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Mike Mentzer and Markus Reinhardt

Markus Reinhardt learned high intensity training directly from the legendary Mike Mentzer himself, Mike even choose Markus to star in his HIT workout video. Learn Markus Reinhardt's history and his current training program.

Markus Reinhardt was born in 1970 in Stuttgart, Germany. He started weight training at the age of thirteen, he worked out in his bedroom with a barbell, dumbbell, a bench and a chin-up bar wedged in his doorway. He learned the basics and developed quickly, in fact he entered his first bodybuilding contest when he was only sixteen year old.

Markus moved to America in 1991, and he continued to compete in bodybuilding and work as a fitness model appearing in print ads, magazines, on magazine covers, and even on an album cover.

Markus was training three days on, one day off, and he was stuck at the same bodyweight for a long time, he knew that he wasn't reaching his full potential physique wise. While training at Gold's Gym in Venice, California Markus had been watching the legendary Mike Mentzer train clients in his unique High Intensity Training (HIT) style. He was intrigued to see people making great progress in what seemed to be almost ridiculously short workouts, and never training more than one day without taking a whole day or two off afterward. At the time, Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates was consulting with Mike and adopting many of his methods, and was getting bigger and freakier by the year.

Markus decided he had nothing to lose and hired Mentzer to be his trainer. Four months later, he had gained 25 pounds of mostly muscle. "Mike had a hard time believing I wasn't on steroids. We trained every other day or every third day. My legs made the biggest improvement. My thighs got so big they rubbed together when I walked. That's when I knew that less training, not more, was the answer." The two became good friends, and Markus adopted the objectionist philosophy popularized by writer Ayn Rand and espoused by Mentzer frequently in his writings.

Markus Reinhardt Training Program

Markus adapted the Heavy Duty theories of Mentzer to fit his own needs as a competitive bodybuilder, much as Dorian Yates had done several years before. "I still do just one work set per exercise, but I'll do three or four exercises for most bodyparts to provide stimulation from different angles," he explains. After experimenting with more and less frequent training, this is the format Markus arrived at that works best for him:

Monday: Chest, Shoulders and Triceps

Wednesday: Back, Biceps and Abs

Friday: Legs

Cardio on days off

"I have so much more energy and enthusiasm now when I walk in the gym than I used to," he says. "When I would train three days in a row and take one day off, I was exhausted most of the time and didn't know why. I had to force myself to be motivated to work out because I was in a state of chronic overtraining. Now that's not a problem. I can't wait to get in there and train hard, because I'm always rested and recovered."

Markus had the courage to buck the prevailing trends in bodybuilding training and try a different approach that made more sense to him. Since then, his physique has continued to transform into one of the most powerful, shapely, and symmetrical physiques in bodybuilding. His brand of High Intensity Training took him to this higher level, even though the masses still laugh it off as constituting "not enough training to make progress." For natural trainers who don't have the tremendous advantages in recovery that steroids provide, less training and more intensity is a logical conclusion. If your chest, or your whole body for that matter, looks the same as it has for months or years despite countless hours of torture in the gym, you owe it to yourself to give High Intensity Training a fair trial. You could suddenly discover that less can sometimes be more when it comes to stimulating muscle growth.

Mike Mentzer HIT DVD

As a final tribute, Mike selected Markus to star in his video to demonstrate High Intensity Training. Just hours after it finished filming, Mike went home and died. "I was one of the last people to see Mike alive," he shares. "It wouldn't surprise me if he had planned all along to just hold out until his video was wrapped."

You can get the Mike Mentzer workout DVD at https://www.bodybuildingdvds.net/mike-mentzer-workout.html

If you have any questions about Mike Mentzer, Heavy Duty, High Intensity Training, Diet, etc. email us and we'll get back to you with an answer as soon as we can.

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