Heavy Duty

[Power]

Hi Sifu Richardson,

As it was your intitial article on Mr. Mentzer in '97 (?) that introduced me to Heavy Duty, I owe you a thank-you.

My question is, since Mike reccomended the removal of aerobic activity to increase muscular gain and maximize recovery, did you alter your personal training? His statements that aerobic activity created a deeper in-road to the body's ability to rebuild itself makes a lot of sense. Albeit most MA's probably train for strength and not size (as I do), there has to be a trade off at some point. Would you reccommend that an individual continue all necessary (as is necessary to them) training i.e. running, sparring, etc and use Heavy Duty as a supplement/addition to their program?

Thank you,

Chad Power

[Burton]

Hi Chad,
I am very happy to hear that you have benefitted from Mike's work. His argument against aerobics is valid, but only within the context of building the greatest amount of muscle as quickly as possible. We as combat athletes have other necessities. We must be in good cardiovascular shape. What Heavy Duty does for me is to make my workouts very short, and get me into growth phase quickly. It is minimum wear on the body, which leaves me fresher to do all of my training. It works perfectly for those who want to pursue combative athletics. Since we wear out our bodies so much with our daily training, we must be absolutely sure not to overtrain with the weights. Thanks for the great question.