Advanced Heavy Duty Techniques Although many people know the basics of the Heavy Duty training method, few people know the more advanced techniques. Advanced and super advanced techniques were intensively investigated and tested by Mike Mentzer in the late 70s. But Mike withdrew from competition after the controversial Mr. Olympia of 1980 and went to work as a personal trainer, at which point he began to focus more on what works best for beginners and intermediates. Because of this, Heavy Duty techniques for advanced and super advanced athletes have fallen by the wayside, even though Mike has made the best gains of his life with these techniques. Climbing the ladder of intensity Mike knew that as a bodybuilder gains strength and muscle mass, he would require even more intense training stress in order to continue to progress. If the applied stress is not more intense, it will stagnate and always remain at the same level of size and strength. beginners For beginners, starting a weight training program is a huge boost in intensity from no workouts and that's why they get such quick gains at first. To continue to progress, they can simply continue to increase the weights and decrease rest periods between sets. When they stop making gains this way, they're ready for the next level of intensity. Intermediates At this stage more intense stress is needed and this is done with pre-exhaustion sets. For example, a series of Extender Chair to failure, followed by a series of Leg Press (or Squats) to failure. In addition, forced and negative repetitions can also occasionally be used to go beyond positive failure. These techniques will take some to the advanced level. Mike has reached this point and has not been able to gain more strength or muscle mass with these techniques. This forced him to carry out more investigations at more advanced levels of intensity. advanced At this level, Mike found that he had so much strength and his ability to apply maximum effort so high that each rep of a set was so intense that the lack of oxygen and the rise in lactic acid levels were almost immediate and sufficiently to force you to stop because of cardiovascular limitations rather than having to stop because you have achieved muscle failure. He looked for a way to be able to perform even more intense reps while slowing the rise in lactic acid levels and the appearance of oxygen deficit in his muscles. His way of doing this was by creating his own version of the Rest-Pause training method. In his version, Mike used a weight that allowed him to do one rep max, then rested for 10 seconds, this would give him enough time for his muscles to eliminate unwanted waste products and get new fuel and oxygen so they could do another complete repetition. After the second rep and another 10 seconds of training, he would ask a partner to help him do another rep, or he would reduce the weight by 20%. Then he rested 15 seconds and performed his last full rep. This was considered a set, with each of the reps in the set being maximal effort. 1 Mike Mentzer Set = First Rep Max + 10 Seconds Rest + Second High Rep + 10 Seconds Rest + Plus 1 Rep Max or Reduce Weight by 20% + 15 Seconds Rest + Final Rep. An example of a Rest-Pause workout that Mike would do for his chest for example would be, 1 set of 4 reps Rest-Pause on Pec Deck, 1 set of 4 reps Rest-Pause on Incline Bench Presses, and 1 set of 5 reps on Incline Bench Presses Bottoms for Pectoral (only negative style). Then Mike had to ask himself, what could be more intense than the Rest-Pause workout? Heavy Duty Super Advanced For Mike, the next rung on the intensity ladder was what he called Infitonic Training; In this training method, he performed a maximum negative rep immediately following each maximum positive rep of a Rest-Pause set. He would ask his training partner to push down a bit in the negative and struggle to resist the descent, lowering the weight as slowly as possible. He then rested 15 seconds before his next positive and negative rep. The highest level of Heavy Duty was what he called omni-contraction training, which means all contractions. There are three ways to contract a muscle, which is by lifting a weight (positive), lowering a weight (negative) and holding a weight in a fixed (static) position. In Omni-contraction training, Mike always applied maximum effort. He would perform a maximum positive rep followed by a maximum negative, but during the negative he would stop the weight and even try to lift the weight again (which was impossible). He tried to do this at three different points during the negative repetition. The first point was at the top, near the full contraction position, the second was midway through the weight drop, and the third was near the lowest position. Mike held each position for 3 seconds. The results Mike and his brother Ray used these advanced and super advanced techniques in the summer of 1979 and as a result Mike gained 6 kg of muscle mass in 9 weeks (while he was losing fat and already at an advanced level of strength and muscle mass. ), and won his first professional competition, beating athletes like Robby Robinson, Danny Padilla and Roy Callender. At the same time, his brother Ray improved his physique so much that he was able to win that year's Mr. America competition. So, if you've already tried Heavy Duty training and haven't seen any results with it after a while, maybe you can try the more advanced techniques we've discussed in this article so that you can continue to make progress. Try them out and find out for yourself if they really work or not.