If you have some interest in bodybuilding and have consumed bodybuilding content to some good extent, then chances are you know Mike Mentzer (1951-2001). This guy:
And you probably know his philosophy too.
He's been dead for a long time but all the content he made is still in good circulation on social media, and so many people have talked about him a lot of times.
His Philosophy
His philosophy is really shocking for many reasons. The philosophy is that you don't need to do more than one set of any workout and that You should only spend 30-45 minutes in the gym. And you should only work a muscle group once in 7-10 days.
Can you imagine that?
If you don't know what a set is, a set of a workout is like, take pushups for example you get in the ground, go up and down till you can't go anymore, and then you get up. That's one set.
After resting a bit, if you do it again, that's two sets.
Now, this guy says you should do only one set for any workout and nothing more.
This is extremely nonconformist. About everyone in the bodybuilding world always talks about doing a lot of sets for each workout, always from 2-8 sets. And everyone tries to work a muscle group at least twice a week.
This guy's reasons are that you need to recover and more workouts make you not recover properly. And most importantly "stimulating the body to build muscles is just like turning on a switch for the light, after turning it on once why turn it on again when it's already on?"
Those are his words paraphrased.
Poor analogy, though, if you ask me 😁.
Modern Expert Opinion
Modern experts like Dr. Mike Isreatel have talked about how Mentzer's philosophy is absolute rubbish.
Dr. Isreatel also provided studies that have proven beyond doubt time and time again that Mentzer's philosophy was thrash. So there's no question about what science says about this.
If you want to build muscles properly, one set wouldn't do it, and you'd require more frequency. 30-45 minutes in the gym wouldn't cut it at all. And once in 7-10 days would fall very short.
But..
The craziest thing about all this is that Mentzer is jacked!
Look at his body:
And he says he follows this philosophy of his and only works out 30-45 minutes a week!
This is the craziest part. How did he build a body like this working out only that amount of time a week?
Even if professional bodybuilders like him were usually on steroids and stuff, it's still a shocker because there are many others on steroids and they don't look better than him while they do hours every day at the gym.
So it's either Mentzer is lying or he has some unbelievably perfect genes that grow with very minimal effort. It is all still a mystery, and if Mentzer was still alive this would have been something he'd reveal later on in life.
The End
Source of 1st pic
Source of 2nd pic
Source of 3rd pic
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Wow!! This is shocking, so does that mean we’ve been doing it the wrong way all along?
We? Doing what the wrong way? 😅