HOW TO TRAIN FOR MASS

INFINITY PODCASTS #156

 HOW TO TRAIN FOR MASS

(film reel rattling)

(piano music)
- [Arnold] Not every legend is a myth.
Some are flesh and blood.
Some legends walk among us.
But, they aren't born, they are built.
Legends are made from iron and sweat,
mind and muscle, blood and vision, and
victory.
Legends and champions, they grow,
they win, they conquer.
There's a legend behind every legacy.
There's a blueprint behind every legend.
I'm Arnold Schwarzenegger.
This is my blueprint.
(piano music)
(film reel rattling)
- [Narrator] Arnold Schwarzenegger, 28
years old,
six foot two, two hundred and 40
pounds.
Mr. Olympia for the past five years.
He is preparing to defend his title
 this year for the last time.
- All Mr. Universes from the past five
years or so
come and get together in one contest
and we find out
who's the best of all the Mr. Universes.
So they created the Mr. Olympia contest,
which is then the top contest,
and then whoever wins that is the top
bodybuilder.
- And you are the top bodybuilder.
- Right, yeah.
- I think that everyone knows
when they get into training
that you're not going to go and
become a champion from one day to the
next.
But the question is, how can I speed up
the process?
(inspirational piano music)
And then the important thing is,
did you train the proper way,
which is to train the basics,
if it is the squats, if the two arm curl,
if it's the bend over rowing, if it's the
 clean
and the press, the bench press, the
incline press,
the dumbbell press, all of those basic
exercises,
and that's what you need to do,
especially the last three months before a
competition.
You've got to shock the muscle,
shock the muscle and shock the muscle
with different kind of training
principles.
Expose your weak points.
You're gonna go and hit those marks,
and then you move the bar higher.
Then you move the bar higher,
and you feel that with hard work,
you can achieve the goals
and you can become successful.
(inspirational orchestra music)
(film reel rattling)
- [Arnold] The important thing for
people
to recognize is that not everyone
wants to be a champion.
Not everyone has the desire to stand on
stage,
to stay up there on stage and win Mr.
Universe
or Mr. America or the World's Best Built
Man
and Mr. Olympia and all of those kind
of titles.
No. But they can apply the same
principles.
One thing I can tell you.
There's major mistakes that are
being made today in bodybuilding
by not covering those basic exercises.
Because today men are going to the
gymnasium,
I don't see anymore the kids learning
about
the cleaning and pressing or they to the
two arm snatch
and they do the upward rowing from
the floor up,
and all of those kind of exercises
that are so important to create the traps
and to create the lower back.
 (film rattling)
I think that the three exercises for chest
today
I have always done.
The first year when I started training
and the last 10 when I was training,
is bench press, incline press in different
levels,
so to start low, medium and high, and
then flys.
I mean, to me the flys was an exercise
that gave me
the full pectoral muscle development,
because I went all the way out
and almost hitting the ground and I was
a big believer
in expanding the chest as much as
possible
and giving that stretch,
because remember with muscles the
important thing
always is to get the stretch and to get the
flex.
And so, to me, that going all the way out
with the dumbbells as far as you can to
 get that stretch,
and then to come in and then to have
the dumbbells touch and then flex like
you're
doing the most muscular on top, and
then going out again,
those are the kind of exercises to me that
were like,
you could not replace them with any
machine.
This was it.
One of the main things, of course,
in order to create size and
to create muscle growth,
which sometimes the body will hit a
wall.
What that basically means is that the
body is saying,
"Look, I know all your tricks,
"I know you're gonna start first with
bench press,
"and then I know you're gonna walk
over to the
"chin-up bar and do chin-ups,
"and then I know you're coming back
 "to the bench press and then you
"go to the chin-up bar and come back to
the bench press.
"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.
(intense orchestra music)
The body, and if this chest knows
that I'm gonna start with 135 and then I
go to 225
and do 275, I'm gonna go and start now
with 315,
and I'm gonna do 20 reps with 315.
And then I'm gonna go and have the
guys
pull off plates and then have 225 left,
and then I'm gonna do another 10 reps.
And then I'm gonna have them take off
another 45 pound plate and then I have
135 left,
and then I'm gonna go to do another 10
reps.
Or maybe if I can, do 15 or 20 reps,
 and let's see if the pectoral muscle is
used to that.
Then always you will find that
your pectoral muscle is shaking after
that.
It did not know what to do because it's
cramping
and it is being tortured and it is in pain,
because you've now shocked the
muscle.
(film rattling)
Bend over rowing with a barbell and the
t-bar rowing.
I mean, any kind of a rowing exercise
that uses the thickness, those are the
exercises
I always relied to, again, from the
beginning to the end.
There's a lot of bodybuilders that have
a kind of a deficiency when it comes to
the
lower back and to the striation of the
lower back,
which you only get from stiff legged
deadlift
 and from regular deadlift, and from
bend over rowing
and all the stuff without supporting
your chest.
You've got to let your body free
and let the lower back hold you up
while
you're doing the bend over rowing.
We did off the bench balancing on the
bench
up to 315 pounds bend over rowing,
because that's what gave you that
strength
in the back and gave you the thickness
of the back,
because remember when you train the
back
you need the width and you need the
thickness,
but you need the thickness in the lower
part of the back,
you need the thickness in the top of the
back
and the outer back and in the center
back,
 so you've got to train and to find
exercises
for all of these different things.
Curls, barbell curls.
I was up doing reps with 275 in the
barbell curl.
Many times we would start out with the
weight,
with a heavy weight and do just one
rep.
Then I have them pull off plates and do
curl,
but just enough that I can now do two
reps.
Then pull off plates and do the three
reps,
then pull off more plates and do four
reps after that.
And so this is how I would go up until,
without ever putting the bar down,
to really let the bicep know,
"you don't know what's coming,
"you're not gonna get used
"to my training method.
"I'm gonna have all kinds
 "of tricks up my sleeve."
I mean, it was absolutely essential
to do the barbell curl to create
the thickness of the bicep,
to do the dumbbell curl on the incline
bench,
and to do the concentration curl.
Because the concentration curl isolated
the biceps
with the heavy weights, not with light
weight,
but do heavy weight, but to isolate it
and to really concentrate and to create
that peak on the outside of the bicep
that they need when you do your back
shots.
The tricep was a lot of narrow bench
press
in the early days, then triceps extensions
down
and then overhead tricep extension with
one arm
and with both arms and then also tricep
extension
out of bar where you let the head go
 under the bar
and press out and use your own body
weight.
Shoulders. Dumbbell presses, barbell
presses
in the front and in the back.
I mean, we always did the rear press
behind the neck kind of presses.
The military presses, the dumbbell
press,
which is now called the Arnold Press,
because there was a certain way that it
was done
in order to really create the stretch
of the front deltoid.
We come down with the elbow here,
not just to here, but they come all the
way down
and then to rotate out and go up and to
get the full flex.
And then lateral raises, and especially
bent over lateral raises on the bench,
that's a 45-degree bench.
This is a specialty that I've
learned at Vince Gironda's gym.
 He had this cutout on the face where
you could
still breathe, where you don't have to
look
sideways but you can breathe.
But it is 45 degrees and to turn your
wrist outward
like this and it is a fantastic rear deltoid
exercise.
We many times went into the gym just
one day a week
where we went to 110-pound dumbbells
and we did dumbbell presses, we did
six reps.
That's all we could do, six reps.
So we picked up the hundred and did
another six reps.
Put them down and took the 90s and
did another six reps.
Then picked up the 80s and we went
all the way down to the 40s and barely
could to six reps then with the 40s.
But I can tell you that I did not know
where to put my arm, because my
deltoids were screaming.
 They were in pain. Why?
Because I shocked the muscle.
(film rattling)
Squats is I think the most important
exercise to create thighs, big thighs.
Squats, rear squats, front squats,
leg extensions, lunges, stiff legged
deadlifts,
or good morning exercise with stiff legs,
and a lot of leg curls.
Then sometimes in order to shock the
body and the muscle,
we would switch from squats to leg
press,
so just load up the leg press machine
and do
a lot of leg press and stuff like that.
(film rattling)
There will be regular ab training that we
did for abs,
which is just leg raises.
We did straight legs, leg raises with bent
knees,
sit-ups, roman chair sit-ups,
which gives you the 500 reps,
 which was an absolute necessity,
and we all believe in, and then crunches.
Everything fits together now,
and all I have to do now
is get my posing routine down more
perfect,
which is almost impossible to do, you
know.
It's perfect already. Oh yeah.
It's down to a point.
Wait when you see it. (laughing)
I think the important thing is that
you always go all out in every set
and that you really don't save yourself
for the next set, because there's another
big mistake that a lot of people make.
They say, okay I'm gonna do 20 sets,
so I better take it easy on the third and
fourth set,
and then the fifth set and then the 10th
set,
because I still have 10 sets to go.
But that's the wrong approach.
Each set ought to be going all out.
I think the most important thing is that
 you eat
the right way and that you get in the
amount
of protein that your body needs, and
there's always,
of course, a debate how much protein
does the body need.
I always lived off the formula that for
every pound
of body weight I want to get one gram
of protein.
The challenge, of course, is that how do
you get this
250 grams into the body and have the
body take it all in,
rather than just letting it go through?
I felt like that for me it worked best
when I had five meals a day.
There's some people that can work with
three meals.
For me, five meals was the answer.
And the reason is because I never was a
big eater.
I always felt comfortable with a regular-
sized steak.
 If you give me a 10 ounce steak,
even in my hey day, I was happy.
And to have a bit of vegetable, so to
have some
sliced tomatoes on it, and then some
salad
or something like that, I'm fine.
In the morning, if you gave me just three
scrambled eggs with a little bit of bacon
or sausage
with some cut in tomatoes and onions, I
was fine with that.
The only thing is that two hours later,
after that breakfast, I was hungry.
And so when I was sitting at Santa
Monica City College,
or I was in the workplace doing
construction work,
or wherever I was, I would pull out of
my bag
a little plastic container that had a cup
on it
that you usually use at the bar to mix
things at the bar.
And I would have my milk in there and
 I would have
my protein powder in there and
everything like this,
and I would just close it up and then put
it in my bag.
And then I'd be sitting in the classroom,
and I would just pull it out, shake it up
like that.
Everyone would be looking, kind of,
"what the hell is he doing now?"
And I would be shaking my protein,
(mimicking shaker)
Just like a bartender doing all the little
tricks,
and then I would drink it, close it up
and put it away.
That, to me, was the additional 30 grams
of protein
that I needed at that time,
and then I would be an hour later going
to the gym.
Then we'd be working out for two and a
half hours,
and then we would go for lunch.
There would be a late lunch, and then I
 would have
again a regular steak and then two
hours later after that
I would have another one of those
protein drinks.
So I would have two times a day protein
drinks
in order to get the 250 grams of protein,
because as I said, it is absolutely
essential
that you have enough protein so that
you can
really experience the muscle growth.
We have to recognize that we would not
get all of the nutrients, the vitamins, the
minerals
and the proteins and all of this stuff
that the body needs just with regular
meals.
This is why we have supplements.
And that's why they are called
supplements,
because we are supplementing,
because we don't get enough from
regular meals
 no matter how healthy and how good
you eat.
- [Announcer] All three contestants, Lou
Ferrigno,
Serge Nubret and Arnold
Schwarzenegger for a pose down
for the final decision for the judges.
- [Arnold] So now I've built a certain
amount of mass during the year,
and I've worked now on certain
weak points throughout the year,
and now with the combination of the
diet
and of high repetitions and more
exercises
and more sets, take that mass and chisel
it down
and work on the details.
And that's why I called the period
before competition
the most exciting period,
because that where you really have to
concentrate,
pay close attention to it every day,
look at yourself in the mirror in an
 honest way,
and expose your weak points.
That motivates you then.
That's what makes you train harder,
So you've got to expose those weak
points.
But the key thing is to set the course,
to do the training every day,
to eat the right way,
and you're gonna go and hit those
marks.
Then you move the bar higher,
then you move the bar higher.
It is really exciting to do that,
and you feel that with hard work,
you can achieve the goals and you can
become successful.
The training principles and the
nutritional principles,
the kind of protein that you need and
vitamins you need
and minerals you need and all of these
kind of supplements,
it all still stays exactly the same.
That is the important thing.
 (cheering)
- [Announcer] And the winner, the one
and only
Arnold Schwarzenegger! (crowd
cheering)
(dramatic music)
- Bodybuilding has been a beautiful
experience for me,
and I will continue it for the rest of my
life.
I only stopped competing,
but I am not stopping bodybuilding.
It's the greatest sport (crowd cheering)
Thank you.
(film rattling)

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