50 Training Secrets of the Mr. Olympia Champions! Part 5 - Arnold Schwarzenegger

The Mr. Olympia title represents the pinnacle of achievement in the sport of bodybuilding. Beginning in 1965, one man was chosen to represent the absolute best in muscular development in the entire world. It’s only natural that bodybuilders around the world, seeking to improve their own physiques and aspiring to greatness, would look to these men as role models on how to sculpt their own bodies and bring them closer and closer to perfection. With the 2017 Mr. Olympia just around the corner, we pay tribute to the event and its legendary champions. We’ve gathered 50 excellent training tips from six Mr. Olympia champions. Take their combined wisdom and use it to forge your own destiny in iron and muscle!

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Mr. Olympia 1970-1975, 1980

Train at the right kind of gym. “A few good bodybuilders are able to train at home or in their garages, but for most, the key to success is training in the right kind of gym. You don’t necessarily have to come out to California and train at World Gym or Gold’s Gym, but you do have to find a place where there is enough intensity so that unusual effort is considered normal. If you can do a 250-pound bench press and nobody around you can do any better, you are going to have trouble progressing to 300 pounds. But if there are some bodybuilders pressing 500 pounds right beside you, you are not going to remain satisfied with your own efforts for very long. You need a gym with both the right kind of facilities and the right kind of atmosphere.

“You have to be able to concentrate on what you’re doing, and some gyms allow this, while others discourage it. If you can find the right kind of training partner, so much the better. When you are aiming at 100 percent intensity in your workouts, you need somebody to kick you in the behind from time to time as well as praise you and give you encouragement when you finally get it right.”

The mind is more important than the body. “The body is important, but the mind is more important than the body. You have to visualize what your body ought to look like in order to make it win, because that’s what then creates the will. The will that makes you go into the gym every day, the will that makes you go and do the forced reps, that makes you go beyond. When you do the 500-pound reps in squats, and you can’t do another rep and your body is shaking, it’s the will that makes you go down one more time and struggle up. It’s all of this— the mental aspect— that motivates you and makes the difference between being in the gym full of joy and looking forward to doing that extra rep, and looking forward to doing those extra 100 reps in the sit-ups, and working past the pain barrier— all that is the mind. It’s not the body. That’s why I think the body is very important, but the mind is more important than the body.”

Every rep gets you closer to making your vision a reality. “You gotta go to the gym and feel like every rep that you do is getting you one step closer to that goal, to make that vision that you have turn into reality. And that’s why when you look at “Pumping Iron,” you can see that we always had great joy in the gymnasium. People were always saying, why would you laugh and have a good time— you’re working out for five hours? We did because I knew that every workout, every five hours, would get me closer to winning Mr. Olympia, Mr. Universe, Mr. World and all these things.”

Expand your chest, stretch and flex. “I think that the three exercises for chest that I have always done— the first year when I started training and the last year when I was training— are the bench press, incline press on different levels, so they start low, medium and high, and then flyes. Flyes were an exercise that gave me the full pectoral development because I went all the way out, almost hitting the ground. And I was a big believer in expanding the chest as much as possible and getting that stretch, because remember with muscles, the important thing always is to get the stretch, and get the flex. So to me, to go as far away with the dumbbells to get that stretch, and then to come in and have the dumbbells touch, and then flex like you’re doing the most muscular and then go out again— those are the kinds of exercises to me that you could not replace them with any machine. This was it.”

Shock the muscle. “One of the main things when you are creating size, and to create muscle growth, is that sometimes your body will hit the wall. What that basically means is that the body is saying, ‘I know all your tricks. I know you’re going start with the bench press. Then I know you’re going to walk over to the chin-up bar and do chin-ups. Then I know you’re going back to the bench press, back to the chin-ups and so on. I know that routine. I know exactly everything you do, and I am prepared for that.’

“So you have to go and use the shocking principle. The body, if it’s chest, knows I’m going start with 135, and then 225 and 275. I’m going to go now, and I’m going start with 315. And I’m going do 20 reps with 315, and then I’m going to have the guys go and pull off plates, and I have 225 left. And then I’m going to do another 10 reps. Then I’m going to take another 45-pound plate off and I have 135 left, and I’m going to do another 10 reps. Or maybe if I can, do another 15 or 20 reps, and let’s see if the pectoral muscle is used to that. And then all of a sudden, you’ll find that your pectoral muscle is shaking after that. And you don’t know what to do because it is cramping, and it is being tortured. It is in pain. Because you have now shocked the muscle.”

Work on your weak points. “I think we have to work on our weak points, and we have to expose our weak points so we’re embarrassed about it, and you do something about it. My weak point was my calves. Your calf measurement is supposed to be the same as your biceps. My biceps were 21 inches at that point, and my calves were only 19 inches. Therefore, I had to go and start training them with 1,000 pounds and do calf raises every day, 20-25 sets, and I had five or six guys on my back doing donkey raises, and I became a fanatic about that. But that’s the only way to really win.”

Bent-over rows give you thickness. “Bent-over rowing with a barbell, and the T-bar row— any kind of rowing exercise— gives you the thickness. Those are the exercises I always relied on, from the beginning to the end. There’s a lot of bodybuilders who have a deficiency when it comes to the lower back and the striations of the lower back, which you only get from stiff-leg deadlifts and from regular deadlifts, and bent-over rowing, and all that stuff without supporting your chest. You have to let your body be free and let your lower back hold up your body while you’re doing the bent-over rowing.”

Use heavy weights for peak biceps isolation. “I was up to doing reps with 275 in the barbell curl. Many times, you would start out with a heavy weight and do just one rep, and then have them pull off plates in the curl. But just enough that I can now do two reps, then pull off plates and do three reps, then pull off more plates and do four reps after that. And this is how we would go and build without ever putting the bar down, to really let the biceps know ‘you don’t know what’s coming.’ You’re not going to get used to my training methods. I’m going to have all kinds of tricks up my sleeve. It’s absolutely essential to do barbell curls to create the thickness of the biceps, the dumbbell curl on an incline bench and do the concentration curl. Because the concentration curl isolates the biceps. We did heavy weights to isolate, to concentrate and really create that peak on the outside of the biceps that you need when you do your back shots.”

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