“When the boys come, instead of buying Barbie dolls, all of a sudden you’re into trucks and remote controls, cars and tanks. You buy building blocks and build castles and locomotives. You get into knives and later take them shooting with pistols, shotguns, and rifles. All of which made me very happy.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“in my opinion, Pullover machines are among the most valuable exercise machines you will find in a gym.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“So is that what’s important to you? To be able to freeze in the middle of a scene and to have somebody give you your line? Wouldn’t it be much better to go through Africa and show them how to dig wells and how to make vegetables grow and inspire them to plant?”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“It was a tough movie to make, with lots of stunts and injuries and craziness and night shooting and dust.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Being busy helping customers meant that I had no time to train the way I was used to, with an intense four-or five-hour workout each day. So I adopted the idea of training twice a day, two hours before work and two hours from seven to nine in the evening, when business slacked off and only the serious lifters were left. Split workouts seemed like an annoyance at first, but I realized I was onto something when I saw the results: I was concentrating better and recovering faster while grinding out longer and harder sets. On many days I would add a third training session at lunchtime. I'd isolate a body part that I thought was weak and give it thirty or forty minutes of my full attention, blasting twenty sets of calf raises, say, or one hundred triceps extensions. I did the same thing some nights after dinner, coming back to train for an hour at eleven o'clock. As I went to sleep in my snug little room, I'd often feel one or another muscle that I'd traumatized that day jumping and twitching-just a side effect of a successful workout and every pleasing, because I knew those fibers would now recover and grow.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“I didn't mind basic training. It taught me that something that seems impossible at the start can be achieved.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Because lower-back pain afflicts more than three-quarters of all Americans at some point, the sit-up is fairly universally contraindicated.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“In the past, before the physiology of abdominal training was well understood, bodybuilders used to do a lot of “conventional” abdominal exercises such as Sit-Ups and Leg Raises. Unfortunately, those are not primary abdominal exercises but instead work the iliopsoas muscles—the hip flexors.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“I never felt that I was good enough, strong enough, smart enough. He let me know that there was always room for improvement. A lot of sons would have been crippled by his demands, but instead the discipline rubbed off on me. I turned it into drive.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Positive thinking can be contagious. Being surrounded by winners helps you develop into a winner.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Kurt Marnul can win Mr. Austria," I thought, "and he's already told me that I could too if I train hard, so that's what I'm going to do." This thought made the hours of lifting tons of steel and iron actually a joy. Every painful set, every extra rep, was a step toward my goal of winning Mr. Austria and entering the Mr. Europe competition.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“It turns out that the governor of California has more authority to name appointees than any elected official in America except the president of the United States and the mayor of Chicago.
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
