What I Learned from Reading Mike Mentzer High Intensity Training
Mike Mentzer was a one of a kind individual. He was a very thoughtful, intense, and principled individual. He spent a great deal of time analyzing his own training and understanding physiology which led him to go against conventional wisdom to further develop a training philosophy that was radically different from the norm at the time and still not accepted as conventional wisdom today. His training was built around maximal intensity which also seemed to infiltrate other areas of his life which was evident by his passion for reading and learning subjects outside of bodybuilding. Mentzer was truly a great bodybuilder with somewhat of a meteoric competitive career. As a teenager and into his early 20’s he won major competitions but after an injury took a significant amount of time away from the sport only to return with more dominating performances until ultimately his career was ended prematurely by most standards because of a controversial 1980 Mr. Olympia placing. At the age of 29, which is typically the prime of many bodybuilders, especially at the time, Mentzer quit the sport. He finished a controversial 5th place in the 1980 Olympia which was the year that Arnold Schwarzenegger returned to compete and win after many years away from the sport. Many individuals felt that Mentzer should have won that competition and rather than continue to compete in a competition he felt was fraudulent, he decided to quit the sport. He had the potential to go on to win multiple Mr. Olympias and continue a lucrative career in the sport but instead gave it up because of his principled nature. After moving away from competitive bodybuilding, Mike began to train individual clients and paid close attention to what training philosophies seemed to get the best results for his clients. Mentzer had already built an incredible physique using high intensity training techniques but now as he worked with average Joe clientele he began to refine and perfect his training philosophy.
I learned quite a bit from reading this book and as I hope you can tell from my writing, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for Mentzer and his physique, his mind, and willingness to experiment and be his own individual rather than just go with the crowd. I don’t necessarily agree with everything that he says when it comes to training but there are many aspects which I do agree with and am currently experimenting with.
Some of the most important ideas that this book emphasizes are as follows:
Intensity is the most important training variable
Mike firmly believed in high intensity training. Each and every exercise performed needed to be taken to true and complete failure. There are a variety of intensity techniques that one could use to take their sets to failure such as drop sets, forced reps, eccentric training, pre-exhaustion, rest-pause training, etc. Mike knew that in order to take each exercise to complete failure something else needed to be reduced and that something else was additional sets and volume as well as frequency of training. Mike believed that only one set taken to failure was a sufficient stimulus for muscle growth and that training needed to be infrequent to allow for maximal recovery between training sessions.Training of the mind is just as important as training of the body
Training the mind to be willing to push yourself past the point of exhaustion is what’s truly needed to take your sets to complete failure. To reach this point in your training, it takes an extreme mindset and requires you to go to a dark, primitive place in your mind that accepts and even enjoys pain. Not everyone is willing or capable of reaching this place which is understandable and one of the reasons why this style of training, while Mike would argue is the most efficient way to reach peak strength and muscularity, might not be the most efficient way for each and every individual.Towards the end of the book, Mentzer also emphasized the importance of visualizing success. He went on to talk about the power of the mind and mindset and how great champions in the past would visualize the effects of their workouts such as pumping up their biceps like peaks on a mountain. For Mentzer, training the mind to be strong and powerful was just as important, maybe more important than training the physical body.
Mike was a very thoughtful and well worded individual and thought deeply about training and developing his philosophy
The way Mentzer talked about bodybuilding was like that of a great philosopher discussing the meaning of life. He was well worded, eloquent, and it was clearly evident that his training philosophy was one that took years of practical experience and scientific literature to develop. The book discusses many training variables and how they interact with an overriding principle of intensity as well as with each other. This wasn’t a “go smash and crush the weights then go do it again” style of training. All the important training variables were well thought out and it was evident by the detailed discussion of each of them.Mike wasn’t afraid to go against conventional wisdom
The conventional wisdom from bodybuilders at the time was hours upon hours of moderate to low intensity training where pros would often train twice a day and 5-6 days per week. Menzter went the complete opposite route. His training could be completed in 30 minutes once every 4ish days. This was obviously an extreme opposite end of the spectrum but something that would prove to be sufficient to achieve extremely high level results for Mike and his clients over the years. As time went by guys like Dorian Yates would take what Mike took from Aurthor Jones and continue to tweak high intensity training to his own liking. The ideas that Mentzer helped popularize are still not widely used by the majority of top bodybuilders or average Joe’s training today who seem to prefer volume training approaches like that of Arnold. I think the answer may lie somewhere in the middle, but that’s a discussion for another time.A very high level of importance was placed on recovery
Mike believed in training intensely to cause as much muscular damage as possible but also to give the body maximal time to recover to be able to perform even better next time. He believed that as you become stronger over time, recovery becomes even more important. I believe this to be 100% true. An individual who squats a maximum of 135 lbs will not need nearly as much time to recover as an individual who squats 800 lbs will before performing another squat session. Mentzer believed that if you hit a plateau, the best option is to take a break from training to allow a more complete and full recovery before attempting to push past this plateau. There was a very strong emphasis on recovery in the book, which I appreciate. I think it is all too common a mindset to believe when it comes to weight training that in order to achieve more, we need to do more. Maybe it is the opposite. Maybe what we need is more recovery, not more work. Mike firmly believed in full recovery before performing another training session.Pre-exhaustion exercise protocols were prioritized
Most of Mentzer’s training protocols involved pre-exhaustion techniques and emphasized training in a slow and controlled fashion primarily in the 6-10 rep range. Mike thought by using single joint movements directly before compound movements the primary muscle would be more completely fatigued by the end of the exercise. I think this is a fairly accepted method of training, which I also agree with. I personally don’t like to train like this year round but I do train like this at some point every year as it’s a very effective and fun method of training.Mike was a radical and revolutionary for his time and in many ways still ahead of his time by today’s standards. Training protocols that emphasized pure intensity and complete recovery, mental fortitude, a complete well thought out training philosophy accounting for multiple variables, and principled attitude towards life set Mentzer apart in many ways from his peers. Although Mentzer would never go on to win the most prestigious title in bodybuilding, Mr. Olympia, the story of the sport of bodybuilding cannot be told in its fullness without mentioning Mike Mentzer.
