“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“The competition physique should be as much pure lean mass as possible, with any excess body fat stripped away. As the saying goes, “You can’t flex fat.” But fat on your body makes you feel bigger than you actually are, and this sense of being bigger is psychologically satisfying to most bodybuilders.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“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
“When you hook your feet under a support and lift your torso up in a conventional Sit-Up, you are also using the iliopsoas muscles.”
―
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.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“I knew I was a winner back in the late sixties. I knew I was destined for great things. People will say that kind of thinking is totally immodest. I agree. Modesty is not a word that applies to me in any way. I hope it never will.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“I was very glad I could afford to say no. With the income from my businesses, I didn’t need money from acting. I never wanted to be in a financially vulnerable position, where I had to take a part I didn’t like.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“That's what most people lack: having the guts to go on and just say they'll go through the pain no matter what happens.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“It was a tough movie to make, with lots of stunts and injuries and craziness and night shooting and dust.”
―
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.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Training was all I could think about. One Sunday when I found the stadium locked, I broke in and worked out in the freezing cold. Every painful set, every extra rep, was a step toward my goal of winning.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
