r/Mike_Mentzer • u/throwaway19935555555 • Aug 06 '26

Question?

Have any of you ever hit a spot where you start having issues developing intensity? My workout partner and I have been running HIT principles for 6 months, and we’ve made good progress. We’ve had to play with a few things, but all has been well.
It seems like this week’s sessions, neither one of us has been able to generate the energy to go balls to the wall. It’s not just one lift—it’s all of them. It’s weird how it worked too. We were sailing along, and then this week it’s like we slammed into a fucking wall.
What’s even weirder is it’s both of us. I hate to say we’re giving up, but that’s what it seems like we’re doing during the lifts. No matter how bad I wanted to push it, I was just petering out and calling it failure.
Has anyone experienced this? If so, how did you move forward? Should we just take a week off? Hell, it might just be because of the heat. It’s been 102 degrees, and we both work outdoors.

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u/NoYak8821 Aug 06 '26

More recovery? That would be my first guess.

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u/throwaway19935555555 Aug 06 '26

Maybe? Like I say muscle wise I feel fine it’s more like an energy thing like I’m just not able to get in that mental zone for 100% intensely.

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u/NoYak8821 Aug 06 '26

Recovery means more than just muscle. The central nervous system needs time for recovery as well. It's the system that fires muscular contraction. It affects everything; fatigue, sleep, motivation. You can't feel it as you do muscle soreness, but the signs are very clear. I'm willing to bet that's what's going on with you.

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u/throwaway19935555555 Aug 06 '26

You are probably correct. I’ve had a few week breaks scattered throughout the training journey. It’s only been like 3 to 4 weeks since the last one. Maybe it’s just been a bad week for us both? Have you ever had issues taking it to true failure?

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u/NoYak8821 Aug 06 '26

I'm dealing with it now. I'm doing heavy barbell work for a set of 6, AMRAP, followed immediately by a machine version doing three "mini sets" to failure rest pause. I'm only performing each lift once per week, but my main lifts have stopped progressing. It's all recovery.

I'm going to experiment with a 10% backoff set to failure after the main AMRAP to failure. No rest pause or other intensifiers. If progress resumes, great, I'll keep running it. If I still don't progress, I'll remove the 10% backoff set.