Does anybody have experience with Mike Mentzer’s high intensity approach to training? Basically just doing one working set to total failure at very high weight coupled with long rest periods to stimulate growth.
Mike Mentzer Training
Does anybody have experience with Mike Mentzer’s high intensity approach to training? Basically just doing one working set to total failure at very high weight coupled with long rest periods to stimulate growth.
Yea 1 working set with 5 fling warm up sets in between close to your working set lol
Yeah I tried it. It didn't work for me.
Look into doggcrapp. Much better than any of the routines Mentzer ever put out but based on similar HIT principles.
Routines have the stupidest names I swear
>literally doggcrapp
I guess I’ll look into it
It was the guys (Dante Trudel) username on a bodybuilding forum, hence why it's kinda silly.
For me, it's the carshart routine.
I’m partial to Muffblaster but I find the volume is getting to be unnecessary
yeah like
said when the guy made the routine I don't think he expected it to be popular or he would've named it something else lol
Mentzer actually built his muscle with the same high-volume approaches other bodybuilders used. He noticed that he didn't regress when he switched to very low volume training, but that's not particularly impressive - one set to failure every week or two probably would maintain muscle unless you were in a hard cut.
Why does this shit keep getting shilled here?
All of the studies looking into assumptions underlying HIT (eg failure vs 1-3 reps short of failure, 1 vs 3 sets at or near failure, training frequency) have completely debunked HIT.
This too. Almost no one does it, and the most famous proponents (Mentzer & Yates) didn't build their physiques using it.
a study came out in the past year or so saying going to failure or as close as possible was better for hypertrophy
Not true, because those studies always compare same frequency.
You can't train to failure and expect to recover as quickly as someone who keeps 3 reps in reserve.
>has no idea what the fricking study is
>is confident the study is wrong
Just watch the video or read the study moron. The PhDs conducting and interpreting the study recommend going close to failure now.
Lol. which one are you saying "not true" to? Those comments are representing conflicting views.
The idea that not going to failure is superior is not true.
You can't perform a study where you compare failure vs not failure where every metric is the same, because even though that would be good study design you can't expect someone with a bigger stress stimulus (failure) to recover in the same amount of time as someone who keeps reps in reserve (not failure).
Same with volume studies. If someone has programmed in 5 sets of bench press and I tell that person to go balls to the wall each set, he sure as hell won't reach 5 sets.
The opposite also holds true, if I want to see the efficacy of 1 set to failure I expect the participant to go balls to the wall. But a beginner will never be able to do that, and after 2 minutes of rest will be recovered enough to do another set. That is not the premise of HIT. When Mike talks about failure, it is real failure that can't be replicated in the same workout, or even the same day. Annihilation.
But I don't believe one training style is superior to the other, I just believe that mixing things up is bad. Don't do volume training to annihilation, and don't do 1 set training without annihilation.
It's also worth noting that the group of test subjects gathered by researchers is going to be a mixture of beginners, intermediates, and maybe some advanced lifters. This is going to skew the data since beginners can grow from pretty much everything (and at a higher frequency too). There is not a single study that examines only advanced natural lifters.
>Advanced lifter
>Participates in a suboptimal study
There is the problem haha
I do low volume but not that low. 6-10 sets per week per muscle. I'd say Mike's routine where you train a muscle with one set and wait two weeks before you get round to it again to be a waste of time
OP here, what about Dorian Yates? Similar approach with a bit more volume maybe
Dorian didn't focus on slow reps and performing negatives like Mentzer did. That's really the only difference. Their Olympia workout routines were identical with the same amount of 4 days of training
not EXACTLY the same but I've been working out like twice a week with crazy high intensity and gains have been pretty much the same. I think the drilling point here is, intensity is what matters and when you're going gym everyday doing the same routine counting reps your intensity is inevitably gonna fall off unless you are some 1 in a million animal. I also found workouts more enjoyable and I have way more time to do other shit.
do you have to make the same thread every week you moron?
>roidtroony routine
no bump for you
Checked. I have never made this thread before. Natties claim it works elsewhere. I’m just soliciting fitness advice you miserable homosexual cuck DYEL
HIT works for natties because they need the extra recovery time to grow back muscle but in all honesty you could just do a 6 day bro split and take a week off to put in muscle mass
post body you won't becuase you are dyel
High Volume would actually be more suitable for roidgays because of the lack of recovery time
Pretty weird how obese powershitters on IST can't put this together. HIT is specifically for guys who don't want to waste time and energy, the kind of guys like me who only post here when pooping. They're here all the time, still fat and moronic looking.
Anyway bye IST.
I did it for a while. One set per muscle group per week, with a slow tempo (4s up, 4s down, 1s at each end), taken to concentric failure, then forced reps until I couldn't maintain the eccentric tempo. It was fun, and pretty intense. I got stronger pretty consistently, and it was much more time-efficient. Still, I've switched to another program to get some more variety in, and I think it'll be good for me.
>program-hopping when you are progressing consistently
Evermediate-kun, I...
Yeah, I try to stick with stuff that works, but any half-decent program you do well will work once you know yourself a bit. The one I switched to (Fortitude) uses some similar principles, but it's much more fun, evolved, and (more importantly) flexible.
One of the main challenges I had with HIT is that it doesn't take variance gracefully. If your one set doesn't go just right or you're having an off day, it's not very forgiving, and you might end up going a few weeks without properly hitting a muscle. It's just kind of fragile.
don't ask this question here. he has a weird cult like following who always to come to these threads and claim that it's the best way to train. of course no bodies are posted. stick to what you know and stop searching for niche advices
HIT is NOT for dyels or intermediate gays but for people who are already in shape because high intensity is genuinely difficult to do and will more than likely do it wrong if you're doing it alone.
Mentzer said just going to concentric failure was enough for beginners. I realize not everyone has access to a power rack but for those that do that would be easy enough.
Reminder that Mike Mentzer was on steroids, meth, and died before the age of 50 from seething too hard.
I've had success with low volume and moderate volume. Never had success with high volume high frequency, it just made me smaller and weaker and I'd always end it because of an injury.
Just go "top set" + "back-off set" and sprinkle in some intensifiers like dropsets/rest pause sets/forced reps (with partner) into the back-off set
Best of all worlds
>Does anybody have experience with Mike Mentzer’s high intensity approach to training?
Yes
Nice digits anon. Would you care to ELABORATE hmm?
no
I'm jk. I prefer full body, split into an A day and a B day. I do one workout every four days. Each day has 6 exercises and each exercise has a warmup, 3-minute rest, and one working set. On the working set, my goal is always to get one more rep than the previous session. If I fail to get the rep goal, I do two drop sets both as a form of punishment but also as insurance to be certain that I hit the required intensity threshold. This rarely happens.
I've seen consistent progress for the last year.
I tried this style of training after 7 years of conventional training and it has worked well for me. I anticipate that I will continue getting stronger until the point that I am forced to take 7 days of rest between sessions (doing each exercise once every 14 days), at which point I would say that I'm at my natty limit.
Looking back, I think the main reason I couldn't get past 170lb bodyweight during those seven years of training was that I was overtrained. I genuinely love training. I love being in the gym. I love trying my hardest and getting that sweet burn in the muscle at the end of the set. I also love the doms the next day. I would train full body every day if I could (I tried full body every day. It doesn't work. I only got weaker.)
One full body workout a week.
4 sets, 2 last set to failure, spend 15 seconds in failure trying to complete the rep
3 eggs a day minimum, low carb
I've made insane gains while losing bf
all routines work, but i did notice the fastest rate of progression in terms if size and base strength when i loosely adhered to HIT principles
train hard, recover fully, repeat
it is painfully simple
Mentzer methods will not make you Xbox hueg but they will maintain your lazy ass at 80-90% of PR for a long time
I do it but I have a very physically demanding job so I’m getting the volume all week lifting stuff about 8 hours a day then HIT on the weekends for my training. It works for me but I’m probably a special case
I did natty it after about 8years of training, to great results, now I do it on gear and its great too. Id say its not a 100% optimal but still very good and the time saved makes it worth it.
It's definetely for advanced lifters tho, because of the mind muscle connection that is required for the muscular failure to be reliably achieved, and because of the technique required to avoid injury
I've been doing a scheme where i do one initial set to failure lets say 6 reps, then do short rest between consecutive sets untill ive hit 2x the reps of my initial set in as few sets as possible
I've been trying HIT recently in my eighth year of training.
4 days off between workouts.
Workouts are 2-3 movements, 1 compound to start, 2-3 warmup sets at low-med intensity, and then 1 working set.
I think most of all the extra recovery time is working for me. I benched 265 for my working set today, 7 initial reps to failure, 30s rest, then another two reps, then 40s rest, then squeezed out another two with an absolute grinder as the last rep.
11 reps of 265 in a rest-pause set is far more than I thought I was capable of tbh.
I'm hoping to hit 3pl8 (which is 308 in kilogram-plates) for 5 reps soon.
>8 years training
>still no 3 plate bench
this is the powere of metznercucks kek
0/10 reading comprehension
308 doesn't equal 315 europoor education
tren hard eat clen
Mike Mentzer was a fraud and a liar and a shill
He admit he did much more exercise than he claimed
He used crystal meth as pre workout
He DID use steroids, but only for competition so that totally makes it okay
He tried to tell people the best way to build muscle was buying his brand of protein powder
He was a huge wiener block to other body builders of the time
He was the guy in all the advice magazines at the time
Nobody could even get their foot in the door because Mike Mentzer had it fricking locked down
Why would anybody want to do any other exercise routine when this guy is telling you that you can become a MASS MONSTER by literally working out less
I felt so stupid for falling for his tricks at first but I'm glad I dug deeper into his history and learned my lesson
It works for the guy who has been training for 10 years and benches 3 plates for reps, not you the newbie who can barely bench 185 lbs
So no it won’t work for you
Now go to the gym and stop trying you to min-max your workouts
min-maxing time used is not wasted effort imo. workout day every 4 days, using myo reps or supersets to compress time used at gym saves heck of a lot of time for more important things in life
opposite dunning krueger homosexual it works for noobs because any stimulus works advanced natty lifters need volume, intensity and to min max