How Mike Mentzer Trained His Arms

[fernvalcourrodley]

I have been overtraining the last 5 years without significant progress. His ideas I have used over the last 3 weeks has provided a new approach to my workout routine and has improved each workout day. Less time in gym and no more than 2 sets a body part and 6-8 reps to failure. Amazing!!!
Especially at 56 yrs old!!!

[antduke]

Mike had such a great well rounded physique with great proportions

[rgk]

Funny. Mike is more popukar now than he was in his heyday.

There is much more to his story than the youtube channels show.

I was training and competing at the same time. He was actually kind of a secondary figure at best due to the Joe Weider machine. His pushing of one set only came after building a great physique. He also knew he had to be different to take on the following Joe had [with Arnold, Franco, etc] under his banner.

I have used the HIT training protocol with great effectiveness, but I always thought and still do he advocated too much rest.

I am quite certain I recover in less than a week.

But I did admire the guy.

[Grimmjow]

Mike Mentzer was and will always be a legend. He changed my whole view on my workout.

[louislamonte]

Mike Mentzer is a "huge" inspiration to me!

[TheAutomotiveKid]

His 4 second count in the up and 4 down, continued with drop sets are highly effective. I was doing 4 sets of squats after my warm ups. Now i do my warm ups, then go to the heaviest weight I can rep for 6-10 at a crawling speed, followed by 3 drop sets continuously. By the time I’m on my 4th set, I’m struggling getting 135lbs X5. My legs feel like jello, and I can barely breath. My intensity before was good, but this feels different. I’m only doing legs this way to see how my body reacts. Upper body is still the same.

[madnowproductions]

In between his sets there was no wait time it was done in superset. So he would completely exhaust a big muscle like chest on pec deck and then superset it with incline press

[martinloo]

Dorian Yates said he learned the H.I.T. Program from Mentzer and refined it to suit him. Dorian proved the H.I.T. really works if done properly. I use a similar H.I.T. Program and it works for me. I believe the H.I.T. Program didn’t maintain it’s popularity because most people don’t want to train with that kind of high intensity. Arthur Jones was the inventor of Nautilus machines and created his total body workouts with high intensity training. Jones predicted that his method of training and the use of Nautilus machines would create champion bodybuilders.
He was not 100% correct but he would have been proud of Dorian Yates!

[sour_lemon_]

Something happened to his mind after a certain year. I wonder why he died so young. Some say it was his smoking and meth use, but many smokers and meth users live much longer. This is a mystery that we may never solve. He did leave an amazing library of his methods for us to better educate ourselves. We can learn much from his great example. On one hand we can grow with amazing results, and on the other we can take his drug use as a warning ⚠

[jimwest]

And let’s not forget the only person to ever In 1978, Mentzer won the Mr. Universe in Acapulco, Mexico with the first and only perfect 300 score. He became a professional bodybuilder after that 1978 Universe win.

[rufust.firefly]

The path to longevity is to keep things in reasonable dimensions. Stay natural, be open towards new perspectives, even out your approaches. In terms of working out: vary your tactics, fullbody or two-day-splits over bro splits, add some slow HIT reps here and there, but don't stick to a certain regimen manically, start thinking in reps more than in sets. 1 set with 10 qualty reps will always beat 2 - 5 sets with downwinded 8 - 12 reps each. Natural BB = Pareto.

[FerintoshFarmsPhotography]

That's how I cheat as well. I can have whatever I want, but its still got to fit in my maintenance. So my big cheat is pizza. I make a personal pan pizza, eat it to myself. Pizza is so easy to make from scratch, so you can make it quite healthy at home. Tends to be around 1200 calories, but 70 grams of proteins by the time I'm done. If you order out, and get carried away, can easily kill your week by eating a 3500 calorie pizza in a sitting I find.

[poderes]

The two “negative” things I feel with his method is training with machines rather than free weights and mostly supersets (almost impossible in gyms today when those machines are far from each other) and staying out of the gym for days…

[Existences]

I thought his prefered biceps exercize was the close grip pull down. Maybe he found that out later when he mentioned it in a speech.

[rainerwahnsinn]

why repeating always the sam sentence???

[ragnavald_]

Mentzer championed the under hand grip pull down as the greatest bicep lift because it hit the entire head.

[ManicMoe]

This is wrong, his favourite exercises for biceps were Scott curls nautilus curls and concentration curls and for triceps tricep PressDown dips and nautilus tricep extensions.

[jc]

I've been working out naturally for about 30 weeks now and my arms are 16 and a half inches so far woop

[Vincent-fvch]

This guy not only got the exercises wrong, but the rest periods and sets. GREAT JOB DUDE!

[stevecheshire]

He never rested 3 to 5mins between sets haha.