Microsoft word - mike mentzer

This is an excerpt from an article that appeared on the website, www.BodyBuilding.com
“I thought this piece summarized Mike’s philosophy. I had the pleasure of meeting Mike
at the Bodybuilding event in Boston’s Hynes Auditorium in 1980. We talked to me a few
minutes on bodybuilding, Ayn Rand, and being an independent thinker. He was a true
pioneer.”
Question from a www.BodyBuilding.com Reader
I have read many articles of yours and you always advise bodybuilders that they should train with high
intensity, once every 5 - 7 days, and every training session should not last more than 20 minutes in order
to achieve maximum muscle stimulation. My question to you is, if 20 years ago you had the knowledge
that you have today, would you train with the same frequency and duration for a bodybuilding competition
or might you change something?
Mike Mentzer’s response…
Given the knowledge I have today, I certainly wouldn't train in the same fashion I did 20 years ago. In fact,I wrote in my book "Heavy Duty I, "Despite having been the arch-advocate of lesser training [20 yearsago] I, too, was still overtaining." What I have learned over the last 11 years, since taking up personaltraining, is that weight resistance is much, much more stressful than the average bodybuilder mightfathom.
Lifting weights places stresses on the body that might be best illustrated by the following. Imagine a flat,
horizontal line drawn on a piece of paper from left to right,with the flat line representing zero effort. Now
imagine a squiggly sine wave come off the zero effort flat line, the sine wave representing efforts of
various sorts. You get out of bed each morning, shower, brush your teeth, walk to your car, drive to work
and so forth.
These are small efforts causing the sine wave to barely move above the flat line.
Then, all of a sudden, you come to that point in the day where you do a heavy set of Squats to failure. All
of a sudden the sine wave departs straight up off the paper and across the street! The distance from the
flat line to the apex of that spike represents not only the greater intensity with the Squats but, also, the
much greater inroad into recovery ability than our usual, daily little efforts.
I wrote in my book "Heavy Duty II: Mind and Body" that the idea is not "more is better" or "less is better"
but "precise is best"; and as I learned from training close to 2,000 people plus myself that the precise
amount of exercise required to induce optimal growth stimulation isn't nearly as much as you've been led
to believe or would like to believe.
Remember, the idea is not to go into the gym to discover how many sets you can do or how long you can
mindlessly endure. Instead, the idea is to go into the gym as an informed, rational individual and do only
the precise amount of exercise required to stimulate growth and no more; then get the hell out of the gym,
go home and GROW! A bodybuilding workout, by God, is not an endurance contest!
Last year I was in 80 percent of my shape, and my leg workouts lasted six minutes and upper body
workouts 15 minutes, training once every four to seven days.
This next excerpt is from his book, “HEAVY DUTY 2: MIND AND BODY”,
CHAPTER 6: SERVING THE NEEDS OF THE GROWTH MECHANISM
f Nutrition to Bodybuilding
In early 1995 I received a phone call from a young man in New Jersey who was obsessed withthe idea that his lack of bodybuilding progress was due to a nutritional problem. As soon as hegot me on the phone, without even announcing his name, he launched into what seemed like anendless series of questions about different supplements such as phosphogain, vanadyl sulfate,Hot Stuff and MetRx. In the midst of this catechism, it occurred to me that since he was soconfused about the subject of nutrition, it wasn't likely that he understood anything about thescience of high-intensity, anaerobic exercise either. Initially, he disavowed this, exclaiming hislack of bodybuilding progress was due solely to faulty nutrition. (In fact, this is rarely the case,especially in this country, where most people are not just well-nourished, but overnourished--especially bodybuilders.) Upon further questioning, I found I was right. He was violating all of the laws of nature here. Heknew nothing about the principle of intensity, or the necessity of training to failure; therefore, hewasn't stimulating much if anything in the way of meaningful growth. And even if he had been,he was so overtrained from his two-hour workouts five to six days a week that his body couldn'thave produced any worthwhile results whatever his diet.
I said to him, "Young fella, you remind me of the man who earnestly desires a suntan, butcontinues to make the mistake of going outside at midnight, then wastes thousands of dollars ondifferent suntan lotions, thinking the next one will solve his problem.
"The issue of the suntan lotion is not without some import," I continued "however, it onlyassumes relevance within the context of first having satisfied nature's fundamental requirement,which is the presence of a high-intensity sunlight stress. In other words, you can't obtain a suntansitting in front of a 100-watt light bulb for an infinity of eternities, even if you're rubbingphosphogain suntan lotion over your entire body all the while. Nature sets the terms." The relationship of nutrition to bodybuilding is similar. While nutrition is, of course, importantin the daily life of everyone, in the context of bodybuilding, nutrition is a considerationsecondary to a proper high-intensity training program. One must stimulate growth first, via theimposition of an anaerobic training stress, and then adequate nutrition must be provided during asufficient rest period between workouts so that the growth mechanism may produce any growthstimulated by the training.

Source: http://glutesandabscom.homestead.com/Mike_Mentzer.pdf