I Trained the MIKE MENTZER Way for 30 Days 

I've been training like this for a year and i almost always get an extra rep or add a small amount of weight every workout. Gains haven't stopped.

One month isn’t enough to test this workout, especially if you start it without a complete recovery period. That said I started getting the best results I’ve ever had since started this program. It still feels weird to have so much rest between workouts but I’ve gotten used to the idea that my muscles are growing the whole time.

SUMMARIZED TO SAVE TIME: 00:00 🏋️ *Mike Mentzer's training philosophy emphasizes training less, focusing on heavy-duty, high-intensity workouts to failure, and allowing ample rest for optimal muscle growth.* 02:33 🤔 *Initial workout challenges: In the first workout, the intensity of supersets led to unexpected fatigue, highlighting the importance of proper warm-up and exercise selection.* 04:47 🛌 *Emphasis on rest and recovery: Mentzer recommends at least four days of rest between workouts to allow for maximal muscle growth, which proved mentally challenging for the individual in the experiment.* 09:26 🤨 *Progress evaluation: After over two weeks, the individual observed a weight gain, but physical changes were not conclusive, prompting self-reflection on potential muscle loss and fat gain.* 14:01 ⏱️ *Overlooked tempo: Proper rep tempo, a critical component according to Mentzer, involves a four-second lift, two-second pause, and a four-second lowering. The individual adjusts their tempo for better muscle stimulation.* 18:20 🚫 *Minimizing strenuous activities: Mentzer's principle of maximizing recovery leads the individual to limit recreational activities on rest days and reconsider the role of cardio in the program.* 20:56 💪 *Mixed strength results: Strength tests indicate potential losses, possibly influenced by the shift from volume-style training to high-intensity training with extended rest periods.* 23:43 🤷 *Subjective approach: Reflecting on the experience, the individual suggests that a more subjective approach to rest days might have been beneficial, indicating the need for flexibility in applying Mentzer's principles.*

30days isn’t an effective time to see full results. I’ve been doing this style of training for a while. It works insanely well. But you need to really push yourself. Move past failure don’t stop when you have another rep left.

They tempo and control are everything in this method. I’ve been trying it for the last few months and I would consider myself an advanced lifter. My chest is literally sore for 4 days after ONE super controlled set of flyes into push-ups. Nice video!

it would be great if you tried out "mewing" for 30 days and see if there's any difference to the overall facial bone structure

Mentzer also emphasizes control and a rep tempo mostly to avoid using bad form and momentum. It makes a huge difference if you do the reps with more control and since your doing less makes the reps count that much more. Rep range suggested is 4 up 2 contraction and 4 down to emphasize all 3 phases of strength - concentric, static and negative. On lagging parts might want to add a assisted negative and hold as long as you can before you have to "controlled" lower the weight down.

I've been following the methods of Arthur Jones and Mike Mentzer for about two years and I have to say that listening to your body is the most important thing. Due to my age of 71, I definitely have to get enough rest between workouts. That said, I workout my total body every 4 to 5 days until my whole body fails. I'm collapsed and exhausted for 2 to 3 days afterwards. It's the same principle but applied to upper body, lower body and core which I alternate during the workout to give each muscle group some minutes to rest while I go to the next muscle group. Because I started out from a hospital bed and almost dying during the pandemic, at first I was working out every other day for only 45 minutes due to lack of stamina and it didn't take much to tire me out. As Mike said, as you become stronger, muscle growth will follow... not vice versa. And the bigger you are, the more deficit you can dig into your reserve. Now, just two years later, Mlmy results turn heads in any gym as this white haired dude rotates training stations with guys one third my age. So, you're on the right track and your lack of process isn't from the failure of Heavy Duty, High Intensity Training. It's because we're trying to teach ourselves this approach without the original coach by our side. Just remember, it's a principle, not a straight jacket and as Mike said to other body builders, more than once, "Feel free to experiment." PS. Just yesterday, I managed my first one arm, standing row of 50 kilograms. Just one rep on each side. 🎉

Hey, brother, I'm 54 and a retired competitive powerlifter. I had been doing the strict HIT training for 11 years and started noticing gains on my second month. Now I did modify the program a little. I did the warm up sets, then the main set picked a weight I could do for five reps strict and slow. Then immediately dropped the amount of weight by 50% and immediately ground out another 9 or 10 reps. Burnt to a crisp, my buddy & I sometimes had trouble driving home. I cycle that and Vince Gironda's 10X10 routine. Two months of HIT, then a week off. A month of 10X10 and back to HIT. Good luck man, nice video.

I swear this is the 4th time this year I do something or research it and within a day or 2 you release a video on it. Great minds think alike. I think I've always trained similar to him. Do my reps, wait a few seconds and do more then wait a tiny bit and push out till failure especially as I lose my grip on pullups before muscular fatigue.

I've not long started this training regime, but don't have an assistant to help spot or help with forced reps. I'm also still trying to find the optimum warm up volumes before hitting the final failure set. That said, I too feel the time between workouts is too long so training 3 days per week (M,W,F) I complete workouts 1 to 3 in week 1, then start week 2 with workout 4 and back to workout 1 on the following Wednesday. There have been days I've felt muscle soreness the following day/s, but this has cleared well before I get back to either 1 & 3, or 2 & 4, as the workouts round out. I was so glad you put this video together. I think with what you have learnt toward the end of this experiment you should have another crack at it, and this time see if you can find a bioimpedance scanner to assess your body at the commencement & the end to more scientifically assess the results. Cheers! I look forward to your next Mentzer update.

Man, you always make laugh, you have a great sense of humor... keep it up bro...

Mike Mentzer's HIT method is more of a philosophy than just another training workout. I've been doing it for roughly 3 months with a few tweeks here and there. I work out thrice in a week where I replace or add workouts, consider the functionality of my body and add partial reps to get the most out of my workouts. All this to say, Mike was kind of ahead of his time with this system of training. In a time where people go to the gym for 2-3 hours a day and perform high volume sessions, it gets in the way of life. Mike's approach is a more holistic one where the gym isn't your life but is a PART of life. In and out of the gym in under an hour, even 45 minutes where you've given it your all. After you get a day or 2 off where you live your life doing other things you enjoy instead of being consumed by the gym.

Active recovery days are so important my dude. Don't be afraid to go for a swim/ bike/ hike on a couple of those "off days." Your joints and surrounding tissue still need to be stimulated to promote growth. 💯

Thanks for elaborating Mike's training methods. I will try this one. I'm excited about the rest periods and the different things I can do in that time.

promoting discernment in research thankyou SO much bro

A big part of the controlled up and down is all about form, and it helps with not injuring yourself. Also, his 96-hour timeline was for much later into a career, 48 is where you should start.

Been doing Mentzer routines for about 4 months now and have noticed good gains. I struggle with “till failure” everytime because I train alone and have limited gym equipment in the apartment I live in, but the gains and strength have slowly ticked up over time. I’m happy with it! Just need to do more core work and adjust my calories down and I’ll achieve my final form 💪🏼

You’re a BEAST bro keep it up I think everyone’s body is different but pretty sure big mike had some “extra” amplifiers to help him even back then... Good to see someone strong who is natural. I def believe in the slow tempo I just always forget

Lifetime natural and Mike and Dorians heavy duty high intensity training when I learned and executed them properly gave me the best results of any program out there. Great job.👊💪

I've been doing it Mike's way for about 3 months and I've getting stronger everywhere. I have a notably slow recovery time so twice a week has been working wonders so far.

Dude, I hope you read this. Thirty days is not enough time to really notice any physiological or anatomical changes when it come to hypertrophy training, strength maybe a little when your young and at your peak testosterone levels. I’m 54 and have been training pretty much my whole life except for a couple times with injuries and feeling lazy but always got back into it after a little time off. I even did some competitive body building in my early and mid 20’s. Having said that, I just started becoming exposed to HIT Training during Covid lockdown when I was training at home in my home gym and couldn’t get to a gym. I decided to try it out and slowly backed off my volume training methods which I have done forever and after about 2-3 months I started noticing some muscle and strength gains again for the first time in a long time. I have diminished testosterone levels and if I can make gains In this program at 54 you could make amazing gains at your youthful age. The key is to know your body and modify it a bit for you. Even Mike modified from book one to book two of his HIT training program. I do two warm up sets of higher reps (15-20) very slow and controlled to warm up the joints and muscles then two working sets the first close to failure (maybe 1-2 reps in the tank) of close to 10 to 12 reps then the second to complete MOMENTARY failure with the last needing a spot to complete it, then I pause for 10-15 seconds drop down to the weight of the first working set and crank out as many as I can unassisted to failure again. For the bigger muscles like legs, back, chest, etc I drop down and do that again. Smaller muscles I’m done after the first drop set. I train MWF Push, pull,legs hitting each body part once a week It’s absolutely amazing for growth and strength. Key takeaways here, there’s a difference between momentary failure and complete failure, you have to have a good mind/muscle connection, which comes with maturity and lots of training, and as a nattie it is really easy to over train, I did it most of my life being natural. As a natty, you only need a couple of sets to complete failure once a week to make good gains. In my opinion, high-volume training is for professional athletes who are jacked on juice. You were starting to get it at the end of the 30 days, you need to stick with it for at least 60 to 90 days to start noticing a real difference. Mike talked about the difference between momentary and complete failure a lot. As soon as you actually start hitting complete failure and your muscles are toast and pumped to the max you will be sold on this program. The hard part for us gym rats is the downtime. Take up another hobby, I started playing guitar. I still do walking cardio several days a week, just not intense, I go for a brisk walk in the evening for about 3 miles, listening to audiobooks and educating myself even more. But I like to stay lean with good stamina for cardio vascular health the older I get. I might sacrifice a little bit of size in bulk with the extra cardio, but it’s worth it for me. I’m about 200 pounds at 15% body fat at 54 years old. Like Seth Feroce says, I just want to look good naked. Hope this helps.

Thanks for sharing this video. It is very hard to incorporate this type of training techniques when we all are used to spend at least one hour at the gym. However; it does intrigue me and I will keep trying Mike Mentzer's techniques and be patient. Nutrition is the key and very essential in all aspects of training. So good luck to all of us who are embarking this journey.

This program really helps working people

Mike did say that if you are used to a different programme of training, take 2 weeks completely off training before starting his programme :/

No you didn't train like Mike at all. And certainly not with his latest insights. It's all in the execution. Your rep speed is way too fast and you ignore the static and negative part of a rep. Wait far too long between pre-exhaust exercises.

You hit the nail on the head. You didn't need 4 days of rest. Everyone's body is different. You need less recovery time for the intensity that you put in. I think Mike would also agree with me on that. I've been spending less time in the gym. Going only 4 days a week as opposed to 6.... for the last 6 months. I'm a natty and put a whole half inch of size in my arms and maybe about 3/4 of an inch across my chest by allowing more rest and having quicker higher intense sessions rather than my old 2 hour gym sessions, I'm down to about a 45 min lift session. Hope you find the middle ground in all of this and make greater gains!!!! :)

Hey man, I did this workout for 8 months, and I came to the exact same conclusion! I literally did the same stuff you did, rest pause, doing the exact recommended workout, everything with the same results. I think Mike Mentzer was really onto something but I think it is all more in principle. I discovered a lot with Mike’s workouts, however I think I must train much more frequently to get results I want. So that’s what I’m up to now. Hopefully combining Mike Mentzer’s principles and my own experience will yield the best results.

I've been using Mentzer's methods for a few months now and it definitely works. I work out three days a week, in three splits, so nothing gets worked out more than once per week. I get plenty of rest and do only a set, or two at most, to total failure after my warm-up sets. Incidentally I'm 58 and am carrying more muscle mass now than most people in the gym even those who are half my age. 17" arms without a pump.

8-minutes in right now, but 1 critique is that your Cadence is too fast sometimes. Mike Mentzer used a 3-4 negative, and on certain exercises held a static hold for 2 seconds. Furthermore, whenever he trained clients, he had them hold a static on their last rep anywhere between 5 to 15 seconds until they completely failed. Then he would assist them in doing 1-2 more Forced Negatives. So in some sense, the spotter could have helped, but I understand that not everyone will have a spotter, so you should have probably substituted some of these exercises for the machine variation.

Thank you for the video, just started lifting and I like to learn more from videos like these.

Its important to keep training records. Its truly inspirational. When you get a new rep or weight step up. And you start to realize Mentzer knew what he was talking about. When I learnt the power of proper recovery. The gains ive gotten in my 60s are greater than my 20s. Im in awe of HIT TRAINING. And Mike Mentzer..

I train for 4 months the Mentzer style, sometimes i pause for 5 to 10 days between seasons...but i am stronger than ever before! I broke PR´s, get leaner and gained more muscles BUT every single season is pure carnage! It is not possible to train like this every single day! But you dont have to, i Love this kind of training!!!

30 days isn't long enough to see if this works especially if you do it wrong the first 2 weeks😂

Thank you! Nice going having the patience to complete your experiment. There is no better hobby or lifestyle than diet and exercise. Because working out takes us to our interior we discover our Spirit which is the Universal Spirit in all of us.

I never thought to do palms up pull downs, but my biceps have been growing like crazy since i started doing the pull downs that way. It's my favorite exercise for back now since it hits the biceps so hard too. love it.

Do Rock climbing/ bouldering for 30 days!! You'll live it, very functional and grip gains

i’ve been doing this as my second year of working out and it’s really putting size on my naturally tiny frame. i promote all the time that mentzer was way ahead of his time

Been training this way for years, I am the strongest person in the gym, I am 59 years old 😊

I appreciate the fair assessment at the end, instead of just shitting on HIT. I used to be very much into HIT, but really my best gains are a program that's more like the heavy set/back off set thing and agnostic about fully on failure but still go there as I'm always pushing my numbers and reps. Mentzer like Schwarzenegger experimented with different extremes after having built their physique already with more moderate methods, to try to refine their physiques and took it to two opposing extremes. In the end it's all about listening to your body and results.

I've been doing something similar to this for several months now. I only rest one or two days between workouts, just listening to my body. Dorian Yates took Mentzer's ideas and put his own tweaks on it, and won five Mr. Universe titles in a row. You have to adjust things a little bit to see what works best for you. It took me a few weeks, tracking weights and reps, to figure out what was best for me. But I been getting stronger, and building muscle, and at fifty two, that's kind of a beautiful thing. As with anything else, you will learn a lot about yourself and your body by pursuing a high intensity, single rep style of training. I love it. Also, I love getting in and out of the gym in thirty to forty minutes. Another thing. With High intensity, training to failure type workouts, machines, be they Nautilus or Cybex or whatever, are your friend. I have a lot of opinions. Maybe I need to start a channel.....

Start off by saying very good video. I was entertained throughout! I’m a personal trainer 34 years now. I’m 56 years old and have trained high volume and high intensity workouts with myself and clients. For the Mentzer program one needs to take at least 2-3 weeks off from your training to totally recover and kickstart your body with the new program. The warmups are definitely important and unfortunately the one set term is always misinterpreted. When I’m on the routine I’ll still do one to three warmup sets based on how I feel with that particular muscle group before you complete the “ one “ set to failure. That is important to know. The strength gains are legit with that program as long as one adheres to the recovery days and eats a well balanced diet. I have found these workouts are best with beginners who are very thin or ectomorphic or older clientele my age and up since it has less impact on the joints due to the lower volume and ample recovery. Again, great video and I hope this helps anyone who may want to try the program. Stay strong!

thankyou sir for promoting safe sets

many thanks sir for this demonstration video, it is mixture of comedy and seriousness.....keep going

Mentzer made all his gains training 4 days a week. He recommended this for his whole career. It was only near the end of his life that he started claiming people should be doing these super brief workouts every 96hrs or more. Golden Era Bookworm has great videos about the actual workouts he used, which are really effective. Also you have to train with a partner to get anything out of this at all. You can't go to true failure on your own without very specific machines, and even then you likely won't reach failure without someone motivating you to push further.

I’m doing this same routine but instead of 4 days rest I always just do 1-2 days rest in between days and I’m looking a lot better and I’m getting stronger

The best thing I’ve gotten from Mentzer is lifting to failure and learning from your lifts with a journal

A lot of people saying a month isn't long enough, and a few things to note: + Time Under Tension was only for 3 workouts. + Mentzer emphasises that 'Strength comes first', i.e., only after you become stronger will your muscle grow. + When you're not sore anymore, it doesn't mean you're recovered. If you're not even recovered, you haven't even started adding muscle. A great video, you were really getting it as time went on!

I’m doing mikes heavy duty training and I’m hooked !!! Been working out my entire life and I’m 40 and my going up in weight every time I go to the gym and growing like never before . Been doing this routine for about 4 months

Ive been trying to train to momentary muscle failure so no drop sets or forced reps or rest pause, just stop when I know I cannot get another clean rep. I perform 2 or 3 warmup sets with increasing weights and lower reps like any strength plan then rest 5 minutes and go for a rep PR. Full body workouts every other day. In six weeks Ive gained weight about 6 lbs on scale and continue to increase strength on most movements weekly. Not having any aches and pains or overuse injuries as I used to using 3-5 sets per muscle group. Im never really sore anymore and just feel great. Im in gym 1.5-2 hrs either 3 or 4 days a week and getting very big. Gotta say at 45 yrs young I really like this single work set routine and I dont think Ill go back to higher volume ever. Its simple to track and once youre done you move on to the next muscle group. Im team full body workouts for life. 3 compounds a push a pull and a leg then 3-4 isolation lifts afterwards still only one set each using lifts you need to fill out any gaps lagging behind,. I train my neck every other day now and its over 18 inches. Looks cool.

i tried mikes method and i went from 76kg to 83kg in 6 weeks, have to say that this was more a re-gain because in my best shape i was 86kg with 12%bf, 1,7 mt tall, i just would say that the most important part for me its the quality of the reps, get a warm up that sets you on enough to actually get the maximum muscle contraction on that main set, controlling the weight moving according to the tempo while you contract the target muscle as much as you can..for me its about 2 warm up sets, 2 aproach sets and one main set, mike would despise me but i enjoy doing it this way, when you are about to fail you get the weight still until the static contraction fails and then the negative part of the movement as slow as you can, then maybe 2 more negatives and thats it. and i would add that some shoulder issues i used to have were improving i suppose its because the muscle was stronger and could stabilize better..using this training method you will need 4 days of rest or more, for me right now is 5 to 6 days of rest, the gym now is only a small part of my weekly routine, this combined with intermittent fasting 16/8 for me is the sweet spot, currently 15%bf 85kg living my life eating kinda well XD Mike is absolutely right in my opinion, you just need to understand the principles, im not saying im expert but the way i apply this principles works for me better than any other method ive tried before

Hi brother I started this HIT program 4 months ago and I just turned 64 in September! I started with just one workout weekly so I can relate to all the time off! I just went walking 3-4 days a week for 30-45 minutes! I’m still just doing one high intensity workout weekly alternating between two workouts! This has definitely been effective for me and but the growth doesn’t really begin until around 2 month mark! Strength about the same time 6-8 week mark I started getting more definitely stronger and then came increasing more muscle growth and definition! Happy to say it’s about mind control and patience to get out the habit of gym visits daily! Great video if you want more time to enjoy your life and stay healthy itya great way to train! Eating clean definitely improves your body’s appearance and overall health!👍🙏😁

I've been training HIT for over 30 years. Few notes. Once you discovered how to warm-up properly and employ a good tempo with a more appropriate weight, your form did improve. The ability to push yourself and focus that intensity into a specific muscle is a learned skill. That takes time. Also, I would drop the angle on your incline press to just under 45 degrees. If above that, it's turning more into a shoulder press, than a chest press. I have found that the best split for a beginner, is the one that Mentzer recommended in his original Heavy Duty book, which is a push/pull/legs routine, with at least one day of rest between each session. Spreading that split over something like a Mon/Wed/Fri, allows for enough recovery for a beginner, while allowing you to work each body part once a week.

I actually just tried this work out a few months ago. I’m glad you posted this. My experience was better than yours because I was able to catch the rep count that was crucial to this type of training. The concentric,centric and static. I was surprised with so much rest that every week I was able to increase my weight and I was slowly getting stronger. I did notice my physique was similar to yours where I lost some size and definition. Dorian Yates follows Mike Mentzer‘s principles however he said you do not need as long of rest periods and he adds more than one exercise per body part. I have tried that and I found it quite useful and it helped me gain back my physique. I found that with the four second rep account and putting all your intensity into one lift is quite Valuable and I am able to spend less time in the gym and less wear and tear on my body that I was having doing max volume max reps

G2's over the S-gel👍 Excellent content, really enjoyed the message!

I've tried this as a newbie (45 years) a physical strong/active newbie. I've done it for 4 months ish. With a few tweeks, mainly just 48 hrs rest! The main points that have worked for me are leaving the ego at the door! Making sure I control the weight perfectly, I mean perfectly! And slowly! Picking a weight to get 6 min then dropping instantly to get to 12 on each exercise. A preset warm up for activation is key, I use resistance bands. I've gone from 100kg to 95kg but all my clothes are now tighter in the right areas, I'm 6'4". People at work are genuinely asking me if I'm taking steroids, which I've took as a compliment. Form is crucial as is pain! You HAVE to go beyond normal failure to validate the rest, it needs to be the hardest, most 8ntense set you can possibly do, for it to work. Done properly it's horrible, but definitely works. In my experience anyway. For me watching you didn't push yourself anywhere near hard enough, probably through fear of injury, which I understand but if you preset properly you'll negate this risk, as well as reduce weight as well as tempo. 👍

I heard that Mentzer doesn’t often mention the actual amount of warming up he does before the actual heavy duty sets. I recently started to try my own version of this with adding adequate warm up and I have to say that in the last two months I’ve made more progress that I did in the previous six months. It’s amazing.

I’ve been training 20 years and I’ve tried everything. This style is the greatest muscle building routine in history. I cannot say enough good things about it

From what I've learned about Mike's workout plan is you cannot go right into it from volume training. You have to take what he calls a layoff period (a break). This is to reset the body because most people are used to volume training and if they cut back in volume there will be a regression. Also it's all based on intensity. Basically after the workout your muscle group should be incapable of moving the weight. Then you would go to an assisted negative after that. This puts greater strain than volume and thus your body sends the signals that you need more muscle to move this weight. The reason the sets are so few is to avoid overtraining. If the muscle gets over fatigued then it will not be able to recover to the prior size it was before the workout or if it does grow it cannot maximize the growth. But ultimately he says the most important step is the journal. You have to note your results, your weights, jot down everything you do and he also never recommends using the scale. He recommends the mirror and also he says that progress will be slow as you only can expect about 10 pounds of muscle growth a year and that's world class growth. The average person training by themselves at a gym probably will see less. So that's less than half a pound on the scale a month. Barely noticeable after two months. After four months maybe over a 2 pound gain of lean muscle. And he also simply recommended calorie counting to lose weight. I'm sure while competing, he wasn't biking 40 miles a day. He wouldn't be able to maintain enough muscle. Then again he could just eat more fat to burn for the biking. He was a master at diet and exercise.

To be honest with you, the first 6-8 weeks is actually learning what your max exertion/ to failure feeling is really like. And I still grew quicker than I ever had. Once you can track that intensity you can implement it in each set and really unleash the potential of HIT

Ive been ill and I found your channel. Thank you so much for the entertainment. Your channel makes me motivated to try something new when I finally recover. I’m so frustrated with my health and you have given me the motivation and ideas on what to try and get past the struggle mentally and physically I’ve been dealing with lately.

Mike trained this of people, plenty of natties. Do less weight, way slower for the reps. You'll annihilate the muscles, but develop flawless form; no injuries. Nice to see you saw some of the good in it. My experience was mindbending progress and potential. I can't imagine I'll ever go back to volume crap. Great effort and video bro! Glad you learned some good principles from the trial.

That slow concentric is critical. Good luck. Great video.

Sooooo cool. Keep up these longer experiments. The dou7bts and mistakes you have are the same as ours. Saves us time

Kudos to you for sticking with it. I’ve tried lower volume/lower frequency training, and have a really hard time sticking with the off days. I don’t think people understand how hard it is to train less when it’s become a habit. I’m definitely going to try again though. Thanks!

By the end of this video Pigmie was starting to look like Mike Mentzer...What worked for me was the late trainer John Christy's version of of High Intensity...I did this Mentzer workout for 6 months and I lost size and strength. Pigmie here was smart enough to reassess it after a month... What worked amazing for me was about 6 failure sets per bodypart (using negatives, statics and rest pause), 3 minutes between sets, bodyparts split into 3 days/workouts and 2 days rest in between workouts.. The first time you do an ALL OUT isolation/compound set you will feel a amazing pump and muscle contraction like never before...Within 3 workouts your body will be accustomed to that and that amazing pump and muscle contraction won't be there anymore...As far as the slow rep tempo goes no top BB EVER advocated slow reps. As long as your muscles are lifting the weights and you aren't stupidly throwing or jerking weights you don't need to be conscious of that...

You weren’t controlled enough in the beginning…with this workout and the reps being so controlled whilst also being heavy it’s really about mind body connection and feeling how everything works together. When you do curls not only are your biceps under strain but your shoulders your traps rear delts pecs…. To be that controlled you have to stop thinking about compartmentalization of muscle groups and thinking about your body lifting it as a whole….this why Mentzer had a perfect physique….every part of his body was worked from such intense strain. I used to be big and worked out every day….had to take roids at one point to get more dense and thick…lost it all after having kids and not lifting for 8 years. Been doing this for 5 months and the weight that I lift isn’t as big of weight as I did but that’s because I’m lifting with more control and putting my muscles under more strain. It’s not about the weight that you lift it’s how you lift the weight….my body looks better now lifting slow and controlled to failure than blasting 100 lbs dumbbells

ive watched one of this dudes videos like 3 years, clicked on this video with no memory of doing so and instantly recognized who it was with the phrase “butcha gotta focusss” gotta love it

I’m 50 next year and have joined a gym for about a month now and have adopted mikes training. I have to say I’ve gotten stronger on each session and my wife has already said my arm and shoulders are looking bigger. It definitely works.

I've used Mike Mentzer's methods in my training throughout the years and have had similar experiences to yours. I've been training for over 5 years, but I think that I'm just not able to go to the intensity required to have my body actually need 4 days of rest between workouts. As I'm sure most people would agree, the more experience you have in the gym, the more you are able to maintain your form under very high exertion. Therefore, I think this program is best progressed up to, as opposed to implemented suddenly. What I mean by this is that it's probably best to start with how you're training right now, and gradually increase the intensity and reduce the volume. And eventually progress up to something like this program. And one more thing. Training this little did lower my overall mood, as I think it did for you during this experiment. For me, even if this did provide exceptional muscle building results, I would not implement it for long periods of time. I think sheer muscle mass is not worth the lower mood that not doing cardio or more frequent training causes. This is, of course, a matter of personal priorities. Still a great experiment!

Tempo makes sense with this style of training. It basically equates to a greater volume lifted and the stimulus felt as if you were going bulk sets and reps

I appreciate that you recognized the lack of proper tempo from the beginning. Also, you didn’t speak to daily caloric intake which would need to be adjusted to reflect your decrease in workout frequency per week (TDEE calc.) in order to not consume too much excess calories, inevitably leading to addition fat deposition. Would be interesting to see some follow-up videos incorporating proper calorie counting with a minimal surplus from maintenance, along with weekly body scans. And of course maximizing intensity with the ideal tempo. Thanks for the video!

Single set to failure has been great because I don't have to think about how to pace my reps over multiple sets which has been causing me to hold back.

What did he do for core? Or was the core worked by contracting it for each exercise?

Do we need breaks between the different excercise if yes how long should b the rest between each excercise ?or we have to do the all excercises continuously? Kindly help

I've been doing the same workout since April and I noticed your tempo wasn't correct right away. My progress from then to now: Chest press 120-->190 Incline press 50-->180 Lat pulldown 115 -->175 Deadlift 135-->245 Leg extension 120-->225 Leg press 240-->375 Squat 140-->338 (squat machine, back can't handle the bar) Seated calf press 160-->300 Lat raise 90-->135 Curl - 50-->115 Tricep extension 90-->135 Decline chest press 90-->180 You can cardio on the non-lifting days. My knees don't hurt anymore and getting close to the full stack on some machines is pretty cool. Only supplement I take is creatine.

After decades in the gym and having to 'reset' my workouts many times, I still believe if youre smashing a muscle group to true failure from several angles, youll grow. High reps/low reps whatever. Theres no secret. Smash it, thats it. Edit: watched whole thing. Whod have known? Training less made you smaller/weaker. Maybe do the routine using his cycle also lol (not serious, but theres the other 'factor' left out) Loved your thoughts at the end. I also had a strict routine for years and now, if Im ready and wanna, Im hitting the same group again or having an extra day off, whatever feels right.

learning your passion is best

Oh yeah. Nice aproach 👏👏

No meth??? 😿🥺

We switched to doing the 4 second negatives/positives and strength greatly improved over a few months . I wouldn't do squats with the controlled decent just for fear of getting a hernia. But controlled reps with machines on leg day is insane.

The principles of Metzer's training are much more useful than trying to follow any strict regiment. Properly done with adequate intensity, rest pause sets are a revelation. And probably most important is the emphasis on sufficient time to recuperate, especially as we age. The more trauma you induce on your muscles, the more time you'll need to allow for growth.

Very entertaining and informative. Give it another try for 90 days.

Mike mentzer was a legend...what he says means a lot.... his routine gives me more time for other activities like doing cardio playing games doing Yoga....and there's less injury and you are more focused

Glad someone is interested in mike mentzer and his training methods.

This is such an interesting video. I really see value in Mentzer's method, but like you, I think 4 days is too long as personally I would start to feel sluggish with that much rest. Do you think this method could be adapted with less rest time and doing upper and lower body back on consecutive days?

I enjoyed your video. It will really benefit others who will try Heavy Duty training

To check if I have gone to failure, I usually drop the amount of weight by 5 to 10 lbs and try for more reps. Sometimes I can't even get one and other times I can crank out a few more. That way I know I have reached failure. I have been doing this technique for a few months and still improve every workout. In between workouts I still get a couple of BJJ sessions a week and other light exercises. I love the method.

thank you very much for good quality video, I mean I saw a video about mike men training another popular channel and there I didn't like that. training program was not 100 percent correct, but in your video you follow my advices and it's really cool.

Bro i dont know why i watched this i haveng been to the gym in close to probleh 20 years and i never followed stuff from the guy although i have heard the name from which you were basing your work out on . But dood j watched your whole presentstion all to the end and subscribed . Way to stick to it to see and show if results could be made .i think yoj did awesome at fjnding out what to do to stay within boundaries of the programme i didn't feel like you were cheating at all and i respect your dedication toward staying disciplined 😢. Respect brother

I was trained by Mentzer in the early 90's for a few months. I barely worked out, the workouts were so infrequent. I got a little chubby with all the inactivity, maybe a little stronger. We talked about it, and I kind of likened it to getting a tan, or forming calluses on your hands. It's especially important if you're NOT on steroids, and studies back it up. If you work a muscle more often, and try to get a little stronger each workout, or increase the intensity by a little bit 2x or 3x a week, you'll build more muscle. I've found that upper/ lower splits 2x per work with varying rep schemes each workout, i.e. Westside for skinny bastards is a superior way to workout. What's funny is that when Mentzer showed up he was kind of fat and smoking a cigarette. WTF? I barely recognized him. After a few weeks and it was apparent that it wasn't working, we had a sit down and talked. I asked him if working out that infrequent was the way to go, why was he so out of shape? He never really could answer that, just said he lost motivation.

Is now on my 11th month on this style of training applied to calisthenics, I train a total of one hour a week. At first it felt strange and not efficient, but after a few months of practice I got the hold of it and now I'm a supporter of the method. I got stronger (added a few reps on chin ups and pull ups) and my arms grew bigger. I still think that is useful to change method from time to time to engage and challenge the muscle and the nervous system so maybe I'll do a bit more volume in the future but the eperiment has been great so far. I encourage to try this method expecially people who are addicted to the gym, or do a lot of volume just for the sake of it, and young people that thinks that the more you exercise the more you grow, whit this method you discover that you can easily stay 2 weeks without training and come back stronger to get a new pr, eliminating the feat of not doing enough. I encounter a lot of people that compliments my physique but when I tell them that I only do one set per week per muscle group they give me weird looks and of course keep training the same as before. We also must take in consideration that the life of the average person can be quite stressful and fatiguing, so a longer rest may e required, also that the muscle is scientifically proven that takes 3 weeks to start to loosing strenght after a workout, so I'm convinced that is better to promote a training like this instead of promoting a gym culture that can become overwhelming for newcomers.

Now do this for 3 months. Time is what showcases whether the experiment works or needs to be scratched. Keep em comin

i tried this experiment for 9 months. i plateaued after 3 months and had to add a drop set, eventually the high weights resulted in catastrophic injury and i had to stop. but mike mentzer makes some good points and integrating the things that he advised helped me figure out what works for me and has helped my routine overall

The system works. I like Yates approach with warmup sets a bit better but just about everyone over trains

What I heard was for beginners, having 1 day rest after each workout works best. Then eventually leading up to 4 days rest gradually. I don’t think mentzer taught it like that though. But this program helped me a lot. No injuries, besides some shoulder inflammation when I didn’t warm up on the flies. But I’ve added 40 pounds to my bench in a span of 2 1/2 months. I’ve gained 20 pounds, which for me is awesome. But overall I like the program. I’d always get injured somehow doing normal workout regimen and end up falling out of working out because of it. It seemed like after I started making any progress I’d just get injured.

For a personal trainer this has lot to think about. Thank you for this and other videos as well!

You didn't train like mike but the recovery got you

You should definitely redo this challenge!!!! Only having forced reps and 4-2-4 tempo for half of the challenge is certainly selling it short.

Glad you've been able to do so many challenges for more than a week recently. Im sure its tough especially when youre doing challenges that overlap each other. Keep it up love the content!