Today’s Chapter is based on the book “Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder” by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-born American actor, businessman, film producer, politician, and former professional bodybuilder who became one of the world’s greatest bodybuilders, winning Mr. Olympia seven times. He rose to international fame as a Hollywood action star, starring in blockbuster films like The Terminator, Conan the Barbarian, Total Recall, and True Lies, and was once the highest-paid actor in Hollywood.
Here’s what I learned:
Have A Clear Vision
“If you can dream it, you can do it.”
— Walt Disney
Long before Arnold Schwarzernegger ever held a Mr. Universe trophy, he visualized himself winning it. Even at a young age, he believed this goal of his wasn’t a childhood fantasy. It was a conviction so strong that it shaped every decision he made. Schwarzenegger makes it clear that knowing exactly what you want is the foundation of all success.
As a matter of fact, he explains that “It was the summer I turned fifteen, a magical season for me because that year I’d discovered exactly what I wanted to do with my life. It was more than a young boy’s mere pipe dream of a distant, hazy future—confused fantasies of being a fireman, detective, sailor, test pilot, or spy. I knew I was going to be a bodybuilder. It wasn’t simply that either. I would be the best bodybuilder in the world, the greatest, the best-built man.”
While most people drift through their early life without knowing what they truly want, Arnold Schwarzenegger was lucky as he was locked in his goal and never wavered. He was able to do so because he found good role models when he was young. He knew he didn’t want to be “normal” or to live a regular life. He wanted to more than that. His first inspiration was Reg Park who was a bodybuilder that played the role of Hercules in a movie. After watching a movie of Reg Park, Schwarzernegger decided that he wanted to become a bodybuilder and eventually go to America to become an actor. He writes, “Reg Park looked so magnificent in the role of Hercules I was transfixed. And, sitting there in the theater, I knew that was going to be me. I would look like Reg Park. I studied every move he made, every gesture.”
“With my desire and my drive, I definitely wasn’t normal. Normal people can be happy with a regular life. I was different. I felt there was more to life than just plodding through an average existence. I’d always been impressed by stories of greatness and power. Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon were names I knew and remembered. I wanted to do something special, to be recognized as the best. I saw bodybuilding as the vehicle that would take me to the top, and I put all my energy into it.”
— Arnold Schwarzenegger
Furthermore, Schwarzenegger believes that visualizing what you want is a good method to push yourself to succeed. When he was working out at a younger age, he always had the image of Reg Park in his mind as a mental reminder to himself to keep pushing even through pain. But more importantly, Schwarzernegger believes that visualization is important for self-belief. While he was doubted by many people, even his own parents, he never lost faith. He writes, “I knew I was a winner. 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.”
As such, it is clear that to having a mental picture keeps you hungry and focused towards your goal even amid setbacks. While vision alone isn’t enough if it is not paired with action, Schwarzenegger’s story is a perfect example of how ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results by visualization and by refusing to be average.
“At that point my own thinking was tuned in to only one thing: becoming Mr. Universe. In my own mind, I was Mr. Universe; I had this absolutely clear vision of myself up on the dais with the trophy. It was only a matter of time before the whole world would be able to see it too. And it made no difference to me how much I had to struggle to get there.”
— Arnold Schwarzenegger
This reminds me of what we have learned from Joe Montana who believed that achieving great things requires knowing what you are pursuing. He mentions, “it is impossible to strive for something until we know what it is we are pursuing. You have to know what you want.”
If we do not know what are specific goals are, it is very difficult to have the drive, discipline or imagination to achieve them. As such, the first thing to do is to identify what we want to accomplish. Not only that, I believe it is primordial to choose which goals we need to focus on in order to manage our time better.
One way of doing this is by writing down the goals we want to achieve and to circle the top three we want to achieve. The rest should be eliminated.
“This first principle, knowing what we want, is the beginning of achieving performance excellence.”
— Joe Montana
Once we have a goal in mind, Montana explains that visualization is a great mental tool in obtaining the positive results that we desire. He elaborates that “By concentrating on the image or outcome we desire, we can step into an “as if” reality, experiencing something as if it is really happening.”
He explains that the most important aspect of the visualization process is imagination. The greater the imagination, the more effective the visualization process will be. This idea reminds me of the importance of having imagination to succeed in business.
Work on the Mind
“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
One of the key takeaways from Arnold Schwarzenegger is the idea that bodybuilding is not solely about the muscles, it is also about the mind. In fact, he believes that the qualities that separate champions from everyone else are disciple, self-confidence and mental control. Schwarzenegger learned early on that it is, fundamentally, a psychological endeavor. He realized that the body will only go where the mind commands it. By treating training as a form of meditation, he developed a level of control that allowed him to isolate and grow muscles that others neglected.
He writes that “The point is, I was learning more and more about the mind, about the power it has over the body. It meant having complete communication with the muscles, always feeling what was happening to my muscles the day after a workout. The most important thing is that my mind was always in touch with my body; I felt my muscles continuously; I always took an inventory before working out. I flexed my muscles and got in touch. That not only helped me train; it was like meditating. I locked my mind into my muscle during training, as if I’d transplanted my mind into the tissue itself. By just thinking about it, I could actually send blood into a muscle.”
As such, in his book, Schwarzenegger mentions a three-part formula which is the secret to working out efficiently:
“The secret is contained in a three-part formula I learned in the gym: self-confidence, a positive mental attitude, and honest hard work. Many people are aware of these principles, but very few can put them into practice. Every day I hear someone say, “I’m too fat. I need to lose twenty-five pounds, but I can’t. I never seem to improve.” I’d hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak. I can lose ten to forty pounds rapidly, easily, painlessly, by simply setting my mind to it.”
— Arnold Schwarzenegger
Obviously the mind and the body are linked together. Schwarzenegger discovered early that by transforming his body, he earned things far more valuable than solely having a better physique, such as building better habits and better self-confidence. He explains that, “I believe I benefited in other ways that finally brought everything into balance. One of these was my self-confidence, which grew as I saw how much control I was gaining over my body. In two or three years I had actually been able to change my body entirely. That told me something. If I had been able to change my body that much, I could also, through the same discipline and determination, change anything else I wanted. I could change my habits, my whole outlook on life.”
By consequence, Schwarzenegger understood that mental concentration was everything in working out. He didn’t just go through the motions but he connected his mind directly to his muscles. This takeaway is crucial. Most people fail not because they lack talent or opportunity, but because they lack mental fortitude. Schwarzenegger teaches us that the battle is first won or lost in the mind.
“Bodybuilders hung on to me like fleas, because they thought if they did the same exercises I did they would get the same kind of muscles. But I watched them fall away with absolutely no results except exhaustion. They weren’t mentally prepared for intensive championship training; they weren’t thinking about it. I knew the secret: Concentrate while you’re training. Do not allow other thoughts to enter your mind.”
— Arnold Schwarzenegger
Similarly, we have learned previously that Chris Bosh is also an advocate for young athletes to dedicate significant time to mental development, arguing that intellectual growth complements physical prowess. He draws parallels from athletes who succeeded through strategy and knowledge, such as Greg Maddux, a legendary professional baseball pitcher, widely regarded as one of the greatest in Major League Baseball (MLB) history.
Bosh writes that Maddux was “one of the most dominant pitchers when I was growing up. If you ever saw him pitch, you know he was pretty much untouchable in his prime. You also know that the dude looked like an accountant or a middle school teacher. He didn’t have the dominating physical presence of a Randy Johnson or Roger Clemens. His fastball rarely got above 90 miles per hour. But he ended his career in the top ten all-time for strikeouts and wins—and he played right through baseball’s steroid era and home-run explosion. It wasn’t physical prowess that gave Maddux his edge. It was his mental advantage. He knew every single hitter’s tendencies and weaknesses, he knew how they hit against him and even how he’d pitched them the last time they faced each other. Like a chess grand master, he’d played out at-bats before the game even started. He’d beaten 80 percent of the hitters he faced with his mind—with his focus and preparation and understanding of the game—before they’d even stepped into the batter’s box.“
As such, Bosh argues that we should cultivate our mind. He explains that the word cultivate comes from the Latin word meaning “to grow”, similarly to how you cultivate a garden or a piece of farmland. By consequence, he believes that cultivating one’s mind isn’t something that happens overnight and requires a long and patient methodical process.
“You have to plant the seeds—that’s learning the basics, figuring out what you’re passionate about outside of your sport, paying attention in class. You have to water the seeds—that’s coming back to the thing you’re passionate about almost every day, putting in the time, developing your mastery. And then you get to collect the fruit, your reward for all of that work. In this case, the reward is that you get to be an interesting person—to others, sure, but mainly to yourself.”
— Chris Bosh
Furthermore, Chris Bosh is also a practitioner of multi-disciplinary thinking. As a matter of fact, he believes that a lot of successful athletes get value from exposure to ideas outside of their field of expertise. He explains that “The book Candace Parker credits for her mental toughness is Chop Wood, Carry Water. Tom Brady likes The Inner Game of Tennis, which obviously isn’t about football at all. I’ve gotten real athletic benefits from books about ancient philosophy, martial arts, science, psychology, and so many other topics.“
Work on your Weaknesses
“Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.”
— Knute Rockne
A big reason of what makes Arnold Schwarzenegger special is his willingness to face his weaknesses heads-on. He doesn’t make any excuses when he losses, and instead, he analyzed, learned and came back stronger from his failures.
For example, when he placed second at his first ever Mr. Universe contest, instead of feeling sorry for himself, he analyzed his weaknesses and promised himself to work on them for the next year. He explains that, “As always, once I was over the initial disappointment of losing, I began trying to understand exactly why I had lost. I tried to be honest, to analyze it fairly. Aside from my total lack of finish, I still had some serious weaknesses. I had come to the contest with something good, but not good enough to win. I had a lot of mass, a great rough cut. My weak points were calves and thighs. I needed to work on posing, on diet, and all the finer points of bodybuilding. For me, that was a real turning point. I decided I had to go back and spend a year on things I had never really given any time to at all.”
While this may seem obvious, many bodybuilders make the critical mistake of solely working on their strengths because it is the easy thing to do. Schwarzenegger mentions that “Many bodybuilders refuse to do this; they keep working on their strong points, which is more gratifying. But I didn’t want the best arms or legs or chest. I wanted to be the best-built man in the world.”
As others avoid their weaknesses, Schwarzenegger ran toward his, as it was a way for him to grow from them. Real progress happens when you stare at your weaknesses and decide to turn them into strengths.
“I was honest with myself about what my body looked like and where I’d have to improve. As soon as I became aware of a weak point I went all out to eliminate it.”
— Arnold Schwarzenegger
Similarly, Schwarzenegger was not afraid of pain, but embraced it. At a early age, he discovered that pain is not a sign to stop, but a sign that you’re breaking through to a new level. This concept hit him when he took a training partner into the forest with 250 pounds and did squats for three hours straight. He narrates, “We ended up doing something like fifty-five sets of squats each. The last hour seemed endless. But it worked. Our thighs pumped up like balloons. That first day we gave our thigh muscles such a shock that we couldn’t walk right for a week. We barely could crawl. Our legs had never experienced anything as tough as those fifty-five sets. And each of us put something like an eighth or a quarter of an inch on our thighs; they just blew up, they had no chance to survive except to grow.”
He concluded that experience by mentioning that “That was the first time I knew pain could become pleasure. We were benefiting from pain. We were breaking through the pain barrier and shocking the muscle. We looked at this pain as a positive thing, because we grew.”
“The theory was this: surprise the body. Don’t always do what it expects. This was a new way of promoting muscle growth. I saw it having amazing results on me and I started to preach this as a method for bodybuilding.”
— Arnold Schwarzenegger
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