“We had a strict routine that nothing could change: we'd get up at six, and it would be my job or Meinhard's to get milk from the farm door. When w were a little older and starting to play sports, exercises were added to the chores, and we had to earn our breakfast by doing sit-ups. In the afternoon, we'd finish our homework and chores, and my father would make us practice soccer no matter how bad the weather was.”
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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 didn't mind basic training. It taught me that something that seems impossible at the start can be achieved.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“On the airplane, Sly and I were smoking stogies and constantly trading jokes. We never talked about the feud. We were typical guys, totally in denial, as if there had never been any problem and nothing had ever happened.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“The average man,” explained the late Dr. Ernst Jokl, “loses fifty percent of his muscle mass between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“You must have a sincere and burning desire to achieve what you dream, dedicate yourself to making progress, and take control of your circumstances to change your body.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Try to keep your rest periods between sets down to a minute or less. In the first minute after a weight-training exercise you recover 72 percent of your strength, and by 3 minutes you have recovered all you are going to recover without extended rest.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“I love it when people say that something can’t be done. That’s when I really get motivated; I like to prove them wrong.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“If you want to turn a vision into reality, you have to give 100% and never stop believing in your dream.”
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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’d closed my ears to my friends’ horror stories about married life. “Ha! Now you get to argue about who should change the diapers.” Or “What kind of food makes a woman stop giving blow jobs? Wedding cake!” Or “Oh boy, wait until she hits menopause.” I paid no attention to any of that. “Just let me stumble into it,” I told them. “I don’t want to be forewarned.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
