A few pieces of key mass-building information have been revealed over the past three parts on Mike Mentzer’s high-intensity training:
1) Too much training volume or intensity, as well as not enough rest days, can cause excess damage, which can slow or derail growth.
2) A low-intensity downshift week after four to six weeks of hard training can allow growth to happen after weeks of hard workouts and stress accumulation.
3) Emphasizing the ideal exercise for each muscle makes your training more efficient and mass-centric.
Let’s delve deeper into #3: I mentioned that Mentzer was all about intensity, and he never bothered to analyze exercises. Why?
He believed, as most of us did—and many still do—that the basic exercises are best: barbell squats, all types of presses, pulldowns, rows, etc.
But even though he believed those were the top exercises, he did not emphasize those by putting them first in his workouts…
That’s because he was a proponent of pre-exhaustion. He insisted on an isolation exercise for the target muscle prior to the multi-joint move to pre-exhaust the muscle. For example, leg extensions before leg presses and/or squats.
An isolation move upfront definitely has mass-building merit—if it’s the right exercise (ideal). In fact, most of the ideals are isolation. (Shameless plug: See Old Man, Young Muscle for the reason why as well as workouts that emphasize the ideal exercises.)
But Mentzer never delved into biomechanics as Doug Brignole did. Plus, he didn’t have the latest hypertrophy research to draw from (he died in 2001)…
So Mentzer’s high-intensity workouts weren’t as efficient as they could’ve been. But with a few tweaks, we can make them significantly better at stimulating mass…
Let’s take Mike’s go-to quad routine as an example:
Superset (as little rest between exercises as possible):
Leg extensions + Leg presses
Brief rest
Barbell squats
You do one set of each exercise, so three total sets to failure for quads—that’s it.
Mentzer got good gains with that routine; however, keep in mind that he had tremendous genetics and he was on anabolic drugs (John Balik photo)…
Tomorrow I’ll show you how to make his routine significantly better by applying the latest research and biomechanics. Stay tuned.
Note: There is a complete Mentzer-based workout in Old Man, Young Muscle, Chapter 9, pages 71-72.
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
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