Mike Mentzer

Early life and education

Mike Mentzer was born on November 15, 1951, in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. His father was of German descent while his mother was of Italian descent. He attended Ephrata High School where he received "all A's." He credits his 11th grade teacher, Elizabeth Schaub, for his "love of language, thought, and writing." In 1975, he began attending the University of Maryland as a pre-med student where his hours away from the gym were spent in the study of "genetics, physical chemistry, and organic chemistry." After three years of study at the University of Maryland, Mentzer dropped out. He has stated his ultimate goal during that period was to become a psychiatrist.

Bodybuilding career

Amateur

Mentzer started bodybuilding when he was 11 years old at a body weight of after seeing the physiques of men exhibited on the covers of several muscle magazines. His father bought him a set of weights and an instruction booklet. The booklet suggested that he train no more than three days a week, so Mike did just that. He attended the first Mr. Olympia and later said: “The 1965 Mr. Olympia contest was almost a religious experience for me." By age 15, his body weight had reached , at which Mike could bench press . Mike's goal at the time was to look like his bodybuilding hero, Bill Pearl. After graduating from high school, Mentzer served four years in the United States Air Force. It was during this time he started working out over three hours a day, six days a week.

Bodybuilding philosophy

Mentzer held to Objectivism, the libertarian capitalist philosophy of Ayn Rand, and insisted that philosophy and bodybuilding are one and the same, stating that "man is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of mind and body." His books therefore concern themselves equally with philosophy and bodybuilding.

High-Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer Way was Mentzer's final work. In it, he detailed the principles of high intensity weight training. Weight training, he insisted, had to be brief, infrequent, and intense, to attain the best results in the shortest amount of time. Heavy Duty II also espouses critical thinking. In this book, Mentzer shows why people need to use their reasoning ability to live happy, mature, adult lives, and he shows readers how to go about doing so. Bodybuilding was endorsed as only one potential component of an individual's existence, encouraging many other worthwhile pursuits throughout his books.

Diet and nutrition

In his book Heavy Duty Nutrition, Mentzer demonstrated that nutrition for athletes did not need to be nearly as extreme as the bodybuilding industry would lead one to believe. His recommended diets were well balanced, and he espoused eating from all four food groups, totaling four servings each of high-quality grains and fruits, and two each of dairy and protein daily, all year-round.

Mentzer's heavy-duty training system

While Mike Mentzer served in the United States Air Force, he worked 12-hour shifts, and then followed that up with 'marathon workouts' as was the accepted standard in those days. In his first bodybuilding contest, he met the winner, Casey Viator. Mentzer learned that Viator trained in very high intensity (heavy weights for as many repetitions as possible, to total muscle fatigue), for very brief (20–45 minutes per session) and infrequent training sessions. Mentzer also learned that Viator almost exclusively worked out with the relatively new Nautilus machines, created and marketed by Arthur Jones in DeLand, Florida. Mentzer and Jones soon met and became friends.

Jones pioneered the principles of high-intensity training in the late 1960s. He emphasized the need to maintain perfectly strict form, move the weights in a slow and controlled manner, work the muscles to complete failure (positive and negative), and avoid overtraining. Casey Viator saw fantastic results training under the direction of Jones, and Mentzer became very interested in this training philosophy. According to Mentzer, biologists and physiologists since the nineteenth century have known that hypertrophy is directly related to intensity, not duration, of effort. Most bodybuilding and weightlifting authorities do not take into account the severe nature of the stress imposed by heavy, strenuous resistance exercise carried to the point of positive muscular failure.

Objectivism

While in school, Mentzer's father motivated his academic performance by providing him with various kinds of inducements, from a baseball glove to hard cash. Years later, Mike said that his father "unwittingly ... was inculcating in me an appreciation of capitalism."

Final years

In the late 1980s, Mentzer returned to training bodybuilders and writing for Iron Man magazine and spent much of the 1990s regaining his stature in the bodybuilding industry. Mentzer met Dorian Yates in the 1980s and made an impression on his bodybuilding career. Years later, when Yates won Joe Weider's "Mr. Olympia", he credited Mike's "Heavy Duty" principles for his training. Mike, his brother Ray, and Dorian formed a clothing company called "MYM" for Mentzer Yates Mentzer, also known as "Heavy Duty Inc", in 1994. MYM was based on the success of Don Smith's "CrazeeWear" bodybuilding apparel. With the blessing and promotion of Joe Weider, the trio manufactured and distributed their own line of cut-and-sew sportswear.

Death

Mike Mentzer died on June 10, 2001, in Rolling Hills, California. He was found dead in his apartment, due to heart complications, by his younger brother and fellow bodybuilder Ray Mentzer. Two days later, Ray died from complications of Berger's disease.