I first got interested in bodybuilding back in 1978, at that time Mike Mentzer was rocketing up the bodybuilding ranks. He won the 1978 Mr. Universe and became the very first bodybuilder in history to have a perfect score within the judges, the following year he placed second to Frank Zane at the Mr. Olympia, some felt Mike need to have won that contest. His last contest was the infamous 1980 Mr.Olympia, exactly where Arnold himself came out of retirement, the rumor was that Arnold was tired of hearing Mike say that Heavy Duty was the only way to train, and that by beating Mike he would prove him wrong. Arnold won the contest though he wasn't in top shape, Mike who was in much better shape then the previous year only placed 5th, folks yelled "FIX!" and Mike, fed up, retired from competition.
You see Mentzer produced extremely many commotion with his Heavy Duty training articles. Mike mentioned that all bodybuilders were overtraining and this was slowing down their progress, and though most bodybuilders like Arnold were training for 2 or additional hours a day 6 days a week and producing 20 or much more sets per entire body part, Mike was only creating 30 minutes Three to 4 times a week and only about Five sets per entire body component (later he would suggest doing even less, as you will soon see).
The debate raged on: "He's wrong." "He's Crazy." "He just is trying to create a buck." "No, Mike is right." "He's a genius." "He has showed us the way", and so it went and even now goes on to this day.
But this article is not to prove Mike appropriate or wrong, it's just to share my experience and allow you try the routine he put me on.
I was in California in 1999 as soon as Mike was training men and women in Santa Monica, I was moving in a few weeks and I felt this was my last chance to meet and train with my boyhood hero (I in no way realized how proper I was as Mike passed away a modest less then A couple of many years later).
I called Mike and scheduled an appointment to meet him, I arrived at the gym and after I spotted Mike walking on the me, the very first thing I witnessed was he looked like he was in pain, I stated "Mike, what's wrong with your back?" "Oh, I've had damaging back difficulties for years." He told me. Quite a few have tried to attack Mike's newest training theories on a truth that Mike himself was in this sort of bad shape within the late 90's, and if all it took was several sets per workout, then why wasn't he in shape? The fact is he was no longer in a position to train as tough as he felt he had to, due to his back.
The next point I noticed was he wan't in shape, but he was not as negative as some produced him out to be, his forearms and upper arms were nonetheless very big!
He told me he would put me via a leg workout, as well as the first issue he showed me was the type he wanted me to use on all exercises, this was extremely slow, about 4 seconds up and 4 seconds down. And if there's resistance inside contracted position, like during the leg extension retain for Two seconds, this makes the activity very hard, yet incredibly safe, he told me he had trained over 1,000 several men and women and never was anyone injured in a training session with him.
After a brief warm up, Mike had me do A single set of painfully slow and heavy Leg Extensions to failure then with no sleep a set of Leg Presses to failure. It's extremely a variety of owning an individual there pushing you compared to training alone, Mike would tell me "Ok, you are able to do more, if there was an earth quake or if your life depended on it you'd get A couple of more reps, and if there were ten naked girls watching and waiting you'd get Three more!" I did way additional reps then I ever although I could, and once I incredibly did hit failure he stated "Ok, that is certainly enough, that may be failure."
One with the questions, I had and you could have is "What did Mike think about failure?", well if you get to a thing wherever you can not complete another full rep on your own, that may be failure. No have to do forced reps, etc.
I had only done 2 sets but my legs have been extremely pumped and I felt a deep growth stimulation in them. He had me take a short rest and then we did calves, most folks say they can not get their calves to grow, but I see them bouncing up and down extremely fast on calf raises. Well try them the way Mentzer produced me do them, "SLOW UP, Hold AT THE TOP, HOLD, RAISE UP HIGHER, HIGHER, HOLD, LOWER SLOW." You do 12 to 20 reps that way and see should you think a difference.
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