How To Train For Mass | Arnold Schwarzenegger's Blueprint Training Program

0:00 (film reel rattling) (piano music)- [Arnold] Not every legend is a myth.

0:10 Some are flesh and blood.

0:13 Some legends walk among us.

0:15 But, they aren't born, they are built.

0:20 Legends are made from iron and sweat,

0:23 mind and muscle, blood and vision, and victory.

0:30 Legends and champions, they grow, they win, they conquer.

0:39 There's a legend behind every legacy.

0:43 There's a blueprint behind every legend.

0:48 I'm Arnold Schwarzenegger.

0:50 This is my blueprint.

0:52 (piano music) (film reel rattling)- [Narrator] Arnold Schwarzenegger,

0:58 28 years old, six foot two, two hundred and 40 pounds.

1:03 Mr.

1:03 Olympia for the past five years.

1:05 He is preparing to defend his title this year for the last time.

1:09 All Mr.

1:10 Universes from the past five years or so come and get together

1:13 in one contest and we find out who's the best of all the Mr.

1:17 Universes.

1:18 So they created the Mr.

1:19 Olympia contest, which is then the top contest,

1:21 and then whoever wins that is the top bodybuilder.

1:24 And you are the top bodybuilder.

1:25 Right, yeah.

1:26 I think that everyone knows when they get into training that you're not

1:29 going to go and become a champion from one day to the next.

1:32 But the question is, how can I speed up the process?

1:34 (inspirational piano music) And then the important thing is,

1:44 did you train the proper way, which is to train the basics,

1:47 if it is the squats, if the two arm curl, if it's the bend over rowing,

1:51 if it's the clean and the press,

1:53 the bench press, the incline press, the dumbbell press,

1:56 all of those basic exercises, and that's what you need to do,

1:59 especially the last three months before a competition.

2:02 You've got to shock the muscle, shock the muscle and shock the muscle

2:06 with different kind of training principles.

2:09 Expose your weak points.

2:12 You're gonna go and hit those marks, and then you move the bar higher.

2:16 Then you move the bar higher, and you feel that with hard work,

2:20 you can achieve the goals and you can become successful.

2:24 (inspirational orchestra music) (film reel rattling)-

2:37 [Arnold] The important thing for people

2:38 to recognize is that not everyone wants to be a champion.

2:43 Not everyone has the desire to stand on stage,

2:47 to stay up there on stage and win Mr.

2:49 Universe or Mr.

2:49 America or the World's Best Built Man and Mr.

2:52 Olympia and all of those kind of titles.

2:55 No.

2:56 But they can apply the same principles.

3:00 One thing I can tell you.

3:01 There's major mistakes that are being made today

3:04 in bodybuilding by not covering those basic exercises.

3:08 Because today men are going to the gymnasium,

3:10 I don't see anymore the kids learning about the cleaning and pressing or they

3:14 to the two arm snatch and they do the upward rowing from the floor up,

3:18 and all of those kind of exercises that are so

3:20 important to create the traps and to create the lower back.

3:25 (film rattling) I think that the three

3:30 exercises for chest today I have always done.

3:33 The first year when I started training and the last 10 when I was training,

3:37 is bench press, incline press in different levels,

3:42 so to start low, medium and high, and then flys.

3:47 I mean, to me the flys was an exercise

3:50 that gave me the full pectoral muscle development,

3:56 because I went all the way out and almost hitting the ground and I was

4:00 a big believer in expanding the chest

4:02 as much as possible and giving that stretch,

4:04 because remember with muscles the important thing always is

4:07 to get the stretch and to get the flex.

4:10 And so, to me, that going all the way out

4:12 with the dumbbells as far as you can to get that stretch,

4:16 and then to come in and then to have the dumbbells

4:18 touch and then flex like you're doing the most muscular on top,

4:22 and then going out again, those are the kind of exercises to me that were like,

4:27 you could not replace them with any machine.

4:30 This was it.

4:35 One of the main things, of course,

4:37 in order to create size and to create muscle growth,

4:42 which sometimes the body will hit a wall.

4:46 What that basically means is that the body is saying,

4:48 "Look, I know all your tricks,

4:51 "I know you're gonna start first with bench press,

4:54 "and then I know you're gonna walk over to the "chin-up bar and do chin-ups,

4:58 "and then I know you're coming back "to the bench press and then

5:00 you "go to the chin-up bar and come back to the bench press.

5:02 "I know that routine.

5:04 "I know exactly everything you do "and I am prepared

5:07 for that." So you have to go and use the shocking principle.

5:12 (intense orchestra music) The body, and if this chest knows that I'm gonna start

5:20 with 135 and then I go to 225 and do 275,

5:23 I'm gonna go and start now with 315, and I'm gonna do 20 reps with 315.

5:31 And then I'm gonna go and have the guys pull off plates and then have 225 left,

5:36 and then I'm gonna do another 10 reps.

5:39 And then I'm gonna have them take off another

5:41 45 pound plate and then I have 135 left,

5:43 and then I'm gonna go to do another 10 reps.

5:46 Or maybe if I can, do 15 or 20 reps,

5:49 and let's see if the pectoral muscle is used to that.

5:53 Then always you will find that your pectoral muscle is shaking after that.

5:57 It did not know what to do because it's cramping

5:59 and it is being tortured and it is in pain,

6:04 because you've now shocked the muscle.

6:07 (film rattling) Bend over rowing with a barbell and the t-bar rowing.

6:13 I mean, any kind of a rowing exercise that uses the thickness,

6:16 those are the exercises I always relied to, again,

6:19 from the beginning to the end.

6:20 There's a lot of bodybuilders that have a kind of a deficiency when

6:23 it comes to the lower back and to the striation of the lower back,

6:27 which you only get from stiff legged deadlift and from regular deadlift,

6:30 and from bend over rowing and all the stuff without supporting your chest.

6:34 You've got to let your body free and let the lower

6:39 back hold you up while you're doing the bend over rowing.

6:42 We did off the bench balancing on the bench up to 315 pounds bend over rowing,

6:49 because that's what gave you that strength in the back

6:52 and gave you the thickness of the back,

6:54 because remember when you train the back you

6:57 need the width and you need the thickness,

7:00 but you need the thickness in the lower part of the back,

7:02 you need the thickness in the top of the back

7:04 and the outer back and in the center back,

7:06 so you've got to train and to find exercises for all of these different things.

7:13 Curls, barbell curls.

7:15 I was up doing reps with 275 in the barbell curl.

7:20 Many times we would start out with the weight,

7:23 with a heavy weight and do just one rep.

7:26 Then I have them pull off plates and do curl,

7:28 but just enough that I can now do two reps.

7:30 Then pull off plates and do the three reps,

7:32 then pull off more plates and do four reps after that.

7:35 And so this is how I would go up until, without ever putting the bar down,

7:39 to really let the bicep know, "you don't know what's coming,

7:43 "you're not gonna get used "to my training method.

7:45 "I'm gonna have all kinds "of tricks up my sleeve." I mean,

7:48 it was absolutely essential to do the barbell

7:51 curl to create the thickness of the bicep,

7:53 to do the dumbbell curl on the incline bench, and to do the concentration curl.

7:58 Because the concentration curl isolated the biceps with the heavy weights,

8:02 not with light weight, but do heavy weight,

8:04 but to isolate it and to really concentrate and to create that peak

8:08 on the outside of the bicep that they need when you do your back shots.

8:19 The tricep was a lot of narrow bench press in the early days,

8:24 then triceps extensions down and then overhead tricep extension with one

8:28 arm and with both arms and then also tricep extension

8:32 out of bar where you let the head go under

8:35 the bar and press out and use your own body weight.

8:42 Shoulders.

8:43 Dumbbell presses, barbell presses in the front and in the back.

8:49 I mean, we always did the rear press behind the neck kind of presses.

8:53 The military presses, the dumbbell press, which is now called the Arnold Press,

8:58 because there was a certain way that it was done

9:00 in order to really create the stretch of the front deltoid.

9:03 We come down with the elbow here, not just to here,

9:05 but they come all the way down and then to rotate

9:07 out and go up and to get the full flex.

9:10 And then lateral raises,

9:12 and especially bent over lateral raises on the bench, that's a 45-degree bench.

9:18 This is a specialty that I've learned at Vince Gironda's gym.

9:23 He had this cutout on the face where you could still breathe,

9:25 where you don't have to look sideways but you can breathe.

9:28 But it is 45 degrees and to turn your wrist

9:32 outward like this and it is a fantastic rear deltoid exercise.

9:39 We many times went into the gym just one day a week where

9:44 we went to 110-pound dumbbells and we did dumbbell presses, we did six reps.

9:52 That's all we could do, six reps.

9:53 So we picked up the hundred and did another six reps.

9:56 Put them down and took the 90s and did another six reps.

9:58 Then picked up the 80s and we went all the way down

10:02 to the 40s and barely could to six reps then with the 40s.

10:06 But I can tell you that I did not know where to put my arm,

10:10 because my deltoids were screaming.

10:13 They were in pain.

10:14 Why?

10:15 Because I shocked the muscle.

10:18 (film rattling) Squats is I think the most

10:23 important exercise to create thighs, big thighs.

10:27 Squats, rear squats, front squats,

10:30 leg extensions, lunges, stiff legged deadlifts,

10:35 or good morning exercise with stiff legs, and a lot of leg curls.

10:41 Then sometimes in order to shock the body and the muscle,

10:45 we would switch from squats to leg press,

10:47 so just load up the leg press machine and do

10:49 a lot of leg press and stuff like that.

10:51 (film rattling) There will be regular ab training that we did for abs,

10:57 which is just leg raises.

10:59 We did straight legs, leg raises with bent knees, sit-ups, roman chair sit-ups,

11:05 which gives you the 500 reps, which was an absolute necessity,

11:08 and we all believe in, and then crunches.

11:12 Everything fits together now,

11:14 and all I have to do now is get my posing routine down more perfect,

11:18 which is almost impossible to do, you know.

11:21 It's perfect already.

11:23 Oh yeah.

11:24 It's down to a point.

11:26 Wait when you see it.

11:28 (laughing) I think the important thing is that you always go all out

11:32 in every set and that you really don't save yourself for the next set,

11:37 because there's another big mistake that a lot of people make.

11:40 They say, okay I'm gonna do 20 sets,

11:41 so I better take it easy on the third and fourth set,

11:44 and then the fifth set and then the 10th set,

11:46 because I still have 10 sets to go.

11:48 But that's the wrong approach.

11:49 Each set ought to be going all out.

11:54 I think the most important thing is that you eat the right way

11:58 and that you get in the amount of protein that your body needs,

12:02 and there's always, of course, a debate how much protein does the body need.

12:05 I always lived off the formula that for every pound

12:08 of body weight I want to get one gram of protein.

12:12 The challenge, of course,

12:12 is that how do you get this 250 grams into the body and have

12:16 the body take it all in, rather than just letting it go through?

12:20 I felt like that for me it worked best when I had five meals a day.

12:29 There's some people that can work with three meals.

12:32 For me, five meals was the answer.

12:34 And the reason is because I never was a big eater.

12:37 I always felt comfortable with a regular-sized steak.

12:41 If you give me a 10 ounce steak, even in my hey day, I was happy.

12:46 And to have a bit of vegetable, so to have some sliced tomatoes on it,

12:49 and then some salad or something like that, I'm fine.

12:53 In the morning, if you gave me just three scrambled eggs with a little

12:56 bit of bacon or sausage with some cut in tomatoes and onions,

13:00 I was fine with that.

13:02 The only thing is that two hours later, after that breakfast, I was hungry.

13:08 And so when I was sitting at Santa Monica City College,

13:12 or I was in the workplace doing construction work, or wherever I was,

13:17 I would pull out of my bag a little plastic container that had a cup

13:23 on it that you usually use at the bar to mix things at the bar.

13:29 And I would have my milk in there and I would have my protein powder in there

13:33 and everything like this, and I would just close

13:35 it up and then put it in my bag.

13:37 And then I'd be sitting in the classroom,

13:39 and I would just pull it out, shake it up like that.

13:41 Everyone would be looking,

13:42 kind of, "what the hell is he doing now?" And I would be shaking my protein,

13:46 (mimicking shaker) Just like a bartender doing all the little tricks,

13:50 and then I would drink it, close it up and put it away.

13:55 That, to me, was the additional 30 grams of protein that I needed at that time,

13:59 and then I would be an hour later going to the gym.

14:03 Then we'd be working out for two and a half hours,

14:04 and then we would go for lunch.

14:06 There would be a late lunch,

14:07 and then I would have again a regular steak and then two

14:10 hours later after that I would have another one of those protein drinks.

14:13 So I would have two times a day protein

14:17 drinks in order to get the 250 grams of protein,

14:21 because as I said, it is absolutely essential that you have

14:25 enough protein so that you can really experience the muscle growth.

14:31 We have to recognize that we would not get all of the nutrients, the vitamins,

14:36 the minerals and the proteins and all of this stuff

14:39 that the body needs just with regular meals.

14:42 This is why we have supplements.

14:45 And that's why they are called supplements, because we are supplementing,

14:50 because we don't get enough from regular meals

14:53 no matter how healthy and how good you eat.

14:56 [Announcer] All three contestants, Lou Ferrigno,

14:58 Serge Nubret and Arnold Schwarzenegger for a pose

15:00 down for the final decision for the judges.

15:04 [Arnold] So now I've built a certain amount of mass during the year,

15:08 and I've worked now on certain weak points throughout the year,

15:13 and now with the combination of the diet

15:16 and of high repetitions and more exercises and more sets,

15:22 take that mass and chisel it down and work on the details.

15:27 And that's why I called the period before competition the most exciting period,

15:32 because that where you really have to concentrate,

15:35 pay close attention to it every day,

15:37 look at yourself in the mirror in an honest way, and expose your weak points.

15:43 That motivates you then.

15:45 That's what makes you train harder, So you've got to expose those weak points.

15:49 But the key thing is to set the course, to do the training every day,

15:52 to eat the right way, and you're gonna go and hit those marks.

15:58 Then you move the bar higher, then you move the bar higher.

16:01 It is really exciting to do that, and you feel that with hard work,

16:06 you can achieve the goals and you can become successful.

16:14 The training principles and the nutritional principles,

16:17 the kind of protein that you need and vitamins you need

16:19 and minerals you need and all of these kind of supplements,

16:22 it all still stays exactly the same.

16:24 That is the important thing.

16:27 (cheering)- [Announcer] And the winner, the one and only Arnold Schwarzenegger!

16:36 (crowd cheering) (dramatic music)- Bodybuilding has

16:54 been a beautiful experience for me,

16:55 and I will continue it for the rest of my life.

16:58 I only stopped competing, but I am not stopping bodybuilding.

17:01 It's the greatest sport (crowd cheering) Thank you.

17:06 (film rattling)