Nelvin Tan

Preface

I decided to write this note down to crystallise my understanding of Mike Mentzer’s¹ workout philosophy and to adapt it for my own use.

I first heard about his philosophy on YouTube where I saw videos of him preaching that one only needs to do one set of an exercise for a muscle group, per week, to grow. This was an intriguing statement but also one that resonates with me since it makes sense (and is very practical) for the typical busy working adult who still wants to train and stay healthy / have an aesthetic physique.

This led me to look into his background² which impressed me, and that eventually led to me being convinced of his philosophy. Mike Mentzer was both a philosopher and bodybuilder, who at his peak (in 1978) won the Mr. Universe in Acapulco, Mexico, with the first and only perfect 300 score. More impressively, at that time he was also studying medicine³ (more specifically, pre-med at the University of Maryland) with aims to become a psychiatrist – though he eventually left this pursuit to focus on bodybuilding.

Exercise Philosophy

His philosophy (named the heavy duty workout or high intensity training) behind the growth of muscle mainly focuses on two key points:

Pushing past failure. Muscles only grow when they are pushed past failure.
Rest and recovery. Muscles only grow when they have sufficient time to recover.

Pushing past failure.

My understanding of this concept is to select an exercise (with a chosen weight / difficulty) such that you are only able to do around 10 repetitions for the upper body and 15 repetitions of lower body (since the lower body is known to have better stamina).
The exercise is then performed to failure (i.e., the point where you are no longer able to do another repetition). At the point of failure and in the middle of the repetition (e.g., at the top of a pull-up or at the bottom of a dip), pause for a bit (a few seconds) before going through the negative (remainder part of the repetition) very slowly – one may count to 10 on the way down to help with the pacing.

Rest and recovery:

The first idea is not to do too many sets, Mike Mentzer recommended one set but I assume this is not counting the warm-up sets. An example for weighted pull-ups is the following:
- 1 set of 10 repetitions of scapular pull-ups (body weight);
- 1 set of 10 repetitions of pull-ups (body weight);
- 1-2 set(s) of weighted pull-ups taken to failure.
The second idea is to take a few days (3-7) of rest between workouts. This works to the advantage of people with busy schedules.

My Example:

My goals are to workout such that I can (i) improve my health, and (ii) achieve (and eventually maintain) an aesthetic physique. I have incorporated Mentzer’s philosophy to my own workouts (which have a calisthenics flavour) in the following manner:

I perform 1 full-body workout with 1 exercise per body part once a week:
- Weighted pull-ups for the back;
- Body weight ring dips for the chest;
- Bulgarian split squats for the quadriceps;
- Single-leg romanian deadlift for the hamstrings.
On the other days, I mainly do cardio (3km of light run) followed by 1 set of pull-ups taken past failure, and 1 set of dips taken past failure.

In total I exercise about 3-5 times a week with each workout taking around 30 minutes and no more than 45 minutes. If one is busy, they are able to get away with just 1 workout per week (i.e., the full-body workout) by employing Mentzer’s philosophy.