Mike Mentzer

[New Hank Wood]

Mike was a fruit cake.  His word meant nothing.

It was a great day, post the 80 Olympia, when Mike decided to turn his back on competition.

The sport did not miss him, in actual fact it was like a breath of fresh air.  

He was just so negative and opinionated.  Thank Christ this nutcase decided to bow out, albeit, ungracefully!

And of course, in true preacher fashion, this disciple of H.I.T 'never' practised what he preached.

He tried to play mind games with industry and failed. He just wasn't smart enough.  Kind of now explains his intense and bitter hatred for Arnold....Hmmmmmm.  

Yes, Mike was a totally screwed up son of bitch!

[Canadian_Muscle]

You are so off on this. Sure he had major flaws, the whiny, nasal a particular galling one. But the man left a legacy. This is easily evident when a debate ensues regarding his training methodology. The theads, both pro and con, grow passionate and heated, and inevitably are locked.

His impact was tremendous and he's hardly given credit for it (though admittedly most of his ideas came from Jones). Remember the Arnold days when they were training each body part 2-3 times a week? When they didn't distinguish between intensity and duration? When the pump was the be all and end all? Who even talked about genetics during that time? Why Arnold was Arnold and though people copied him nobody was close to him during that time? Who talked about the difference between localized recovery and systemic recovery? In fact, who talked about the importance of recovery at all or even the idea of over training. What about the weak links like biceps when training lats and triceps when training chest and how the principle of pre-exhaustion can circumvent that?
He even was the first to dismiss the idea of "reforming" or "shaping" your muscles by certain exercises like trying to do concentration curls for a "peak" or Scott curls for your "lower" biceps. That muscle shape was genetically predetermined and no matter how many incline presses you do you're never going to get Franco's armour plated upper chest.

You are very, very wrong about Mike Mentzer not having a legacy. His impact was great and will continue to be.

Please retract your statement about his mustache being "grotesque." This is now my second request. Don't make me dismiss you ala gh15.

Great post.

[luvvsuNOT]

Mike is just another fraud...a stealer of ideas and concepts.

He made wild claims, yet was never able to back them up with science.

Take away the drugs and Mike was nothing.  It was the steroids that provided a false reality for Mike.

This is evidenced by his ridiculous lifting-regime.  Basically, all he achieved from this was a destroyed vertebrae and major joint problems.

Similar to every other delusional roider, when the needles stop, the body deflates!  And this was clearly the case with this irrational-man-of the-junk!

At the end of day, happiness can be measured in health and longevity.  Mike failed in both of these areas...no surprises there!

Yes, Mike died and unhealthy man.  

He slipped into the abyss with no 'real friends'.  People just tolerated this raving lunatic....now, that is a true tragedy!

I think you are the raving lunatic my bitter friend. It has been proven scientifically the importance of intensity vs duration for the purpose of increasing strength and hypertrophy.

Mike was above average and developed before drugs. At fifteen he probably put you to shame at your best.

Every athlete in any type of contact sport or sport requiring extreme physical exertion will suffer from injuries. Did Mike train heavier than Coleman? Has any top bb gone through his career injury free?

Everybody will deflate into a weak mass of flesh whether you do drugs or not. Who dies healthy? From dust to dust my bitter, angry, self-appointed commentator.

And where did you get the idea that happiness stems from health and how long you live? Stephan Hawkings has lived a very productive and, most importantly, meaningful life, yet he has spent most of his life in poor health. The brave and courageous soldier, Pat Tillman, gave up a comfortable and prosperous life style to fight and die for his country at a relatively early age. By all accounts he was a very happy man.

And how do you know Mike had no real friends? How can you possibly know that? To this day, no matter what you or anybody else thinks about him, he has a legion of devoted fans. The woman who runs his site was very close to him. Have you read any of letters written from people all over the world that testifies to the positive impact Mike had on their lives? Can you say the same?

You are known mostly as a bitter, disillusion, commentator who seems to have gotten his heart broken because of the travesty that modern bb has become. So you sit there and put yourself on a pedestal and just criticize everybody and everything associated with this endeavor.

When you die no one but your immediate family will remember you and hopefully care. But that will quickly pass in the next generation. Mike Mentzer will be long remembered and his principles, along with it's variations, will be discussed and debated while you pass quickly into oblivion leaving no legacy behind.

You, poor man, are the true tragedy.

DISMISSED!

[WillGrant]

maybe they only THOUGHT he was workin hard on his warm ups..   i dont know.. i traned with a guy who was taught hd by mentzer and he swears by hd  and thats the way he trained exactly and he always said that the warmup sets were a joke and they were just there to get a feel for the weight and let the muscles know what was going on..

It sure looks like traditional BB training though..he pyramid every exercise like that..

I follow a more Yates and Labrada form of training..

Say I was doing bench and my hardest set was 150kg 6-8 reps.
I would do it in a feel set way like your friend..

Example.
Bar x20 reps
60kg x10 reps
100kg x 3-4 reps
120kg x2 reps

1st set 150kg x 6-8 reps maybe a forced rep
2nd set 140kg x 6-8 reps..

Now to me that out mentzers mentzer.
there are really only 2 genuine work sets there.

the bar and 60kg set are to get blood  into the area the next two are feel sets where in reality I could knock off 12- 20 reps on those sets.

Mentzer trained like arnold but only counted his last set.he was witnessed to be training hard on those first sets and to follow the same set/rep pattern for three more exercises.that is redundent when the area is already warmed from that first exercise..all that is needed is some feel sets for 3 or 4 reps then jump to your heaviest , but no , mike followed the way arnold trained he just did not like to say he did.

[Ruffneck]

to be fair hawking never had half the meltdown that Mike had.If he had that wheelchair and that monotone voice would be well out of sync and talking like Ann Rand had programmed it.

[New Hank Wood]

Mike possessed little strength of character.  He used drugs as a crutch.

Drugs addicts are weak minded, undisciplined losers. Hence, they 'use' to blot-out or veil  their reality! Mike was a master at cover-up and distorting truth!

He would belittle people and dismiss all training doctrines that contradicted his methodologies (the one's he plagiarised).

At the end of the day, Mike felt threatened and insecure about the principles he was trying to promote.  And again, not his own concepts; ones stolen from Arthur.

Mike was always looking for ways to justify his pathetic lifestyle. His obsession with Ayn Rand is a testimony to that.

Just another lost and tormented soul looking for justification in a life that had become consumed by amphetamines, alcohol and chain smoking.

Oh yes, Mike was sooooo happy!

And again, genetics are genetics. When Mike stopped with the roids everything turned to shit.  Again, demonstrating that drugs are  'the equation' and not training style!

In summary, happy and contented people don't try and rubbish an industry.  They don't become raving drug addicts.  And they don't shit in their bed.  Mike is all of this and more.

[Viking11]

A great bodybuilder. Innovative trainer and HIT theorist. A good friend. Funny guy. RIP Mike.

[New Hank Wood]

An irresponsible drug addict, that's all Mike amounted to! 

Mike can take the credit for pushing a theory (HIT) that is singularly responsible for destroying more physiques than any other. 

There are  hundreds of half baked training theories out there, but 'Mike's stolen ideas' stand above all else, as being the ultimate in bullshit-ideology!

That's right, Mike encouraged anyone who would listen, to go heavy, heavy, heavy.  All that resulted were a lot of severely injured noobies.

And yes, Mike never practised what he preached. 

He can join the queue of dead charletans!

Thanks Mike, for adding your brand of nothingness to a sport that is now regarded as one of the most obscene and reviled passtimes on the planet.

And i agree, with that whingey and whiny voice of his, there must be 'a part gay chromosome' lurking within!

[pellius]

I'm a big fan of Hank and love the way he exposes modern bodybuilding for what it has become. But this Mentzer diatribe is a bit odd. Sure Mentzer had his demons and for a period of time was a drug addict but he did rehabilitate himself and ran a very successful training business. He was in demand and had clients all over the world.
He always gave Jones full credit and even talked about how he began his journey when he first met Casey Viator at the America and how through Casey he met Jones. Jones, who was a very hard, no nonsense, vindictive, ornery SOB didn't suffer fools and was quick to criticize those who tried to copy him or in any way exploit his genius. As far as I know, he never criticized Mentzer or accused him of plagiarism and seemed to always be on good terms with him. At least, insofar that one could be on good terms with Jones.

To say Mentzer has no legacy and contributed nothing is really strange. I mean, Hank started a thread devoted just to him, and any thread that contains Mike and his training methods always seems to go on forever nearly thirty years after his retirement. The ones who seem to get the most attention from that fateful 1980 Mr. Olympia is of course Arnold, but after that it is easily Mentzer.

Mentzer's impact on bodybuilding and training was huge and obviously enduring. You're off on this one, Hank. I don't get it. Maybe you're just running out of people to trash and you're reaching back into an era when bodybuilding was still halfway decent.

[pellius]

You are so off on this. Sure he had major flaws, the whiny, nasal a particular galling one. But the man left a legacy. This is easily evident when a debate ensues regarding his training methodology. The theads, both pro and con, grow passionate and heated, and inevitably are locked.

His impact was tremendous and he's hardly given credit for it (though admittedly most of his ideas came from Jones). Remember the Arnold days when they were training each body part 2-3 times a week? When they didn't distinguish between intensity and duration? When the pump was the be all and end all? Who even talked about genetics during that time? Why Arnold was Arnold and though people copied him nobody was close to him during that time? Who talked about the difference between localized recovery and systemic recovery? In fact, who talked about the importance of recovery at all or even the idea of over training. What about the weak links like biceps when training lats and triceps when training chest and how the principle of pre-exhaustion can circumvent that?
He even was the first to dismiss the idea of "reforming" or "shaping" your muscles by certain exercises like trying to do concentration curls for a "peak" or Scott curls for your "lower" biceps. That muscle shape was genetically predetermined and no matter how many incline presses you do you're never going to get Franco's armour plated upper chest.

You are very, very wrong about Mike Mentzer not having a legacy. His impact was great and will continue to be.

Please retract your statement about his mustache being "grotesque." This is now my second request. Don't make me dismiss you ala gh15.

I like this post. Mentzer gave a new perspective on training protocol, or at least brought it to the forefront. For Hank to say he destroyed more physiques than anybody is just very strange and odd. Have you forgotten some of your other targets, Hank, like Milos and Palumbo? Has Mike created such atrocities as Kovacs, Kamali, Hide, Luke Wood and even Cutler? -- All who use to look great.

[Soundness]

I think you are the raving lunatic my bitter friend. It has been proven scientifically the importance of intensity vs duration for the purpose of increasing strength and hypertrophy.

Mike was above average and developed before drugs. At fifteen he probably put you to shame at your best.

Every athlete in any type of contact sport or sport requiring extreme physical exertion will suffer from injuries. Did Mike train heavier than Coleman? Has any top bb gone through his career injury free?

Everybody will deflate into a weak mass of flesh whether you do drugs or not. Who dies healthy? From dust to dust my bitter, angry, self-appointed commentator.

And where did you get the idea that happiness stems from health and how long you live? Stephan Hawkings has lived a very productive and, most importantly, meaningful life, yet he has spent most of his life in poor health. The brave and courageous soldier, Pat Tillman, gave up a comfortable and prosperous life style to fight and die for his country at a relatively early age. By all accounts he was a very happy man.

And how do you know Mike had no real friends? How can you possibly know that? To this day, no matter what you or anybody else thinks about him, he has a legion of devoted fans. The woman who runs his site was very close to him. Have you read any of letters written from people all over the world that testifies to the positive impact Mike had on their lives? Can you say the same?

You are known mostly as a bitter, disillusion, commentator who seems to have gotten his heart broken because of the travesty that modern bb has become. So you sit there and put yourself on a pedestal and just criticize everybody and everything associated with this endeavor.

When you die no one but your immediate family will remember you and hopefully care. But that will quickly pass in the next generation. Mike Mentzer will be long remembered and his principles, along with it's variations, will be discussed and debated while you pass quickly into oblivion leaving no legacy behind.

You, poor man, are the true tragedy.

DISMISSED!

luvvsuNOT = respect

[Rmj11]

Newsflashh..mike never actualy followed the shit he talked about..

He was seen once doing a chest work out by a quite well known journo from MM.

He was seen to do 4 exercises for his chest.

Example.
Bench press.set 1 10 -12 reps
                 set 2 8-10 reps
                 set 3 6-8 reps
                 set 4 4-6 reps with 2 forced and a negative rep.


He did this on all 4 exercises..

After his work out the journo approached him  and asked if he had given up on HD training and had gone back to traditional bodybuilding pyramid training..
Mike said:Rubbish , that was HD at its best , its only the last set that counted as the proceeding sets were warm ups and he was adament he had only done 4 sets total..

Even though he worked hard on all lead up sets.
The journo was astonished as he had just seen mentzer do 16 work sets but mentzer claimed to have only done 4. 

Yep. Conventional pyramid training. Just like Arnold used. Mentzer was full of it.