It’s been more than four decades since Arnold Schwarzenegger won the last of his seven Mr. Olympia titles in 1980, yet the workouts that helped mold him into arguably the greatest bodybuilder ever are as valid today as they were then. From the time he migrated from Munich to Southern California in 1969, right through to his first retirement from professional bodybuilding in 1975 (1980 represented his brief competitive comeback), everything Arnold did revolved around training.
He would train twice a day at Gold’s Gym in Venice, joined by all of his closest friends—bodybuilding icons like the late-Franco Columbu, Frank Zane, and Dave Draper.
His workouts lasted hours, with a seemingly endless number of exercises and sets. It was the epitome of high-volume training, a style of working out criticized by most training experts today as not allowing adequate muscle recovery. But there was a method to Arnold’s madness. In the following slides, you’ll see—body part by body part—the actual workouts the Austrian Oak performed while in the prime of his career, when he was the undisputed king of bodybuilding.
Born: July 30, 1947, in Graz, Austria
Height: 6’1½”
Arms: 22″
Chest: 57″
Waist: 34″
Thighs: 28½”
Calves: 20″
Off-season Weight: Around 250 lbs.
Competition weight: 225–235 lbs.
a.m.: Chest, back
p.m.: Legs, calves, abs
a.m.: Shoulders, triceps, biceps
p.m.: Calves, abs
Trying to describe Arnold’s chest and back routines separately can get a little tricky; he supersetted the two exclusively for most of his bodybuilding career. (For the sake of organization in this article, however, we’ll focus on each body part separately, as each routine can also stand on its own.) Arnold had simple reasons for employing supersets: One, they saved time and allowed him to train chest and back combined in roughly one hour. Two, he felt he could handle more weight this way, and so develop greater muscle density (the same logic behind training opposing muscle groups together). And, of course, three, because he relished the experience.
As he once put it, “When the chest and the upper back”—essentially, his entire upper body—“are pumped simultaneously, there is an indescribable feeling of growth stimulation and massiveness.” But Arnold also warned beginners about this style of training, recommending they work into it slowly because of the demands it places on endurance and stamina. Even seasoned lifters can struggle. Arnold once told a story about introducing his chest/back workout to several experienced bodybuilders while visiting South Africa. According to the Oak, two of his training partners “passed out cold, and a third became so ill he lost his breakfast!”
| Exercise | Sets | Reps |
| Bench Press* | 1 | 30-45 |
| Bench Press | 5 | 20-6** |
| Incline Barbell Press | 5 | 10-15 |
| Flat-Bench Dumbbell Flye | 5 | 10-15 |
| Weighted Dip | 5 | 15 |
| Dumbbell Pullover | 5 | 15-20 |
*Performed as a warmup
** Arnold pyramided up in weight (and down in reps) every set
When Arnold was in pre-contest mode, he would amp up the intensity of his training by pairing his chest and back workouts, creating a mega workout of searing intensity. Here’s what it looked like:
| Exercise | Sets | Reps |
| Bench Press* | 1 | 30-45 |
| Bench Press | 5 | 6-8 |
| Wide-Grip Behind-the-Neck Chinup | 5 | 15-8* |
| Incline Barbell Press | 5 | 10-15 |
| T-Bar Row | 5 | 10-15 |
| Flat-Bench Dumbbell Flye | 5 | 10-15 |
| Wide-Grip Barbell Row*** | 5 | 10-15 |
| Dip | 5 | 15 |
| Close-Grip Chinup | 5 | 12 |
| Dumbbell Pullover | 5 | 15-20 |
| Iso-Tension Contraction**** |
*Performed as a warmup
**Pyramid up the weight and lower your reps set to set
***Performed standing on a block or bench for better ROM
****Performed as a finishing exercise
Building a wide, thick, detailed back isn’t a new idea revealed exclusively to modern-day bodybuilders like Ronnie Coleman, Jay Cutler, and Phil Heath. Arnold, Franco Columbu, and others they trained with also knew the importance of the back double-biceps and lat spread poses for winning major competitions. When Arnold trained back, he didn’t just concentrate on lifting the weight to a desired position as other bodybuilders did. After all, he would never be the best at training the way everyone else did. On lat pulldowns, for instance, he attempted to pull the sky down on top of him as opposed to simply moving the bar to his upper chest. When deadlifting, those weren’t weight plates on the ends of the barbell, they were massive planets. The thinking was abstract, sure, but effective nonetheless.
There was one potentially effective visualization technique Arnold didn’t know to use at the time. “Had I been aware of Conan [the Barbarian] during my competition years,” he said in the time leading up to that film, “I probably would have imagined I was him during my workouts.” He was intent on developing his back for the movie because he knew it would be easily visible from many camera angles—and the last thing he wanted was less-than-stellar lats if he was to be a proper barbarian. “I’ll want my back muscles to bristle with power,” he said. “If my back is writhing and rippling during fight scenes, the public will know that I am a rugged fighter.”
| Exercise | Sets | Reps |
| Wide-Grip Pullup | 5 | 15-8* |
| T-Bar Row | 5 | 10-15 |
| Bentover Barbell Row | 5 | 10-15 |
| Chinup | 5 | 12 |
| Barbell Deadlift | 3 | 6-10 |
*Pyramid up the weight and lower your reps set to set
“A man who has developed wide, broader shoulders feels superior and has a greater sense of security and confidence about him,” Arnold once told a magazine. Not surprisingly, he scoffed at the large number of bodybuilders he knew whose training regimens were absent any sort of shoulder work. No wonder the one exercise named after him, the Arnold Press, is a delt movement.
Early in his bodybuilding career, Arnold’s deltoids were the weakest aspect of his upper body. So he worked them tirelessly, and after winning the 1967 Mr. Universe contest in London, he attributed the victory in large part to his improved shoulder development. Three years later, at the 1970 Universe, he beat his idol Reg Park, and again wrote that he was thankful he’d trained his shoulders so hard.
Joe Weider once asked Arnold what role he thought bone structure played in shoulder development—in other words, were some people born with more potential than others? The future California governor acknowledged that certain individuals possess a genetic advantage (among them, Steve Reeves and Frank Zane), but that doesn’t mean others not so blessed can’t improve greatly in the area. He maintained that anyone could widen his shoulders by at least two inches via “direct and specialized training.”
| Exercise | Sets | Reps |
| Barbell Clean & Press | 1 | 20-30 |
| Arnold Press | 5 | 6 |
| – superset with – | ||
| Bentover Lateral Raise | 5 | 8-10 |
| Lying Lateral Raise* | 5 | 12 |
| Cable Lateral Raise | 5 | 12 |
| Alternating Dumbbell Front Raise | 3 | 12 |
*Lying sideways on an incline board
In Arnold’s early days, his leg-training protocol suffered from two critical weaknesses: disuse and, as Joe Weider called it, primitivism. The former was pretty straightforward: The young Austrian didn’t train legs at all in his first year of bodybuilding. After finally catching on to the needs of his lower body, he went overboard, even going so far as to train legs every day for a year with 10 sets of squats and 10 sets of leg curls. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t satisfied with the results.
His “primitive” ways were most obvious in the lifting “retreats” he and his buddies would go on in the Austrian countryside. They’d load up several cars with weights (and admiring girls) and drive to a remote area in the trees where they could train. They’d squat from morning till afternoon, rest, party, drink beer, then go right back to squatting again.
When Weider came into the picture, the antiquated training methods went by the wayside, as did the beer-drinking. He felt Arnold’s legs had become bulky and lacked definition. “[Your legs] suffer by comparison [to your upper body] and it is of the most urgent necessity that you completely alter your leg-training program,” Weider told young Arnold. “I rather imagine, too, that others may have noticed this odd effect and are puzzled by it.” Arnold agreed. The result of this rethinking was the type of workout you see here—not to mention the well-proportioned legs that helped him win seven Mr. Olympia titles.
| Exercise | Sets | Reps |
| Barbell Squat | 5 | 8 |
| Front Squat | 5 | 8-10 |
| Leg Press | 5 | 10 |
| Leg Extension | 5 | 10 |
| Lying Leg Curl | 8 | 10 |
Though his Alpine-peaked biceps could take much of the credit for his 22″ arms, Arnold was no slouch in the triceps department, either, sporting impressive horseshoes. After initially focusing on bi’s early in his career, he wised up and sought to build hulking triceps by employing multi-joint movements like the close-grip bench press and weighted dip to go along with his old-standbys, pressdowns (on a lat-pulldown machine) and French presses.
Arnold occasionally supersetted biceps and triceps, though usually only during pre-contest training. This further demonstrated his firm belief in the benefits of training opposing muscles together, an idea recognized by Joe Weider before him and many bodybuilders still today. The pre-contest routine typically consisted of five torturous bi/tri supersets repeated four times each, followed by five supersets for forearms. For gains in size, he’d do this twice a week; for definition, three times weekly.
Although he cautioned novice lifters against doing his routine (“This system…is a severe form of advanced training that is not recommended for beginners,” he once said), he did advocate the program to non-beginners in a feature article titled, “How I Built My 22½ -inch Arms.” “If you’re an advanced trainer and want to shock your arms into growth,” he wrote, “why not give my twice-a-week arm-growth program a try? It brought my arms up to their present massive size…see what it can do for you!”
| Exercise | Sets | Reps |
| Close-Grip Bench Press | 5-6 | 6-8 |
| Cable-Pushdown | 5-6 | 6-8 |
| Lying EZ-Bar French Press | 5-6 | 6-8 |
| Dumbbell Kickback | 5 | 6-8 |
Inspired by photos of his boyhood idol Reg Park in the German magazine Der Muskelbilder, Arnold made his first visit to a gym as a teenager. The young Oak watched gym-goers lifting weights, and did his best to commit the exercises to memory so he and his friends could do them at home. Four in particular stood out, all arms exercises: the cheating barbell and Zottman curls for biceps, and the pushdown and close-grip bench press for triceps. At the time, having big arms interested him the most, so this served as his starting point.
Surprisingly, when Arnold arrived in America he’d never even seen a preacher bench—an apparatus he’d soon come to use religiously (no pun intended) to build biceps that would surpass those of predecessors Larry Scott and Sergio Oliva. He also discovered that American bodybuilders trained more methodically and had a firmer understanding of anatomy and physiology than he did.
Despite already having a Mr. Universe title and two of the biggest arms in the world, he felt he could do better. “I wasn’t reaching my fullest potential,” he said years later. “The deep fibers of my muscles were untouched. It was as if I had built a large building on top of a foundation of sand.” He recalled watching Scott train and being “particularly fascinated watching him bomb his biceps on a curling machine. His arms looked deep and thick from training.” Despite the freakishly mountainous biceps peak Arnold developed, we can safely say it’s not a tumor.
| Exercise | Sets | Reps |
| Barbell Cheat Curl | 6-7 | 6-8 |
| Incline or Seated Dumbbell Curl | 6-7 | 6-8 |
| Preacher Curl | 6-7 | 6-8 |
| Concentration Curl | 5 | 6-8 |
| Barbell Reverse Curl | 5 | 8-10 |
| Reverse Preacher Curl | 5 | 8-10 |
| Barbell Wrist Curl | 7 | 10 |
Arnold’s midsection wasn’t his strong suit. He didn’t have a naturally small waist, nor did he possess the deeply etched six-pack of a Frank Zane or a Serge Nubret. But his abs weren’t a glaring weakness, either. Perhaps that was because he was a master of deception. Look at shots of him posing and you’ll notice that he would often twist his upper body in such a way that he’d end up facing the camera or the judges regardless of the pose. This gave him the appearance of having a smaller waist, and was an important strategy for him in competition.
He also defied any genetic shortcomings by adopting an extremely high-volume routine consisting of many exercises and lots of reps. He also acknowledged that eating clean played a major role in minimizing fat in his waist area, which allowed his abs to show through. That his vacuum pose wasn’t quite Zane-like wasn’t for lack of effort or passion. Arnold considered the midsection one of the most critical parts of the male physique, citing the sculpted abdominals of Greek gods as his inspiration. “In physique competitions, if your abdominal region has a slight layer of fatty tissue on it,” he once said, “you might as well forget about taking home a trophy.”
| Exercise | Sets | Reps |
| Hanging Knee Raise | 3 | 25-50 |
| Roman Chair Situp | 4 | 25-30 |
| Lying Leg Raise | 3 | 25-30 |
| Side-to-Side Twist | 3 | 50 |
| Back Extension | 3 | 15 |
| Seated Leg-Up | 4 | 25-50 |
Arnold’s self-consciousness about his calves has been well-publicized over the years. They used to be small, so he’d cut the bottoms off his sweatpants while he trained to expose them. This motivated him to improve the area, which he ultimately did by building massive gastroc and soleus muscles. Extreme high-volume and high-training frequency were his keys to bringing up this weak point; but it was even more than that. Arnold seemed to be a bit more cerebral when it came to calf training. Here’s what he had to say in a past issue of Muscle Builder:
“The calves are like no other muscle, and every day they seem to have a different mood. Sometimes I can do calf raises with shoes on and it feels better, then other times the shoes get in the way and I have to do this exercise with bare feet…It’s strange, kind of supernatural.
“A secret I learned is to test the calves’ personality or attitude with two or three sets, then I know which way they want to go that particular day. The calves will let you know—just give them a chance to ‘talk’ to you. [It’s] almost like they have a mind of their own—a brain that the other muscles don’t have.”
| Exercise | Sets | Reps |
| Donkey Calf Raise | 5 | 15-30 |
| Standing Calf Raise | 5 | 15-30 |
| Leg-Press Calf Raise | 5 | 20-30 |
| Standing One-Legged Dumbbell Calf Raise | 3 | 15-30 |
