The Mentzer's legacy...

How do you think Mike and Ray will be remembered? For those who don't know, both brothers sadly passed away several years ago within days of each other and were very strong advocates of strength training and pioneers of HIT. I think Mike will be known as an intelligent curmudgeon, teetering on the brink of insanity (or totally embracing it), depending on who you ask. Ray was a bit more grounded obviously. Their training philosophies, while controversial helped me a great deal back in my serious lifting days - I doubt I could ever have achieved the kind of lifts I made w/o the help of Mike's guidance, I had telephone consultations with him back in '95-'96...very different dude - I could've done w/o hearing about Ayn Rand and him shouting "Arthur Jones is God!" though. Eccentric, you bet but their achievements and contributions have been immense imo. Opinions?

 

They might have made an impact on people, though the HIT jedi movement has petered off post-Mentzer's heavy set of meth to failure workout, but their actual impact on the sport and science of strength training is next to nothing. I guess if anything they helped to get people out of the Weider mind-set of doing 100 sets in a workout for a bodypart, but the Mentzer view was just as flawed in the other direction.

 

When I was working out for size, I made the fastest gain following the stuff in his book: 12lbs in 3 months, lifting only once a week with no change in diet. Granted it wasn't all lean since my running went from 3 times a week to once a week, the increase was remarkable. Don't know if I want to keep doing it long terms, it felt a little unhealthy for some reason, plus, I was getting way too heavy and didn't like the way I looked.

 

I think there are still a significant number of coaches that follow HIT, there was a long discussion recently on the supertraining newsgroup. One just doesn't realize this, because sites like elitefts etc. obviously don't reference HIT.

 

I just looked at HIT on wikipedia... I'm a newb here, but it's like totally opposite to the type of routine supported by most S&P regulars: machines, 8-12 reps... did some people achieved actual strength results with it? I'm guessing not...

 

I don't think that's HIT. It's the opposite of 8-12 reps. He still has a website somewhere, you can check it out.

 

That's from the Wikipedia page on High Intensity Training... but I suppose you have good reason to think otherwise... Wikipedia's far from perfect. I'll look at his website later.

 

HIT / HD was (and is) a great (and expedient) way to to get bigger and stronger, i think the only people who failed to get great results using HIT never really grasped the concepts of momentary muscle failure and muscle fiber recruitment.
Jones/Mentzer's brief but brutal workouts don't satisfy alot of guys who are used to spending over an hour in the gym, but all in all the system is really one of the best.
As for a legacy, MM blew Arnold away on stage at the Olympia in 1980 ( but as it goes sometimes with body building, he was robbed of his victory. Mentzers attacks on Joe Weider Supplements and Arnolds role in "Conan" won Arnold the Olympia in 1980. And Dorian Yates 6 Olympia wins proved that HIT/HD was more than a fluke.

 

Yep, I was getting very good results from 15 minute sessions once a week. And I was no beginner. As brief as they were, they were very taxing on the muscles and nervous system. I was more tired and spent after 15 minute of HIT than a 1 hour traditional workout.

 

It might be a good way to get bigger, but I don't think you won't find any strength athlete of sucess using HIT. I don't know jack about bodybuilding so I won't pretend to and judge it merits for hypertrophy, but none of the strongest people in the world train in a way anywhere close to HIT and it just isn't applicable to the goals of this forum which is why it isn't discussed much.

 

Braz looks like a sissy without the blue name.

Fuck HIT. Fuck the police.

 

God, there's been a lot of broken links recently.

 

Heavy Duty is a derivative based on HIT principles. Originally, HIT was a 2-3 day per week training modality involving total body workouts with 1-3 sets to failure.

The old Cyberpump website was a pretty good HIT resource.

I think Mentzer's earlier contributions were somewhat worthwhile. Hard training with adequate rest periods. But then he just went of the deep end with his one size fits all dogma. Not making progress? Train less. He probably had clients training once a month.

 

I have no Idea what I'm doing at the minute but I think it's a sort of HIT phase. I was doing the pull/push/squat routine and had no gains to be honest, but when I used the Pavel 5x5x5 routine I had great gains just doing 1 set of each exercise in a workout.


Then I tried doing 1set for each exercise to failure but more days rest and I had even better gains. I havn't gotten much bigger but I have put on more muscle and shed more fat however. But my numbers have went way way up sense I started doing it. So strength can be obtained by doing 1set to failure. , but I could eat more to get bigger.




I think it's all down to Trial and Error to see what works best for you. I've been doing it a while now, and if it works, well it works, then when it doesn't I can try and create a new routine using knowledge from other sources whether it be a HIT source or more a Powerlifting source and past experience.

But it all stays the same, sorta in the end. Lift heavy

 

I appreciate that they wanted people to ask questions, to evolve, to look at things critically rather than dogmatically.

Which is ironic because most famous coaches insist that people accept their word dogmatically and yet they themselves were only able to create something new because they challenged the dogma handed down to them.

 

HIT or HD, whatever you wish to call it, is more of a philosophy towards training than an actual system of training. The main thrust of the philosophy is that 1-2 sets worked as hard as possible, produces better results than 5-8 sub-maximal effort sets. I have used the HIT/HD many, many times over the years with tremendous results in both strength and size gains. The HD system that Mike used in later years looked NOTHING like the Serigo Oliva at Nautilus, Casey Viator, Dorian Yates, Mentzers circa 76-80. etc. I think by then Mike had completely lost it and was grasping at the fringes. This was about the same time that he was seen running down the street naked carrying a bag of oranges. Even Dorian who consulted Mike during his early Olympia years trained in more of the classical HIT style than Mike was advising at the time.

I have said this before and I will say it again, the primary ingredient in strength and to a lesser extent in bodybuilding type training is workload, you have to place a force/stress on the body that it has not yet experienced. It responds by changing its internal machinery to be ready for the "next" stress/force which it anticipates to be idential to the one it just adapted to--so you have to figure out how to continue to stress the body over the long run. There are many, many, many ways of doing this, but adding weight to the bar and reps to the sets is the easiest way to "measure" that workload. Yes, you can "squeeze" the bar and tense your muscles a the peak contraction, but that type of added stress is very hard to meaure and therefore hard to duplicate and improve on. The problem with HIT is that you do 1-2 sets to positive failure, then forced reps, then negative failure, etc and while that is very productive for a time, the body quickly adapts and prevents you from doing this for very long. In other words, your body "learns" (neurolgically) what you are doing and it is able so shut down your subsequent efforts in a modst amount of time. HIT is a great thing to do for awhile, or interspersed with volume work, but when done exclusively ( and with aid of drugs) it has a very short half life. I do give the Mentzers a lot of credit for getting people away from pump, pump, pump and back to hard, nasty, all-out effort in the gym

Mike challenged the establishment thinking and to that I give him a lot of credit. I also ordered a HD shirt from him that I paid for and I still have not received it and I and a buddy of mine almost got their butts kicked by Ray Mentzer in 1981--I think I have told that story on here before.

Mike should have won in 1980 and he should have won the O in 79 against Zane. I have an original Ironman from 1979 with a contest report of the Mr. O and there is a black and white shot of mike doing a front single bicep with the other arm exended to show the tricep and it is one of the best physique shots I have ever seen.

 

Here is an interview with Mike where he speaks about Objectivism and Ayn Rand and his philosophy:

PRODOS.COM radio - Mike Mentzer and Sean Bowring

 

That was an excellent summary on HIT. You're right about Mike going crazy in his later years. I followed the basic stuff in his book and got great results but later on his website he took it so far as saying you can come in, do 1 intense rep and then go home. I thought that was a little much

Before I started my 3 months of HIT, my arms were my weakness, and I had been lifting on and off for years. After 3 months, they were my biggest strength. I think they got at least 15-20% bigger. I also got great gains on my back. My chest was already well developed, didn't make any progress. I think they got flabbier due to the drastically reduced amount of exercises, but the strength actually went up. So HIT seemed to be good for the parts that have been unresponsive to the traditional BB routine. The overall strength gain was good, but no where near the mass gain.

The biggest reason I got into it was laziness. I was working over time and looked for ways to be efficient in my workout. So when I read about being big for 30 min a week, I had to try It was efficient terms of gym time but wasn't in recovery. I remember being tired for days after each 15 min session. May be that was why he recommended a 5 day beak in between. Toward the end, I didn't like the way my heart beat after the workout. The forced rep and negative failures were a little too much on the heart. So I naturally became concerned knowing both Mentzers died of 'congenial' heart failures. It could be genetic or steroids or it could be because of their life time training method. So I thought I'd quit just to be on the safe side.

 

Great summary keith, I think that the way Yates trained in the early 90's was the best example of HIT. He was strong, big and in and out of the gym quickly.

I completely agree with Keith when he wrote

and again this is so true

One of the reasons I love hard and heavy weight training and fighting for that matter is because they are both "Hard, Tough and Painful" And the sense of achievment after doing them is awesome. I get nervous butterflies before some workouts or training sessions because I know what I am going to have to put myself through to achieve a new PR or hold my head up after a good workout.

Its also partly because I know very few people will ever consider doing something like that let alone attempt it. That is why I love this sub forum there are so many guys here who are willing to push themselves on a daily basis.

 

mike wrote a great book and it help me put 30 lbs of rock solid muscle in 5 months

at the end of the 4th month i was only working out ONCE a week because my body needed the rest from the high intensity workout and i was still growing

you get big, you get crazy strong ...but absolutely no conditioning:icon_cry2:icon_cry2:icon_cry2

i almost died when i tried for frank shammy team with this workout and a little some running for cardio LOL