other preparatory sets. In other words, do for example 5 sets not just 2 or certainly not just 1, but the first 3 or 4 are not draining on the nervous system because at least a rep or two is being kept in reserve, and there’s no need for slow lifting tempo in the warm up sets, which can accumulate excessive eccentric work.
@ Bill Roberts -thanks for that. Apreciated.
I agree and came to that practice on my own mostly. I like high volume but go heavy using your long term program very regularly - and then change back again.
It just feels right to me and is fun as hell.
Effectiveness of Mentzer’s methods depends a lot on the individual and how they interpret “training to failure”. One mans failure, is another’s version of when the set really starts working. If its working for you at the moment keep with it until it stops, then go back to a more traditional conservative approach.
From my personal experience(when natural I haven’t tried it yet on PEDs)it sounds great in theory but really led to overtraining and chronic injury in the long term.
As natural bodybuilder I responded better to more frequent workouts 2x/wk/ bodypart, with moderate to high volume, working the muscle most of the time a couple of reps short of failure. Multiple sets with this approach fatigued the muscle. Occasionally I would go to failure, or do drop sets but it was sporadic otherwise I overtrained, or got injuries.
I did a lot of Mentzer/Yates type workouts in the late 80’s early 90’s, over a long period of time it becomes really draining on the mind and the body. I was the type of guy who really should have reined the intensity in. Eventually psyching yourself up to go to failure and beyond on a consistent basis is too much for most natural and even many guys on gear, even if only one set per exercise. Form and posture go in the attempt to get the maximum effort and this leads to acute and then chronic joint problems, if not as well as systemic overtraining and exhaustion. For me personally I find it better to rely on form and technique, cycling poundages, multiple sets, consistency over the long run, rather than max effort for one balls out set.
Some of the other issues I have with Mentzer’s theories, it was more like a marketing exercise to sell books/manuals, a religion of heavy duty. When you hear contemporaries talk about Mentzer training they say they saw him training multi set like everyone else. Yes it could be that all but the final set he did wasn’t to failure, but it seems to over play that you only needed to do one set to failure.
A lot of the Nautilus stuff advocated one set to failure, where I guess Mentzer got the idea from. Casey Viator who did famous test where he put on 60lbs(from memory, could be wrong, but it was a lot), after using Nautilus program for a couple of months was a bunkum marketing exercise for Nautilus and their training methods. Casey was on gear before and had plenty of good mass. He went off the gear before the test and heavily dieted, to reduce his body weight to skew the results. As during the test it was most likely that he was back on the gear, and the results were mainly due to the return of heavy training, regaining his lost weight, not building brand new muscle.
Great marketing to convince the ignorant at the time(myself included)that brief exercise and Nautilus machines were all you needed.
Mike, Casey, Dorian were all taking gear, which at the time was at unacknowledged to the greater public. Lets face it if you are on substancial amounts of gear you are physically capable of doing a lot more in terms of weight lifted, exercise frequency and intensity, than if you aren’t on the gear. Virtually any weighted exercise program will give impressive results.
Even Dorian Yates who successfully interpreted Mentzer’s heavy duty system came to the conclusion that he couldn’t train that way all the time, especially later in his career, especially in contest prep. Multiple tears and tendon ruptures shortened his career(a fine legacy though).
Hey Swole’ I had another look at your routine, and I don’t know if we are talking about the same thing, Mentzers theories that I’m aware of are one set to failure, and other HIT advocates may go as high as 2 sets /exercise. Your routine looks more conventional, higher # of sets per exercise. Where did you get your routine from?
Whatever approach you take, esp’ if you aren’t geared up I would avoid training that results in regular soreness, as that is a sign that you aren’t adapting to your current exercise levels.
I had watched Mentzer Bros’ HIT movie where Markus Reinhardt executed the exercises and it was boring as hell.
Mike Mentzer was making him do extremely slow repetitions. There is no way i can train like that.
Bill Roberts touched upon this in a more eloquent fashion than I’m capable of, however I’ll add my personal experience to his scientific explanation.
The only time that I experienced changes in my body (positive changes) from HIT style training was after longer periods of very high volume AND high intensity (i.e. a lot of overall volume with regards to muscular work and a lot of CNS stress from utilizing heavy weight as well). Essentially I overreached for a significant period of time, proceeded to take roughly 10 days off from ALL training and then did about 4 weeks of HIT style training. My training consisted of, no joke, two 30 minute, full body sessions per week. I did about 1-2 exercises per body part…one true working set that was taken WAY passed the point of failure, utilizing numerous methods: extremely long tempo reps which accumulated quite a lot of metabolic waste byproduct, forced reps and long negatives, drop sets, isometric holds, extended sets etc. I can promise the level of intensity because it was done under the eye of a trainer specializing in HIT.
Summation of my experience:
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My body responded relatively favorably, however, nothing out of this world. I was only on for a brief four weeks (not really fair to judge based on the duration). This was attributed, IMO, simply due to a severe reduction in overall volume, exercise duration etc.
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I hated absolutely EVERY. SINGLE. SECOND. This type of training (when done TRULY to and passed failure) is simply not for everyone. It certainly is not for me…one of the primary reasons is the amount of discomfort and the amount of mental fortitude it takes to truly go that far passed failure was exhausting in every sense of the word. I dreaded training…even though it was only two 30 minute sessions per week!..I literally could not sleep the night before because of the sheer dread I had. Perhaps, I’m a pussy…whatever. For me, I can tolerate hours of volume…zero rest days…hell, I’ve even squatted every day, some times twice a day for weeks on end! Nothing I have ever done has equaled the amount of mental and physical pain of HIT style training. The second session I did, I literally could barely make it to the locker room…I was SO nauseated and so exhausted that I could hardly speak to anyone let alone get my ass off the couch in the locker room. In fact, I had to shit my brains out, yet I couldn’t muster the strength to get my ass up and go to the bathroom for almost 30 minutes until I thought I might shit my pants if I didn’t/
I only stayed on this for four weeks because of the above reasons. It truly made me HATE training and training is one of the few things I hold dear to my heart and enjoy…I look forward to it. I didn’t like not liking training. The other reason was the amount of time being out of the gym. To be in the gym for only 1 combined hour per WEEK was just too difficult for me. I felt like a lazy piece of crap and I couldn’t really will myself to do cardio much due to the amount each session took from my physically and mentally; surprising how much those very brief, 30 minute sessions took out of me. Needless to say, this type of training was not for me, and I found that I got the same favorable effects from simply taking deload/taper weeks or a full week off after long periods of heavy volume.