Heavy Duty Building Part 3
posted by a.g.spinelli
So just as Howard Moscowitz turned the world of spaghetti sauce upside down (in Part 1), Mike Mentzer gave a mighty roar of reason and logic, forcing the worm to poke his head out of the horseradish, and bathe in a new, glorious world of SANITY. Mentzer, like Moscowitz, was about to challenge the orthodoxy, BIG TIME!
A Little History
In 1978, Mentzer did what most thought impossible, won the Mr. Universe in Acapulco, Mexico with the first and (thus far) only perfect score of 300; this after having won the North American Championships the previous year and the Mr. America the year before that. He repeated his perfect score miracle at the 1979 Mr. Olympia (the grand poobah of all bodybuilding events)by winning the heavyweight class, but alas lost the overall to Frank Zane.
These accomplishments would have been enough to propel the young Mentzer to stardom, but something else set him apart – his mind!
A Philosopher, An Intellectual and A Bodybuilder?
I am sure that many of you have read fitness articles from various sources, and typically they are not the prose of intellectuals, rather the writings (some might even say ramblings) of the average Joe. Not that there is anything wrong with the average Joe. Well crafted well thought out musings are, after all, well done, regardless of their source. And when Mike wrote, there was no question that he fit this bill BUT he also set himself apart. Here was a former medical school student determined to be a psychiatrist turned philosopher, devotee/disciple of Ayn Rand, student of politics, art, business AND a bodybuilder. Not your average author of bodybuilding articles in the 1970′s – far from it in fact.
to be Continued
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