Mike Mentzer: Genius or Lunatic
If you don’t know who Mike Mentzer was I will
give you some quick background. He was a famous bodybuilder
who competed back in the seventies and eighties against none
other than Arnold, himself. He was known for being a huge
proponent of extremely low volume training. Mike was either
loved or hated; there was no in between. He had some radical
view points and an in-your-face way of expressing them. He
even had the balls to call Arnold out about his high volume
training protocols and say what a complete waste of time it
all was.
Mike Mentzer’s basic ideas and theories
were that we are all grossly over-trained in sets and overall
volume but under-trained in intensity. He recommended somewhere
between one and three sets per bodypart, once every 7-21 days.
He also knew what I have since learned; that high protein diets
are unnecessary and are just another scam perpetrated by the
bodybuilding industry to force you to buy more protein powder
and useless crap.
Many people thought Mike Mentzer was a genius and learned a
great deal from him while making tremendous progress employing
his advice. Others thought he was completely insane and needed
to be committed.
I, personally, loved Mike’s attitude and rebellious nature. I
also learned quite a bit from him and when I first read Heavy
Duty way back in the early 90’s, it completely changed the way
I thought about training. It also led to some outstanding
results.
The problem was that at the time I was like many of you;
constantly in search for the next best training program and
always thought there was a better way of doing things. So I
lost my way for a few years while experimenting with everything
under the sun.
Sadly, you have to get off the right path and get lost for a
while in order to realize that you were heading in the right
direction all along.
It has been at least 15 years since I read Mike Mentzer’s
training theories for the first time and I have experimented
with quite a bit of different loading parameters and training
methods since then. I can now state, unequivocally, that Mike
Mentzer was a lot smarter and a lot closer to the truth than a
lot of people I have taken advice from over the years.
Was he a genius?
No. But he was a smart guy and a rational thinker. He never
just blindly accepted what everyone else did. He thought for
himself and questioned everything.
Looking back I can say that Mike was a little off with his
frequency recommendations and that the intensity he advocated
was a bit too high and unnecessary. In fact, I think some of
the extreme intensity techniques he advocated may have even
been counterproductive. I also strongly disagree with many of
his exercise choices.
But that doesn’t mean that Mike’s ideas weren’t effective. He
is, after all, responsible for helping Dorian Yates win the Mr.
Olympia contest.
Mike knew the dangers of overtraining and realized just how
unnecessary and counterproductive all that useless junk volume
really was. He knew that it didn’t take anywhere near as much
training as most people think to produce dramatic gains in size
and strength. Mike knew and preached to people that if they
couldn’t get the job done in a fraction of the sets they
normally used then they weren’t training hard enough. Or maybe
they weren’t eating properly or getting enough rest… But
whatever it was, their lack of progress was not due to their
lack of training volume. In fact, their training volume may
have been what was holding them back.
I respect what Mike Mentzer contributed to the strength
training world and will always consider him a pioneer in our
business.
To learn how I incorporated many of Mike Mentzer’s theories
with my own (that are based on 20 years of in the trenches
experience and endless discussions with renowned coaches and
trainers) to create the best muscle building system available
for drug free, genetically average lifters, go
to Muscle Gaining
Secrets now.
Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is
renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as
humanly possible. He has trained thousands of clients during
his 14 years as a professional fitness coach, including more
than 500 athletes from over 20 different sports. Jason has
written hundreds of articles for numerous top rated training
magazines and websites and has authored four fitness books. He
is also the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine
where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle
building. For more great muscle building information, please
visit Muscle Gaining
Secrets.
| 
