Heavy Duty Training is intense training techniques, created by the well known Pro-bodybuilder Mike Mentzer during the 70’s.

What is Heavy Duty Training?

When Mike Mentzer hit a plateau on his lifts, he then incorporated pre-exhaustion sets. This was done by doing a isolation excercise before a compound. For example, a set of chest flyes would be done before doing sets of bench press. He occasionally would also go beyond muscular failure, by doing forced reps and negatives(with help of a spotter).

Eventually Mike mentzer realized, that the intensity of the previous technique was reducing his ability of maximizing workout intensity overall. He then incorporated a version of Rest Pause training. This allowed his muscles small breaks in between, to allow for a more grueling overall workout.

How it worked is; he would do a weight he could handle only for a one rep max, rest 10 seconds, do another one rep max, rest 10 seconds, reduce the weight by 20%(or keep it the same and get a spotter) and do another one rep max, then rest 15 seconds and do the final rep.

This workout wasn’t intense enough for Mike Mentzer, so he increased it through what he called Infitonic training. What he did was follow each of the one rep max sets in the previous workout, with a one rep max negative. He increased the rest time from 10 seconds to 15 seconds.

Mike Mentzer still wasn’t done. He eventually increased the level of intensity even further, to what he called Omni-Contraction training. In omni-contraction training, he did static holds during the negative reps in his infitonic training. He would hold the wait at 3 different positions of the negative. He held it during the top, middle, and bottom of the negative rep for a count of 3 seconds.

How well does Heavy Duty training work?

Mike Mentzer techniques have been controversial because of the high intensity low volume. It worked for Mike Mentzer and his brother Ray Mentzer, who used these training techniques to get high ranks in top bodybuilding competitions.