Great Genetics and Drugs
He built 90% of his mass with volume training and drugs as a teenager
Here is Mike at 19 and 195lbs
Mike told me he spent the majority of his teenage training following a low* to moderate** volume powerlifting and Olympic lifting routine.
*,** -- for the time.; e.g., four days per week, B/SQ/DL, maybe 6-8 hard sets per bodypart.
He said he transioned to high volume in his late teens and around the time he started attending UOM, got hurt, joined the Air Force and resumed lifting with 30+ sets/bodypart and made minimal progress. Around that time he gave the Art Jones stuff a (second?) chance and liked it.
Mike was thoughtful, but genius, no. He made many errors in his logic, especially where overtraining was concerned. His solution to that was carried to ridiculous extremes...
...However, to say none of his stuff had merit is also b.s. I used an earlier variant of Heavy Duty to considerable effect, and won the teen class of the NPC Tri-county in the general Charlotte area two years in a row, drug-free. I was doing something right...a few of the other guys asked me about my prep cycle, and I had no clue what they were on about.
I've since come to appreciate shying away from failure and doing more work sets, but I still don't think there's any reason to do more than 9-16 work sets/bodypart per week, ideally spread across two sessions if you can swing it.