Q: You’ve quoted Mike Mentzer a lot, and your current workouts are similar to his. But you’ve also featured Arnold’s training and mentioned that your Positions-of-Flexion method has some roots with him. Do you agree more with the Heavy Duty high-intensity approach or Arnold’s volume style?
A: Not to cop out, but the answer is based on individual recovery ability and also the ability to stay consistent. And recovery ability diminishes as you age…
I’ll provide personal experiences to show how I’ve come to a number of mass-building solutions; however, keep in mind that I’m a sample of one who is not a genetic freak by any means. I’m also not a steroid user…
Early Training
Way back in my teen years, Arnold was the king. And that meant we had to train and eat like he did. So over one summer, I went on a six-day split, eating a hamburger patty with my big breakfast before hitting my morning workouts—yep, three-way split over six days a week…
I was going to look like Arnold by the time school started, and the high school babes would swoon.
My plank-like body didn’t even last a month on that grueling schedule. Plus, gains were nonexistent, even though I slept a lot from exhaustion.
The muscle magazines forgot to tell me that Arnold was on steroids when he trained like that, not to mention that he had stellar genetics.
Late-Teens-to-Early 20s
Mike Mentzer came along in the mid-‘70s with his Heavy Duty training, challenging the status quo by doing only three or four sets per muscle twice a week. My training partner Bill and I embraced his scientific rationality and hit the gym with all-out intensity…
We were training every set to failure, plus using three partner-assisted forced reps followed by as many slow negative-only reps as we could muster—partner lifting the weight, trainee struggling to lower it without losing control and smashing an important appendage.
Gains were not great; nervous system was shot after every workout. And again, neither of us had the genetics for bodybuilding greatness—plus, we weren’t on steroids. At least Mentzer acknowledged that he was on drugs when he trained for competition…
So again, we were overtraining, severely outrunning our recovery abilities, hammering our nervous systems, and then training before supercompensation, or growth, could occur.
I eventually was forced to train alone, so crazy intensity wasn’t possible—no forced reps, etc. I made up for it by creating Positions-of-Flexion training. It was a bit more volume—five to six sets per muscle—but you trained each muscle from three unique angles, or positions: midrange, stretch, and contracted (see Old Man, Young Muscle for more on that and how it has evolved).
That was a godsend for my growth, as I won my first bodybuilding contest using a crude version of POF. Granted, it was a small show—I bested about nine other guys—but it was a victory for my hypertrophy search nevertheless.
After graduating college in the late ‘80s, I secured my editor-in-chief job with Iron Man magazine. By that point, I had honed Positions-of-Flexion mass training into a viable mass-building system; however, it took a few years interviewing bodybuilders and talking to researchers to figure out some things, particularly one big piece of the hypertrophy puzzle…
That simple discovery helped many trainees pack on 10 to 20 pounds of muscle quickly. I’ll have that tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Your Efficient Mass-Building Handbook: For complete mass workouts that include Speed Sets, the ideal exercise for each muscle, and the best stretch and contracted add-on moves, get your copy of Old Man, Young Muscle.
And you still get The Muscle-On, Belly-Gone “Diet” ebook FREE for a limited time when you add Old Man, Young Muscle to your mass-building library. Go HERE.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
www.X-Rep.com