Arnold - Steroids Source Talk

eazy · #1 (**permalink**) 05-23-2016, 05:53 AM

After less than a year of training, Arnold made his first contest appearance ever, in a weightlifting competition held in a beer hall (!) by the Athletic Union in Graz, his hometown. He cleaned and pressed 150 pounds. “The crowd gave a big cheer,” he wrote in his 2012 autobiography Total Recall. “The applause had an effect like I’d never imagined.” Buoyed by the audience, Arnold pressed 185 on his next attempt—“35 pounds more than I ever had before... I discovered that I performed much, much better in front of others.”

eazy · #2 (**permalink**) 05-23-2016, 05:53 AM

Later, Arnold had other victories in strength competitions, including the International Powerlifting Championships and the 1967 annual Munich stone-lifting contest, in which he hoisted a 560-pound stone—with no warmup. By the end of the 1960s, Arnold weighed 250 pounds, had a 520-pound bench press, and carried a physique that was rough and lacking definition, but undeniably Herculean.

eazy · #3 (**permalink**) 05-23-2016, 05:53 AM

Of course, Arnold’s flirtation with powerlifting led to his friendship with future Mr. Olympia Franco Columbu, whom Arnold in turn encouraged to take up bodybuilding. As Arnold wrote in his Encyclopedia, “Franco and I started out as weightlifters, which gave us a muscle density that bodybuilders who have not done power training lack.”

eazy · #4 (**permalink**) 05-23-2016, 05:53 AM

As Arnold’s film career took off in the late 1970s, his training shifted to suit whatever role he had to embody. As he told Men’s Fitness in 2012, “When I did Stay Hungry, [director] Bob Rafelson made me lose 30 pounds. So two-thirds of my training was cardio and one-third was weight training.” In contrast, when Arnold made Conan The Barbarian, “they wanted me to look like a powerful guy who had gotten his body through fighting and hard work. I had to be big and strong but not as defined, so I did heavier weight training.”

eazy · #5 (**permalink**) 05-23-2016, 05:54 AM

In general, throughout Arnold’s prime filmmaking years, he used lighter training loads and incorporated more circuit work, sometimes doing a set each of up to six exercises in a row without rest. The intense pace kept his heart rate up, allowing him to burn more calories and stay lean while keeping every muscle group pumped. It also allowed him to accomplish workouts in well under an hour, which made his travel and shooting schedules more manageable.

eazy · #6 (**permalink**) 05-23-2016, 05:54 AM

Arnold was renowned for having a massive trailer delivered to the sets of his movies, so that he could train between shooting scenes. He even allowed his co-stars to work out in it, including ex-wrestlers (and fellow future governor) Jesse Ventura, which he used while making Predator in the Mexican jungle.

eazy · #7 (**permalink**) 05-23-2016, 05:54 AM

In 1997, Arnold underwent open heart surgery to repair a defective valve, and doctors cautioned him to reduce the intensity of his training going forward. In 2003, he needed shoulder surgery after an accident on the set of Terminator 3—the shoulder was operated on again in 2012.