Al, yeah, I guess Brian tried to be creative with his ideas, and I commend him for that. It’s just that he pretty much bashed Mentzer after he died…
Funny, I never heard (or read) him say anything negative about Mike before he died.
Look, Mike was human and could be very hard headed and tough to get along with. But he was of the highest integrity.
And yeah, so his record keeping and progress charts weren’t great…
But no taking away the fact that Mike had a passion for perfecting Jones’ principles despite facing constant bashing from the BB orthodoxy. He really carried the torch for HIT after others fell by the wayside (Casey Viator pretty much sold out to Weider in the end).
To me, the success of Dorian Yates was his crowning achievement.
I realize Yates didn’t follow Mike to the letter, but he definitely had a huge impact on how Yates trained from 1992 on, especially after their watershed workouts at Gold’s prior to Yates winning his first Mr. O in 92.
In fact, when Yates returned to Gold’s in 1993 in preparation for his second Mr. O, Mike told him pointedly, “Dorian, so what if you find your workouts last just 12-15 minutes once every 4 to 5 days”!!!..“That’s what you MUST do to improve upon an already massively muscled physique!!”…
That to me, that is the SHEER GENIUS OF MENTZER…No one in the HIT community has ever come close…Respectfully, Steve…
Scott, Does smoking make one crazy? …And do you have first hand knowledge of his “Crazy stuff he was saying and acting.”…?? …Is that just second-hand hearsay?..
Even if he did act bizarre and possibly “crazy”, so what???
There’s no taking away how hard he worked to perfect Jones’ theory of HIT…He put his heart and soul into it. And all his writings are still great reads…
Respectfully, Steve…
The smoking was just one of many indicators . I’m not trying to take away from Anything Mentzer did to perfect Jones theories , he did put his heart into it and his stuff was great to read even if it didn’t always turn out to be great advice in reality. Like I said I stopped reading muscle magazines after he stopped writing because no one else wrote like he did . He was very scientific. For me his death was a huge loss to the bodybuilding world which in my opinion was exasperated by his own actions more than anything.
Scott
Scott, I totally agree with you…I too stopped buying the muscle comics when Mentzer’s articles stopped appearing…And yes, his death was a huge loss to BB…Who knows the direction that BB training may have went had he lived longer???..Respectfully, Steve…
I would love to hear more!
one of my favorite Mentzer stories is 3 months prior to 1980 olympia, he consulted with Roger Schwab and asked him to train him for the competition, which he did at his facility. According to Scwab, Mentzer was trained full body 3x/week using the nautilus equipment.
I was on the IART forum (Johnston’s forum) for several years.
Prior to his links with Mentzer, Johnston had a book published , but of course him linking up with Mentzer increased his profile significantly.
I think he still would have been successful irrespective of Mentzer’s involvement, as it was at a time the Internet was growing and a lot of unknown writers experts etc were building their reputations (including several in the HIT field) . As successful and known ?
That is up for debate.
As for bashing Mentzer after his death ?
They initially went their separate ways fairly amicably , but then Johnston published a critique of Heavy Duty 2.
Johnston did critiques of several books/training philosophies, and it was reasonable therefore to do one on HIT training’s highest profile one.
I read the critique , and it was detailed, but fair and hard to repute (Mentzer never reputed any of the critique).
This created a rift between the two and lasted for a few short years until Mike Mentzer’s death.
There were on occasion emails to Johnston from Mentzer which he copied to the forum which were at best eccentric and at worst would have one very concerned about Mentzer’s state of mind.
I haven’t read anything from Johnston since Mentzer’s death ,which he did not say prior to it , and pretty much all that I have read has been related to Mentzer’s training philosophy , and certainly not “Mentzer bashing”
If anyone can show me otherwise, then I will be happy to be proved wrong.
Mark
That part always puzzled me.
Why did Mentzer never mention this ?
I’ve met Roger and consider him to be an honorable man.
So why would Mike talk about every other day splits with his brother and all these great gains he was making when he spent a key part of the year training the whole body 3 times a week ?
It is something we may never know the answer to.
Mark
minus the negative only work, that’s a very similar to a routine that i also found very effective…
thank you.
I think the low reps came from his and Ray’s own experiences. They both did very well with very low-rep Dips and Inclines and perhaps (here’s the speculation) he felt it was universal. Of course, the second part of this answer lies with the fact that this was intended as the second part of a Pre-Fatigue Superset.
I thought it was pretty well documented that there was a 5 year stretch where Mentzer suffered from some significant psychiatric problems, bad enough to require hospitalization? I’ve seen a quote attributed to Mentzer where he seemed to acknowledge that stretch, saying it was due abuse of amphetamines, coupled with some personal traumas (death of his father, the failure of a business venture, and a breakup with his girlfriend).
Give him credit for overcoming that, and starting to come back from it.
OK, Mark, thanks. Good stuff…Certainly Johnston had every right to critique HD2…Interested if U still have those emails.
I too believe Mike went too far with his conso. routines (like many say, it was the ultimate consequence of his theory).
I’ve had good results with an HD2-type Ideal Routine…I just substitute most of the isolation movements with a compound movement. …Example, I do standing overhead presses for shoulders and sometimes add a set of side laterals…
Curious on your take of his HD 2 Ideal routine as opposed to his routine in HD 1…
Respectfully, Steve
Yes Al, Mike did address his mental issues and should be commended for overcoming them.
In later years, Mike just became too rigid, dogmatic and defensive in regard to his work.
Something he warned most of his followers not to do…Interesting…
Respectfully, Steve
Thanks, Tokon, What’s your routine like now?
Respectfully, Steve
Jerry Brainum on the Mentzer’s autopsy report. Of course, since his post from 2004, the dangers of pain meds (especially mixed with certain other drugs) has been widely acknowledged as a health crisis in the U.S.
I viewed the offical autopsy report of both Mike and Ray Mentzer, who were long time friends of mine. Mike’s offical cause of death was athersclorotic heart disease, and the same for Ray. Yet the toxilogical report listed lethal doses of pain-killing drugs and antidepressants in both men. I asked the coroner who did the autopsy about this apparant discrepancy, and he said that it was difficult to determine which came first, the heart attacks or the overdose. He also said the drugs may have triggered the heart attacks.
What’s strange about this is I always heard that Ray died of kidney failure and Mike had heart issues
Steve,
In regards the 2 routines , if I was training Heavy Duty i would use the HD1 routine as the starting point of a training cycle and evolve it later in the cycle to something similar to the ideal routine .
Mark
Yes, and I think the low reps in the second part of pre-exhaust set were to prevent the set from becoming aerobic. Respectfully, Steve
When it comes to bodybuilders you never really know what to believe. It seemed that after Mentzer lost to Arnold he quit because he believed it was rigged and that he should have won. That’s very possible considering Columbo won an Olympia ha ha! I think that was the beginning of his deterioration, it just took time to manifest . Having seen with my own eyes and talked with Mike in person about the gym bag he carried full of drugs Mike and probably Ray used there’s no doubt in my mind that like so many other bodybuilders Rays kidneys gave out and probably Mikes heart was effected quite negatively as well and then you add the later years depression and other problem drugs they probably took it’s easy to see what killed them both. I also suspect Mike felt responsible for Ray’s death and took that very hard, compounding his depression. None of that takes anything away from all the good stuff he did when he was alive. It’s very sad as both had so much to offer.
Scott
Scott, could you please give more details on “the gym bag full of drugs”…What year?..Was this at Gold’s in Santa Monica?..What drugs are we talking about?..Steroids, speed, recreational drugs???..Also, Mike died BEFORE Ray…Respectfully, Steve…