“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.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.”
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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
“Always keep in mind that training stimulates growth, but that actual growth takes place while you are resting.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“I’m a big believer in hard work, grinding it out, and not stopping until it’s done,”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“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
“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
“When you hook your feet under a support and lift your torso up in a conventional Sit-Up, you are also using the iliopsoas muscles.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“I’d hear guys bragging about their new Gulfstream IV or IV-SP, and then I’d get to say, “That’s great, guys. Let me talk about my 747 . . .” It was a great conversation stopper.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Positive thinking can be contagious. Being surrounded by winners helps you develop into a winner.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“My fellow Republicans acted like they’d been punched in the stomach. “You have them on the ropes, go in for the kill!” they said. This was my first real taste of the new Republican ideology that any compromise is a sign of weakness.”
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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
“I knew I was a winner back in the late sixties. I knew I was destined for great things. People will say that kind of thinking is totally immodest. I agree. Modesty is not a word that applies to me in any way. I hope it never will.”
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Arnold Schwarzenegger
“On the airplane, Sly and I were smoking stogies and constantly trading jokes. We never talked about the feud. We were typical guys, totally in denial, as if there had never been any problem and nothing had ever happened.”
―
Arnold Schwarzenegger
