HighIntensity.net View Mike Mentzer Bodybuilding Topic

Ok everyone gather round, I just put a log on the fire, the beer is cold, hamburgers fresh off the grill, nagging wives back at base camp. Does it get any better?

Anyway

I read much more than I post, as many here know. A battle rages between HIT and volume, turns up almost everywhere in the posts.

I think we can have both.

The attempt to have both in any situation is considered a mark of a successful mind and philosophy ( I read that somewhere).

I myself train like this:

I divide my body into upper and lower

I train once per week (every Wednesday )

I use rest pause,

I have had great success with rest pause, what is happening however is that I have begun to go way up in the rep range. For example it is nothing for me to do 20 even up to 40 reps on say deadlifts. 1 solid rep at a time, taking up to a minute or more between reps.

Will 40 reps of deadlifts with 405 cause growth if only done once per week?

Is 40 or more reps relatively high volume (at least for HIT guys)?

So my sample leg workout will be one set of deadlifts (yes I believe they hit the entire leg at heavy weight and higher reps)

1 set of calve raises (rest paused up to 20 or more reps)

One set of straight rep weighted crunches and bingo, go home.

I never train more than once per week, each bodypart gets blasted once every 2 weeks, but when I say blasted I mean bloody blasted. Forty or more rest paused deadlifts at 405 will do the trick for 2 weeks of recovery.

It seems to me that I have found a balance here between HIT and volume, or maybe a hybrid system.

I never mess around with frequency, it can go longer, but never shorter, reps can go as high as needed.

Well that is my .02 here on this subject.

Now for a fireside question that has no relevance:

Who could bench press more , Darth Vader or Chewbacca? I actually wondered about this way back in the 80s.

Jetro
Good post!
Interesting workout!
It′s Vader all the way not monkey boy.
LOL LOL
Bob

Cool post, thats one hell of a workload on the deadlifts not suprised it takes you two weeks to recover! Out of interest what is your upper body workout and what weights are you using on the exercises? you seem like quite a strong guy.

Have you checked out Dan Moores max-stimulation training? Its very similar to what your doing on the deads but more frequent workouts.

I′d say Darth on the bench, Chewies got more of a deadlifters physique with them long arms and all:-).

Cheers

Hello Deadtrap and Garethit1

Yeah Vader would win the bench contest , what with his mastery of the dark side and so on, but he would have to be careful not to hit any of those buttons on his chest with the bar. That could shag him up royal. He would be better off with dumbells.

You are correct Garethit1, about Chewie and the deadlifts, he would need to be careful not to hitch the bar up on to his twig and berries. Imagine how much he would yell then.

I read over the max stim website, it is good stuff. I use as much time as I need, could be 10 seconds, could be a few minutes. By the end of my set I feel pretty good. I think the avoidance of fatigue is the secret to this method. It is like bending a metal bar, you can bend it a little, but if you go beyond to an angular bend then that metal will never be the same in that spot. I now believe that once fatigue has been reached that is it, game over, maybe not for the muscle, but the CNS.

I wrote that I can squeeze out up to 40 reps with deadlifts at 405/180 kilos, it takes about 40 minutes total, but that is it for my legs, no other stuff, apart from calves and a set of ab crunches, that is all for 2 weeks for quads, hams and calves.

Craziest thing about this is that I do not get much DOMS either, it seems that having the pause between reps takes recovery a long way forward.

My upper body workout goes like this.

Chest: flat bench press ( 1 set of however many reps it takes to make the pecs feel stimulated) my weight on these range between 275 lbs /100 kilos to 315/ 120 kilos. I topped out long ago at 315, I do not need anymore than that.

Back: I use either barbell rows or chinups. I use the Yates row, and I can do 315/120kilos on those, but I get more from these if I stick with only 225. On chinups I will use exra weight 40 to 50 lbs

Delts/traps: I use a thing I call high pulls, I am not sure if that is the official name, it is an upright barbell row, that is pulled up just under the pecs. It kills the delts and traps. I found if I do presses of any sort my bench strength goes down. I just stick with 135lbs/ 40 kilos, with rest pause in a power rack. I have taught this move to guys at my gym, and they freak out about how fast it blows up the side delts

to top it off I nail the abs with 1 set of weighted crunches 10 kilos, then I do sidebends with 30 kilos for about 20 reps.

then that is it, those bodyparts will not get hit again for 2 weeks.

I can say that yes I am a strong guy, but I have trained for over 20 years. I am lucky in the genetic department, thanks to my dad, RIP. When I mention my training weights it may be heavy for some, and maybe light for others.

I am 183 cm tall and I weigh anywhere between 105 to 112 kilos, I go up and down by manipulating carbs, while keeping fats and proteins high. Creatine blows me up , only supplement that has ever worked for me.

I hope I answered your question a little, I am a big fan of negatives, but they are not practical in the long run.

I also believe pain tolerance is the secret to success with HIT, guys that have low pain tolerance "fail" faster, long before the muscles get the stimulation they require, ( I may be wrong on this ). I trained with a guy in Canda that saw Tom Platz do leg extensions in Golds Venice back in the 80s, he said Tom was "fucking retarded" his words not mine. He banged off so many reps with such a heavy weight that the machine he was on, moved about 3 meters across the floor by the time he was done. His pain tolerance was not human, hence the legs he had.

Well I better scram, but hey could any of us have imagined that Princess Lea had such a fine body as was revealed in Return of the Jedi, whew, SMOKIN

Hey Jetro,

Are you finding renewed growth with rest-pause as compared to doing negatives. Also, if you had access to machines such as ECCENTRIC-EDGE, would you still do negatives or continue with rest-pause.