“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
“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
“What is the point of being on this Earth if you are going to be like everyone else?”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“I always believed in shooting for the top, and to become an American is like becoming a member of the winning team.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“More often than not, a lack of progress in your muscle-building efforts can be linked to nutritional shortcomings in your diet.”
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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
“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
“Positive thinking can be contagious. Being surrounded by winners helps you develop into a winner.”
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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.”
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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
