I Followed Mentzer For 2 Years. It Nearly Ruined Me | Dr Nash Jocic

Dr Nash Jocic: Philosophy, Bodybuilding and the Golden Era | Degrees of Health

Every so often, a conversation goes somewhere you didn’t expect. This was one of them.

Dr Nash Jocic came to bodybuilding through philosophy, not the other way round. He started with Hermann Hesse, arrived at a view that a person exists as three entities physical, intellectual and spiritual — and realised philosophy was only giving him two of them. Bodybuilding was the only thing he could find that was challenging enough for the third.

That was forty years ago. He’s 64 now, trains five times a week, does zero cardio, and has eaten broadly the same way for decades.

The interesting part is the wrong turn he took on the way there. In his early twenties, he followed Mike Mentzer’s heavy-duty system religiously for two years, hit 112kg, and couldn’t find the line between his chest and his shoulders. Then he went to his first bodybuilding show, looked at the men on stage, and had the thought that changes everything for anyone who’s had it: if those are bodybuilders, what am I?

Ben and Nash get into high volume and what it really means, why copying Serge Nubret won’t make you Nubret, rep ranges and time under tension, rest periods, and his hormonal case against eating six times a day. His most contrarian position is about the word “cardio” itself, and he goes after it hard. Underneath it all: Nietzsche, Spinoza, Sartre, Hobbes and the Buddha, deployed to make one point. Methods are many, principles are few. Stop looking for the recipe.

Worth your time whether you lift or not.

MILESTONE MOMENTS

⚡ Seventies lifters had two machines and protein powder that made you sick. By every measure, we should be producing better physiques now. We aren’t.

⚡ Mentzer won Mr Universe training like everyone else. The system he sold came later, after his shape went.

⚡ From 112kg to 82kg on stage. “I had to lose 30 kilos to see my six pack.”

⚡ The Buddha: “Do not rely on my stick, make your own one.”