Edited by Ivan Mercolini
Introduction to Heavy Duty
This time I want to talk about the Heavy Duty training method. It is a method aimed at achieving the most fruitful muscle growth in the context of Body Building. Oh yes, my friends, for this time the Model Trainer will take care of an exquisitely culturistic topic, which however can be used by youngsters in particular and temporary cycles. It is a strictly male method, but I will not fail to mention a routine example for girls, if a reader is interested. But I'll do more. At the end I will leave some examples of pharmacological cycles, this time for body builders then, which are well matched with Heavy Duty. What is Ivan Mercolini talking to you about this time?
Well, those of a certain age certainly know this practice and its author, Mike Mentzer, at least by hearsay. As a tribute to his missing person and to a method that I have never abandoned, here is my new essay which, as always, will lead you by the hand into a path that will not be short. There will be cameos, windows open to other branches of culture, from poetry, philosophy, animation, mediumship. Who will want to deepen, who will want to mature, will not have to do anything but open the window he prefers.
Another introductory note: being a very intense protocol, the suggested one, never as in this case it is necessary to make sure that you enjoy an absolutely healthy cardiovascular system. It is therefore contraindicated tout court for hypertensives. Individuals with other pathologies will first have to assess their suitability to carry out the suggested workouts with their professional. Enjoy the reading.
What is Heavy Duty? Inside the heavy duty method Muscle training and intensity techniques Heavy Duty sheets HEAVY DUTY CARD FOR HIM divided into AB-CSCHEDA FOR HIM divided into A-BSCHEDA HEAVY DUTY FOR HER divided into A-BA an anecdote and thanks
What is Heavy Duty?
The HEAVY DUTY is a protocol for hypophrophic training that optimizes the stimulus and minimizes catabolism: in short, pure hypertrophy.
Those of you who are very young do not know this term. Instead you know very well what BIIO is, since it is advertised in all the Ciccarelli books and magazines and given the reputation of the NBBF. Well the BIIO is nothing but a deepening, an elaboration, an evolution of the HEAVY DUTY.
The late Mentzer, a former Mr. Universe and a brilliant-minded man, revolutionized the training methods that had been popular until then. Imagine yourself on the same stage at Mr Olympia, Schwarzenegger and Mentzer. The first author of Body building texts where the cards are composed of numerous series, frequent sessions (even twice a day); the second one, author of texts where the cards have very few series and rare sessions (only once a week). Damn: practically two opposite poles. It is self-evident that one of them was wrong. Schwarzenegger won on stage, but Mentzer won on the didactics.
In fact, any Personal Trainer, even the most illiterate, knows that the maximum hypertrophy is achieved with short, intense and infrequent workouts. Increasing the volume and / or increasing the frequency will never compensate for a possible deficit in intensity, when the goal is hypertrophy. Watch what I said. Beware.
If you are unable to develop high voltages in a series, do not think about solving the problem by performing a second or third one. Doing this, PROLONGE THE EFFORT, that is, you move horizontally and not vertically, working on the resistance and not on the hypertrophy. Do I speak complicated? Okay then, it's normal.
Mentzer understood that to obtain maximum muscle development, especially for a natural, an INTENSITIVE stimulus was needed, but short and infrequent, so as to reduce overtraining to the maximum: the worst enemy. He wrote: "a bullet is enough to kill you", meaning: "one series is enough to get the stimulus". "Shooting with a machine gun" instead means digging excessively into the body's ability to recover and react, thus working on resistance and not on hypertrophy.
Those of you who know Claudio Tozzi's BIIO, will tell me: they are the same principles, more or less the same speeches. Exactly. And in fact now I come to open a critical parenthesis. Anyone who knows me and has been following me for some time, or has searched for me with a search engine, knows that I have the NBBF estimate, and traces of my past articles can still be found on the WEB, from publications in Ciccarelli magazines since I was novice. I leave you with just one example: //www.olympian.it/on/56_1.cfm. Over the years, however, I have developed some observations to make to the NBBF.
The first is that the HEAVY DUTY of Mentzer, as we shall see, is a simple, clear method that develops into a few booklets of a few pages. The BIIO takes up these concepts and develops them by looking for physiological, evolutionary motivations, LAWS that lead to these training theories. And so far, so good. Except that in recent times the NBBF from development has moved on to prolixity, creating a redundancy of methods, WAVES, MACROCYCLES, GIANT SERIES, PALEO ROUTINE - with kitsch hedges, let me - that they have no reason to exist except the commercial need to always renew itself (= FASHION) to keep up with the competition. Here I close the critical parenthesis, which obviously only wants to be constructive, given the long-standing estimate that links me to TOZZI.
Well, let's get into this Heavy Duty and you will see that with a few pages, scrupulously following Reason and Logic, you will learn the only method of pure hypertrophy that exists.
