Mike Mentzer never hid his favoritism towards intensity during exercising as a technique to gain muscle mass. At the time, the debate on the superiority of intensity over duration or vice versa was quite prevalent among the fitness community, and the Pennsylvania native had some strong opinions on it.
Most bodybuilders resorted to spending more time at the gym in hopes of making progress with their physiques. However, Mentzer slammed this school of thought because he had logic and science to back his opinion.
Intensity is the amount of effort one puts into performing a particular exercise, pushing their limits to the extreme. Whereas, duration is simply the time spent performing each exercise and at the gym.
Both served different purposes and while Mentzer favored one over the other, he admitted that they couldn’t co-exist. One could either push their intensity to the brink and ultimately spend less time at the gym, or spend more time working out but not exert as much force as expected.
“These two factors exist in an inverse ratio to each other. In other words, they’re mutually exclusive. You can have one or the other, but you can’t have both together to any significant degree.”
Mentzer noted how intensity worked mainly towards muscle mass, providing a positive result upon gradual progression. On the other hand, longer durations of workout routines mostly worked on the cardiovascular output of the body.
“Intensity is one feature of exercise most responsible for inducing size and strength increases, while duration primarily affects cardiovascular response.”
Therefore, for legitimate hypertrophy, it’s no secret that Mentzer had always voted for applying intensity over duration. He even explained the technicalities of the situation, noting how the human body ultimately had limits. While it was possible to progressively increase intensity and strength, it wasn’t possible to keep up the same intensity for a longer time.
Mike Mentzer also revealed how often one should train
Since Mike Mentzer established that intensity beats duration to some extent, one might wonder how much time they could spend performing exercises to grow more muscles. Well, the Pennsylvania native did address this subject, with a solution, in an old lecture.
The heavy-duty training plan that the late legend had come up with contained a healthy mix of both intense exercises and extended recovery periods. Ideally, he suggested a 72-96 hour break cycle that had worked wonders for his clients wanting to increase muscle mass.
