Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Mike Israetel on Mike Mentzer’s “Heavy Duty” HIT Training

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

Mike Mentzer's high-intensity training (HIT) method has been experiencing a resurgence in popularity lately, but does the science support its effectiveness? In this episode, I talk with Dr. Mike Israetel to get his take on the pros and cons of Mentzer's Heavy Duty Workout approach. In case you're not familiar with Dr. Mike, he's a repeat guest on the Muscle for Life podcast and a true expert in the field of sports science and hypertrophy.  With a PhD in Sport Physiology, years of experience as a competitive bodybuilder, and a wealth of practical knowledge from co-founding Renaissance Periodization and working with thousands of clients, Mike knows how to bridge the gap between science and real-world application.  In our discussion, you'll learn about . . . The allure of HIT training and why it's gaining popularity again The benefits of Mentzer's approach, including its emphasis on recovery and progressive overload The valuable tradition of logbooking workouts that Mentzer helped popularize The scientific shortcomings of Mentzer's method, such as the superiority of multiple sets over single sets The suboptimal nature of very low training volumes and frequencies in HIT, and the potential drawbacks of training to failure When and for whom HIT-style training can work effectively Practical tips for trying a more sustainable, evidence-based version of Mentzer’s approach And more . . . Whether you're a fan of Mentzer's methods or simply curious about the science of hypertrophy training, click play because you won't want to miss this discussion. Timestamps: (0:00) Please leave a review of the show wherever you listen to podcasts and make sure to subscribe! (2:28) Go to www.mfl.show/spring to get BOGO 50% off during our Spring Sale! (5:51) Who was Mike Mentzer and what is his Heavy Duty training method? (9:13) Why is Mentzer's HIT training experiencing a resurgence in popularity? (20:08) What are the benefits of Mentzer's training approach? (25:18) Please share the podcast with a friend! www.muscleforlife.show (25:52) - What did Mentzer get wrong about optimal hypertrophy training? (32:38) Is training beyond failure effective for muscle growth? (35:24) What other components of Mentzer's HIT style are suboptimal? (38:56) When can low-frequency training work well? (47:41) How can you improve on Mentzer's HIT method if you want to try it? (50:20) Where can people find more of Mike Israetel's work? Mentioned on the Show: Our Spring Sale Is Happening Now! BOGO 50% every product! Plus, free gift cards on orders over $99! Go to www.mfl.show/spring to save now and use coupon code MUSCLE to get double reward points! Renaissance Periodization Website: https://rpstrength.com/ Renaissance Periodization YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RenaissancePeriodization

Very low volume and very high relative effort are the key cornerstones of Menser's system. And the philosophy behind it is one that says recovery is such a huge limiting factor that doing less will give you more recovery and thus give you more results in the long term, which has some very, very good validity to it, but isn't valid in all cases and all times. Hello there. I am Mike Matthews. This is Muscle for Life. Welcome to a new episode on Mike Menser's

heavy-duty, high-intensity style of training, which has experienced a bit of a resurgence in popularity lately. You've probably noticed this if you spend any time on social media rummaging around the fitness space you've seen over the last probably 68 months. A lot of people talk about Mensur's unusual style of training and you may have wondered, does it work or minimally does it work better than what you're doing right now? Would you get better results with Menser's methods? You may have also wondered how Menser's

training methods compare to the scientific literature, compare to the body of evidence that underpins, I guess you could say the current training paradigm in the evidence-based fitness space, which has some similarities to what Mike taught and did, but also has some pretty major departures, some pretty major differences. Well, you are going to get comprehensive answers to those questions and more in today's interview with Dr. Mike Isretel. And in case you are not familiar with Dr. Mike, he is a repeat guest on my podcast, someone I always appreciate speaking with. He is a true expert in the field of sports science and hypertrophy. He has a PhD in sports physiology.

He has many years of at the co-coalface experience as a competitive bodybuilder and a true wealth of practical knowledge. He co-founded Renaissance Periodization and he has worked with thousands and thousands of people over the years. And he understands how to bridge the gap between theoretical science and real world application and results. This episode is sponsored by me because I don't have any show sponsors because I have never had any show sponsors and probably never will because I would rather you just check out my stuff, check out my books, check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which currently is holding its big spring site-wide sale over at www.mfl.show slash spring. And that means that

for the next week or so, you can buy one, get one 50% off site-wide. All of our products, every supplement, buy one, get one 50% off. And you are going to get a $10 gift card on orders over $99. And that's good toward anything in our store, as well as a $20 gift card on orders over $149. And if you don't want to go BOGO, we have more. We also have discounted our stacks up to 40% off. And so that means you can save up to 40% on some of our most popular supplements bundled by goal like building muscle or improving health or improving recovery, accelerating fat loss, and so on. So if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you like 100% naturally sweetened and flavored sports supplements with clinically effective ingredients and doses,

and that doses point is important. It's not just the ingredients, but it's how much. but it's how much. And finally, if you like to save money, then again, head over to www.mfl.show slash spring, check out everything Legion has to offer, see what catches your fancy, save big on it and enjoy. Hey, Mike, it's good to see you again. Hey, Mike, what's up? How are you? With your patented, I like the simple, clean background, just the black chair. And the white wall, which reminds me that I'm soulless and have no feelings. We're going to talk about Menser training, which at least as of, let's say a month or so ago when Damien reached out, I guess it was having a bit of a

moment. I don't know if it still is, but it certainly was just as of a month or two ago. I don't actually quite know why. I'm assuming it's social media's fault. It must be. But quickly, quickly, a lot of people were talking about Menser's high intensity training. And this is a protocol that you'll get into the details and so forth. And I wanted to have someone like you on, an expert, to have a discussion about this so people listening can get more than they're going to get just flipping around on social media because I've seen a lot of silly claims about this type of training and essentially why it's just the way to go for everyone, all circumstances, just the best. And look at how jacked Menser was. Don't you want to be jacked? So just do what he was doing. Logic. I mean, that's how syllogisms work, right?

I mean, come on. Yeah. So maybe we should start with who, who, uh, was, was Mike Mansour, just for people listening, a quick little explanation of why is that a name? And then what is this training style? Mike Mansour was a competitive bodybuilder in the early to mid 1980s it was quite good he um was a finalist in the mr olympia contest and he was a bit more cerebral than the average bodybuilder of the time and probably more on cerebral than the average bodybuilder in any era. And he kind of based his practices on his interactions with Arthur Jones,

who developed a system of training in which you go to all-out muscular failure, concentric failure, and typically that is paired with low volumes. So something like a few sets per muscle group per session, think like one to three sets for chest a few times a week versus like something you would have seen back then as typical in Arnold's time would have been 15 to 30 sets of chest twice a week also. So a very, very big difference, a huge scaling down of volume, but a massive emphasis on what we in sports science call a relative effort, how close you are to your own abilities. So very much a huge advocate of failure training. And Arthur Jones' original system was called HIIT high-intensity training.

And I believe Mike Mentzer's offshoot method was called the heavy-duty method. Now, it's just some slight modifications, barely worth discussing, but, and, you know, to, to credit the people that adopt his methods today. And, um, one of the biggest adopters of something like his method methods was a six time Mr. Olympia, Dorian Yates, uh, one to, to the, to credit to both Dorian and the people that adopted since. One, to credit both Dorian and the people that have adopted it since and even today, very few people are literalists about exactly what Menser did and recommended. And to Mike Menser's credit, his system was a little bit adaptive in such that there wasn't a specific, this is the only thing you do. So it's best for intellectual honesty and for us to learn more, to treat Menser's system as a bit of a couple of bullet points of

on average this is kind of what it looks like like if if you tell me how big is a mouse i'm not gonna i'm not gonna say as you have 3.15 inches in length is it's just one species of mouse one individual mouse specifically but i said like it's something that fits in your hand, but isn't the size of an insect. Like, so for Mike Menser stuff, it's like you do a few sets and they're to failure or beyond failure. And you do it no more than twice a week, typically for a given muscle. And sometimes as infrequently as once a week and even once every one and a half weeks. So very low volume and very high relative effort are the key cornerstones of Menser's system. And the philosophy behind it is one that says recovery is such a huge limiting factor that doing less will give you more recovery and thus give you more results in the long term, which has some very, very good validity to it, but isn't valid in all cases and all times and for all people. And so using it as kind of a shibboleth as this is the one true thing can get you into just doing something that doesn't work all that well.

And why do you think this heavy duty system is having a bit of a resurgence? It's a good question. Max, you'll ask me why Sam Sulik is popular. I think we could deduce a few things. I mean, he's jacked. Okay. So that's a thing. Is he though?

How jacked is he? He's maybe not, he's maybe relative to me. He's fairly jacked. He's bigger than I am. Do you know how many competitive bodybuilders are bigger than Sam Sulik? Taking nothing away from him. He's absolutely jacked. But there, I mean, there are people that make him look like he started the day one training so why aren't they yes crazy popular

and so I haven't seen too much of his stuff not to go off on a complete tangent but I've been asked this is a recurring question when I do my little Instagram Q&A yeah big mystery and uh and I really haven't watched that much of his stuff, so I don't have a great answer. But okay, so he's probably, I'm guessing he's popular with young men. I'm guessing that's most of the people who are probably, right? And I think he started his rise on YouTube. TikTok originally. It was a TikTok. So there you go.

And that and YouTube. Right? So it's going to be young. It's going to be young, but it's going to be boys and young men. And so relative to them, he's jacked because I'm guessing a lot of these boys are just getting into weightlifting. Yeah, but a relatable level of jacked, because an IFB pro, you just can't even make sense of it. You're like, what the hell is that? And then there's the age similarity. So that automatically just makes him more relatable than me or than you. And I guess there's something in his demeanor. He has, maybe you'd say, I know it's a buzzword, but he comes across as kind of a humble, kind of authentic, nice guy who would be fun to

maybe train with or go grab a beer with. And he doesn't seem to take himself very seriously. And I think there's some combination of personality traits that his boy followers also that his boy followers also just find likable. Sure. But I haven't looked into it. Sure. That's about the most I've thought about it. So I don't know. That's awesome because it actually dovetails right into my hypothesis

as to why the mensory surgence occurred. It's a couple things. One, I legitimately think a part of it is 80s glasses, fashion styles, and hairstyles are coming up kind of a trend. You see like the, the young law kids kind of doing that, like sort of Jerry curl looking faux Hawk thing with the, with the gold rimmed glasses.

I see him in the gym with the gold rimmed glasses, the, the broccoli hair, the broccoli hair that's back. So the same, the same type of tattoo. Yes. The men,

the men's jewelry the cross yes i mean they're clones of each other 100 100 so i think like that style started coming up and then people were like what the hell who the hell is mike benzer he's been doing this for all a long time a couple of us got a sick mustache oh the mustache is back the whole the whole thing so there's actually a guy who's a very good lifter seems like a very nice guy we've done a did a review on our youtube channel about his training and it's um max taylor lifts hugely popular young lifter competitive bodybuilder and like it looked like he just tried to cosplay as mike mentor like that's his whole look and you're like okay this can't be by

accident and he trains in mentor style no surprise And the other thing that Menser advocated that I think really resonates with people is a couple other things. One, not a darker side, but a me being snarky side, is low volume, right? And not that many sets. And it's just like absolutely easier to train with fewer sets than more sets. So it's easy to sell that. You know, like people are like, hey, do you want to do 20 sets of 20? Oh, man. Masochists might catch on on the squat uh right exactly not on the anything else also no right so yeah uh just like you know when you say like all you got to do is one really hard set uh it's not that hard so automatically the uh kind of umbrella of how many people you catch

is is bigger because there's more people are buried yeah one side that sounds great another thing is because it's all out to failure it has that uh raise the sword to the whole roman army bravado kind of thing like i'm a fucking warrior and i'm gonna slay and it's cool it's fun like you really get to show off you get to scream you get to push yourself and a lot of like theulek thing, young men really want that sort of thing. When I was younger in my early 20s, oh my God, dude, I wanted to die in a fire, like 100%. It's awesome.

So there's that. That has an appeal. Another thing is that Mike Menser spoke with a very distinct air of certainty about the validity of his methods, about the theoretical validity of his methods, he made a few postulates that he was quite convinced of. Something like, one of them is, any set number, any number of sets that isn't one is arbitrary. Of course, my retort to that is one is also arbitrary. It's neither here nor there. No one ever corrected him on that, I guess. But he had these very objective things.

The technique looks like this. The sets look like this number. You go to absolute failure, which is also not arbitrary, according to him. And he's more right about that than not, at least somewhat objective. The set has failures pretty straightforward, at least in your head, as to how that works. Thus, the simplicity and assuredness of this program is very high. And when you give people something that they can try really hard at, it's simple, it's not very difficult as far as total accumulated work volume, and it gives them the assurance that

they're doing objectively the right thing. Hey, man, that sounds like something I want to try. the right thing. Hey man, that sounds like something I want to try. Now, do those things actually lead to better results? Well, you know, that's probably the topic of this podcast, but that's my best hypothesis along with the fashion whole trends thing that basically a Menser high intensity trend during Yates had one, they come and go all the time. A lot of these are like waves, like core training for abs is a wave. And this wave came and it kind of hit in the right spot. And, you know, Menser also says some really very sure of himself, kind of very discreet. This is right and this is wrong and this is the way.

And a lot of people think that training is overcomplicated. You can sure as shit get quite confused on social media with how training works menser kept it so simple and he said this is the exact way to do it that it's for lack of a better term very realable right very tick talkable like if you ask uh you know one of my colleagues and uh you know folks that i look to with great esteem um dr eric helms but he's a phd in sports science and it's one of the most nuanced thinkers in the space. He's just not very real-able in the sense that like, whenever you get out of him a 30 to 60 seconds is the beginning of a very nuanced conversation from which you will learn a lot, but his probability of getting very popular on TikTok is quite low. And while I've been pretty popular on reels, mostly because of ridiculous examples and dirty jokes, it's difficult to convey a lot of information about

a holistic training system in 30 to 60 seconds. But if you're Mike Menser, that's really all about the complexity of your method can be conveyed in 30, 60 seconds. And since that's the TikTok attention span, you got people like looking at it and be like, holy shit, this guy's got the answers. And anything sufficiently more complicated means, you know, you need to get on and log on and watch Alexander Bromley on YouTube, who's a great creator in his own right. These videos are 30 minutes long.

He's awesome. But I don't have time to watch that shit. Menser says, this is how you do it. I'm not into nuance. I'm just going to take that. So that's probably one of some of the reasons why, in my idea, Menser got a resurgence in popularity. And there's ease of understanding, too. Yeah.

The simple, it is just easy to understand. Super simple to understand. You feel smart, you just learned something and you can go do it. And if you're new, you're going to get results. It's going to work. And so there's that as well versus some of these other examples you've shared where if you're brand new, you're going to have some trouble understanding a lot of the stuff that they're talking about because, I mean, you could start with terminology alone. You're going to, to get through that 30-minute YouTube video. Oh, yeah.

You're going to have to go over to, now you probably go over to ChatGPT and have it explain things to you. Every minute, there's going to be something. If you have the patience to understand what it's saying and read it. Correct. I'm going to try to read a lot of text. But if you don't do that, you just get confused. You feel stupid. And then you don't, though,

people, and this is just humans, this is all of us, we don't instinctively think, well, it's my fault. I'm the stupid one here. I'm just not understanding it. We think this guy is an asshole and he sucks at teaching and i'm closing this video to to paraphrase uh um uh the guy who made created the boondocks cartoon i don't know if you're familiar he had a couple of comedy guys in a circle and they were all super hilarious they made a bunch of youtube videos back in the day and they were like lampooning he came out with like a comic book like went to stores and he this guy's like thumbing through it and it's all just a joke he's like the only thing he says about he's like there's all

these words on this motherfucker man i'm not trying to read that shit it's the greatest critique ever let's take this here so exactly it's like you know depending on our mood we all feel like that at times like man somebody trying to explain some shit to me just tell me what to do holy shit and especially if you really like lifting but you're not a totally obsessed science geek. Sometimes just what do I do is better. Like if I'm like, you know, if I have some money and I'm like, do I get a Corvette or do I get a Mustang?

It's, I talked to some mechanic or car enthusiast. You're like, well, like traction and torque. I'm like, dude, but just tell me what to do, man. I don't, but I don't want to get into this bullshit. So Mentzer's like one set, two failure, once a week per muscle go. And you're like, what else? He's like, that's it. You're like, all right. And then it works pretty well for you. You're in. Exactly. A guy who works with me has been really into crypto for a while. Smart guy. He's made a lot of money with it. And so years ago, his name's Matt. I said, hey, Matt, I'm going to gamble some money. I understand

it's gambling on crypto. And it's going to be an amount of money that I don't care about. So don't feel bad. Don't feel bad if it goes to zero. You know a lot about this. You're smart. So what should I do? And you don't have to explain anything. I don't need a single detail. Just tell me what I should do. Where to put my money. And he says, all right, fine. Put 60% in Bitcoin, put 30% in Ethereum and put like 10% in Litecoin. Yeah, that's a great idea. Great. Thank you, Matt. I love it. And I think that's up five or six times now what I've put in. Yeah. So that's a perfect example. I don't want any explanation. Don't worry. Totally. Just tell me what to do. Totally. Corvette or- Yes, exactly. All right. So what's a perfect example. I don't want, I don't want any explanation. Don't worry. Just tell me what to do.

Corvette. Yes, exactly. All right. So what's good. Let's start with what's good about Menser's methods. And then we can talk about some of the deficiencies. Yeah. So a lot of good things.

One is super emphasizing recovery. You're not going to overtrain a Menser system. It's highly unlikely. And that's really good because people can beat themselves to death with volume and just like get weaker for weeks and wonder what's going on.

And they blame themselves and they're not doing enough. So they do more volume and it's a terrible idea. Especially, especially people who are new on social media. Sure. Seeing Jack influencers

doing 30 sets of chest three times a week. Yeah, and the way people think is, well, if I do 32, I'll be even bigger than that guy. Yeah. One does not simply, so that whole thing. That's really good.

Mentzer, although he didn't talk about it too much, or that's not what he got famous for, was a technique stickler. So he was a very good technique, no momentum, no swinging, used the muscle. He was always really, really good about that. So that's really awesome. Another one is the folks that have trouble trying hard, he was like, oh, very very very good about telling people what muscular failure looks like and about the fact that you want to chase it and really go after it and also mentor was really really incredible um and and to this i think all of bodybuilding owes him a really a cultural and transformational change that i think dorian yates really carried the torch forward on is the logbook.

Like people, a lot of times still don't write their training down. Now we have the RB hypertrophy app, which is like a super logbook on ultra cybernetic steroids or something. And not only do you write your shit in, but it tells you what to do next and predicts all the stuff and does feedback. But we owe something to Menser for even the existence of the app because he was like you write stuff down you write down your sets and reps that you did and next week you try to add a little bit of weight you tried an extra rep and you go a little further people go in and you just

kind of do stuff and then they'll come back getting gains and i would ask people well how has your strength been over time it gets going up mother fucker what do you mean think are you out of your mind don't you care about training? Did you make gains? If you can't tell, oh my god, it's terrible. Imagine trying to race your car and going to the mechanic and be like, I don't think it's fast. He's like, well, what's your top speed this time on the track? You're like, I'm not sure. I didn't look. He'd be like,

I don't know. Is this a joke? Is there cameras? Is Ashton Kutcher going to pop out? So logbooking and being very meticulous about trying to hit little mini PRs over time was a huge, huge deal that Madison introduced that it doesn't matter if he was wrong in 10 other things. I mean, this is a massive contribution and it's an awesome, awesome thing. I didn't know that. And that point alone can be transformative.

You could do a lot of other things fairly well in the gym, but if you're not tracking your training, you're all but guaranteed to plateau. You'll, you'll get over, you'll make some newbie gains regardless, but once, once it gets hard to continue gaining muscle and strength. Yes. And here's the thing, everyone plateaus anyway, but the log book allows you a set of kind of diagnostic criteria about what it was. How am I plateauing? What is it that I'm doing? And how can I change it? It allows you to experiment, record, experiment, record, and find some truth to it. And the most foundational thing about training is you just go hard. When you're tired, don't lift or lift less. When you've got a lot of energy, lift hard. And everything kind of takes care of itself, but that only works when it works. And it doesn't work when

it doesn't work. Every now and again, there's kind of an anti-intellectual movement every now and again in bodybuilding circles and you get somebody on an interview on a podcast for an hour talking about volume sets and reps and there's a call inevitably a couple of fucking idiots in the comments like man it's not that complicated just lift and eat and i'm like okay what if i'm not making gains what do i do and of course they never have an answer to that lift more and eat more idiot. Can you imagine telling like a formula one driver, like just step on the pedal and turn the wheel. He's like, okay, this guy's an idiot. Get him out of my face. Like that's yes. That is the requisite for going fast. There's not a requisite for running races. It is not a requisite for making the pro tour. It's, it's like a child's

like understanding of how the world works so there at some point you know if you have a logbook you can be a bit more intellectual about what is that could be doing better sometimes we are mind plays tricks on us you say man i'm not feeling any stronger you look at your logbook for five months you've added like 10 pounds a month on your fucking dumbbell press or whatever like random example leg press well then like it looks like it's going pretty well and i guess I'm just getting paranoid. So the logbooking, and for note, Mentzer, as far as I'm aware, did not invent the logbook. He just had a cultural influence that was like, logbooking is important. And then

Dorian Yates was like, if it wasn't in his logbook, he wasn't getting done. Dorian also logged all of his macros and all of his calories and all of his training. And he has all those logbooks. They stacked up. They've been kind of published in various places over basically his whole career. But that's a really serious dedication. I mean, when a lot of guys were trying to beat Dorian at the Olympia, which essentially never did until he retired, he was like, you know, how do you beat this guy? Well, like this guy's thinking about every single variable. And Menser started that tradition in a really big way.

Like in Arnold's day, you kind of go in and you thought about stuff, but you kind of did stuff, chill with the boys after, which is dope. But Mentzer really tried to think about it and really tried to track it. And even if he did some of the stuff wrong, which he did, that cultural tradition is hugely, hugely valuable. You are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general, and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even who might want to learn something new? Word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone

who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. Let's talk about what he got wrong, especially in the context of what is known today. Yeah. Outside of the first several weeks of training, it's been demonstrated unequivocally that doing two or more sets to failure is superior to one set to failure. I don't understand that statement that more than one is arbitrary. I mean, how are we defining arbitrary? I mean, my understanding of arbitrary is kind of decided on a whim, not according to a system or rules or- Yes. Okay. So could one not be arbitrary then is what am i missing definitely arbitrary anything's arbitrary unless it is grounded in some kind of framework of like

evidence or theoretical rationale uh so uh yeah so the one is either so he was really on like the one set and we don't even have to hold him to that because there's kind of interpretations of his views that other people have taken, which is like low volume is good, but even that's not true, right? The volume that's good is the volume that's good. It is somewhere between the volume that gets you the minimal amount of gains

and the volume is so high you cannot recover from it. But there's a lot of right answers in that bandwidth. And for many people, that bandwidth is anywhere from five sets to 30 sets per muscle and everything else or per session and everything else is details and nuances and has tons of context to it so the idea that like just one or two or three sets is optimal is a is quite literally make-believe like it's something mencer just made up and he was convinced of it but nonetheless it just make-believe so the whole idea that low volumes are superior to high volumes has uh in all of the accumulated research history

since been just turned completely on its head so much so that if systemic fatigue is not a concern to you and you're not very big and strong but you're decently well trained to take a lot of volume you can do 30, 40, or 50 sets per muscle per week for weeks on end and get better gains than if you did 10, 20, 30 sets. And this has been done over and over and over. There are like five studies now confirming this. And so back in the day, I was doing my early theoretical work and I had postulated that there was a certain number of sets beyond which you would get worse gains or no gains at all. And we still haven't been able to really reliably tap into what that number is in context. We found it, but generally we haven't because what's called maximum recovery

volume is can be so high. So it turned out that the truth was backwards to what Menser said. He would have been more correct saying, look, more volume is better if you can recover. More volume is better. Then he said less volume is better. So it was actually backwards on that. And now in some contexts, low volume is great. And some people will experience very good gains from it. And it's something you can train very consistently with because you never accumulated enough chronic fatigue in order to make a deload or have a week off or anything like that. But yeah, he was definitely incorrect about that. And like you said, your workouts are easier to just mentally face. You're walking into the gym.

It is different to think, okay, I just have to go hard for 30 minutes and I'm done. And I'm done. Versus, yeah, I'm going to have to grind through an hour and a half. Oh yeah, sure. So speaking of grinding, the other thing he got wrong was his insistence on going to failure. And it turns out that failure training is not superior to keeping reps in the tank. And that if measured on a stimulus to fatigue ratio basis, how much growth do you get from failure versus how much excess fatigue you get from training a failure. Training a failure is not a really good way to train. In contexts you can rig it especially with lower volumes that

it's a very effective way to train but if you're going to say training a failure is categorically the most effective which mensur said you're going to be up shit creek with no fucking paddle because research study after study after meta regression, after meta analysis shows that training to failure is at best an equivalent method to get to muscle size and at worst an inferior method. Given all context, there was a meta regression by the guys at data driven strength. They're excellent, excellent folks. People should Google them and follow their Instagrams and stuff. excellent folks. People should Google them and follow their Instagrams and stuff. And they basically said that failure training does have an advantage in hypertrophy versus non-failure training. And of course, everyone ran with that. That was a big deal.

That really boosted those in the middle of the mentor thing. And people really ran with that. Except they only read the title of the study and didn't read this abstract. And some people read the abstract, they didn't read the whole study. When you read the whole study and the discussion methods, they say, okay, the relationship seen that failure is beneficial disappears with the following inclusion of variables. When you're more advanced, when you're stronger, when you're used to trying really hard, when you're a high volume program with multiple other muscle groups, with multiple other training days per week, which is almost everyone that really cares about this kind of stuff. So like if you're a housewife, you train twice a week, whole body, you should go to failure because your recovery window is up here and what you're training is here. And if it's

failure, it's here. And if it's not failure, it's a little lower. And so it's like, look, you know, go to, I'll give you a quick, a quick example. Your friends are getting ready to go in the car and like, you got a drunk, a designated driver and you've got a pre-drink real quick because you're going to the club and you can chug a glass of vodka, right? But there's a third of a glass. How fast do you drink it? You don't sip that motherfucker. You go, boom, and you get in the car. Let's go.

You're not going to throw up. Everything's going to be fine, right? That's very different from saying the optimal drinking strategy in the club is to just drink as much vodka as fast as you can. It's like, dude, you get to 10 or 12 shots, you're going to die. That's not a reliable way to just drink. So failure training is supreme when you're way inside your window of recovery ability. But when you start training three or four days a week, you start getting stronger, you start getting more into training other muscle groups versus just one or two at a time or whole body, your systemic fatigue generated gets so high that failure training starts to be something you got to treat with a little bit of respect and maybe not always do it. And then it

definitely loses its superiority. And what I would say, and there are not so many studies looking into this because mostly they don't do studies on advanced bodybuilders in the context of people who are very, very strong, trying very hard and training their whole bodies five or six days a week. I think failure training, my hypothesis is just downright suboptimal because it creates so much fatigue systemically that it just erases your ability to put weeks and weeks and weeks into the logbook. You're better off starting at two or three reps in reserve and then getting close to failure over time and then deloading in my humble opinion. And so the failure training,

he was just way off base on that. And what about beyond failure? Because that's also part of the mix, right? Sure. Yeah. Depending on the interpretation. Yeah. So like forced reps and assisted reps and all this other stuff, drop sets. I mean, look again, if you are way, way below your recovery ability, those are excellent tools. If you have very little time at the gym, bro, it's all drop sets all the way down. Drop sets, supersets, psychotic failure, the whole thing. So you have very little time to put in the work. You're very under your recovery ability.

You got to jam, bro. You have to jam. But, you know, in the context of an overall whole body program, forced reps, drop sets, et cetera, they're just extra ways of providing a stimulus. But they come with a lot of psychological fatigue and they just drain you like spiritually because they're real hard. And is it worth the gains? Probably not. You can just get better results by doing another half of a set or just another set

for sure beats going to failure on sets and then doing a drop set. So the best way to think about training so far that I think we've discovered, and it matches kind of the likely biological reality inside a muscle cell is, uh, the stimulus you get for muscle growth training is like a cup and you got to fill the cup. And if you fill it with one set at a time with three minutes of rest and you get 10 sets, it fills it up to two reps shy of failure. If you do maybe nine sets but they're all really all the way to failure then it's going to fill the cup in nine

sets instead of 10 something like that but if if we conceptualize a submaximal failure as when you just hit the water fountain and smooth water comes out and then you can top it off failure training is like when it sprays out of a fucking fire hose. Water goes everywhere and that symbolizes fatigue. So yeah, you'll get to where you're going a little faster, but it's going to cause a lot of fucking chaos as well.

And anyone who's gotten bigger and stronger and trained to failure consistently can say like, yeah, it's fun and it's great. It's effective. But what exactly say like, I train it's fun and it's great and it's effective, but wouldn't exactly say like, I train like this to maximize recovery. You wouldn't arrive at that logically in any sense. So there's that big downside as well. I guess you could think of a financial analogy of the relationship between return and risk. If all you do is look at returns, you can come up with

some pretty high return strategies that are great until you do is look at returns, you can come up with some pretty high return strategies that are great until you lose all your money, then that is not so great. Yeah. So to kind of finish the analogy off, if you're gambling with a very small fraction of your money, fucking risk it away, everything in crypto. But if it's your whole lot, man, you got to rethink that strategy because there's a lot of downside. And you got to rethink that strategy because there's a lot of downside. And are there some other components of the Menser style? And I understand that there are different, different formulations of this, but of the ones that just other elements that you also feel that are not optimal or are just outright

wrong. Yeah. Well, so just one, one of the really good ones is he really was a stickler about technique and making sure you feel the tension in the target muscle. And that's really, really good. He was not just move the weight around, which is awesome, hugely to his credit. But like if Menzer saw you cheat curling, he'd be like, what are you training? And you'd be like, I don't really know, sir.

I just started curling and it all got away from me. But, um. It looks cool though, right? It looks cool, I guess, for the gram. So I'll say that. But another one of his things that I think didn't survive the test of time and science was his insistence on low frequencies. He would say, you know, training a muscle more than once a week is, you know, at various

points in his life is somewhere between suboptimal and lunacy is something he would, he would say, you know, training a muscle more than once a week is, you know, at various points in his life is somewhere between suboptimal and lunacy is something he would, he would probably call it. And, um, because he's, he thought recovery was so important and it turns out now we have pretty good data on recovery and within a pretty wide range of volumes, anything from like five to eight sets per session per muscle, taken to failure, by the way, by people who are at least a little bit trained, six months of decent training under their belt. I mean, they recover in most measurable ways, probably after about half a week. And so if you have to say, look, you have to have a week of rest between training muscle,

the fraction of cases in which that's true is way smaller than the fraction of cases in which that's true is way smaller than the fraction of cases in which that's false. So much so that in the empirical literature, three sessions beats two, two sessions beats one per week. Three sessions beats two by a small margin. Four sessions beats three in context. And in a real adjustment context, five sessions beats four. And they haven't found a lot of examples for muscle growth where the reverse is true. So if you go looking for studies that show one session is equivalent to two, there are contexts in which that's the case. Like you limit the total volume. So either someone does four sets on Monday or two sets Monday, two sets Thursday, they might get the same growth or similar growth. But if you go looking for, okay, this is a frequency per week,

let's say six times a week, that is demonstrably suboptimal for hypertrophy over the course of two or three months of training. Mike, you won't find that. There may be no one study that finds that. Maybe one or two floating around here and there, but out of a group of maybe 20 or 30 good studies, when 28 studies say, generally higher frequency is better, at least convincingly up to two or three sessions per muscle group per week, and one or two studies say, yeah, five or six is kind of like inferior to four or five or three or four, you got a problem when you hung your hat on the idea that one session per week per muscle, chest, Monday, period, no more chest the rest of the week. If you hung your hat on the idea that that is categorically superior than 2 or definitely 3 or for sure 4,

when the reality turns out to be nearly backwards, you have a big, big problem. It's like when you say low frequency is king, there are definitely times when that's true. For example, if you train your chest and it still has delayed onset muscle soreness after six days, yeah, don't train it yet. Seems at least sound in some kind of hypothetical. It's not healed.

Don't train it. Totally. But if you train your chest Monday and by Wednesday, you feel exactly as strong and even stronger than Monday. You have no soreness, no tightness. And someone's like, don't train your chest yet. Why not? Why not? At least give me some physiological rationale. There is no rationale. It never happened. And the worst thing is empirically these results failed. So if you're a true mentor, psychotic, all the way to the grave kind of person, you have really big problems to contend with. And the biggest problem is that

direct examination on thousands of real people in the science contradicted most of the central claims. That's not to say that in many contexts, people can get a lot of wisdom because some people overdo it. They got it. Six sessions, 10 sets each every week, no deloads, everything all out. I'm going to get huge. Also, I'm not eating well. So here we go.

And I don't sleep well. That person can do less and benefit greatly for sure. Or when you see someone do six sets of 10 and you watch them do it, you're like, how far from failure is that set? And they're like, I don't know. Are you still warming up or what's going on here? Mike, isn't that funny? When you look at someone training, you're like, I can't tell if they're warming up or

training. Like Menser crushed that one out, right? So there's definitely tons of wisdom to extract from Menser, but a wholesale acceptance of his paradigm is the acceptance of a very more than incorrect paradigm backwards in most cases paradigm you know like if you think for example that like tough authority is the way to handle problems if you're the chief of police you're right if you are democratically elected leader of a foreign country you're not not Kim Jong-un, motherfucker. No one wants that. That's not the place to do it. And on average, authoritarian leaders cause worse outcomes for nations than more democratic and nuanced leaders. Does that mean that authoritarianism never works? No, God, no. And sometimes if you're super soft on a crime, you're just going to have a crime in the city until you put the fucking law down. Right. But that's a very different, that's very contextual, very contextual. It's not a writ large, like, yes, always the strong man, like authoritarian, that's the best way to

do things like, no, that's actually more, more wrong than it is right. And, and so if you want to look to Menser, examine your own program and see what can I get out of this that can enhance my approach? Oh my God, there's tons. But if you go to Menser and you're like, this is, you know, Mensa, examine your own program and see what can I get out of this that can enhance my approach? Oh my God, there's tons. But if you go to Mensa and you're like, this is, you know, hashtag the way, uh, you may not be training in the most optimal way. And the last resort of the Mensa acolytes, like with many acolytes of many, uh, uh, sort

of, uh, the dead enders as they're called. Yes. Is, um, well, I just like to train like this. And I had two responses to that. One is why the fuck did you talk about what's right and wrong in science? Dummy. Yeah.

Yeah. I like it. I don't care. Yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't trust science anyway. Right. And the second thing I have to say is, dude, I love that spirit energy dope.

I'm going to support you a hundred percent. You got to do what you like in the gym until and unless you need results more than you need to like the gym. So like, like in the gym is fucking important. And so if you just like to do it. stay lean uh and continue to gain muscle and strength indefinitely the there there's there's only uh so much and i've more or less reached that limit for my genetics now if i was willing to take take anabolics or if i was willing to minimally just carry around more body fat eat more food hyper optimize your life to with the one goal of gaining exactly true reduce stress exactly for for that extra pound, which won't go to my calves. I've already accepted that. Yeah, but it never does, does it? Then fine. So in my case, I understand that maintenance, especially also when I consider

I'm not willing to be in the gym more than three to four hours a week right now lifting weights. I do cardio in addition to that, but that's what I'm willing to give to my weightlifting right now. And so I have more leeway. I can do just workouts that are they optimal if I were trying to make progress in terms of gaining muscle strength? No, but I'm not. So are they optimal for what I'm trying to do? Well, actually they are because I'm maintaining my muscle and strength and I'm enjoying them. Yes, totally. And many people for decades and decades can make excellent gains with a menstrual light program and they're going

to like it, but that's a different discussion than, is this the best way to train? Because once you start talking about the best way to train, I think in many cases, for some people, the two-factor approach of I like it and it gets me good results is enough. And God bless those people. I agree. For so many people, a lot of people listening who- Yes.

They have a life and fitness is not at the center of that life. They care about it. They want to get into good shape. They want to stay that way. They have three to five hours a week and on and on and on. Yeah. And then, so like, you know, my wife and I have one car, it's a 2017 Subaru Outback. If it gets me to point A to point B and it's a fine car and that's good enough. But for some people, those two things of it works and it's getting me results and I like it isn't enough. They have to think it's optimal or the best or sciencey or has really good reasons behind it. Similar to if I was to say like, well, look, 2017 Subaru Outback really kind of is a superior car for my life. Anyone who knows about cars be like, that's wrong.

You're wrong. Don't, don't, don't. You don't even know what you're waiting're waiting into you have no idea you don't even know the specs of your car enough to argue this but like well how much how much horsepower do your car have i don't know somewhere between 100 and 200 or something like that get out of here right so some people are totally cool to just do their thing go to failure a couple times a week and they fucking love it and sweet but some people be like this is the way to train man this is optimal like dude and then they get the whole personal anecdote thing which never ceases to amaze me how many people just maybe just never learned theory of science but they give their personal stories you you make a youtube video about menstrual training is suboptimal and there's like long paragraph

triests about like it worked for me man and you're like yes but you do understand that first for other people it on average doesn't work as well. And two, something else could have worked even better for you. These aren't very intellectually weighty concepts, but then it comes back to another thing. Like when you said, you know, when people are just starting out, they want simplicity. I have something I'm sure pretty politically incorrect to say, but I'm getting real tired of political correctness, blocking our ability to speak real obvious truths and here we go here we go ready some people just aren't that fucking smart man and in many respects i'm a fucking dummy and it's okay to not be able to understand a lot of complicated shit but you don't

have to pretend that your fucking shit is better and everyone's a fucking overthinking idiot you're not that smart and it's totally cool i walk into a fucking you know like my wife and i had to like uh get some like other tires changed or some shit oil i don't even know what it was that's how fucking stupid i am with cars we went to the car person mechanic i don't know what they're called and we had needed to do things like that could have told me anything dude i would give her money but i'm not like pretending i know shit i'm just like i'm a fucking moron just tell me what's wrong in the car and i'll pay you money god damn it hopefully you don't rip me off read the better business bureau thing on the fucking website for like this guy seems nice that's it but people out

there are like no ma'am this is the way everyone's overthinking it's like no dude you're just not that smart and it's totally cool not everyone's fucking neil degrasse tyson and at some point i thought life taught most people the fact that they had intellectual limits you know like i'll watch a fucking you know i'll get high and watch some kind of pbs special about quantum space time and 90 i'm like the fuck if i know what that means but some people will be in the comments like well technically speaking a positive shot actually actually and some of those actually guys are real smart but then they make sense but it's a very different thing to be like this is over complicating it quantum mechanics is bullshit you're like dude i'm sorry you're just not in the conversation you're not in the conversation there's no other way to say it

well i know we're coming up on time uh so i want to ask one final question and that is for people listening who would like to give the mensur style training a go they could go back and or if they've been taking notes they probably could piece this together based on everything that that you've you've shared so far but maybe if you could just quickly give people a simple so yeah just just a simple little hey here's here's a mensur style you know routine that you might enjoy if you want to try out this kind of higher intensity lower volume type of totally i got a real simple one with an example even upper body monday lower body thursday sorry good good good god i already started off wrong. Upper body Monday, lower body Tuesday, Wednesday off, upper body again Thursday, lower body Friday, the weekend off. Start with one set

of every, one exercise and one set for every muscle group that you're training. Chest, pick an exercise, one warm up, one working set. go to all out muscular failure, write down how many reps you got with how much weight you got. Next week, repeat the process, except increase the weight just by a little, or like do one extra rep, see how it goes. And then keep doing that. If you notice that you're not really tired, not really sore and you're, dude, I can recover so much fucking more, add a set, just go to two sets of everything. And not even everything, you see, man, my hamstrings are getting pretty toasted, but my biceps can do more. One set of hamstrings, two sets of biceps. Stay on the low end. Never go above two to four sets per muscle per session.

And that means you only ever need to do one exercise per session per muscle, which is sweet. You're going to save a lot of time. Try to do that, sticking mostly to sets of 10 to 15 repetitions and do that for a few weeks, it'll probably get you some good results. If you like it, like from a spirit perspective, like I love the way this training feels, I can rock on. After a few months, you get tired, take a week off, go back, switch exercises, try something new, go back to one set for everything, recycle a plan and keep going.

It's immense or like, you get to go to failure. The volumes are very low, plenty of time for recovery, but the frequency is twice a week. So you get better gains than if you just do once a week and almost everyone will recover from this. No problem. That would be my way to start that off. And for someone wanting to just maintain, they

probably could just do the, the upper lower two workouts per week. Two workouts. And if those sets are taken to failure, I would suspect that. Oh yeah. Two sets to failure will be sets are taken to failure, I would suspect that. Oh yeah. Two sets to failure will be maintenance for almost everyone, unless you're really, really

jacked. And then you're probably not having these kinds of discussions because you know what works well for your body by this point. There's no one in the Olympia stage that's doing one set per week of one muscle. It's nonsense. Well, this was, this was great as always, always

like having these discussions. So I appreciate it. I know you have to run. Why don't we just wrap up quickly where people can find you, find your work, anything in particular that RP has that you want people to know about,

maybe something new, exciting. Sure. Nothing new, nothing exciting. We're done making new things. We're going to shut down the company real soon. I'm tired of this bullshit, Mike. JK, the RP hypertrophy app. Just give it away.

Just give it away. Here you go. No one wants it. You can just just give it away just give it away here you go no one wants it you can't even give it away um rpi hypertrophy app is something that we talk about all the time it's available through links in various uh rp strength youtube videos so rp strength on youtube is the way to find us best at this point and we got tons of free information tons of links to even more free information the rpi hypertrophy app costs a little of money, but it'll just take care of all of your training. And that whole like pick exercises, do them twice a week and add a little weight, a little

reps. You can do that in the app so seamlessly. And then it guides you the rest of the way with example videos. It's just, I love the app. I use it all the time. I don't, I am like a, had a test version of the app for a while and then the engineers needed to reboot it. So I had a couple of days of not using the app and i was like yeah how am i supposed to do with my training i

don't want to open up apple notes again this is off so i love it it's great to use obviously you don't have to use it so come to youtube rp strength on youtube you'll see my giant ugly head click on a video don't click around your children because i say i'm seeing things all the time and then we'll have a good time and learn or just have the headphones you know yeah sure i mean you know there may be things uh that I say that you would want to forget. So maybe you shouldn't. What's the, what's the drug that the, the, the dentist gives you that, that. The laughing gas or whatever.

Yeah, whatever. So I can find out what that is. Yeah. That's always good to have. Have some of that handy, you know, when. Laugh yourself out of memory. Yeah. When the trauma, when it, when it just gets to be too much.

That's it. Well, thanks again for doing this. I look forward to the, when it just gets to be too much. That's it. Well, thanks again for doing this. I look forward to the next one. Thank you so much, Mike. Take care. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes.

And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback.

So thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.