Physique Metamorphosis

by John Little
n the six years since Joanne Sharkey asked me to do phone consultations for her on Mike Mentzers Heavy Duty training system, the most common question weve received is, What did Mike mean when he said, As the body changes, training requirements change? Does it mean that everybodys different? Does it mean that there could be a time when someone could (or should) perform more volumeor even high volumein ones training? The answer to the last two questions is no. The answer to the first is what were talking about in this installment.
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To begin with, everybody is not different. As Mike accurately pointed out years ago: We arent all that different physiologically. Were all unique as individuals, but when a young man or a young woman goes to medical school and studies muscle physiology, whose physiology is he or she studying? Everybodys. We all have the same muscle physiology. The biochemical changes leading to muscle growth in Mike Mentzer are the same as the ones leading to muscle growth in you. It follows that the specific stimulus required to induce the biochemical changes leading to muscle growth in you and me is the same. What is that stimulus? High-intensity muscular contraction! Thats why nobody ever put an inch on an arm as a result of washing dishesthe intensity of muscular contraction involved in that activity is far too low. As Mike also pointed out: We all grow at different rates of speed. I might grow faster as a result of high-intensity training, but

well all grow faster when each of us trains more intensely. If youre not gaining fast now or if youre not gaining at all, youll gain faster when you train more intensely. Anybody will gain more rapidly when he trains more intensely. He may not gain as rapidly as me. Then again, he might gain more rapidly than I do because of innate adaptability. We all have different innate adaptabilities to exerciseage, physical condition, motivation, a lot of different factors. The underlying muscle physiology, however, is the same. The people who say we all have different training requirements are entirely wrong. Theyre ignorant of the basic facts regarding muscle physiology. If we all had different physiologies, medical science could not exist. A doctor would have to study each individual as a separate physiological entity and then learn all the intricacies of that physiology and devise medicine around them. The very fact that the basic principles of physiology apply to the whole human race is what makes medical science a viable discipline.

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As an individuals muscles grow bigger, they also grow stronger.

As for the issue of whether highvolume training makes sense, the answer is that a high volume of training and a high intensity of training are mutually exclusive. The body requires high-intensity muscular contractions to produce the biochemical reactions that result in muscle growth. Low-intensity contractions, which let you carry on a particular activity for a longer period of time, do very little to stimulate much, if any, growth at all. Again, try washing dishes for a couple of hours and let me know when youve put two inches on your arm. Lets hear from Mike Mentzer on the issue: Does anybody here think that growth comes easily? Has anybody grown too fast this year? No, we all know that growth doesnt come easily. You literally have to force growth. Now, tell me how you can force growth with light weights, mild exertion, easy workouts. You cant. The harder you train, the faster you grow. The harder you train, the less time you can spend training, just as the faster you run, the less distance you can run. Given the above facts, we are brought back to square one. So what did Mike mean when he said that as the body changes, training requirements change? Simply this: That as an individuals muscles grow bigger, they also grow stronger. Consequently, the energy expended in ones workout from a given muscle group

The bigger and stronger you are, the more stress you can impose on your body in any given set.

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Bigger, stronger muscles expend more energy, so the larger you become, the more quickly you become exhausted.

increases dramatically. That causes you to grow exhausted more quickly and to take longer to recover from the workout. That should be evident to anyone whos trained in a truly all-out manner. The harder the effort, the more quickly exhaustion intervenes; when your gas tank has been emptied, in other words, the workout is over. Your gas tank gets emptied very quickly when you are exerting yourself to the max. As you expend more energy in lifting heavier weights300 pounds for 15 repetitions in the squat vs. only 120 pounds for 10 repetitions in the squatit takes the body longer to replenish a greater energy debt than it does a lesser one. Or, as Mike put it: As you grow strongerthat is, as the weights grow progressively

greaterthe stress on your body becomes progressively greater and must be compensated for. Perhaps the easiest way to understand that phenomenon is to observe the stresses on your body when performing a warmup set of squats compared to what happens during the actual work set to failure. On the heavier work set you immediately recognize the much greater stress on the bones than you get on the warmup set. The same goes for the much greater demands on the cardiorespiratory system and so forth. Now simply extrapolate that over time, as you lift progressively more weight from workout to workout. As the stresses grow progressively greater, theyll eventually add up to overtraining. The first symptom will be a slowdown in progress, and if you continue with the same

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Within two to three weeks of embarking on a high-intensitytraining program, you should begin inserting an extra rest day or even two into your schedule.

volume and frequency, the stresses will cause complete cessation of progress. Thats typically referred to as a sticking point. You need never experience a slowdown in progress, let alone a sticking point, if you bear in mind all the while that you must compensate for them. Within two to three weeks of embarking on a Heavy Duty, high-intensity training program, you should begin adding an extra

rest day or even two at random so that youre giving yourself sufficient time to recover from your workouts. Do that with increasing regularity until youre training once every seven days or so. According to Mike: The implication here is that if the individual trains again before the bodys growth production process is completed, it will be short-circuited and less than 100

units of possible progress will be realized. Once the individual is training once every seven days, I suggest a reduction in the volume of training, as outlined in my books, along the lines of the Consolidation Program. [Editors note: Please see The Wisdom of Mike Mentzer or High Intensity Training The Mike Mentzer Way for a detailed presentation of Mentzers Consolidation Program.]
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If you train before recovery is complete, you short-circuit the growth process.

With a consolidation routine, theres a decided shift in emphasis to predominately compound exercisesthat is, ones that involve multiple muscle groups, such as squats, dips and deadlifts. A workout consisting of compound exercises still works all of the major muscle groups but with fewer total sets, making for minimum inroads into recovery ability. Following the above advice,
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youll never hit a sticking point. Youll experience unbreached progress with your training. As Ive written before, if scientists can send a man to the moon and bring him back safely each time, we should be able to succeed with every one of our

missions to the gym here on earth. Building bigger muscles should be a cakewalk compared to a moon walk. In other words, anytime you increase the intensity of a workoutby lifting heavier weights,

performing more repsyouve increased the stress on your body. You must account for that both in the length (or volume) of your workouts and in the extra time that will be required between workouts in order for you to fully recover and adapt

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Multijoint moves that train the largest muscles stimulate the metabolism and anabolic hormones.

More-isolated finishing exercises should be used infrequently.

from the training. Editors note: For a complete presentation of Mike Mentzers Heavy Duty training system, consult his books Heavy Duty II, High Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer Way and the newest book, The Wisdom of Mike Mentzer, all of which are available from Mentzers official Web site, www.MikeMentzer.com. John Little is available for phone consultation on Mike Mentzers Heavy Duty training system. For rates and information, contact Joanne Sharkey at (310) 316-4519 or at www.MikeMentzer.com, or see the ad on the opposite page. Article copyright 2007, John Little. All rights reserved. Mike Mentzer quotations provided courtesy of Joanne Sharkey and are used with permission. IM
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Model: Jose Raymond