Mike Mentzer says you should only do one set per excercise. nobody else says this. The athlean-x guy seems to think he's right. What's ISTs opinions
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what’s the difference between you doing 3 sets of 12 different exercises and one set of 36 different exercises?
Lmfao
because resting inbetween sets allows you to either do more reps or load more weight leading to better hypertrophy
He is wrong /thread
Who knows /thread
He is right /thread
He is maybe /thread
He is, therefore he lifts
The mentzer method works in the same way that most methods work. You're working out so you see results.
lmfao i come here for posts like this, concise and correct
I have a B.S. in movement science. The textbook showed a bar graph of studies that 1 set had the highest bar for muscle growth, 5 sets had the highest bar for endurance, and 3 sets is a happy medium of both, with growth decreasing with each new set.
>the textbook
There's.... just one textbook?
The one I actually bothered to buy. I figured out fast, they were a waste and unnecessary.
An education worth every penny.
RP actually made a video with some exercise phd and they had data that showed doing as little as one rep a week showed muscle growth lol. it sounds like a troll but that was literally the conclusion. Now it wasnt optimal but one rep per week cmon man. One set per exercise is plenty especially if you do several exercises. But you cant just go and wing it. "Oh I guess I did the set". No like you have to go in with fricking great intent and do a PR basically every session. Most people are not able to train "hard" and with this mindset. They benefit more from doing fluff and training frequently.
True and good post, the key to mentzer's one set thing was that the intensity was SO HIGH, you had to take multiple days rest afterwards. The aforementioned intensity included slow tempo work, forced reps, negatives only, but no drop sets- most people don't realize this is what the peak of intensity looks like. Stopping 2-3 reps shy of actual muscle failure so you can do more volume is DEFINITELY a stupid plan, you'll almost always get better gains doing lower volume (see 1-3 sets of 4-10 reps) with higher intensity; not necessarily using the HIT methods of all out failure i touched on before, moreso taking your sets to the point that you CANNOT complete another full rep.
Is that why every hypertrophy focused training program does 24-40 sets a week?
>Stopping 2-3 reps shy of actual muscle failure so you can do more volume is DEFINITELY a stupid plan
That’s exactly how Jay Cutler trained and it worked great for him
>Stopping 2-3 reps shy of actual muscle failure so you can do more volume is DEFINITELY a stupid plan
Literally the best way to train for long term gains and avoiding injury.
Doing more sets also increases risk of injury. And going to failure barely increases risk of injury as long as you take the necessary safety precautions and stop before your form breaks down. So overall I'd say they're about even, unless you're ego lifting.
>Stopping 2-3 reps shy of actual muscle failure so you can do more volume is DEFINITELY a stupid plan
Thats how the vast majority of bodybuilders train
>you'll almost always get better gains doing lower volume (see 1-3 sets of 4-10 reps) with higher intensity; not necessarily using the HIT methods of all out failure i touched on before, moreso taking your sets to the point that you CANNOT complete another full rep
I agree but with higher reps you can get closer to failure
Like instead doing 4 out of 5 reps you do 9 out of 10 reps. 4/5 is 80% but 9/10 is 90% so you're making 10% more gains. Some would say the higher weight makes up for it in intensity but I would say the extra sets and lower risk translate to better long-term gains.
Also, who is doing 5-rep maxouts of DB fly or facepulls. Or calf raises. "You do 1x5 calf raises per week??" "Yes *chad face*"
It's not 4/5 or 9/10. It's 4/4 or 9/9. But you're onto something. It does often happen that you should be using less weight.
That was showing strength gains, not muscle growth
>RP
lmao. He lies about what his doctrate over. He claims he's this training and exercise expert but his degree is in nutrition related science. His opinion on lifting is the same value as a computer scientists who lifts weights if we're going to do the appeal to authority crap. Furthermore, his thesis was just "40g of protein in a meal is optimal" which everyone already knew.
The guy he had over did his phd on that exact topic
Iirc he said it was something similar for hypertrophy
1 is all you need if you lift to failure. his definition of failure is different than what most people do. To lift to failure, involves both the positive and negative movement and requires a spotter to do properly.
how to find spotter without sounding gay?
Try not being gay.
>2024
>discussing mike mentzer still
more volume = more muscle growth, how hard is it to understand?
>The athlean-x guy
can't benchpress with proper form
had to peak to pull over 4pl8 dids on camera
At what point does the growth potential peak? Surely if i lift with intention and intensity, i can make it through a full workout and be completely gassed within 30 minutes to an hour, no? For what purpose would i lower the weight and continue to do easy low intensity high volume work?
After completing one set taken to failure is optimal.
>more volume = more muscle growth
Sufficiently use the muscle enough to cause the mechanoreceptors in your muscle to trigger hypertrophy causes muscle growth. Doing a single set to failure with a slow enough cadence to guarantee good form and eliminate momentum is more than enough for this. Whereas doing a lot of sets is an extremely time inefficient way to stimulate this growth. You can spend no more than one hour per week in the gym doing HIT or you can spend one hour per day doing volume. You're going to get the same results the from multiset routine is intense enough in the long run. There is no reason to waste time in the gym doing it.
you will be able to use one set training to create maximum muscle microtears for hpt - only if:
A. you've unlocked all of your neuronic activation - aka you've intensively volume trained for at least 6-7 years
B. you are doing at least 15-16 reps for non-trivial fatigue
C. you are on PEDs or heavy stims which let you overcome the first (faux) line of fatigue.
you need A, B and C. in any other case, you will gain nothing doing low volume high intensity training.
>t. personal trainer with 22 years of experience
Caffeine can get you over the fatigue hurdle if used sparingly.
It's not even about microtears. They're just an unfortunate side effect. It's about creating more tension than your body would like and thus obligating it to make more muscle, which requires
A) practice
Yet, after the collapse of the societ union, when trainers of olimpian champions could reviel how they were training, without being sent to siberia, all of them used high intensity training. Including youngling who were just starting and didn't use any pharma.
There really is like 3 respectable dudes that we know of that trained like this, so keep your fables are foolish
Its not about microtears, its about mechanic tension and mTOR signalization in the muscle cell
>Sufficiently use the muscle enough to cause the mechanoreceptors in your muscle to trigger hypertrophy causes muscle growth. Doing a single set to failure with a slow enough cadence to guarantee good form and eliminate momentum is more than enough for this.
It's actually way fricking easier and more reliable to just do a few sets more half assed than it is to do one perfect set to failure. That's why no-one actually does HIT
does shit shit include all the ramp up sets, if there are any? i seen programs that do a set of 50%, 60%, 70% up to a 'working set' of a reps at 85-95%, is it like that? i am ignorant.
A warmup set or two can be used your for your first compound, one of maybe 5-6 reps at 50% of the working weight and one of 2-3 reps at 75% of the working weight. But no more warming up than that is required. If you do Bench Press as your first exercise for example and you find that warming up for that then completing your working set is sufficient to warm up your upper body, then you do not need to warm up for the following upper body exercises.
More volume does not equal more muscle growth by itself.
The effort/ intensity is what creates muscle growth, and you are not going to be able to do real intensity for more than one to two sets if you are actually training to complete muscle failure.
Doing 30 sets of junk volume is just pumping up the muscles a little bit with no growth. Youre just wasting your time doing your 3x12 with 30 lbs on the barbell.
intensity and volume are necessary you homosexual moron then again you are brown so the moron thing is redundant
Why is volume necessary? You think your body won't adapt to the stress because you didn't do it a few times over?
yes dude one rep surely will get you jack post body to prove me wrong
One set, not one rep.
body not someone elses traps you brown homosexual
It's just a tan. There is no need to be upset.
under 6 feet tall i can tell by your manlet proportions also under 16 inch biceps kek try adding some volume you might actually look like you lift
Thank you for your input, non body poster.
One, absolute, all-out set to failure + forced reps/partials/negatives/whatever you've got access to, probably IS best for raw hypertrophy, but it doesn't take into account the role of warm-ups, pumps and motivation in the gym. Very few people can go to absolute, sheer failure for 5+ exercises in a single session. The focus required and the toll it takes on the body/nervous system is immense. Maybe if you're a full-time bodybuilder with peak sleep and time to plan your workouts, you can, but for the rest of us it isn't that easy
This is why Dorian > Mike, at least in practice, because Dorian puts more emphasis on the final set being the destructive one, but with sufficient warming up and even intermediate sets. The difference between Dorian and Mike is that Dorian was operating in the 80s and 90s, whereas Mike was obsessed with rebelling against the bodybuilding norms of the 70s. If Arnold did 20 sets of bench, then Mike would do 1 set and dovetail all of his research and study into this
Mike is based for a variety of reasons, and he has that real thick physique Dorian had, but I don't think he properly explained his ideas + he was hellbent on going against whatever the bodybuilding zeitgeist of the time suggested
The bottom line is that almost any way of working out is fine if you're a) consistent b) willing to go to some level of failure and c) make a distinction between enhanced and unenhanced lifters
Totally- their ideologies surrounding training were groundbreaking, but had flaws. The important thing, not just for bodybuilding programs but life in general, is to utilize comprehension and pick out the most useful and applicable pieces of information and weaponize them to realize your maximal potential
I think it's also relevant to remember that Mike was literally taking amphetamines to get himself hyped up for these kinds of sets.
>Maybe if you're a full-time bodybuilder with peak sleep and time to plan your workouts, you can, but for the rest of us it isn't that easy
If you're a beginner or even intermediate you physically can't hit the requisite intensity for it to work properly.
Intensity basically means absolute load, the physiological response to a set to failure at a high load is not comparable to a low load. That doesn't mean percentage-if you do a set of squats to failure at 80% 1rm the effect on the body will be hugely different if 80% is 5pl8 vs 2pl8.
>One, absolute, all-out set to failure + forced reps/partials/negatives/whatever you've got access to, probably IS best for raw hypertrophy, but it doesn't take into account the role of warm-ups
Mentzer never said that you shouldn't warm up. You got this moronic notion from some anti-HIT poaster on here
>listen to these other roiders on how to train
>don't listen to this roider, the other roiders are right for some reason
Not saying you're samegayging, it's just funny when one opinion gets critiqued from two opposite sides
Reasonable critique, I can totally understand that it's not for everyone, not for most people actually, but it worked for me.
>inb4 "you would've looked better if you did more junk volume for another 45 minutes every workout"
mayhaps, but I prefer not working out for 90 minutes like all the dyels I know do
>Mentzer never said that you shouldn't warm up
nah he said that you should warm up. especialy on leg days
you're fat kek
You forgot to attach a pic.
don't care you are fat lose like 5% bf then come back fatty
Why are you scared of taking up additional space on the planet and getting stronger as a result? Are you worried girls won't find you attractive? Kyriakos grizzly
>listen to these other roiders on how to train
Mentzer too was a roider and not only that, but also a meth addict as well>
you just need to look at his body he's still on noobie gains and acting like he knows his shit the definition of dunning krueger
It's not often i agree 100%, but this is one of those times.
try it for a couple of months and see for yourself?
He's wrong. HIT briefly piqued peoples interest like 30 years ago then got quickly forgotten about because it doesn't work. Recently some tiktok grifters went in about it and it got spammed by gullible zoomers. Mike was a mentally ill, drug addicted moron that advocated driving your own piss btw
Do you want to listen to Mike Cucktzer or the actual people who compete and win and look amazing in comparison?
Mentzer is correct. If you are training with sufficient intensity and taking an exercise to muscular failure, you only need one set.
If you're going for absolute optimum gains? No. If you want something that's going to give you reasonable amounts of gains for the bare minimum amount of effort? Yes. Research is increasingly moving in the direction that a pretty fricking small amount of muscle stimulation per week is actually required for a sizable amount of gains.
>Do one set for good gains
>Do 52 sets only for an additional 0.00025 inches to your limbs which might just be fat from your bulk.
>optimal
Depends on your definition of "optimal". If you're going for absolute maximum gains, then yes, higher volume is going to be better (but with diminishing returns). If you're more concerned with time and effort expenditure, which most regular people (and especially beginners) probably are, then a low volume routine wins hands down.
I didn't say that to be derogatory. I am personally a big advocate of simpler, lower volume routines, since I think they're much more manageable and approachable for most people.
>If you're going for absolute maximum gains, then yes, higher volume is going to be better (but with diminishing returns)
They diminish heavily one the second set where you get almost no additional gains from them. The higher intensity the exercise, not only do you need fewer sets for the same benefits in the long run, you cannot tolerate doing more than one or two sets since that first set, if done properly, will thoroughly exhaust the muscle.
>The higher intensity the exercise, not only do you need fewer sets for the same benefits in the long run, you cannot tolerate doing more than one or two sets since that first set, if done properly, will thoroughly exhaust the muscle.
There's the rub. Most people (especially beginners) are going to fall short of that level of intensity.
>bare minimum amount of effort
Imagine saying this while advocating for barbell cardio LMAO
>Mentzer says do X
>IST: post body
>Mentzer posts body
>IST stays gay
I hate this board
>1 set = 3 reps to failure, 3 just barely manageable.
First three are for breaking your PR, do that every session no matter what. Last three are to slip past the mental blockage, it sounds moronic(because you are) but persistence requires self deception. I have someone else adjust the weight without me looking. I also face away from the mirror. I’ve had differences in as much as 50 pounds between my actual max and what my brain told me was my max. Myostatin is a helluva drug
Anything works on juice
When you are roiding it doesn't really matter what you do.
You can lift the shittest of forms and still get big than any natty, all while eating junk food.
This is true too
That's why we should always take care with what roiders say about hypertrophy
>the intensity was SO HIGH, you had to take multiple days rest afterwards
>absolute, sheer failure
>The focus required and the toll it takes on the body/nervous system is immense
can someone post a youtube video of one of this superhuman level absolutely unfathomably epically intense set? i want to see how much more extreme it is than when i go to failure and do partials. i assume it involves shitting yourself and screaming a mist of blood into the air
I don't have video, but ultra intensity is when you push yourself so hard that it gives you euphoria and want to do the next rep to failure without resting. It's hard to get there. I felt it like 4 months ago and it scared me because I thought I was going to have a panic attack, but a wise anon here told me it's ok and is actually something you should aim for. It's hard to get there but you can do it if you truly go to the max failure per exercise. I use music to motivate myself and not rest too much so I can get to that state again.
Haven't done it lately because I don't have time to put music as I lift during my lunch break
Just look up dorian yates workouts.
Mentzer had even higher intensity as he would use momentum for concentric and the kill muscles on eccentric. Not recommended due to a high risk of injury.
>can someone post a youtube video of one of this superhuman level absolutely unfathomably epically intense set?
It's just a side effect of extremely high load.
Using deadlifts as an example, a lifter with a 5RM of 150kg could probably hit that every day if they really wanted, but good luck doing that with a 5RM of 350kg.
watch dorian yates' blood and guts
start at 7:42
?t=462
Just do wat works for u bro
reminder, Mentzer is a fraud who shilled HIIT to help sell Arthur Jones' machines. He never trained that way to build his physique. He also smoked meth and sucked dick.
All you have to do for your body to adapt and grow is more than its use to and eat and sleep of course
99% shit about your regiment doesn't matter because in the end of the day it's up to your body to decide how to react on physical stress. Use whatever the frick gives you the most gains
He's wrong.
Mentzer has been rebuked a long time ago
The only reason people take him seriously is because of Dorian Yates
He also took meth and auschwitz wagon full of roids, so, yeah, you're probly better off listening to someone else
Imagine how big Arnold would have been if he followed Mike's routine?
threadly reminder that mentzer did not build his physique with that sort of programming. he spent 10+ years doing regular body building training daily, and of course used steroids. only then did he switch things up to start selling books.
Any roider is automatically a fraud, so nothing they say can be considered trustworthy.
He's right. Six months doing 1 set to failure once a week
My progress is barely visible, but it's visible, meaning it's working.
Slowly but surely.
Still dyel though, but with time, perseverance and patience, i will make it.
mentzer's failing is that he doesnt understand that what's optimal for a normie bro split hobby lifter is not what is optimal for a guy at his level of physical development with gear usage
Do a set of 8 hour reps of sleeping. Then eat a lot of protein. Now do two set of 4 hour reps of sleeping. Then sleep, get 8 hours, now repeat.
I tried his methods and I think frequency matters more than he thought it does. Yeah, on paper it sounds great to get a PR, fully recover, and get a PR. In practice it just didn't happen like that. If I lift to failure but more frequently on the other hand, aka DoggCrapp my body does support bigger and bigger sets somehow which in turn does lead to continuous myofibrilar adaptation for as long as I can handle it. Which was like 2 months. Now that I have my will to live back I'm trying DC without the roid pause. Just a single set to failure because I believe Mike was 100% correct about that one.
>DC without the roid pause. Just a single set to failure because I believe Mike was 100% correct about that one.
The rest pause is just an intensity method to prolong that single set. Same as forced negatives and partials.
It’s true, but it only works if you know how to feel your muscles contract during a movement and if you know how to properly train to failure. Most people only stop when they feel the burn but still have several reps in reserve. It could also be because people aren’t lifting heavy enough to experience failure, like when you physically cannot lift the weight for another rep.
He’s definitely right in the sense that most morons in the gym don’t push themselves properly they do the simple 4 sets of 10 where they save all the energy for the last set
In reality if you get an appropriate weight amount and push yourself to absolute failure even holding it in the static position at the point of tension you’ll see real growth
He’s also absolutely correct about recovery and time in gym needed, Dorian Yates has the best analogy for it describing the process of building muscle to rubbing sandpaper on your skin and giving it time to heal
maybe try it and see for yourself?
The way Lyle MacDonald explains it makes the most sense to me. Paraphrasing/adding my own interpretation:
>there are fatigue reps and effective reps
>effective reps are the ones before you fail where the bar slows down and the entire muscle is recruited for maximal effort contraction
>effective reps actually grow the muscle so you need a certain (unknown) number of them
>fatigue reps are the repsinstead that which get you to the point of full recruitment
>a 10 rep 0RIR set might have 6-7 fatigue reps and 3-4 effective reps (30-40%)
>a 10 rep 2RIR set (what you would do if you were aiming for 3x10) might only have 1-2 effective reps per set, so you would be doing 30 total reps to get 3-6 effective ones (10-20%) which is obviously less efficient
>you need the first set's fatigue reps but the fatigue reps on set 2 and 3 are only needed because you rested too long; in rest pause you would cut the rest to ~20 seconds and your next set would be effective reps straight away. So 3 sets would be 7 fatigue/3 effective; 3 effective; 3 effective so 9 effective reps with only 16 total reps (56%)
>other failure training methods similarly work by getting more effective reps and fewer fatigue reps
>you should actually fail as a beginner/intermediate because you don't know what 0RIR (stopping on the rep before failure) feels like; advanced lifters can stop before failing
>he says something about the difference between task failure (can't finish a rep with good form) and actual muscular failure (can't contract the muscle/move the bar at all) but I can't remember what he suggests doing
>we don't do 1RMs or similar low rep sets every time because we need to know the failure was due to the muscle fibres being fatigued rather than the CNS not being able to recruit enough motor units or send a strong enough signal to contract; we don't know this if we fail on the first rep so we aim for 5-10 RM instead
Link?
While that definitely sounds like Lyle's way of thinking, I've never seen him actually advocate for rest-pause. His GBR uses 3 minute rest periods for compounds and 90-120 seconds for isolations.
I think I got most of it from this series: https://bodyrecomposition.com/training/muscular-failure-definitions
That's interesting. I think of it in a slightly different metaphorical way from MacDonald and Mentzer.
I think of volume as a cost, like the price of a product at the store, and I think of stimulus as the product that I want. If you can get the same product at a lower price, that's always better. All techniques besides the first working set can be ranked within this model. Instead of doing a traditional 3x12, you could replace two of those sets with drop sets and get the same stimulus with less total volume, which is always better. Instead of the two drop sets, you could have a spotter help you do two static hold/negatives, which is better still, etc. More bang for your buck.
in my experience a mix between instensity and volume is what produces growth. mentzer would tell you do just one set, schwarzenegger would tell you do 20-30 sets: i think the answer lies in the middle. i personally do 3-10 sets per week for each muscle group, depending on how fatigued i am, and i try to focus on my weak bodyparts, for example my forearms grow from just pulling exercises so i simply don't train them directly. my biceps are a weak bodypart of mine, they simply won't grow so im still figuring it out. see for yourself
I used to curl every day and that made my biceps curl
I do think the answer is different for different muscles. We used to swing from tree branches all day like a monkey, our biceps are probably meant for high volume. We generate power in our legs and hips, so those muscles are probably meant for low volume work. Everyone's trying to find a one-size solution but there may not be one.
>used to curl every day and that made my biceps curl
Grow, it made my biceps grow
>I do think the answer is different for different muscles
i agree. that's why i went from training my biceps once a week to twice or 3 times per week. muscle that refuses to grow needs more training, both in intensity and volume. on the other hand my triceps grow with little to no direct training, i do throw some skullcrushers and extensions here and there but my 80-90% size of my tris is from bench and military presses
Mentzer is half-right. He showed that 90% of the work is done by steroids.
You can through hard lifting push past and get better results, like obviously every modern bodybuilder is much bigger than Mentzer. What Mentzer shows you is that you can take it easy and take a step back, relax a little, you don't need to grind those diminishing returns and injure yourself. With the Mentzer method you'll be smaller than the other guys, but you'll have a longer career with less surgeries and a longer lifespan. You could consider Mentzer's methods as the baseline for a bodybuilder and know that everything else you do is just extra for a small boost. Then look at Ronnie Coleman and Jay Cutler who are just these obsessed freaks who just don't stop at good enough and push every limit humanly possible.
didn't he heart attack before 50?
yes. either way he was genetically predisposed to die young, his brother had the same fate. i dont know what was his steroid use but im sure it was no way near to what dudes like markus ruhl used to do (on top of that he smoked cigarettes) and he's still alive
And yet Dorian Yates dominated in his time, lifting a grand total of 3hrs per week.
remember mike mentzer also said that the only way that you can build muscle is by eating carbs
mentzer didn't say that, he being a pro-balanced diet said carbs are important as much as protein in contrast with bodybuilders that claim eating an absurd ammount of protein is a must to build muscle
That's true. If you don't eat carbs you're not gonna be able to eat enough.
His “one set” was a giant drop set. If you drop the weight 5-10 pounds at a time, and work your way all the way down the the smallest weight, your “one set” was really like 15-20 sets
Nobody actually has a problem with what he's saying, they just don't like Mentzer. Supersquats was a famous program for decades and even had a mini revival a few years back and that's literally 2 sets a week of squats (the 3x a week version you sometimes see is not supersquats and just some fricking redditor's grift) and a set of curls and something else. Very short term program with dozens of people logging the progress they made. Volume training is the dumbest fricking thing you can do. All you're doing with those 20 easy sets is prexhausting yourself for that 21st actually hard set.
how many reps on squat? you do 2 sets of 20 reps a week?
No. He takes roids opinion disregarded It takes a few sets to get blood into the muscle to strength max but you want rest between sets so alternate types of exercises during each set and return to original type multiple times, this keeps blood maxing and fatigue low and time maxes and cardio maxes and calorie burn maxes without straining the muscle, gives time for synovial fluid to fill the joint and stretches muscles, tendons, and ligaments
Example, start 5 pound dumbell 10 curls right arm, 10 left, 10 right 10 left, 10 right 10 left, rest arms and walk around gym 3 minutes then another set of 30 each arm as before, another walk, now delts same pattern, then same triceps, now 10 minutes actual rest no walk, repeat, etc intil arm workout done, then do back with a barbell no weights to stretch back and legs, wait five minutes, add two 5 pound weights do same, 10 reps repeat etc. These natural patterns simulate real work. Doing similar things multiple times then changing but never done until end of session.
Mentzer has trained both naturals and drug users.
> It takes a few sets to get blood into the muscle to strength max but you want rest between sets so alternate types of exercises during each set and return to original type multiple times, this keeps blood maxing and fatigue low and time maxes and cardio maxes and calorie burn maxes without straining the muscle, gives time for synovial fluid to fill the joint and stretches muscles, tendons, and ligaments
Which is why multiset routines only work with roiders. However, a pump not not necessary for hypertophy. A pump is just vasodilation. Hypertrophy is caused by mechanoreceptors in the muscle responding to sufficient stress during exercise. A high intensity exercise provides more than enough stress to trigger hypertrophy. Then you only have to provide enough time for the muscle to recover AND THEN grow after exercise.
>stretches muscles, tendons, and ligaments
This happens simply by performing a motion that takes the muscle into the stretched position.
Wrong. Blood flow is NECESSARY for hypertophy as constriction not only leads to necrosis, but blood flow REMOVES DEAD TISSUE via BRUISING and sub-dermal bruising however slight is only possible when the muscle swells against the skin and bones. Besides hypertrophy is NOT the point of exercise at all. That comes naturally with resistance training. The point of exercise is to LUBRICATE THE JOINT and stretch and strengthen the TENDONS, LIGAMENTS, and to rebuild cartilage in the gap left behind the expanded joint to PREVENT INJURY AND IMPROVE MOBILITY AND STRENGTH OVERALL. Otherwise the extra strength gained by the muscle wear stress the tendon tearing it from the bone. This is basic shit people. Besides if you lift few reps with high weight you will develop arthritis at the point of contact between the bones. If however you use a LIGHT WEIGHT and more reps in reasonable sets you will STRENGTHEN the joint therapeutically making it more and more resistance to injury while building muscle and bone density and MUSCULAR ENDURANCE which is necessary for any actual WORK including fighting and you know work. That's why you gym bros keep getting injured. You're roided up, pushing way to much weight, compacting your joints, jamming them against each other, and pulling yourself apart under high tension and like a guitar string the ligaments, tendons, and muscles are snapping and tearing suddenly instead of growing naturally over time through micro-tears. Stupid. When you get injured you'll realize I was right. You want a very slow workout warming up giving time for the blood to enter the muscle and the synovial fluid to enter the joint. Then you can lift your target weight and come back down. This is basic physics. Every action has an equal and opposite react and objects at rest tend to stay at rest, meaning you need to set them in motion GRADUALLY or you'll be met with the same force you apply and you won't achieve acceleration, but rather dead opposition.
Why would tendons not grow with heavy weights? Makes 0 sense. The pump is shortlived as well.
Because they tear too soon to grow. They can't grow if cut.
It would make more sense ifyou said they don't tear enough with low reps.
This makes 0 sense though, and I hope you understand my skepticism. If you have any benefits of high rep work I'm actually inclined to switch over, but it's very fricking boring.
I'm guessing you've never tore a tendon? Once they are torn, I don't mean micro tears, I mean torn, they have to be surgically REPAIRED and then regrow SHORTER than they started with. It takes years to lengthen them again. They stretch very very slowly. And that's what can tear if you use too much weight. The most common type of tendon tear in weight lifting is the rotator cuff in the shoulder. It usually happens when working on the delts or during deadlifts. You don't want it. Believe me.
I dont operate on fear brother. Now give me a GOOD reason to do light weights.
I gave them. Overall better strength as the ligaments, tendons, and cartilage are cared for and subdermal bruising encourages waste removal in the muscle for faster gains. And YOU CAN PREVENT SERIOUS INJURY like torn muscle, tendons, ligament, cartilage, and bone end wear all of which slow down your training or end it. And you better operate on fear. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom. If you are not cautious with your body you will ruin it. As the bible says he that defileth the temple of God, their body, him will God destroy. So take care of yourself and get those gains sensibly.
>this keeps blood maxing and fatigue low
The stimulus for hypertrophy corresponds somewhat to fatigue. If you're not fatigued, then you're not going to grow. Pump maxing is one of those things that only works for roiders. Mentzer has not advocated for pumpmaxing.
>and time maxes and cardio maxes
No. Performing an exercise in the fashion which it is performed in hit with a 4/2/4 cadence gives at least 10 seconds per rep. Over say 8-12 reps, that's 80-120 seconds of high quality reps taken to failure in a single set. And then with the pre-exhaust supersets following an isolation with an appropriate compound to do something like 3-6 reps, that's a total of 110-180 seconds of high quality exercise. If you compare it to the multiset programs where the typical rep is maybe 1-2 seconds at best, over 3-6 you are running 24 to 144 seconds of what are generally low quality reps (a lot of momentum present in fast reps). And then you have to account for the 1-2 minutes of rest typical between sets which increases gym time unproductively. Your time in the gym is maximized. But your total time exercising is not. You're also robbing yourself of stimulus if you never go to failure since you are not guarantee that you have exhausted all type IIa and IIx fibers.
I’ve been doing HIT since February this year but I’ve come to the conclusion that 2 sets is better than 1. I just do one moderate set just to warm my shit up while it’s still intense, then I go all in. It works wonders.
Also his
>just take 4 days rest bro
It’s kinda extreme. It’s good if you are a busy boomer like me but come on, do you really need 4-7 days after a set of lateral raises and a bicep curl?
>do you really need 4-7 days after a set of lateral raises and a bicep curl?
Not with the puny weight you're pushing.
>Not with the puny weight you're pushing
Maybe you were just joking, but I think this hits at the heart of the problem. That Mentzer's ideas were meant for people who were training for like 8-10 years and pushing crazy heavy weights, and getting way too fatigued from the volume work that was popular at the time. It's not meant for beginners and intermediaries, who won't be getting that fatigued anyway, and can problably take and should take more volume.
Why should they?
It's what my favorite youtuber told me
Mentzer literally said in his audiotapes: As you get bigger and stronger, the stress you inflict on your body per set increases, therefore you must add rest days to compensate.
Mike mentzer is the type of guy who works hard enough to compensate for his subpar knowledge.
works on my skinsuit.
homie was on meth before every workout. imagine the mind muscle connection he had, im surprised he didn't rip the muscle off the bone
Post some Mentzerwave pls
So the issue is that it has been found volume matters and Mike was full of shit about his lift every 4 days one set to failure stuff. Dude was smart for sure but he also lied his ass off about his career. Dude was doing Silver Age BB programs which were super high volume, was a genetic freak at 16 and blasted Steroids.
Then when he lost to Arnold he looked like shit went full incel rage and talked shit about body building in order to sell workout equipment and training programs.
Interesting guy but he also constantly quit and gave up on things including lifting, blamed everyone else for it and then taught people a no gainz hellethod of training.
>So the issue is that it has been found volume matters
Volume, as in the number of sets does not matter. All the clickbait you read is all clickbait. The studies used to support it when read in detail often result in at best fractional (insignificant and orders of magnitude in the long run will not be noticed by the average lifter) differences between single set and multiset programs in terms for muscle mass. In terms of increasing 1RM for specific motions, there is a large skill component in which multiple sets of higher frequency can be better. Practicing a motion increases neurological efficiency during that motion which in turn translates to an increase in 1RM. Ellington Darden however is an example of someone who applied HIT to strength training.
>Then when he lost to Arnold he looked like shit went full incel rage and talked shit about body building in order to sell workout equipment and training programs.
Mike Mentzer's ideal came from decades of training his clients though he individualized his programs for each person. The principles of HIT predated Mike with Arthur Jones who directly trained Casey Viator and Boyar Coe. There's also John Heart who competed in the natural bodybuilding circuits (these test you for use of anabolics) who trained using HIT principles. It's not just a Mike Mentzer thing. It is a general set of principles for exercise.
The story about him losing his shit is moronic.
>in order to sell workout equipment and training programs
You mean just like what Joe Weider did with the IFBB and his magazines? You have to provide what equipment Mentzer was trying to sell. Even people who do high volume like a variety of machines and equipment. If you look at Mentzer's books, he prefers machines over anything else for a variety of reasons. However, there is nothing in Mentzer's books or in any of his recordings that are trying to get people to buy equipment or supplements.
tl;dr also you seem like a homosexual
It takes one to know one. BTW, welcome to IST.
>t.newbie
>However, there is nothing in Mentzer's books or in any of his recordings that are trying to get people to buy equipment or supplements.
He was a salesman for Nautilus bro
Source?
He created a program using valuable training principles and stretched them it to its hypothetical limit, but it’s not as simple as just doing one set. His emphasis on the variance of set-types and the quality of reps is what makes him worth researching. Didn’t reduce down to a single set, but I did cut my volume by 50% and in the past 3 months I’ve made massive progress.
>Didn’t reduce down to a single set, but I did cut my volume by 50% and in the past 3 months I’ve made massive progress.
You reduced your weight load or the amounts of reps?
Volume in common lingo = number of sets.
He's one of the idiots who defines volume as sets * reps * weight. You understand that weight is relative and reps don't matter so volume is really the number of sets and how difficult they are. One day you'll understand that volume doesnt matter either and it's all about whether or not you generated enough tension and how much weekly frequency you can do it with.
Anons tomorrow's leg day for me. I'm afraid I'll injure myself if I do HIT. Esp for lunges in my knee. Wat do?
Lower the weight and get to absolute failure at a higher rep? Or just do bulgs?
Just don't do lunges.
wrap your knees in support bandages, don't go very low and use light weight and SLOW movements. If you feel paint your form is wrong like stepping out too far or something. Lunges are really hard on your knees so go very easy on them. You can wear the joint down a lot so go very slow and easy. Fencers lunge, but they are light and stay on the balls of their feet and turn their rear foot forward. They don't use weight during the lunge and even they have knee injuries so take that into consideration.
*sorry rear foot backwards, forward from the ankle's perspective, backwards to the opponent's
Why would you get more injured by doing fewer sets?
so then if intensity is the main driver of hypertrophy, how do you achieve failure in 1 set without a partner?
1 drop or rest pause set per exercise with partials if it's possible on the movement?
>pls respond
If you're still breathing well enough and the only reason you can't get this last rep is because you don't have the muscle for it and you try anyway until you (safely) drop it, then you defintely achieved failure and without a doubt stimulated growth. Drops sets are a cope for when you gave up and failed at failing and need to quickly extend the set for damage control. It's best to not allow yourself these and focus on hitting failure now matter how much it hurts. If you force yourself to do that you'll eventually learn.
Rest pause and the other intensity techniques like forced reps are not ever going to be necessary under the natty limit.
mike mentzer lost the olympia to arnold, was so btfo that he threw his trophy away, promptly stopped lifting, started shilling his "do my program" book, tried coaching younger kids while doing all kinds of barbiturates and shit, and was so poor he even reported to having to bum room and board off the kids he was coaching.
once i find this out it really is hard to take any of his training advice seriously.
don't read the biography of philosophers and artists, you might go back to living in the woods
He sounds like all my favorite thinkers, maybe I should give him more credit lol
The most interesting thing in these threads is how aggressively some people react to the Mentzer's ideas without ever trying or even considering them. This is how older people behave when you present them some non-offensive though non-obvious innovation. Same with people who are into religion when they find out about a church that splits off from their common beliefs. A common lifter "prays" to the god of gains by doing standard volume training with a faint idea (at best) of how it works, is basically just a mindless ritual that he was taught and he stands by it, because he's used to it and never thought of any other way.
I personally didn't jump into any of the cookie cutter Mentzer's training, I just got inspired by the logic and science behind it, cut my frequency to 2 trainings a week, replaced multiple set with rest pauses / drop sets + technical failure and holy shit, that was probably the best training decision I've ever made. Gains are there, overuse nagging injuries fricked off, I'm less beat and have more time. I literally couldn't justify adding another session into that mix, that would be most likely just a waste of time and energy.
You should have to post body before posting opinions here...
Mike didn't count the 8x warmup sets before as volume and just counted the one burnout set.
He was working with dudes that bench 4pl8 and do a warmup set at 1, 2, 3, 3.5 plates and don't count any of that as volume.
>It was the warmup sets! Volume works!
Meanwhile he has no idea what he even means by that and it's 100% guaranteed that whatever program he's doing has him progressing by intensity.
I just do progressive overload. I dunno why you gays make it so complicated. Just lift more than you lifted last week for as many weeks as you can. When you get stuck take some more rest and then try again. I dunno why everyone has to pick whatever roid troony and worship their routines as Gospel
Are you overloading by volume or by intensity?
Double progressive if you wanna get technical about it. The goal is always to move up weight but if you can't then you can do a little bit more volume at current weight until you can move up. It yoyos with increasing weight into less reps into increasing reps into increasing weight etc..
When the weight stalls, you increase the reps or you add a set?
Reps
That is progressing by intensity.
Methner’s HIT horseshit has been discredited for decades. Nobody serious trains that way because it’s objectively inferior to volume training, as shown in study after study. Methner himself built his non mr olympia physique with volume training then pivoted to selling his HIT scam after becoming disillusioned with pro body building. He was a sore loser who was a smooth talker thanks to all the meth. You morons are a salesman’s wet dream. Just a bunch of marks ripe for the taking.
There is literally no such thing as volume training. All programs including HIT have a certain amount of volume but it doesn't progress. The intensity does.
I think he's right.
I follow the Dorian Yates program. slightly more exercises than Mentzer's program, but same idea. I have seen great results since starting it, in size and strength.
Best advice is to try it and see if it works for you.
Anyone ever notice Mike Mentzer looks like the chud meme?
these threads have always the same proportion of posters:
>a handful of dudes claiming they've tried it and had good results
>a few guys trying to argue in favor of HIT and talk science
>some dudes who want to try but they're not sure what it's about
>a whole crowd of people who have never tried the method and try to convince everyone it can't work
>total mouthbreathers repeating over and over again Mentzer didn't know anything about bodybuilding training because he was taking steroids (lol)
My understanding of steroids is it literally doesnt matter what you do and you get huge. That dude from more plates more dates said he had a whole cycle where he tried to see how little he could workout and he would get back pumps from driving his car
*Assuming you eat at a calorie surplus
>the guy who makes money by telling people how to take steroids told me that they make you big without lifting
Every roider I see in the gym shows up for 30 mins and lifts light weights and is fricking huge. All of them wear hats because they are bald and will die by 50 though so it is what it is
You're lying through your wiener filled teeth. Even the bodybuilders who say to lift light are curling incline pressing 405.
They literally do warmups and like 1 set of 3pl8 and leave before I'm a quarter done with my routine
>the huge guys do 1 set to failure
Well I for one am SHOCKED.
They don't even go to failure. They always leave some in the tank. On roids you can do whatever the you want you just gotta get home and upload that new YouTube video telling people to buy your protein powder/sign up for AG1 with your code
Although true to a degree Steroids and how they effect your body is dependent on your genetics.
>a handful of dudes claiming they've tried it and had good results
and the only one to post body looks like shit and he's not white so going by that it doesn't work
>a few guys trying to argue in favor of HIT and talk science
lmfao
His approach has a lot of appeal because it allows DYELs and fat asses to quit the gym with their ego somewhat in tact. They already don't want to be there, so they show up, half-ass, no, quarter-ass a workout, then they leave, get no results (big surprise), and they're just like "hey why don't I just not workout entirely!"
How is going to failure on every lift quarter assing? It's literally lifting as hard as you possibly can.
Because 99% of the people
1. Aren't on steroids which is arguably a pretty key ingredient in making this work.
2. Aren't going past failure (which again is a key aspect of this) because they don't have someone there actively helping them to go beyond failure.
3. Are doing like 5 sets, which is the big appeal of this whole program in the first place, and then leaving.
So the end result when you combine all of this is they go in do like 1 set until "failure" move onto the next lift do the same thing and they're out of the gym in 30 minutes and go "wow, I managed to get in and out of there so fast, I found the cheat code and to think, all I had to do was do drastically less than everyone else!"
They don't realize the only reason this shit has appeal to them in the first place is because they don't want to be in the gym and they're looking for an excuse to lift less. Rather than biting the bullet and accepting they have to put the time in, they're just looking for shortcuts and inevitably those people burn out and they stay DYELs or fat fricks.
Muscle isn't built while you work out. It's built while you rest.
>do drastically less
In other words, rest drastically more.
>accepting they have to put the time in
The time into sleep, that is.
>burn out
Lol. Lmao, even. If they've been bashing their heads against a wall with high volume work, why would they burn out with low volume work?
You sound upset. Maybe you should take a couple days off.
I can go to failure on a set, rest for a reasonable amount of time then go to failure on another set. Why tf would I stop after the first set? Why leave gains on the table?
Because you don’t leave gains on the table lil bro. You gain muscle through recovery and you harm your recovery capabilities by overtraining
lil bro unironically thinks that he grows during lifting and not during sleep
I genuinely love the gym and used to get up at 4 am to go do full body every day and it made me the smallest I've ever been. HIT has been a godsend.
It is not optimal by any means. First of all, you will not reach complete absolute failure if you're alone, meaning you need to always bring someone with you. Second, you're not on gear so you will not unlock the real potential of HIT, what you do to your muscles using HIT is only 50% of what a person on roids can do, yes you can apply this logic to regular exercises (non HIT) as well but it applies even more so when trying HIT. Third and most important, you will be extremely prone to injury, you think it's all fun and games until you get a tear or worse.
Just because something worked with 2-3 athletes doesn't mean anyone can replicate it. It's the same as Bill Gates telling you that the secret to get rich is to stay consistent and work hard. Sure it might help but you won't be anywhere close to Bill Gates.
>>this is for natties only
train 3-5 days per week
train each muscle group 1-2 per week
3-6 working sets to failure or close to failure (0-2 RIR)
1-3 movements be muscle group per workout
4-8 reps per set
2-3 min rest
progressive overload
use a split that fit the above and is fun
that's the frick it
if Mike is so smart, then why is he dead?