If I were to do Mike Mentzer’s HIT, for a fullbody workout. Should I still contain 1-2 excercise per muscle?

bobo_mcpherson

New member
I’m a newbie, 5 months in with only gains when I’m serious. Aside from thag, I never made much gains (though I lost 20kg). I’m 14, and I feel like HIT could help with my time management as well as gains.

I’m very new to this and use a home gym with no smith machines. I hope you could help.
 
@bobo_mcpherson HIT training the Mentzer isn't super advisable for natural athletes or beginners. The whole purpose of HIT training is one, all out, gun-to-your head set per body part to absolute absolute failure. It you do it right, you can't do another set, and according to his theories you don't hit that body part again for a week+.

Like I said, not for beginners, not for naturals. And Mentzer, God rest his soul was also on amphetamines too when coming up with his later theories, so keep that in mind.
 
@lineman Mike Mentzer is an enigma to me, he seems to be both correct yet incorrect. Like Andrew Tate or Napoleon Bonaparte.

His training seems to truly benefit naturals, if they excercise at 30 minutes to two hour with HIT(unlike his 30 min 4 day split of HIT).

I will at best attempt it, and find any reports on improvements.
 
@nicole351 Andrew Tate is both a madman and yet says some actual philosophical ideals that make sense.

Napoleon Bonaparte loved his woman, but we are unsure if he even loved France, even if he did truly fix it.

Napoleon is more of an enigma as we did not know what motives drove him to such ambitions
 
@bobo_mcpherson That's just called being wrong about some things & right about some things. It's not an enigma, it's actually a massive proportion of the human race. Mike is a great example of a guy with some good theories and also some bunk.
 
@bobo_mcpherson But that's the thing, you can't do true HIT for 2 hours. True true true muscular failure is so taxing, you won't be able to stretch it out for 2 hours doing set after set. If you do more than one set per body part in a session, it's not true HIT.
 
@thunderbolt1990 3DMJ has been more vocal about lower volumes recently as well. Not 1-set-per-exercise-low, but definitely that everyone tries pushing their training intensity with 6-10 sets per muscle group per week.
 
@lineman Doctor prescribed amphetamines that were for productivity use he wanted to read and write all day as well as ride bike for miles a day and found that it helped him a lot. He made many books and articles about bodybuilding and the mind as well. And his theories are correct.
 
@mycroft1325 He was a charlatan who got butthurt about losing to arnold and made up a dogmatic training system to market himself after he quit competing.

Mentzer trained high volume. None of his students became high level pros. 1000000s of bodybuilders successfully train high volume.

And dont bring up dorian because he used pyramid sets.look at his logbooks theyre all online.
 
@mycroft1325 I wonder what bicycle could even handle a man like him 😂.

If the theories are presently correct, why was he open to steroids?

I mean most videos I find of him seem to align with trusted modern sources, but he seems to be sort of…cultish? Or moreso he trained his cilents differently from how he claimed to train which offputs me.

From what I know, his cilents did 5 sets per excercise while he claims to do one.
 
@bobo_mcpherson There are programs and there are principles. You're going to want to take the principles in order to create a program.

HIT teaches you about working very hard and putting forth effort. A very valuable tool, as in my opinion, you won't be able to accurately assess Reps in Reserve (RIR) appropriately without knowing what failure feels like.

The harder you work, the less you'll be able to do and recover from.

With that said, Mentzer's work is strong. Towards the end he went a bit off the rails, though. With that said, it's not a bad starting point with some caveats.

A couple resources I would encourage you to look into are 3D Muscle Journey (especially their pyramid books about nutrition and training both), as well as Paul Carter (if you're fascinated by the concept of HIT).
 
@liz1965 Ah, I’ll look into 3D Muscle Journey.

Now the next question is how to create a program for myself? From my basic peek at it, programs are basically just a period where you workout certain muscles at a certain split?
 
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