Here’s a relaxed comparison of two of the thickest bodybuilders from the 1970s, Danny Padilla and Mike Mentzer.
We’re not sure who snapped the Padilla photo, but we do know that Wayne Gallasch snapped the Mentzer pic on the beach (gmvbodybuilding.com).
We’ve evened out their heights: Padilla was 5’2” and Mentzer was 5’8”. You can see the height difference in the shot below, taken at Gold’s Gym back in the day: Mike on the left, Danny in the middle, and Ray Mentzer at right…
Mike and Danny did compete against each other in a few contests. Unfortunately, we can’t find any pics of them going head to head, so we decided to put them side-by-side.
As you can see, both men had jaw-dropping mass with plenty of eye-popping proportion and symmetry…
What’s interesting is that while their training was different in volume—Padilla higher and Mentzer lower—both were similar in that they fatigued an array of muscle-fiber types every workout…
For example, for chest Mentzer did a higher-rep set of Nautilus flyes (isolation), rested only briefly, then did a heavy lower-rep set of Nautilus decline presses.
He made it a point to do slow, controlled reps on each exercise—higher-rep isolation followed by lower-rep compound.
In essence, Mentzer’s modified Pre-Ex was a higher-rep slow-twitch set followed by a lower-rep fast-twitch one. That’s right in line with our progressive muscle-fiber loading method outlined in the new ebook.
In fact, Chapter 9, Pre-Exhaustion-Inspired Mass Workout, contains a complete Mentzer-style workout with a unique twist. Steve rotates that innovative routine in every few workouts for change to gain.
Padilla’s workouts were also progressive muscle-fiber exhaustion, but he used only moderate weights over four or five sets, all with short rests between sets and about 10 reps per set.
For example, he would pick a weight that he could get about 15 reps with, but only do 10; rest a minute, then do 10 more—and so on until he completed all sets. The first set or two was easy, the last ones were brutally hard…
In less than 10 minutes per exercise, he was quickly fatiguing the majority of muscle fibers…
Danny’s style is right in line with our 4X Mass Method that we used for years, which is an off-shoot of Vince Gironda’s Density Training…
And like Vince, we prefer shorter rests, around 30 seconds.
Both are thorough methods to get total muscle growth in almost all fiber types; however…
If you want to make either of the above methods as efficient as possible, we highly recommend that you emphasize the “ideal” exercise for each muscle, as identified in Old Man, Young Muscle.
Steve IDs the ultimate move for each muscle, the ones that provide the most fiber activation via the proper biomechanical action as well as other key factors for off-the chart hypertrophy. See below…
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
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