I loved Mike Mentzer and his methods back in the day - I am not a body builder, I was a carpenter, now retired. He was good for a pencil neck like me who just wanted to stay strong for work. I liked it so much I now use the Stronglifts 5X5 method.
The summary at 14:30 or so is probably also the same reason starting strength is so popular. People mess about in the gym, don't get stronger or better results, then try a systemic approach (actually train for the first time) and get results. There's probably a ton of newish gym goers, who've never actually trained hard, who find the Mentzer way successful, because it's the first time they've ever pushed to failure or near failure.
Great interview thank you. On my reading of Menzter his reasons for “1 set per exercise” are quite reasoned and not arbitrary. It seems to have been a response to the notion propagated by people in his day that, say, 12-20 sets are necessary or optimal for hypertrophy. He reasoned that if no growth occurs as a consequence of so many sets how can we know whether the person requires more or less stimulus ie sets, exercises, intensity increases (for him post failure methods) or decreases etc. If a person is looking to build strength and size then a logical place to begin is 1 set per exercise (not necessarily per muscle group) in order to methodically discover ones minimum effective workout dose for desirable stimulus and as a result growth adaptation/s. For Mentzer one set per exercise to momentary muscular failure was on average that minimum effective dose hence that recommendation to *start* with. He was not dogmatic about this to my knowledge as he routinely would state that if that wasn’t enough to stimulate growth then at least one knows they can go to two sets etc. to hit the switch to get the muscles growing. Anecdotally I’ve been experimenting with the one set to or close to momentary muscular failure per exercise every 4-14 or so days and found great results in my body. Of course I’m a case study where N=1 so that information likely helps few people who may have an approximation of my precise genetic & epigenetic profile, life circumstances etc lol There is more to the story as always but I thought I’d comment to add to the discussion.
I appreciate your comments. I found that I did just as well, if not better, with 1 whole body workout - warm up sets + 1 very hard work set per body part per week. I set a lifetime bench press record (355lbs), doing 1 very hard set of Bench Press every 2 weeks. I would do 1 very hard set of Incline Press on the alternate weeks. I did not see an increase in muscle size when I switched back to a high volume approach, nor did I see a muscle loss when I switched back to a very low volume approach, which is where I am today.
@@westfieldartworks8188Incredibly possible that you were over doing the volume when doing the "high volume" phase. This is very common of people who report better gains with very low volumes compared to higher.
Quite interesting. It may be that your body prefers less frequency. I’ve found I tend to feel my strongest and freshest around day 7 after a workout to MMF on each exercise. Experimenting with the number of days til I see a decline in progress I’ve found that I can abstain from training for up to 21 days and still retain my size and strength. As a side note I’ve begun to trial zero warmup sets ie to begin from the moment I workout with my working weight on the leg press let’s say. No injuries thus far which is promising from a time efficiency perspective if this is sustainable. For busy people, or people who have better priorities than spending more time than necessary in the gym to be healthy and look good enough and be strong enough this approach is far superior in my opinion provided of course no deleterious effects occur.
Great comment; but what NOT going to failure? There is certainly evidence that failure isn’t needed (and that failure can be relatively detrimental.) Then this set discussion shifts.
Almost every single fitness related adaptation whether it’s increased running endurance, strength, even skill acquisition requires an accumulation of INTENSE ENOUGH (NOT MAXIMAL) repetitions/sets (plural) to be maximized. You can’t run your best mile running an all out mile everyday, you can’t get the best skill acquisition practicing one rep a day, you probably can’t maximize strength and muscle gain with one balls to wall set a day. That’s the point of doing sets and reps, it allows you to accumulate multiple high effort bouts without blowing your tank in one all out bout. The ones who maximize growth/size on one set are the 5%ers if that.
I notice you said “probably can’t” Why comment in something you’ve never tried? So what do you think of eating live octopus, or 12th century portuguese fashion, while we have you here?
@@matalostodos who said I’ve never tried based on saying probably can’t? That’s a weird assumption. Do you like reading absolute statements only? Raw octopus tentacles are pretty good.
Yes, after reading the comprehensive pro-Mentzer comment above yours, this is a well-stated example of the alternative position. Some of us like to think of strength acquisition as skill acquisition. For other skills, you don’t go “all out.” What IF strength is unique, though? Also, is this conversation always about strength at its core, or can it be only about hypertrophy? (I assume the answer is that you don’t have hypertrophy here without the corresponding progressive overload, but I’m not sure.)
@@ericmalitz Good luck then. Go do your 1 set balls to wall and show your friends how you’re stronger than them doing just 1 set. Hypertrophy also requires multiple high effort bouts, like any other adaptation. It just also happens to tie to strength.
Evidence points to 4-6 0-1 RIR sets per muscle per session is where the cap off for stimulus points to in the science literature. Each muscle 1 x5-7 days is where MYOPS is elevated. Look into the research from Paul Carter and Chris Beardsley
You cannot do four full sets of a real challenging workout. Any more than you can sprint all out four times in a row. Let alone do so five times a week. Of course if you could, then logically you’d be making supernatural gains in a matter of months arriving at your top level. otherwise the adaptation theory is nonsense. Because I don’t see israetel’s gym rats making impressive gains unjuiced. They didn’t even try without juicing, there never was a time they relied on technique, diet or science to beef up. To slim for competition, yes, coz that’s harder regardless of pharmaceuticals.
The idea of starting with one set is not arbitrary as Mentzer said: if one set does not work, you do two sets, if two doesn’t work you do three sets every workout. If you start with 10 sets and you are not growing, do you go up or down?
No need for a long list of speculations as to why he's become popular. It's simple and I'm sure it's true for most of us. I was spinning my wheels for years with the volume training you guys promote, having barely passed my noobie gains stage. Started HIT and am finally progressing - PR's on every lift, every set, every training session. For months now. I'm at a point where I'm questioning all the so-called 'scientific' approach based on studies that I find worthless for the most part. I don't think you need that much protein, I don't think volume is the answer, I don't think the 30 gram per meal limit is true, I don't think the 48-72hr anabolic window post training is also true, etc.. I've seen growth occur 3-4-5 days into my rest after training. At best I could accept that there's a segment of the population that has vastly superior recovery abilities and can grow on higher volumes but I don't think this is true for the majority.
When training a muscle 1 x week on a PPL split is it better to have an A/B exercise selection for each muscle and rotate those every week hitting the same exercise every 2 weeks like in DC training or better to stick to the same exercises weekly for a while then switch them a few mesocycles later? Or doesn’t it really matter for Hypertrophy as long as you’re beating the log book?
I though M Mathews was all about the train a muscle once a week and lift heavy. Has his lifting ideology changed since writing his book? I've been following the one muscle set per week, rest for a week, and lift heavy with 3 sets of 6-7 reps
I think you may have me confused with someone else, there's no evidence to suggest you should train one set per week or train each muscle 1 set per week. 9-12 sets per muscle group per week for beginners, 12-20 for intermediate and advanced.
When you're really fatigued, the stress isn't just in your muscles anymore-it's all over your body. You can feel it in your brain (CNS), your immune system, and your heart and blood vessels.
Looking around nearly all gyms, apart from the dudes with back acne and womanly mood swings, seems like you described everyone who is “following the science”.
More volume = more muscle growth. It’s truly that strong a relationship. Training a muscle multiple days in a week is only superior to once per week because it generally allows more volume. If you do so many sets that you can’t recover as quickly, that hurts your volume. So overtraining still proves it’s volume or volume-load that has to be maximized. There are smokers who live to 100, millionaires who take out credit card debt to invest in penny stocks, valedictorians who never study, and jacked people who never train. None of that disproves what we know about those behaviors and outcomes.
Mike mentzer has gained popularity because there is so much anecdotal evidence of gaining way more muscle for naturals via his approach. Myself included. Volume didn’t work for me, high intensity training has gained me so much muscle since I started it. There’s thousands of others it’s worked for too. I use a mix of mentzer & Dorian Yates style and I’ve seen better results probably 4x that of volume.
@@matalostodos are you saying that using studies to understand something is analogous to blindly following a dictator because they said so? If you believe that, I encourage you to read some exercise science research yourself and thoughtfully criticize it.
@@tomowen9412 I don’t think his videos going viral translates perfectly to people utilizing his training style. But we have no way to put all this anecdotal evidence into context. We have no way of knowing how many people, what they did previously, what else they changed, their lifting experience, which muscles grew, or even by how much. I can probably find 2 people who grew more muscle as they worked out more for every 1 who grew more by working out less. I do think intensity here is an overlooked factor. It’s entirely possible that people who do high volume tend to train less intensely. So it perhaps is better to train with less volume if it means higher intensity. However, with equal intensity, more volume will tend to be better. Anyways, glad it’s worked for you!
#Notice: he doesn't mention what's enough. It "all depends" on your personal situation or whatever. His issue is he can't really back up the arguments against itm. It's effective...but sometimes it isn't? Etc. 🤦♂️
@@santicruz4012 I've tried a large number of volume ranges. I recovered from high volume but the gains were mediocre. Got better results doing 9 sets for chest and when that stopped I got more gains when I lowered it to 6.
@@theiceman7590 thank you. Im going to try training on the lower end, even if I dont get as sore. I workout 3 times a week so I have plenty of time to recover. I’ll probably get back to you in a few months.
The Low Volume guys tend to be a bit bigger for some reason. Yates, Mentzer, Viator. That's my impression at least. When I do Mentzer's approach, I'm sore for four days afterwards at least, sometimes five.
So that's 3. Derek Lunsford, Hadi Choopan, Phil Heath, Dexter Jackson, Ronnie Coleman, Jay Cutler, Shaun Rodan, Big Ramy. These people were just as big or bigger than the 3 people you mentioned and trained high volume. Mentzer was a flawed individual with a deep rooted hatred for Arnold and a drug addiction. If Arnold said it was raining outside, Mentzer would argue it wasn't, that's how fickle of a human being he was.
Dr Mike has spoken about this in length. When you get very advanced, large and strong, lower volumes become what work best simply because you can't recover from more volume. For the average person of average training age and even some natty advanced folks, more volume is better
Mike Isratel doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Everyone who tried Menzer’s routine swears by its results. How many people do you know who benefited from doing 40-50 sets a week?
Mike interviewing Mike about Mike
No doubt each of them using a Mike to do so 🤣
Mike^3
Mikeception
I guess if your name is not Mike, you're just not that guy!
Hahahaha
I loved Mike Mentzer and his methods back in the day - I am not a body builder, I was a carpenter, now retired. He was good for a pencil neck like me who just wanted to stay strong for work. I liked it so much I now use the Stronglifts 5X5 method.
Mike mentzer is so popular now because it WORKS. So many of us have gained amazing results doing this vs rubbish results when doing volume training.
The anabolic Mike trifecta going on here.
Mentzer topics are always highly appreciated.
Mike, your interview of Dr. Mike on the subject of RIP 🙏 Mike's HIT principles was fantastic. Mike, you're awesome!!
Thanks for the comment, glad you liked it!
The summary at 14:30 or so is probably also the same reason starting strength is so popular. People mess about in the gym, don't get stronger or better results, then try a systemic approach (actually train for the first time) and get results. There's probably a ton of newish gym goers, who've never actually trained hard, who find the Mentzer way successful, because it's the first time they've ever pushed to failure or near failure.
Hot 🔥 Mike on Mike action 🎬 talking about Mike on the mic. 🎤
lolz
Second. Love Dr Mike for everything he is. Thanks for this one.
Great interview thank you.
On my reading of Menzter his reasons for “1 set per exercise” are quite reasoned and not arbitrary. It seems to have been a response to the notion propagated by people in his day that, say, 12-20 sets are necessary or optimal for hypertrophy. He reasoned that if no growth occurs as a consequence of so many sets how can we know whether the person requires more or less stimulus ie sets, exercises, intensity increases (for him post failure methods) or decreases etc.
If a person is looking to build strength and size then a logical place to begin is 1 set per exercise (not necessarily per muscle group) in order to methodically discover ones minimum effective workout dose for desirable stimulus and as a result growth adaptation/s. For Mentzer one set per exercise to momentary muscular failure was on average that minimum effective dose hence that recommendation to *start* with. He was not dogmatic about this to my knowledge as he routinely would state that if that wasn’t enough to stimulate growth then at least one knows they can go to two sets etc. to hit the switch to get the muscles growing.
Anecdotally I’ve been experimenting with the one set to or close to momentary muscular failure per exercise every 4-14 or so days and found great results in my body. Of course I’m a case study where N=1 so that information likely helps few people who may have an approximation of my precise genetic & epigenetic profile, life circumstances etc lol
There is more to the story as always but I thought I’d comment to add to the discussion.
I appreciate your comments. I found that I did just as well, if not better, with 1 whole body workout - warm up sets + 1 very hard work set per body part per week. I set a lifetime bench press record (355lbs), doing 1 very hard set of Bench Press every 2 weeks. I would do 1 very hard set of Incline Press on the alternate weeks. I did not see an increase in muscle size when I switched back to a high volume approach, nor did I see a muscle loss when I switched back to a very low volume approach, which is where I am today.
@@westfieldartworks8188Incredibly possible that you were over doing the volume when doing the "high volume" phase. This is very common of people who report better gains with very low volumes compared to higher.
Quite interesting. It may be that your body prefers less frequency.
I’ve found I tend to feel my strongest and freshest around day 7 after a workout to MMF on each exercise. Experimenting with the number of days til I see a decline in progress I’ve found that I can abstain from training for up to 21 days and still retain my size and strength.
As a side note I’ve begun to trial zero warmup sets ie to begin from the moment I workout with my working weight on the leg press let’s say. No injuries thus far which is promising from a time efficiency perspective if this is sustainable.
For busy people, or people who have better priorities than spending more time than necessary in the gym to be healthy and look good enough and be strong enough this approach is far superior in my opinion provided of course no deleterious effects occur.
Mike mentzer is so popular now because it WORKS. So many of us have gained amazing results doing this vs rubbish results when doing volume training.
Great comment; but what NOT going to failure? There is certainly evidence that failure isn’t needed (and that failure can be relatively detrimental.) Then this set discussion shifts.
First. Giving love to Mentzer style training 🥰
Ahhh mike grew up for this video. Bring back tiny mike.
Hahaha no more smol mike
Almost every single fitness related adaptation whether it’s increased running endurance, strength, even skill acquisition requires an accumulation of INTENSE ENOUGH (NOT MAXIMAL) repetitions/sets (plural) to be maximized.
You can’t run your best mile running an all out mile everyday, you can’t get the best skill acquisition practicing one rep a day, you probably can’t maximize strength and muscle gain with one balls to wall set a day.
That’s the point of doing sets and reps, it allows you to accumulate multiple high effort bouts without blowing your tank in one all out bout.
The ones who maximize growth/size on one set are the 5%ers if that.
I notice you said “probably can’t”
Why comment in something you’ve never tried?
So what do you think of eating live octopus, or 12th century portuguese fashion, while we have you here?
@@matalostodos who said I’ve never tried based on saying probably can’t? That’s a weird assumption. Do you like reading absolute statements only?
Raw octopus tentacles are pretty good.
Yes, after reading the comprehensive pro-Mentzer comment above yours, this is a well-stated example of the alternative position. Some of us like to think of strength acquisition as skill acquisition. For other skills, you don’t go “all out.”
What IF strength is unique, though?
Also, is this conversation always about strength at its core, or can it be only about hypertrophy? (I assume the answer is that you don’t have hypertrophy here without the corresponding progressive overload, but I’m not sure.)
@@ericmalitz Good luck then. Go do your 1 set balls to wall and show your friends how you’re stronger than them doing just 1 set.
Hypertrophy also requires multiple high effort bouts, like any other adaptation. It just also happens to tie to strength.
I had a feeling this interview wasn't going to go anywhere, after Mike described Mike Mentzer as a 80s competitive bodybuilder🤷
Which Mike? “…….yes”
Evidence points to 4-6 0-1 RIR sets per muscle per session is where the cap off for stimulus points to in the science literature. Each muscle 1 x5-7 days is where MYOPS is elevated. Look into the research from Paul Carter and Chris Beardsley
You cannot do four full sets of a real challenging workout. Any more than you can sprint all out four times in a row. Let alone do so five times a week.
Of course if you could, then logically you’d be making supernatural gains in a matter of months arriving at your top level. otherwise the adaptation theory is nonsense. Because I don’t see israetel’s gym rats making impressive gains unjuiced. They didn’t even try without juicing, there never was a time they relied on technique, diet or science to beef up. To slim for competition, yes, coz that’s harder regardless of pharmaceuticals.
Loving the discussion gentlemen 🙏
WOAH WOAH WOAH two smart guys giving an hour of content for free? And it's a triple Mike situation?
The idea of starting with one set is not arbitrary as Mentzer said: if one set does not work, you do two sets, if two doesn’t work you do three sets every workout. If you start with 10 sets and you are not growing, do you go up or down?
You go up.
No need for a long list of speculations as to why he's become popular. It's simple and I'm sure it's true for most of us. I was spinning my wheels for years with the volume training you guys promote, having barely passed my noobie gains stage. Started HIT and am finally progressing - PR's on every lift, every set, every training session. For months now. I'm at a point where I'm questioning all the so-called 'scientific' approach based on studies that I find worthless for the most part. I don't think you need that much protein, I don't think volume is the answer, I don't think the 30 gram per meal limit is true, I don't think the 48-72hr anabolic window post training is also true, etc.. I've seen growth occur 3-4-5 days into my rest after training. At best I could accept that there's a segment of the population that has vastly superior recovery abilities and can grow on higher volumes but I don't think this is true for the majority.
This guy did not listen to the podcast
When training a muscle 1 x week on a PPL split is it better to have an A/B exercise selection for each muscle and rotate those every week hitting the same exercise every 2 weeks like in DC training or better to stick to the same exercises weekly for a while then switch them a few mesocycles later? Or doesn’t it really matter for Hypertrophy as long as you’re beating the log book?
I recommend using the same movements through a few mesocycles rather than switching it up.
Interesting & useful 'interview'!
Glad it was helpful!
One thing I’ve noticed is that people named Mike really love working out.
Lolz
Honest question, didn't Mike Mentzer earn a perfect score twice? The only bodybuilder to do so if i'm not mistaken.
I'm not familiar with his stage stats. Interesting if that's true.
I though M Mathews was all about the train a muscle once a week and lift heavy. Has his lifting ideology changed since writing his book? I've been following the one muscle set per week, rest for a week, and lift heavy with 3 sets of 6-7 reps
I think you may have me confused with someone else, there's no evidence to suggest you should train one set per week or train each muscle 1 set per week. 9-12 sets per muscle group per week for beginners, 12-20 for intermediate and advanced.
What is meant, specifically, by "systemic fatigue"?
When you're really fatigued, the stress isn't just in your muscles anymore-it's all over your body. You can feel it in your brain (CNS), your immune system, and your heart and blood vessels.
Pros: you’re in and out in under 30-45 minutes.
Cons: you’re gains after the beginner stage come extremely slow
Looking around nearly all gyms, apart from the dudes with back acne and womanly mood swings, seems like you described everyone who is “following the science”.
The Goat
More volume = more muscle growth. It’s truly that strong a relationship. Training a muscle multiple days in a week is only superior to once per week because it generally allows more volume. If you do so many sets that you can’t recover as quickly, that hurts your volume. So overtraining still proves it’s volume or volume-load that has to be maximized. There are smokers who live to 100, millionaires who take out credit card debt to invest in penny stocks, valedictorians who never study, and jacked people who never train. None of that disproves what we know about those behaviors and outcomes.
🤣 gotta love libril’s faith in man. Stronger than any other kind of faith. If Mao or Stalin says so, it must be true. They got studies to prove it!
Mike mentzer has gained popularity because there is so much anecdotal evidence of gaining way more muscle for naturals via his approach. Myself included. Volume didn’t work for me, high intensity training has gained me so much muscle since I started it. There’s thousands of others it’s worked for too. I use a mix of mentzer & Dorian Yates style and I’ve seen better results probably 4x that of volume.
@@matalostodos are you saying that using studies to understand something is analogous to blindly following a dictator because they said so? If you believe that, I encourage you to read some exercise science research yourself and thoughtfully criticize it.
@@tomowen9412 I don’t think his videos going viral translates perfectly to people utilizing his training style. But we have no way to put all this anecdotal evidence into context. We have no way of knowing how many people, what they did previously, what else they changed, their lifting experience, which muscles grew, or even by how much. I can probably find 2 people who grew more muscle as they worked out more for every 1 who grew more by working out less. I do think intensity here is an overlooked factor. It’s entirely possible that people who do high volume tend to train less intensely. So it perhaps is better to train with less volume if it means higher intensity. However, with equal intensity, more volume will tend to be better. Anyways, glad it’s worked for you!
Show us your results please
I’d do anything Dr Mike told me to do….anything…
Too many Mikes, one must change their name.
#Notice: he doesn't mention what's enough.
It "all depends" on your personal situation or whatever. His issue is he can't really back up the arguments against itm. It's effective...but sometimes it isn't? Etc. 🤦♂️
More volume is better, as long as you can recover for it. Why do you need a straight universal number?
@@santicruz4012Thats simply not the case
@@theiceman7590 can u elaborate?
@@santicruz4012 I've tried a large number of volume ranges. I recovered from high volume but the gains were mediocre. Got better results doing 9 sets for chest and when that stopped I got more gains when I lowered it to 6.
@@theiceman7590 thank you. Im going to try training on the lower end, even if I dont get as sore. I workout 3 times a week so I have plenty of time to recover. I’ll probably get back to you in a few months.
lol is there a yt channel this dude isn't in
The Low Volume guys tend to be a bit bigger for some reason. Yates, Mentzer, Viator. That's my impression at least. When I do Mentzer's approach, I'm sore for four days afterwards at least, sometimes five.
So that's 3. Derek Lunsford, Hadi Choopan, Phil Heath, Dexter Jackson, Ronnie Coleman, Jay Cutler, Shaun Rodan, Big Ramy. These people were just as big or bigger than the 3 people you mentioned and trained high volume. Mentzer was a flawed individual with a deep rooted hatred for Arnold and a drug addiction. If Arnold said it was raining outside, Mentzer would argue it wasn't, that's how fickle of a human being he was.
Ronnie Coleman was high volume and high frequency and there was nobody bigger than him and that's what made him the GOAT!
Dr Mike has spoken about this in length. When you get very advanced, large and strong, lower volumes become what work best simply because you can't recover from more volume.
For the average person of average training age and even some natty advanced folks, more volume is better
@@thegoldfish123 There’s more big HIT guys also...Jordan Peters, Dante Trudel, Tom Kiat, Russo Augustine, John Heart, Markus Reinhard, Jay Vincent etc
They train harder.
3 mikes, some mics, and a pizza place.
Mike Mentzer was the world's most balanced bodybuilder. He had a chip on both shoulders!
Again.
He's #missing a lot of info. In fact, it sounds like Mentzer was basically right.
47:00 ewww NDT is the "ackshually" guy that gets lots of things wrong when it's not the basics of astrophysics lol
Mike Isratel doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Everyone who tried Menzer’s routine swears by its results. How many people do you know who benefited from doing 40-50 sets a week?
Subaru?? Hang on... all that Lamborghini talk is bullshit?
lolz
Cons, it doesn't work.
Pros, none.
Hit sucks.
You should get Paul Carter on!
Thanks for the recommendation!