Mike Mentzer Quotes

It is only within the context of having properly developed your mind that you will be able to truly enjoy the achievement of your material values, including that of a more muscular body.

In order to lead the orchestra, you must first turn your back to the crowd.

Theoretical knowledge is not the exclusive domain of ivory tower intellectuals, but is, in fact, a crucial necessity of man's proper survival. Every bit of your mental contents is derived from some theory, and your success and happiness hinge on whether it is true or false, good or evil.

What is required if a bodybuilder hopes to realize the most from his workouts and become a champion? The answer: an attitude befitting a hero, one full of fury—an attitude I call siege mentality. Once he enters the gym, all else is forgotten and he is transformed into a valiant warrior with girded loins, ready to do battle with the weights.

Don’t just be a bodybuilder—be the greatest bodybuilder that you can possibly be.

paucity

efficacy

mens sana in corpore sano—

poignancy)

So keep in mind that even the most productive of the high-intensity training principles will prove fruitless if they are approached with a defeatist attitude.

I would languish in the sack until noon, hoping reality would somehow go away by virtue of my simply refusing to acknowledge it.

the gym became a Wagnerian landscape

that the actual contests, like the consummation of all goals, are but single points, standing out like glowing peaks against the tapestry of our lives. It’s the travel from peak to peak, the interior process of goal fulfillment in which one must seek the enjoyment—that is what makes life worth living.

William James, What Makes a Life Significant

so much time looking outside to new scientific advancements and technology, that they overlook the inner possibilities of the greatest transformative device in the world: the human mind.

The human mind is thought to be the only self-evolving thing that exists, and the more evolved, the more we develop its natural capacities, the more control it will give us over our bodies.

John Lilly, psychologist and dolphin researcher, has said, “The only limit man has is that which his mind conceives.

Formulating farfetched, unrealistic goals only sets up a pattern of failure and hence frustration, dampening motivations. Don’t set a goal of gaining 10 pounds of muscle each week or month when you’ve heard it over and over from all authorities that a 10-pound gain of muscle per year is more realistic

advanced techniques such as forced reps, cheat reps, negatives, partials, static contraction, and rest-pause.

Nietzsche was the only other philosopher who stimulated me. It was be of his sense of life. He had a marvelous feeling about the greatness of man... nature in order to be commanded has to be obeyed

Having been successful in my efforts to become both muscularly massive and very strong, I can assure you that the principle of intensity refers almost exclusively to the human will and the ability to command your muscles to contract against the only real resistance—your own mind.

Aristotle (credited as the founder of logic) stated that the whole of logic is predicated on the Law of Non-Contradiction, that a thing is what it is and cannot be something else at the same time and in the same respect. In other words a muscle is a muscle—with its own distinct identity and qualities—it is not a mind, despite one popular bodybuilding “principle” of “muscle confusion.” Given that the principle of identity applied to human muscle tissue reveals that it cannot reason or properly use the principles of thought, one must wonder then how it might become confused.

1. All exercises should start from a pre-stretched position. For a muscle to contract maximally it must start in a fully extended position in which the muscle actually involved is being mildly stretched.

To settle for anything less than certainty about the truth of the ideas guiding you in the pursuit of your goals would be to leave your life literally to chance.

That aspect of reality of most central concern and importance to human beings is, of course, human beings. And in order to survive and succeed in his fullest capacity as a human being, man must be able to identify his own nature (including his means of knowledge) as well as the nature of the world (or universe) in which he acts.

The principle of identity states that everything that exists (entities and their actions, qualities, attributes, and relationships) has an identity, a nature: that a thing is what it is and can be nothing else; or as Aristotle first posited it, “A is A.” The principle of identity put into action affects the Law of Causality, or “cause-and-effect,” which states that an entity can act only in accord with its nature and cannot act otherwise—which is why a rock cannot fly, a bird cannot conceptualize, and a muscle cannot grow without the imposition of the requisite stimulus.

And, remember, fundamentally a thing is what it is; we live in a universe where everything—including a human mind and body—has a specific, clear-cut identity and can be nothing else. A human being is not a dog, a cat, a bird, a fish, a computer chip, or a stream of photons—“A is A” and man is man.

abdicate

arbitrary

evict oneself from the realm of reality.

volitionally