Before he was the Governor of California or a record-setting box office actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a seven-time Mr. Olympia winner, five-time Mr. Universe, and the most recognizable bodybuilder in the world. He’s still considered by many to be the best ambassador for fitness on the planet today, even though he hasn’t competed on stage in almost 45 years.
If you’re looking for words of bodybuilding wisdom from the man himself, we found nine tips Schwarzenegger has offered over the years to help you achieve personal fitness goals.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 9 Tips for Bodybuilding
- Emphasize Supersets
- Don’t Skip Dumbbell Pullovers
- Use the Shocking Principle
- Get Some Rest
- Flex to Build Your Physique
- Deadlifts for Grip Strength
- Dial 4-11
- Make Your Routine Automatic
- Protein Matters. A Lot.
Emphasize Supersets
“The Austrian Oak” may be associated with supersets more than any other training hack in the game. For those new to training, supersets call for you to perform two or more exercises back to back without rest. They’re usually utilized for exercises that train the same general body parts, but Schwarzenegger had a different approach that he wrote about in his book, The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding.
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“Supersetting two different body parts, such as chest and back (one of my favorites) or biceps and triceps, allows one muscle group to rest while you are working the other, allowing you to exercise on a continual basis, which is great for cardiovascular conditioning,” Schwarzenegger wrote.
For Schwarzenegger, supersetting was key to his training because, as he put it, the pump he got made him feel like he had “the body of King Kong.”
Don’t Skip Dumbbell Pullovers
The dumbbell pullover is a golden-age gem that trains both the chest and back together in one movement. And in an article for Muscle & Fitness, Schwarzenegger detailed how this one move was his secret for building his massive upper body.
“Some authorities disagree, but I firmly believe that doing pullovers for a number of years increased the size of my rib cage and kicked me toward that 57-inch mark,” Schwarzenegger wrote. “It also, of course, works the pecs, particularly the outer and lower areas, and it gives the lats and serratus a bit of a workout.”
To do this exercise on your own, first lie down on a flat bench. Then hold a dumbbell straight over your head with your hands around the end of the dumbbell. Your palms should be facing up.
Then, lower the dumbbell down behind your head, keeping just a slight bend in your elbows. Once you feel the stretch in your lats and chest, return to the starting position.
Use the Shocking Principle
Schwarzenegger was as consistent as anyone in the weight room, but he knew that wasn’t always a good thing. He believed his body would grow accustomed to the same workouts day in and day out, so he always found ways to surprise his muscles with a new wrinkle in his training.
Known as the “Shocking Principle,” this strategy can be applied in several ways, such as throwing in higher reps, some surprise circuit work, and, one of Schwarzenegger’s favorite strategies, upping the weight, as he shared in The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding.
“One way I introduced radical change into my workouts was by training super heavy one day each week, typically on Friday,” he wrote. “We’d overload the weights on a couple of sets of each exercise to really train with power, then take Saturday off to recover from the soreness.”
Get Your Rest
As much as Schwarzenegger enjoyed training, he knew rest days were important for hitting his goals. And he wants his fans to follow that same rule.
“You don’t grow in the gym. In fact, it’s the only time you’re not growing. You break down your muscles when you train, and the remainder of the day you build them back up,” he said, according to longtime bodybuilding journalist Greg Merritt. “I thought of sleep or even just rest as growing time, and, as the name suggests, that time is crucial to bodybuilding success.”
[Related: What You Need To Know About Muscle Recovery]
Schwarzenegger focused on getting anywhere from eight to 10 hours of sleep a night, and he would take a nap in between his two sessions a day when he was training for the Mr. Olympia contest.
Flex to Build Your Physique
Posing is foundational for every bodybuilder, but, according to Schwarzenegger, there’s more to it than just looking good on the stage. His intense off-season posing practice helped bring more detail and definition to his physique, helping him edge out victories over contemporaries like Franco Columbu and Lou Ferrigno. He shared his mindset behind posing in The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding.
“On heavy days especially, I always include a great deal of posing and flexing along with the heavy weight training,” Schwarzenegger wrote. “Hitting a lot of side chest shots and most muscular poses, along with intense training, is the best way I know how to bring out the pectoral striations.”
According to Schwarzenegger, this strategy of revealing striations is far superior to bodybuilders who rely on dehydrating themselves to achieve similar results.
Deadlifts for Grip Strength
Grip strength sometimes falls under the radar for many, but it’s absolutely key if you want to lift bigger weights. And while there are many ways to go about improving your grip, Schwarzenegger relayed a couple of hacks in his newsletter, with one being as basic as it gets.
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“We used to do what you call farmer’s walks every so often, but we called it walking with dumbbells to the ocean,” Schwarzenegger wrote. “But mostly, my grip strength came from heavy deadlifts that were a part of my routine.”
Dial 4-1-1
Rep tempo matters in lifting, and Schwarzenegger learned early in his training that how you lifted was as important as what you lifted. He offered his newsletter readers a strategy they could perform in future workouts to build muscle and get stronger.
It’s called the 4-1-1 tempo, and it breaks down like this:
- The “4” is a reference to how many seconds it should take to lower the weight during an exercise.
- The first “1” references how many seconds to pause at the bottom of the lift.
- And the second “1” indicates how quickly you should return to the starting position.
“The 4-1-1 tempo forces you to control the weight through the full range of motion, which gives your body an incredible stretch,” Schwarzenegger wrote in his newsletter. “Plus, when you lower the weight under control, instead of just dropping into the bottom of the lift, you’re more likely to protect your joints and reduce the likelihood of injury.”
Make Your Routine Automatic
Have you ever sat in bed after a late night and convinced yourself to skip the gym? It happens to the best of us, but sometimes, those missed sessions can turn into a habit. For Schwarzenegger, it’s a battle he tries to win right when he wakes up every morning by crafting such a rigid, automatic routine that he doesn’t even have time to think about skipping the gym.
“You need discipline until your routine is so automatic that you never think about it. Because once you start thinking, your mind will fight with itself,” Schwarzenegger wrote in his newsletter. “The part of you that wants to sit still (it lives in us all!) will tell the motivated part that you can start tomorrow. The only way to silence that is by removing those thoughts with simple behaviors that guide you like a machine to start your day. That’s why when I wake up, there’s never any question about what I am doing.”
[Related: The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Own Bodybuilding Workout Plan]
To stay on track, Schwarzenegger boils his mornings down to a science.
“Each morning, I make the coffee and feed the dogs and [his miniature horse and donkey] Whiskey and Lulu. While I drink my coffee, I check my emails and read a couple of newspapers,” he wrote. “And as soon as my coffee is finished, I ride my bike to the gym and exercise, and then I eat breakfast. That’s the first time of the day that I let myself start thinking.”
Having a set routine allows Schwarzenegger to get out of bed, stay on track, and remain consistent with his training, even at 76 years old.
Protein Matters. A Lot.
Once you put in the work, you’ve gotta feed the machine. Nutrition and recovery are as important as the training itself, and Schwarzenegger has plenty of advice on doing it right.
“The importance of protein for a hard-training lifter can’t be overstated. Everything I ate as a competitor was geared first and foremost to how much protein it had,” he wrote. “My diet was based less on what I was hungry for and more on ensuring I met my daily protein requirements.”
And for Schwarzenegger, that daily requirement was simple: One gram per pound of body weight. Though opinions differ — with some sources saying you can benefit from 1.2 to 1.6 grams — the Oak chose this rule for its simplicity. (And you can’t argue with those results.)
Learn From the Best
Arnold Schwarzenegger carved a permanent spot on bodybuilding’s Mount Rushmore thanks to his seven Mr. Olympia titles, his iconic performance in Pumping Iron, and his ability to connect with a global audience. But it’s easy to forget about the countless hours of work it took for him to craft a physique worthy of that reputation.
These are just a sampling of Schwarzenegger’s timeless tips for anyone who steps into the gym, whether you’re aiming to eventually light up a bodybuilding stage or just want to improve your life. Though there really is no one-size-fits-all advice for fitness, you can’t go wrong with words of wisdom from a legend of this caliber.
Featured Image: @schwarzeneggerboss on Instagram
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