“I was striving to be the most muscular man, and it got me into the movies. It got me everything that I have.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”
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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
“All I know is that the first step is to create a vision, because when you see the vision – the beautiful vision – that creates the want power.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“learning to think, read, and write like an American. I didn’t want to just wait till I picked it up. One weekend a couple”
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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.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Mass is vital to a bodybuilder’s physique. But it is the shape and the quality of this mass that win contests.”
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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
“In weeks that followed, I refined this vision until it was very specific. I was going to go for the Mr. Universe title; I was going to break records in power lifting; I was going to Hollywood; I was going to be like Reg Park. The vision became so clear in my mind that I felt like it had to happen. There was no alternative; it was this or nothing. My mother noticed right away that something was different. I was coming home with a big smile. I told her that I was training, and she could see I found joy in becoming stronger.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“The difference between those who adapted and those who didn't, Gorton said, was a willingness to totally commit.”
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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
“Every morning you have two options. Continue to sleep with your dreams or wake up and chase them.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“I do the same exercises I did 50 years ago and they still work. I eat the same food I ate 50 years ago and it still works.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
