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Mike Mentzer Bodybuilder

Mike Mentzer Tribute Page

Mike Mentzer Picture

Mike Mentzer was born on November 15, 1951 and died on June 10, 2001, he will most likely never be forgotten because of the huge impact he had on bodybuilding and weight training.

Mike started weight training at only 12 years old after being inspired by a muscle magazine he found at a local newsstand, his bodybuilding idol was Bill Pearl.

Mike trained the way most bodybuilders did back in the 1970's which was two hours a day and six days a week, but then he met Arthur Jones who convinced his to switch to high intensity training. Mike then only trained 30 minutes four times a week and made better progress then ever before, in fact he won the 1978 Mr. Universe with a perfect 300 score.

Mike retired from bodybuilding after the 1980 IFBB Mr. Olympia, which was won by Arnold Schwarzenegger, many of the competitors and spectators felt the show was fixed and Mentzer agreed, After he retired he continued to write articles & books and also work as a personal trainer.

Stats:
Height = Five Foot and Eight Inches Tall
Weight = Two Hundred and Twenty Five Pounds

Bodybuilding titles won:

1970 AAU Mr. Pennsylvania
1976 IFBB Mr. America
1977 IFBB North American Championships
1978 IFBB USA vs the World
1978 IFBB Mr. Universe
1979 IFBB Florida Pro Invitational
1979 IFBB Southern Pro Cup

Mike Mentzer Workout

Many people are confused about the Mike Mentzer Heavy Duty training routine, they think he did only one set to failure and worked each body part once every 2 weeks. While he may have recommended this type of training later in his life, it is not the way he trained when he was competing as a bodybuilder.

Back in the 1970's he was training four days a week, splitting his body in half and worked each muscle twice in a 7 days period.

Each workout lasted only about 30 minutes because he didn't take long rests between sets.

He did 3 to 6 total sets of 6 to 10 reps to failure for each muscle group.

An example of his back routine is below:

Nautilus pullover superset with palms up close grip chin ups for 2 sets of 6 to 10 reps.

Cable row for 2 sets of 6 to 10 reps.

One arm dumbbell row for 2 sets of 6 to 10 reps.

Note: The Mike Mentzer training routine is based on High Intensity Training for more info see The Colorado Experiment Workout

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