Famous Quotes From "The Oak"
"Having chicks around is the kind of thing that breaks up the intense training. It gives you relief, and then afterward you go back to the serious stuff."
"Having a pump is like having sex. I train two, sometimes three times a day. Each time I get a pump. It's great. I feel like I'm cuming all day."
"I was always dreaming about very powerful people - dictators and things like that. I was just always impressed by people who could be remembered for hundreds of years, or even, like Jesus, be for thousands of years remembered."
"The best activities for your health are pumping and humping."
"I'll be back."
"Hasta la vista, baby!"
"Bodybuilding is much like any other sport. To be successful, you must dedicate yourself 100% to your training, diet and mental approach."
"Everything I have, my career, my success, my family, I owe to America."
"I can promise you that when I go to Sacramento, I will pump up Sacramento."
"I didn't leave bodybuilding until I felt that I had gone as far as I could go. It will be the same with my film career. When I feel the time is right, I will then consider public service. I feel that the highest honor comes from serving people and your country."
"I just use my muscles as a conversation piece, like someone walking a cheetah down 42nd Street."
"Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer."
"Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength."
"The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That's what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they'll go through the pain no matter what happens."
"The resistance that you fight physically in the gym and the resistance that you fight in life can only build a strong character."
"The success I have achieved in bodybuilding, motion pictures, and business would not have been possible without the generosity of the American people and the freedom here to pursue your dreams."
"The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that."
"There is no place, no country, more compassionate more generous more accepting and more welcoming than the United States of America."
"To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say, don't be economic girlie men!"
"Training gives us an outlet for suppressed energies created by stress and thus tones the spirit just as exercise conditions the body."
"You know, nothing is more important than education, because nowhere are our stakes higher; our future depends on the quality of education of our children today."
"When I was ten years old I got this thing that I wanted to be the best in something, so I started swimming. I won championships, but I felt I couldn't be the best. I tried skiing, but there I felt I didn't have potential. I played soccer, but I didn't like that to well because there I didn't get the credit alone if I did something special. I just avoided team sports from then on.
Then I started lifting through the other sports and I enjoyed it the most. I won the Austrian championship in 1964 but found out I was too tall. So I quit that and went into bodybuilding. Two years later I found out that that's it-that's what I can be the best in."
"The only way to be a champion is by going through these forced reps and the torture and pain. That's why I call it the torture routine. Because it's like forced torture; Torturing my body. What helps me is to think of this pain as pleasure.
Pain makes me grow. Growing is what I want. Therefore, for me pain is pleasure. And so when I am experiencing pain I'm in heaven. It's great. People suggest this is masochistic. But they're wrong. I like pain for a particular reason. I don't like needles stuck in my arm. But I do like the pain that is necessary to be a champion."
"A beginner does eight repetitions of a certain exercise with his maximum weight on the barbell. As soon as it hurts, he thinks about stopping. I work beyond this point, which means I tell my mind that as soon as it starts aching it is growing. Growing is something unusual for the body when you are over eighteen.
The body isn't used to ten, eleven, or twelve reps with a maximum weight. Then I do ten or fifteen sets of this in a row. No human body was ever prepared for this and suddenly it is making itself grow to handle this new challenge, growing through this pain area.
Experiencing this pain in my muscles and aching and going on is my challenge. The last three or four reps is what makes the muscles grow. This area of pain divides a champion from someone who is not a champion. That's what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they'll go through the pain no matter what happens.
I have no fear of fainting. I do squats until I fall over and pass out. So what? It's not going to kill me. I wake up five minutes later and I'm OK. A lot of other athletes are afraid of this. So they don't pass out. They don't go on."
"If you want to be a champion you can't have any kind of outside negative coming in to affect you. So I trained myself for that. To be totally cold and not have things going through my mind. And it was a sad story when my father died. Because my mother called me on the phone and she said, "You know, your dad died." And this was exactly two months before a contest. "Are you coming home for the funeral?" She said.
I said: "No. It's too late. He's dead and nothing can be done. I'm sorry I can't come." And I didn't explain the reasons why, because how do you explain to a mother whose husband died, you just can't be bothered now because of a contest?"
"I can hide my feelings under my muscles. Definitely. I can hide them as long as necessary. And when I feel they can come out, I let them out. I think this is fantastic. It's great to have control over my mind. Other people get mixed up. They can't control themselves. They can't go to work for a week or they can't talk on the phone because they're crying.
I can switch myself back and forth. When I'm training for a competition, I can be what some people call inhuman, but really I think it's more like being superhuman. Then after the competition, I can switch off again be human and very emotional and so on."
"Not many people understand what a pump is. It must be experienced to be understood. It is the greatest feeling that I get. I search for this pump because it means that that my muscles will grow when I get it. I get a pump when the blood is running into my muscles. They become really tight with blood. Like the skin is going to explode any minute. It's like someone putting air in my muscles. It blows up. It feels fantastic."
"Body building should be fun because you get a feeling of satisfaction which is very hard to explain. A body builder knows when he pumps up his muscles it means growth. The muscles grow. So therefore he knows when he pumps up well, that is progress. And that satisfies him because he feels the progress in his body. Therefore the pump feels good.
It's actually the best feeling a body builder can have. It's a difficult thing to explain. Like sometimes we joke around and we get a good pump and we say you have to admit that a good pump is better than coming. Somebody off the street wouldn't understand that, but sometimes a pump is the best feeling you can have."
"My definition of a sport is that it's a physical activity that involves competition. Since bodybuilders train and then compete, we are certainly a sport. The unique thing about bodybuilding is that when I compete, it is just me on a stage alone. There is no field, no bat, no ball, no skis, no skates.
All other athletes have to use equipment, like a football. As soon as the football if thrown, where does the eye go? To the football. But I don't use anything in competition except myself. It's just me up there. Me alone. No coach. No nothing."
"I think the public thinks I am narcissistic because I look in the mirror. What they don't understand is that is the only way I can check my progress. How do I know that my muscles grow the way that I want? By flexing them and checking them in the mirror, by measuring them with a tape or possibly by stepping on a scale.
The mirror is by far the best because I can see each muscle's definition. That is very subtle. Sometimes even another bodybuilder cannot see what I can. A swimmer uses a stopwatch like a mirror. A jumper's tape is his mirror. But the public is weirdly afraid of themselves. They are guilty about the mirror. They think by looking in it there's something wrong. How many mirrors are there in America?"
"You don't really see a muscle as a part of you, in a way. You see it as a thing. You look at it as a thing and you say well this thing has to be built a little longer, the bicep has to be longer; or the tricep has to be thicker here in the elbow area. And you look at it and it doesn't even seem to belong to you. Like a sculpture. Then after looking at it a sculptor goes in with his thing and works a little bit, and you do maybe then some extra forced reps to get this lower part out. You form it. Just like a sculpture."
"What I'm doing is the thing I want to do. I don't care what other people think. If the rest of disagrees and says I shouldn't waste my time, I still will be a bodybuilder. I love it. I love the feeling in my muscles, I love the competition, and I love the things it gives me. I have never really had to work in my whole life. I've never had an eight to six job. I've always made good money. I've traveled all over the world competing and giving exhibitions.
I've made a profession out of a pastime, which perhaps only five percent of the population can do. The other ninety-five percent are frustrated office workers, working for someone else. I'm totally independent. So, I... feel... if I would live again or if I would be born again, I would do exactly the same thing."
"The better you get, the less you run around showing off as a muscle guy. You know, you wear regular shirts, loose shirts-not always trying to show what you have. You talk less about it.
It's like you have a little BMW-you want to race the hell out of this car, because you know it's going 110. But if you see a guy in a Ferrari or Lamborghini, they slide around at 60 on the freeway because they know if they press on that accelerator they are going to go 170. These things are the same in every field."
I mentioned that Arnold's progression of starting as a power-lifter and then moving on to being a bodybuilder was an integral part of his success as a champion bodybuilder. Arnold explains why power-lifting was so important to his success as a competitive bodybuilder by quoting the bodybuilder that he looked up to most, Reg Park, in his book The Education of a Bodybuilder:
Reg is using the analogy of a sculptor starting with a large mass and then chiseling it down to be the exact size and shape that they desire it to be. Keep in mind that the end result will always be smaller and contain less mass than the starting material.
