One set to failure...

[Mark Rippetoe]

Didn’t he also promote very slow reps?

Probably. If it made no sense, Mentzer was for it.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Didn’t he also promote very slow reps?

Not exactly. Mentzer followed Arthur Jones' premise of 2 seconds concentric and 4 seconds eccentric movements.

Superslow^TM advocated 10 seconds concentric and 10 seconds eccentric movements. I tried that nonsense too. It was even worse.

[VNV]

Probably. If it made no sense, Mentzer was for it.

Eddie Van Halen’s guitar teachers said, theoretically, his compositions should sound like crap. Nonetheless, people listened.

I wonder if he made “music confusion” work for him.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Eddie Van Halen’s guitar teachers said, theoretically, his compositions should sound like crap. Nonetheless, people listened.

I wonder if he made “music confusion” work for him.

Mentzer didn't advocate the muscle confusion thing. That was Weider.

[bjvinson]

I tried, I mean really tried this almost 40 years ago. The results were so bad that I thought something was wrong with me. Like Nick Saban says, "It takes what it takes" and getting strong takes more than 1 set to failure.

[dalan]

Unless there's been some "hidden wisdom" that a ouija board (the Mentzernomicon?) revealed about what Mentzer actually meant to say, he didn't talk about warmup sets. Just pedal to the metal in one set.

Ok.

[johnst_nhb]

Could be the volume of "warm up sets" that's the productive part. It always appeared to me that Mike was just doing a typical pyramid with a set to failure set at the end.

Marty Gallagher and Jim Steel have a podcast where they discuss this very thing.

As usual, the headlines trumped the reality.

[johnst_nhb]

Name one guitar teacher of Eddie.

[VNV]

Name one guitar teacher of Eddie.

His words, not mine.

Something I ran across in one of his interviews long ago. Will need time for the citation.

On it.

[VNV]

Name one guitar teacher of Eddie.

Still looking . . .

Peripheral evidence here:

https://www.heraldextra.com/blogs/ed...9dfeed5d1.html

...

DF: So going back to your music theory class at Pasadena City College, I remember your teacher said, “If it sounds good, it is good.”

VAN HALEN: Yeah, his name was Truman Fisher, and he was a great teacher. Frank Zappa was one of his students. That shows you right there the difference, what a great teacher he was, you know, to not have molded his students, like, “This is the right way to do it.” I mean, it’s called music theory — not music fact.

...