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The advanced techniques, most productive workouts, and life-transforming personal philosophies of bodybuilding legend Mike Mentzer

Whatever your level of fitness, you can kick your muscles--and your mind--into high gear with the radical training philosophies and advanced bodybuilding techniques of Mike Mentzer, the first bodybuilder to ever garner a perfect score in the Mr. Universe competition.

The thinking man's bodybuilder, Mike revolutionized the art of training with his Heavy Duty^TM system, proving that "less is more" when it comes to making great gains. But Mike's most advanced ideas have never been revealed--until now. Direct from Mentzer's inner circle--friend and colleague John Little along with Joanne Sharkey, the CEO of Mentzer-Sharkey Enterprises, Inc.--The Wisdom of Mike Mentzer gives you an insider's look at his most intense, in-depth lessons.

Inside these pages you will learn all the fundamentals of:

• HUNGER--the code of integrity for displaying a heroic physique
• Philosophy and character building--why you need never again fear your competition
• The science of productive bodybuilding exercise--Mentzer's fail-safe principles for building maximum size and strength
• Consolidation Training--a lightning-quick workout that works "like magic" for producing phenomenal muscle growth
• •Advanced Heavy Duty^TM techniques, such as Omni-Contraction Training, Infitonic Training, and Rest-Pause Training

The Wisdom of Mike Mentzer provides readers with a unique insight into the world of Mike Mentzer--the man, the philosopher, and the legend.

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HIGH-INTENSITY TRAINING the Mike Mentzer Way

McGraw-Hill

Contents

Chapter One

Those readers who have been engaged in serious bodybuilding for more than a year probably have realized that the growth of muscle tissue beyond normal levels is a relatively slow process. And while I have never seen the results of studies that might reveal exactly how many pounds the average bodybuilder gains in the course of one year of hard training, I think that most experienced bodybuilders would agree that a five-pound gain of pure muscle tissue—as opposed to five pounds of body weight, despite its composition—would be considered a considerable achievement.

Five pounds of muscle tissue may not sound very impressive, but if a bodybuilder were able to sustain that rate of growth (5 pounds of pure muscle tissue per year) for five years, he would, at the end of that period, end up some 25 pounds of muscle heavier. If you could envision that much beefsteak laid out in front of you on the dinner table, you would then get some idea as to just how much "meat" 25 pounds of muscle is—enough to transform the average American male weighing 155 pounds into a veritable Hercules at 180 pounds of solid, cut-up muscle. It should also be remembered that of that average American male's 155 pounds of body weight, the muscle weight component is roughly 20 pounds (the remainder being bone, water, fat, and waste materials). Given this fact, his muscle weight gain of 25 pounds over five years would represent a transformation that would more than double his existing muscle mass!

Considering that the majority of the top muscle stars past and present weigh less than 200 pounds, that really is quite an achievement. I recall that at the 1977 Mr. Olympia contest bodybuilding luminaries such as Frank Zane weighed in at 187 pounds; Bill Grant at 184 pounds; Boyer Coe tipped the scales at a mere 196 pounds; and Ed Corney competed at a weight of 174 pounds. Barring the odd genetic freak, you'd actually be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of top bodybuilding competitors in contest shape that would weigh in excess of 200 pounds.

One of the most massively muscled bodybuilders from that era was Danny Padilla, a man who won the Mr. Universe title in Nimes, France, weighing a very muscular and cut-up 165 pounds. I recall Danny telling me that when he first began training 10 years prior to that contest he weighed a meager 120 pounds. That represents a gain of 45 pounds spanning a 10-year training career, with the yearly average gain being 4&fra12; pounds. Those figures may offer hope to those of you disappointed with similar gains.

Bearing this in mind it is now evident just how ludicrous some of those commercial claims in bodybuilding magazines are—such as those promising "a pound a day" of muscle gain if you take a particular nutritional supplement. There was even one well-known top bodybuilder who promised those purchasing his training courses that they would "gain 100 pounds of muscle" if they followed the advice contained in his booklets. It is doubtful that he ever succeeded in gaining that much muscle in his entire career—and yet he was promising everyone else in the world just that.

Of course there will be a number of you reading this book that cannot be counted in the ranks of the average. A few might possess well-above-average potential in gaining muscle mass at a rapid rate—a potential that will enable you to add up to 10 or more pounds of muscle tissue in a one-year period. But even these unusual few, whose abundance of the required genetic factors will allow for such rapid growth, won't see the results of such growth every time they step onto a scale. The individual whose potential allows him to gain a solid 12 pounds of muscle a year won't see those results on a day-to-day basis, or even a weekly one; most body weight scales just aren't sensitive enough to record fractions of a pound. Only if he were to gain at a steady rate of a pound per month for 12 months might he witness a weight gain once a month. Then there may be a month or two interspersed through the year when he makes no gains at all, but then proceeds to his 12 pound yearly gain by adding 2 pounds of muscle some other month. It is a rare individual indeed who makes such steady gains that they'll show up the same each and every month for a year. The majority will find that they gain in cycles: i.e., three months may pass with no visible signs of improvement, and then the next month their size and strength skyrockets. These growth patterns are highly individual, and thus will vary broadly from person to person.

It will be these few blessed individuals possessing all the required genetic factors who might possibly reach the top and take the big titles. (The next chapter will delve more deeply into the role of genetics in assessing one's ultimate potential.)

I stated at the outset that this book was not intended as a guarantee of a Mr. America physique. Nor would I insult your intelligence and tell you that by following the advice contained in these pages you'll end up gaining 50 or 100 pounds of muscle. The material contained in this chapter was not meant to frustrate you either, but to show just how difficult and slow the acquisition of a top physique might be. And if I was successful in doing that, you'll probably realize for yourself the utter absurdity of training six days a week for up to 25 hours per week. Can you really justify 1,200 hours per year of your time and energy gaining a couple of pounds of muscle? Especially when you discover how you may have been selling yourself short—vastly underestimating your growth potential—when you actually had the capability of gaining 8 pounds of muscle a year from a tiny fraction of the total amount of training. In many cases, the unbridled enthusiasm that leads to training excesses is the very thing that slows down the progress of the majority of bodybuilders—frustrating indeed.

Think of what could be accomplished were you to channel 1,200 hours of your time and energy each year to making a million dollars or the attaining of a college degree—why, you'd likely be on your way to your first million by now and probably have affixed a couple of Ph.D.s to your name.

Chapter Two

After having read the previous chapter, many of you are probably asking yourselves this question: how can I know just what my potential for developing large muscles is? Unfortunately, there exists no surefire method for accurately assessing an individual's ultimate potential. There are certain traits, however, that suggest to the aspiring bodybuilder just where he might be headed.

Individuals inherit characteristics peculiar to their parents and not common to the species as a whole such as facial appearance, hair color, and blood type. These characteristics are fixed in the individual and not subject to progressive alteration. Other inherited characteristics such as intelligence and physical size are not fixed, and they can thus be altered from the outside.

The genes (hereditary material within a cell) responsible for mature body size can't find expression in an individual deprived of adequate nutrients during the early stages of maturation and growth. The very same applies to the full development of a person's intellect; deprived of early intellectual stimulation, a person's...