“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
“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
“When you have a well developed body and you're confident, you see people bending your way, wanting to be on your side, wanting to do things for you.”
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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
“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.”
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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
“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
“Because lower-back pain afflicts more than three-quarters of all Americans at some point, the sit-up is fairly universally contraindicated.”
―
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
“Of course, now I had to show I was worthy, but I didn’t feel at all concerned. I would do whatever it took to get there. I didn’t share my feelings of pride with anybody. My style was to keep moving and not reflect too much. But it felt great.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
