[Video of Mike Mentzer] And it just so happens to be true, audience, the close grip palms up
pull down is the best bicep exercise in the world, better than any curl you can do.
Well, shit, now what am I supposed to do? You might be having the same thought as me, especially
if your current bicep workout looks a little bit like this: a hefty dose of barbell curls,
if you ve been watching this channel any length of time, probably some chin ups in there too,
and of course, a variety of other curls that we've known to be shown effective here. Well, maybe it's
time to change it up, at least if you're listening to what Mike Mentzer has to say. See, Mike Mentzer
is somebody that I've actually listened to and admired for a long time. This is Mike from his
Heavy Duty book from about 30 years ago. The idea, though, is, is there merit to what he's
talking about and are you training your biceps wrong? Well, I have a story to tell you that
might blow your mind here. As a matter of fact, three times in this video, Mike Mentzer might
blow your mind. But I want to first hear what he thought in full of why he thinks that exercise
was so good. Let's hear that clip again. [Video of Mike Mentzer] And it just so happens to
be true, audience, the close grip palms up pull down is the best bicep exercise in the world,
better than any curl you can do. Here's why. When you do a curl, whether it's a Barbell Curl,
a Nautilus Curl, a Dumbbell Curl, whatever, you're working this muscle around a single joint axis,
the elbow, which is why the stress is limited exclusively to the lower bicep if you've noticed.
When doing a close grip, palms up, pull down, on the other hand,
you're working the bicep around the joint, the elbow joint and the shoulder. The muscle
is contracting more uniformly from both ends. And so there you have it. But is he right? Well,
let me bring it back to that story of mine. So, about a year and a half ago, I was walking my
son into school, and he slipped on the ice. And when he slipped, I went to go catch him and at the
same time, I actually successfully caught him, I unsuccessfully kept my distal bicep tendon intact
because I tore it 99%. The only part that was still intact was something called the aponeurosis.
That's the tendinous encapsulation of both heads of the bicep as it enters into the forearm. Well,
needless to say, I was kind of screwed, There's a lot of things I couldn't do. I couldn't
lift a heavier weight, I couldn't do anything pain free, I couldn't lift without cramping
up. I couldn't feel that my muscle connection that I had known for a long period of time,
a lot of things were instantly gone. And because of that, a lot of exercise choices were instantly
eliminated from my workouts. Right away I was not going to do any Incline Bicep Curls because
that would place that bicep in too much stretch at the bottom of every single repetition. Also,
no Preacher Curls and for those of you who are wondering, well, how come? Well, here's
your three second warning, and yeah, mind you, it will be gruesome. Three, two, one. [Video Clip]
I did warn you, and that's probably largely why I didn't want to show up as the next guy to be in
that type of video, so, no Preacher Curls. But I did think about those Chin Ups that we
talked about before. And remember, I told you that what I learned here is going to be serving every
single one of you, no matter whether you've been injured or not. I went to the chins because I know
that it does exactly what Mike was talking about on that exercise. It applies the stress to the
biceps from both ends because we're going into that flex shoulder position and bent elbow. And
it's the reason why I told you for all these years why it's such a great exercise for you
to be doing. And I did it until things went wrong. And that is, I developed elbow pain,
a lot of medial elbow pain. And I've done a whole video that I'll link for you at the end
of this one about why you get medial elbow pain, particularly if you don't have enough strength
in your biceps. And now we're talking about the compromise strength I had, so I was feeling too
much stress on that inner elbow and the chin ups themselves weren't working too much body weight
for me to have to handle and pull up on every repetition. The biceps couldn't handle it alone,
so they were forcing the forearm to do more of that work. Again, detailed explanation of why that
happens and how to avoid it in the other video. So needless to say, now that's off the table too.
And the Bicep Curls was just not really where it was at for me because I wasn't able to really
manage too much weight there anyway and I did feel that cramping I mentioned before,
But I do remember that clip from Mike Mentzer. Again, this is someone I watched from childhood,
and it stuck in my brain, and I thought to myself, I know there's something else I could
do that would unweight the whole weight of my body that wouldn't force me to have to do assisted pull
ups and use the underhand close grip pull down. And so, I ran my ass right over to a pull-down
bar and started to do the exercise as part of my recovery back. And guess what happened?
My biceps grew a lot. Why? Because I could apply good tension in that shortened position with the
arms up elevated into shoulder flexion and having that flexed elbow. And the safety
of the exercise was actually unmatched for me because the eccentric part of this was actually
occurring at the same time that I was flexing my shoulder. So, while I was getting lengthening of
the bicep at the elbow, I was actually getting a shortening of the bicep as the bar raised up. So,
it was actually very safe for me, unlike those inclined curls that would have actually
put that under a great amount of stress. And as far as the exercise itself utilizes,
some of those Mentzer intensity techniques, I could either self-spot myself by going to
failure and then applying a couple of negatives by just dropping down into position by holding
on to the bar and then concentrating on the slow ride back up. Or I could actually have Jesse here
who could help me with the concentric portion of the lift after I was fatigued and then help me as
I slowed it back up to the top. Either way, I was able to apply a lot of intensity to the exercise,
again, making sure that I was making it a curl variation and not just a lat driven exercise.
And if you do the same thing and stop overlooking that exercise, I guarantee you that you will also
see something start to change. Number one, that my muscle connection that you may not
have right now and your ability to control the bicep contraction, to actually feel discomfort
when you do it is going to be instantly solved. But that's not where I stopped because I still
wanted to curl. And one of the other things about Mike Mentzer is he talked heavily about volume
and making sure you don't do too many sets. As a matter of fact, you might be shocked to hear how
many sets he thinks is actually good. [Video of Mike Mentzer] On occasion,
I've had a phone client ask, Mike, would it make a difference,
would it be the mistake to do a second set? You keep making such a big deal about doing one set.
And I respond something to the effect that doing a second set is neither necessary nor desirable.
In fact, it would be the biggest mistake you can make. Going from one set to two sets is
literally the biggest mistake you can make, because going from one to two, audience, is
not merely a linear increase of one unit, one to two, it represents a doubling. A 100% increase in
the volume of the exercise. And remember, that's a negative. Even once that represents a negative,
because insofar that you train it all, you make an inroad. Well, some people might say, Well, Mike,
if I do a second set, maybe I'll get a little bit more growth stimulation. But then I point out
whatever little bit extra growth stimulation, you made a doubly deeper recovery ability,
so that negates any greater growth stimulation. Well, one set, hell Mike, now you got to go and
ruin everything for me. Again, as someone who actually enjoyed training and training
my biceps specifically, one set was a hard pill for me to swallow, so I didn't do that. But what
I would recommend is potentially investigating a lot fewer sets for you right now because it can't
hurt. And my thought was in this state where I was injured, I had nothing else to lose because
I couldn't simply continue to go. In other words, I had a car accident right here and I either chose
to go get a new car and have it operated on or continue to drive the same banged up car and do
my best with it and I chose Option B. And in doing so, I had to realize that it's not the
same car anymore and I have to respect that fact, so, I have to take it a little bit slower. So,
cutting that volume down was a good idea and doing a lot less of it was a good idea in
order to salvage what was left of that tendon and build up the strength of that muscle while I was
reformulating the scar tissue in the elbow. Could I make it work? Well, I was about to find out.
So, I cut things way back and when I started to do was this variation of a curl where I
would simply just run the rack here, one set. I start at the bottom here of this easy curl rack,
again, Intensity was the name of the game for Mike Mentzer, I made sure that this one set was going
to be ultimately intense. I d rep out, I put the weight down, go right up to the next one up the
rack, curl again, continue to rep all the way out, hit failure, keep it going. Again, the intensity
was the equator of the lower volume. If I can keep the intensity high, I could keep that stimulus
that Mike talked about, flipping that switch for anabolic adaptation. Go up the next step up
the rack, again, to failure. And I was limiting again the number of repetitions or rotations on
that tire that was already banged up here. What were the results? Better. As a matter of
fact, my arms started to feel stronger from workout over workout over workout. I wasn't
able to do the way I was doing in that clip for you right there when I started. I had built up
my strength again pretty decently in my bicep by taking this approach. So, in this case, less was
actually way more than continuing to always think that more is better. What am I saying to you? Not
necessarily that you've got to start doing one set, but it might be worth investigating fewer
sets of whatever you're doing right now, because I don't believe that there'll be a compromise of
the gains that you can get. As a matter of fact, you might be surprised at how much better you can
get. One more set, again, with much lighter weight here, but at this point, feeling incredibly heavy
to failure. And that was my workout. But that led me to sort of the third point
that Mike makes here, and this one might be the most mind bending of all of them,
and that is what type of recovery do I have? Because it's not really about what I was doing
in the gym. If I just did what I was doing here and I didn't focus on this other aspect, I don't
think my gains would have actually recovered. [Video of Mike Mentzer] Most bodybuilders today do
not understand that the big picture is comprised essentially of two elements of equal value,
I emphasize the word equal. By equal value, I mean literally 50/50, not 60/40, not 70/30, but 50/50.
The first element, the first 50% of the big picture, obviously, yes, of course,
is the actual workout. Who would deny that? But just as important, the other 50%,
not one iota less important than the actual workout is the rest period between sets.
And here's why. The workout, you must understand, does not actually produce - the word is produced.
The workout does not produce muscular growth. Remember, the workout is merely what?
A stimulus. It stimulates what? The body's growth mechanism into motion. It is the body
itself that produces the growth, but only if you leave the body undisturbed by further
exercise during a sufficient rest period. Or you can say it simply, in other words, if you don't
rest enough, you don't grow enough, if at all. Well, damn it, Mike. I mean, with all due respect,
I love you, but you're killing me here. I thought my five hours of sleep was adequate. Look,
you know, and I know that not getting enough sleep is not a good idea, not getting proper
nutrition is not a good idea, not having proper supplementation is not a good idea,
not when we're trying to maximize our recovery. But when you hear him say it with such a degree
of certainty and how equally important it is, it really did get me to thinking again,
I really have to prioritize a little bit better. And I tried to get just one extra hour of sleep by
just forcing myself to go to bed just a little bit earlier. And when it came to my training, I was
willing to space it out a little bit more. Again, my bicep work didn t have to come on a
regular basis, not every five days or seven days. I was able to space it out a little bit more and
again, without a compromise in the results. And I want to invite you guys to investigate that
for yourselves. Maybe you're going to often when it comes to bicep training, maybe you
need to try to space it out a little bit more. Realize that when you do your other back work,
you're getting that indirect bicep work. If you're doing any kind of rowing, if you're doing any kind
of traditional pulldowns, you're getting some bicep involvement there that might be enough of
a stimulus and trigger in between that direct work to keep those gains coming. And again,
that drop in frequency is likely going to lead to better results and sort of in a surprise
way because you never thought it would. Well, I will tell you, when it comes to that
nutrition side of it, that was never a struggle for me. You guys know how locked in I stand by
nutrition. But if you're not locked in, I suggest that you do become very much aware of what you're
putting in your body because your body will repair itself if you're providing it with the
right nutrients. When it comes to supplementation, I really believe that a high-quality protein is
something that's incredibly important in order to make that happen. Which is why I actually
took my PRO30G Protein, of course, I'm going to take my own, but it's because I know what's in
it. Thirty grams of protein, the highest quality to make sure I get enough in the day. And also,
Rx-3 ReconstruXion is something we have over on our website if you're interested.
It's what our MLB athletes take to make sure that they're recovered for 162 game season,
that takes place in just 180 days. Guys, if you found this video helpful,
make sure you leave your comments and thumbs up below. Let me know if you implement any of
these things I showed you here today because I do believe it might be a refresher for you and
deliver some very surprising results. If you're looking for complete programs, we have them over
at Athleanx.com. If you haven't done so, click Subscribe, turn on your Notifications so you never
miss a video when we put one out. That medial elbow pain that you might get from chin ups, guys,
make sure you watch this video to see exactly how to fix it. All right, guys, I'll see you soon.