Mike Mentzer’s ‘Heavy Duty’ Training Routine

In this post I’m going to show you a powerful bodybuilding method called ‘Heavy Duty’ Training.

‘Heavy Duty’ training was Mike Mentzer’s encapsulation of High Intensity Training (HIT).

HIT was his preferred way to train because it yields the best results in the shortest amount of time.

He used HIT to sculpt a body like a greek god and become the first bodybuilder to win the Mr. Universe with a perfect score.

Who is Mike Mentzer?

Mike Mentzer was an American veteran, champion bodybuilder, and fitness philosopher.

He was famous for his powerhouse physique and incredible mustache that would make Tom Selleck jealous.

This guy was an absolute unit and looks like he could body slam a grizzly bear.

Mike Mentzer built his ‘perfect’ physique with something he called ‘Heavy Duty’ Training.

Heavy Duty Training is an ultra-intense, laser-focused, yet minimalistic training style.

It works by pushing your muscles to the absolute limit by placing them under incredible stress until achieving total muscle failure.

Total Muscle Failure

Total muscle failure means the muscle just refuses to work anymore until it’s had a break.

You reach total muscle failure when you cannot possibly even contract your muscle the slightest bit.

Muscle failure occurs in two phases: The first phase of muscle failure is on the Concentric phase (lifting portion) of the rep. and the second phase is on the eccentric phase (lowering portion).

When you cannot prevent the weight from plummeting to Earth despite your best efforts, you have reached total muscle failure.

High Intensity Training is not for the faint of heart. I recommend training this way for season gym veterans only.

If you’re a newb and try this you may never touch a weight again due to the severe physical pain and psychological damage that you’ll experience.

Heavy Duty Training for Muscle Building

Mike’s Mission was to achieve the perfect body and to help others do the same.

His practical approach to bodybuilding reflected that Mission.

Mentzer’s High Intensity Training theories are intended to help a drug-free person achieve his or her full genetic potential as quickly as possible.

He insisted that weight training should be brief, infrequent, and intense, to attain the best results in the shortest amount of time.

Heavy Duty training is predicated on this philosophy.

Mike Mentzer’s Training Philosophy

Mentzer would spend hours in the gym every day when he began training.

He admitted to spending three hours a day in the gym as a young man while serving in the United States Air Force.

That sounds like a long workout but marathon training sessions where common practice amongst the Golden Era Bodybuilders.

While spending three hours in the gym everyday was normal for a professional bodybuilder, it’s an absurd amount of time for a non-athlete to spend in the gym each day.

As time went on, Mentzer adopted a ‘less is more’ approach to bodybuilding.

He reasoned that there is no need to spend hours in the gym. Muscle growth isn’t a matter of workout length, it’s matter of intensity.

What most people accomplish in three hours, can be accomplished in 30 minutes with high intensity training.

According to Mentzer, scientists since the nineteenth century have known that muscle hypertrophy is directly related to training intensity.

He believed that intensity, above all else, is the most critical factor to stimulate muscle growth.

Pushing to the Limit

Everyone and everything has a limit, and once you reach that limit you can’t go any farther.

The thing is that nobody reaches their limit.

But when you train to your limit, it only takes a brief moment to reap massive results.

Getting to the point where you’re firing on all cylinders is a whole new level  of intensity.

That last rep of each set is do or die.

What is High-Intensity Training?

High intensity training (HIT) is when 100% of your possible momentary muscular effort is exerted.

It means that you literally couldn’t do another repetition if there was a gun to your head and the bad guy was about to pull the trigger.

As described by the man himself:

“That last rep where you’re trying as hard as you can and you barely make it!

That is what turns on the growth mechanism in your body.

That last almost impossible rep where you’re bearing your teeth, you’re shaking all over, you need assistance!

That rep is very special, that rep is very different. There’s something special going on inside your body when that happens.” – Mike Mentzer

High Intensity Training should actually be called ‘Maximum Intensity Training’.

You’re not just using high intensity, you’re going to the absolute limit and beyond.

I’m talking about a place you didn’t know existed. An excruciating level of intensity that only a few dare to fuck with.

Taking your workouts to the absolute limit like this can be fun. But you will have to be smart and work up to it.

The mentality it takes to endure this kind of pain takes practice, focus and a lot of will power.

Once you’re ready to get after it though, here’s what you do:

Mike Mentzer’s Heavy Duty Workout Principles

Mike Mentzer realized that we only have so much energy to spare before you have to recharge our batteries.

We only have so much time to spend in the gym due to work, family, friends and responsibilities.

Knowing that time and energy are limited resources, it only makes sense to make the most of them, right?

That’s exactly what high intensity training does.

It is designed to reach the point where the maximum muscle growth can occur without ‘spilling over’ and wasting precious energy.

Energy that could be used to aid the recovery process.

That’s way each workout is short, intense, and relatively infrequent.

Mike Mentzer’s High Intensity Training can be summed up thusly:

• Low Reps
• Heavy Weight
• Train to Muscle Failure
• Adequate recovery

This High Intensity Training is low volume but pushes your muscles to the absolute limit (and beyond).

In some cases, you need a training partner for Heavy Duty workouts. So get your gym buddy and get psyched.

Having a spotter the only way to fully push yourself beyond complete muscle failure in a safe manner.

The ‘Heavy Duty’ Workout Routine

The Heavy Duty workouts themselves are straight forward and simple:

Pick 1-3 exercises per muscle group for each workout.

Do 2-3 working sets per exercise.

Perform 2 of the exercises in superset fashion.

Use the heaviest weight possible that allows you to reach muscle failure within 6-9 repetitions each set.

Aim to get stronger within this rep range.

You know it’s working if you’re getting stronger.

The below workout example was pulled directly for Mentzer’s book ‘Heavy Duty’.

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You can created unlimited workouts by mixing up the exercises. So High Intensity Training can be used for all muscle groups with great results.

Oh and there’s one last thing…

Take each set to muscle failure.

How to Train to Total Muscle Failure

Muscle Building Workout Techniques to Increase Intensity

Use the following techniques to achieve superior muscle growth:

Forced Reps

Force reps are spotter assisted reps.

When you can’t lift the weight anymore by yourself, your training partner helps you lift 3-4 more reps until complete muscle failure.

Where you can’t even hold the weight any longer.

Rest-Pause Reps

When you reach muscle failure, pause at the bottom of the motion.

Keep hold of the weight. Catch your breath and do another rep. Rest again at the bottom of the rep if necessary.

Repeat this 3 or times at the end of each set.

Negative Reps

When you reach muscle failure on the positive part of the lifting motion, do negative reps.

Negative reps help you reach complete muscle failure. Hold the weight in the concentric position as long as possible.

Fight the weight as long as you can as it lowers.

Do as many negative reps as necessary until you can’t hold the weight anymore no matter what.

A good split for this program is upper body workout followed by a lower body workout.

Or, you can do a ‘push’ workout followed by a ‘pull’ workout. Space workouts 2 days apart.

High Intensity Training Principles

There are a few principles that must be applied if you want to train successfully.

Warm Up Quickly

Do 2-3 sets to warm up for your workout.

Anything more than this is unnecessary and saps precious energy is is not very productive.

Obviously, listen to your own body and take as much time as you need to warm up to ensure a safe and productive workout.

Do your last warmup with 75% of your working weight. Get a good pump but do not go to failure on warm up sets. Stop about three reps from failure.

Then move into your first working set.

Pre-Exhaust Stronger Muscles

Let’s say you go straight to bench press and start your working set (after your warm up).

It is likely that your shoulders or triceps will fail before your chest.

This defeats the purpose of training a chest-dominant exercise to failure. You need to pre-exhaust the stronger muscle before doing your compound exercise.

So, start your chest workout with set of dumbbell flies to failure (after your warm up sets).

You can (and should) pre-exhaust any muscle group.

For example, perform pullovers (which isolate the lats) right before doing pulldowns (which work the lats with the biceps and rear delts), for your back workout.

Keep Rest Brief

There is no rest between superset exercises.

You must move from one exercises to the next immediately for best effect.

You want the accumulated fatigue to carry over to each set.

No more than 3 seconds should be spend transitioning between superset exercises.

If you wait longer than three seconds, your muscles begin to rebuild stamina by as much as 50%.

This will cause weaker muscle groups to fail before your major muscle groups reach total failure.

Maintain Strict Form

Perfect form is necessary to keep all the tension on the muscles being trained.

Good form reduces the risk of injury.

As the weights get heavier, proper form because even more critical.

Lift in a Slow and Controlled Manner

Zero momentum is used when training with High Intensity Training.

The muscle must move the weight slowly.

2-4 seconds up and 2-4 seconds down.

With a stretch at the bottom and a full contraction at the top of the movement. Holding each for about one second.

Work the Muscles to Complete Failure

Hey, I don’t know if you know this yet but, train your muscle to failure.

There are three types of failure:

• Positive
• Static
• Negative

Positive Failure

Positive failure occurs when you can no longer lift the weight by contracting the muscle.

Positive contraction is when your muscle is the weakest and it is the first failure point.

Static Failure

Static is the ability to hold the weight in place in the middle of the range of motion without elongating the muscle. (Without the weight moving.)

Negative Failure

Negative failure occurs when you can not hold the muscle in a fully contracted position.

A muscle at full contraction is at its strongest position.

When a muscle can no longer hold a contraction and the weight falls without any resistance from the muscle, it has achieved total muscle failure.

It is not necessary to take a set to total muscle failure every workout.

However you should take a set to total muscle failure every third or fourth workout in order to shock muscles into a forced adaptation response. (Strength and muscle growth.)

Once a month work the muscle to complete failure in both the positive and negative part of the lift.

Muscles fail first on the positive part of the motion.

After this part fails, your training partner needs to help you move the weight so you can perform the negative portion of the lift.

Continue doing ‘negative reps’ until you can no longer hold the weight. Your muscle will feel utterly useless. and will completely give out.

That my friends is complete failure.

Avoid Over-training

It seems ironic to say you need to avoid over-training with High Intensity Training.

What he Mentzer mean here is to allow enough time between workouts for your muscles to make a full recovery.

4-7 rest days for each muscle is about right.

The point here is to not train the same muscle group too frequently.

Also, do not go to absolute failure more than once a month or twice every six weeks per muscle group.

Train Infrequently

After he retired, Mentzer prescribed increasingly lower volume—eventually as few as only one or two all-out sets per body part every two weeks!

So, there you have it. Grab a training partner and get to the gym for some ‘Heavy Duty’ training.

Or, For an in-depth look at Mike Mentzer’s training routines, buy his books:

Mike Mentzer’s Books

If you want to learn more about Mentzor’s ways, check out his books below.

I’ve read Mike Mentzer’s Heavy Duty as was quite impressed with his depth and thorough explanation of the science of bodybuilding.

Although the points he makes are not bullet proof, they are hands down the most thorough and comprehensive explanation and reasoning for why high intensity training is an excellent way to train.

It convinced me to try it out even though I am a die hard fan of high volume workouts.

Get a copy of ‘Heavy Duty’ on Amazon. It’s been out of print for a while so hard copies are hard to find. You’ll likely pay a premium. You can find a free PDF if you search for it. Or just buy it. It’s a great addition to any book collection. Plus it’s worth its weight in gold.

There’s no fluff in ‘Heavy Duty’. There’s no explanation of specific diet plans (other than optimum calorie intake).  There’s also very little explanation of how to execute exercises. You can find that information elsewhere, so he doesn’t water down the book with it.

The interesting thing is that the only lifting tip in the book did help me improve my bench press immediately. So there’s that.

High-Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer Way

This book contains information on High-Intensity Training (HIT).

The same training methods Mike Mentzer used to achieve a perfect score at Mr. Universe.

The Wisdom of Mike Mentzer: The Art, Science and Philosophy of a Bodybuilding Legend

Learn to build a better body using Mike Mentzers revolutionary “Heavy Duty” system. Learn about the “less is more” training approach and discover Mike’s most advanced training techniques and philosophies–previously known only to his inner circle and personal clients.

This book dives into:

• The importance of working to failure
• Techniques for pushing past mental and physical plateaus
• How overtraining impedes progress
• A complete advanced “Heavy Duty” training system

He is often overshadowed by other bodybuilding ledgends like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Serge Nubret. Both of whom he competed against in the 1970’s.

Although Mike Mentzer didn’t have their stardom, his revolutionary approach to bodybuilding makes him a contender for one of the greatest bodybuilders to ever live.

So reach that limit quickly (and safely), then move on to the next thing.

Mike Mentzer was doing high Intensity training before it was cool.

Actually, he’s one of a rare breed that actually train with numbing intensity.

High Intensity workouts at your local gym are not the same thing as what Mikey was doing.

Oh no, his high intensity was much higher than anyone else intensity.

Mike Mentzer: Fitness Philosopher

Mike Mentzer wasn’t just a big muscle. He was also a genius.

His practice pierced to the depths of the physical and psychological to build his training philosophy from the ground up.

He advocated scientific method, critical thinking, and practical application of fitness and psychological theory by each individual.

Mentzer’s understanding of the body and mind made him a master trainer.

He trained over 200 high-profile clients, including Dorian Yates. He brought out their best by blending bodybuilding science and reason to keep clients motivated and moving forward.

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