It was Christmas day, 1995, and my girlfriend Patty and I were happily opening presents together. Two pretty cool things happened that day:

1. My girlfriend Patty became my Fiance Patty.

2. I opened a box that contained a letter from Mike Mentzer, stating that Patty had arranged to have him train me sometime in the near future. And wishing me Happy Holidays.

I had recently worked with someone who had been personally trained by Mike, and Patty could tell how cool I thought that was. Somehow, she had figured out how to contact him, and arranged the workout at Gold’s Gym in Venice, CA and subsequent phone consultations.

We planned a California vacation around the workout, which would take place in April of 1996.

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Mike Mentzer was the first guy who, through his writing, got me excited about High Intensity Training. I was in my early twenties at the time, frustrated by my lack of progress training 6 days a week with multi-set workouts.

Early in his bodybuilding career, Mike himself had been in that position too. He placed 10th in the 1971 Mr. America contest, which was won by 19-year-old sensation Casey Viator (who is now my neighbor). Mike befriended Casey, and found out that Casey was using a training system that was radically different than what everybody else was doing-maximum effort, short and infrequent workouts.

Casey told Mike he should talk to Arthur Jones, the guy who had trained him, who was also the inventor of Nautilus exercise equipment.

Mike did that, learned all he could from Jones, developed an unwavering commitment to High Intensity Training, and became the world’s most vocal and well known advocate of the system.

He also became one of the greatest bodybuilders in history.

Mike retired from bodybuilding in the ’80′s, left the scene for a while, then resurfaced in the ’90′s as a trainer.

By training dozens of clients, and consulting with hundreds who sought his advice, Mike had refined his system to what he felt was the most productive methods of High Intensity Strength Training to date.

I was anxious to experience these methods for myself!

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The big day finally comes, and we arrive at Gold’s Gym in Venice. Gold’s Venice is the most famous gym in the world, known as “The Mecca” by bodybuilders. the gym consists of 3 large rooms, each one stuffed with every piece of training equipment you can possibly imagine.

I played around on a few machines to warm up a little and try to control my nervousness. Then Patty told me “he’s here”!

Mike came in, introduced himself, and told me he was running a few minutes late, he had to talk to somebody out in front of the gym, and then he would be in to train me.

Patty and I watched him conversing with the guy through the window. Strangely, all of the sudden the guy started jumping up and down, literally, right in front of Gold’s Gym.

Mike came back in and apologized for the delay. I asked him why that guy was jumping up and down. Mike said it was because he was so excited about his progress since he had started training with Mike, gaining 5 pounds in 3 weeks.

It was time to get down to business, and Mike gave me a choice of 3 workouts: chest and back, shoulders and arms, or legs. I didn’t choose legs because Patty and I had hiking planned in Yosemite National Park later in the week, and something told me if I did legs with Mike Mentzer hiking wouldn’t go too well. I reasoned that my shoulders and arms would get plenty of work in the chest and back workout, so I chose chest and back.

The chest workout would consist of a pre-exhaustion superset–the Nautilus 10 degree chest fly, followed immediately by the Icarian incline press. The fly, a single-joint exercise, would isolate the pecs; the incline press would then utilize the fresh muscles of the shoulders and triceps to push the pecs to a deeper level of fatigue.

Mike believed it was essential to begin the second exercise as quickly as possible after completing the first, as even a 3 second delay would compromise the effectiveness of the superset. I was about to find out just how serious he was about that.

We went to the incline press first to warm up, where Mike coached me up on how he wanted me to perform the exercise: hands positioned as close together as possible, with the elbows flared out wide, away from the body.

Mike explained that this would maximize the range of motion provide maximum stimulation to the pecs. he pre-set the weight he thought would be right for me, and we proceeded to the chest fly machine.

After a few warm up reps, which allowed Mike to “guesstimate” my working weight, the real set began. Mike made sure I moved the weight slowly, under control, with no momentum involved, getting a good “squeeze” in the finish position. When I reached failure and couldn’t move the arm pads any more, Mike helped me get the weight into the finish position and had me perform a “static hold”.

A static hold meant I would squeeze the arm pads together for as long as I could; when they came apart due to my fatigue, I would continue to try to hold them as close together as I could, until inch by inch they ended up back in the start position with the weight stack touching down. This would cause additional growth stimulation by tapping into my static and negative strength levels.

As it turned out, he wasn’t satisfied with first static hold rep I did, so he reduced the weight a little and made me do it again. He said he wanted to make sure I really understood the concept and got a feel for how to do it correctly, and I was very appreciative of that. He obviously wasn’t just going through the motions of training me, he genuinely wanted me to get the most out of the short time we would spend together.

The moment the weight stack came together, Mike helped me out of the machine, yelled “LET’S GO!” and started sprinting to the incline press, located in the next room.

It must have been quite a sight–Mike sprinting at top speed through the gym, with me right behind him, and Patty right behind me with the camera. I’m just glad nobody got in our way, because I have no doubt Mike would have leveled anyone who was in our path.

Once we got to the incline I immediately sat down, positioned myself as I had been instructed, and pushed as hard as I could. The weight felt like a ton, and seemed to take forever to get to the finish position.

I heard Mike say, “perfect weight selection”. I found out later that the rep range on that exercise was 1-3 reps. Mike felt that since this was the second exercise in the pre-exhaustion superset, there was no point in extending the duration of the set, so the weight should be ultra heavy. Trust me, it was.

I got one rep on my own, and then one forced rep with Mike’s assistance, at which point I was convinced I was done. I let go of the handles, and Mike adjusted the height of the handles upward and told me to do as many reps in this position as possible.

Mike called these “strongest range” reps. He explained to me later that the last 15 degrees or so of range of motion on pressing movements provides the least resistance, due to favorable leverage factors. This can be used to advantage at the end of a set, when a full range of motion is no longer possible. Squeezing out a few reps in this small range totally exhausts any remaining strength available on that exercise, allowing you to safely get closer to total failure.

After a few of those, my chest was fried. The whole thing probably took all of five minutes.

Now it was on to the back workout.

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(To be continued)

Copyright © 2010 by Dave Durell. All rights reserved worldwide.
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