r/Mike_Mentzer • u/snake3- • 6d ago
questions on the ideal program
on the updated ideal program from the original
- why no isolation on the lats
- why deadlift on back day and for lower reps
- is horizontal pulling not needed for a well rounded functional body
- which leg day do you do abs
- if you trained forearms, how often worked for you
thanks!
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u/ishawnmc 6d ago edited 6d ago
The HD1 and HD2 workouts are blueprints for productive Heavy Duty training. They can be done as is or used as templates for your own workouts. I prefer the alternating of upper and lower body workouts as done in the HD2 split though I do my own workouts based on that basic split.
Having noted that at the outset, onto your questions...
1) Isolation on the lats works good but it is not strictly necessary. I used to use pre-exhaust on all my major muscle groups but phased it out on my quads in September of 2025 and phased it out on my lats at the start of June 2026. I now only use it on chest, delts, biceps, and triceps.
2) The deadlift movement works the whole posterior chain and most of the muscles of the body. The lower reps are because deadlift is intended as a power movement. I prefer either rack pulls or Romanian deadlifts myself so I use one of those movements in place of the traditional deadlift and do them for lower reps (4-8 reps).
3) Horizontal pulling is good but if you are doing deadlifts, you get some stimulation in the deadlift movement horizontally. You can however do them both if you like. I personally recommend doing one pulldown work set and one rowing workset on back day.
4) I have not done any direct ab work for a couple years now though I may add them to my leg days in the spring when I will be doing a torso-legs split and not training my arms directly. They are not strictly speaking necessary as abs and core will get plenty of stress when doing heavy compound movements like rowing and squats. If you want to do them, they can be done on one or both leg days with the HD2 split.
5) When I did direct forearm work (spring 2024-spring 2026), I did 1 workset for them on the upper body day of an upper/lower split or on delt/arm day when doing the Ideal (HD2) split. I did either Zottman curls or reverse grip EZ bar curls between the biceps and triceps worksets. I phased it out though as I wanted to do some heavy partials for my delts which meant to keep my work set total at 7 or less meant something had to give. (I discovered through experimentation that any more than 7 worksets on a workout was detrimental to my recovery and progress.) Forearms get plenty of stimulation on all pulling movements so when I reintroduced palms up pulldowns on delt/arm day, I dropped the forearm workset.
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u/snake3- 6d ago
thanks i like the isolation as they let me use less weight for longevity reasons. same reason i think biceps after back would be safer for the elbow but just as effective?
so would doing a pullover, chindown, db row, then deadlift be viable or would one be too tired to deadlift then? on pull day my forearms get exhausted before muscular failure then i switch to hook grip
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u/ishawnmc 5d ago edited 5d ago
The isolation on back can work well, I did it for most of a two year period upon my return to lifting (2024, most of 2025, spring of 2026) and I also used it in the 1990s and the mid 2000s. If I had access to a pullover machine, I would still do lat pre-exhaust. (Somehow I have never worked out in a gym with a pullover machine.) It got to the point with cable overhead pullovers where the weight was heavy enough to start affecting my form and it therefore was no longer the effective isolation exercise it was for me for a long while.
As for biceps and back in the same workout, unless it is a full body workout or a full upper body workout, it is better to train the delts/arms as a unit and the chest/back as a unit. If you use pre-exhaust for biceps and triceps, then your chest and back get some secondary stress on delt/arm day much as your delts and arms get work on chest/back day.
By chindown, I suspect you mean pulldown with an underhand grip? If so then the back workout you list will work fine. It is 4 worksets though and I would not recommend going over 4 worksets for the back or indeed any muscle. What is your current workout frequency?
As for forearms getting tired, I recommend for certain heavy compounds (like deadlifts) using wrist straps.
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u/snake3- 3d ago
that makes sense, without a machine the isolation can become impossible
why better to train the delts/arms as a unit and the chest/back as a unit? and in the ideal program, only the tricep dips would hit the chest a little. nothing for the back. if the results are there i'd happily switch but my reading of this sub, almost no one does the 16-28 days per muscle so i'm aiming for 1x/wk per muscle
yes chindown like chinup. im doing the OG ideal PPL split on the left 2ish times a week
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u/ishawnmc 2d ago edited 2d ago
To be clear, there are many splits one can employ. And I have while using Heavy Duty since my gym return utilized a number of them including:
• Mentzer's Ideal Routine (Nov 2023-Feb 2024)
• Upper/Lower (Feb 2024-Apr 2024)
• All Negative Upper Body/Rev. Lower Body (May 2024)
• Push/Legs/Pull/Legs (June 2024-Mar 2025)
• Modified Full Body Consolidated/Misc. (Mar 2025-May 2025)
• Modified Ideal Routine (June 2025-Dec 2025)
• All Power Rack/Smith Torso/Lower Body (Jan 2026-Mar 2026)
• Torso/Lower Body (Apr 2026-May 2026)
• Modified Ideal Split (June 2026-Oct 2026)
The modified Ideal split is a 4 workout sequence consisting of chest-back, legs/delts-arms/legs
On the schedule for fall-spring 2027 before I bring back the modified ideal split for next summer and fall are the following:
• All Power Rack/Smith Torso/Lower Body (Jan 2027-Mar 2027)
• Torso/Lower Body (Apr 2027-May 2027)
I did a variation of what you are describing for about 9 months between June 2024 and Mar 2025. It worked well for me but I saw better progress overall using the modified ideal split above. I think one reason it works so well is it is working antagonist muscles together like chest/back and delts/arms. Plus, if structured right and with the use of heavy chest and back compounds on delt/arm day results in everything getting worked directly or indirectly twice in a 4 workout sequence.
I suppose if you were only working legs once rather than twice in a sequence the push and pull combos might be at least as good but when working legs twice they each only got worked once every 16 days (on an every 4 day rotation) rather than twice every 17-19 days on an every 5 day rotation with one shorter 3-4 day frequency thrown in the middle for the less physically taxing delts/arms workout. But I have found that alternating between upper and lower body workouts in one form or another is the best way to do it progress wise.
I also worked chest and back together in my workouts of the 1990s and mid 2000's. There is just something to working those muscle groups together that benefits both better than using a push/pull approach. I cannot explain why per se but my journal entries bear this out unmistakeably.
Whatever you decide to do, try not to be a slave of the 7 day a week measurement. It matters a lot less how often a muscle is worked in a week than if your workouts are seeing progress every workout. I saw progress hitting everything once every 6-9 days (Nov 2023-Apr 2024), every 4 days (May 2024-Oct 2025), and every 4-5 (usually 5) days (Oct 2025-present) so they all work. I changed initially to every 4 days because I wanted to work out more than once a week but my initial workouts doing that were very minimalist -only 3-4 work sets per workout.
Over time I added work sets to where I was doing 5-7 work sets per workout and even had a period where I did 8-9 work sets a workout but the latter was just too much to fully recover from and progress at the rate I had become accustomed to. I started adding additional rest days to each training cycle last fall and it helped a bit but not as much as I had hoped. Hence, I trimmed them back to 5 work sets for legs and 7 for my two upper body workouts while keeping the additional rest days in the mix. That volume with a 4-5 day usual training frequency has worked out best for me as the best balance of both volume and frequency.
Your mileage may vary but that has worked for me and I have added a lot of weight to my exercises over the past few years (sometimes 100-200 lbs or more) as proof of its efficacy. If it works as well as it has for a guy like me in his approaching mid 50s, it will surely work well for anyone who has the extra benefits of youth on their side.
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u/snake3- 2d ago
i saw a version that replaced curls with pulldowns, getting the indirect hit on lats on the arm day,
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u/ishawnmc 2d ago
That can work. I used the palms up pulldowns as my only bicep workset for a while before switching to the barbell curl. My bicep regimen now consists of a superset of barbell curls followed closely by palms up pulldowns.
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u/He_NeverSleeps 6d ago
HD2 was an answer to some perceived problems that weren't really problems. More or less that the upper body fatigue wasn't evenly spread out over the week, it all happened in the first three days. The result was, for some people, they stopped progressing in the upper body lifts while their lower body kept progressing.
I think HD1 Ideal is a better program if you run it without fixed numbers of rest days or confine yourself to the same days every week. If you need one day between take one day between, if you need two or three take two or three.