What was arnolds workout routine

On the other hand Arnold relied on heavy rowing exercises and deadlifts to make his back thicker. Arnold believed these heavy barbell exercises were perfect for making the spinal erectors, the traps, the rhomboids and even the lats as thick as possible.

As you can see Arnold trained his upper back with a wide variety of exercises including pull ups, pulldowns, barbell rows and seated cable rows.

Arnold was also a big fan of deadlifts and sometimes performed them in his back or leg routine. It is a shame that many modern-day bodybuilders skip these old-school exercises like pull ups and barbell rows. If you want to build a wide, thick back then Arnold is a perfect role model. Arnold Schwarzenegger trained his shoulders and arms twice per week on Tuesday and Thursday using lots of sets, reps and exercises.

Arnold started almost all of his shoulder workouts with some type of overhead press. Then he moved onto different isolation exercises to train all 3 heads of the delts. Talk about a high-volume shoulder workout! Arnold believed that you had to train using a combination of compound and isolation exercises to maximally develop the shoulders. He started almost every shoulder workout with some type of overhead press.

Arnold used dumbbell overhead presses, military presses and even the controversial behind-the-neck press! It was widely considered to be one of the best mass-building shoulder exercises. It seems like most modern-day bodybuilders are terrified of this exercise! After his major pressing exercise Arnold moves onto a bunch of isolation exercises to really isolate and pump up the shoulders.

Arnold used many different types of shoulder raises but he also relied on all types of upright rows. Many modern-day bodybuilders such as Ronnie Coleman train their shoulders using a similar type of routine. Once Arnold finished training his shoulders he moved right onto training his biceps. Arnold has said on many different occasions that he used three primary exercises to build up his biceps: barbell curls, incline dumbbell curls and concentration curls.

Arnold believed in using exercises to really isolate the biceps. Arnold says that he lifted as much as pounds in the standing barbell curl for reps! Now THAT is a lot of weight! Here is a great video for this exercise:. Arnold performed his triceps routine right after training his biceps. Arnold used to visualize his biceps as mountain peaks that were exploding through the gym ceiling!

Modern research shows that Arnold was correct: visualizing your biceps performing the exercise and blowing up in size really does help with muscle growth. Arnold was never known for his triceps development but that was only because of his mind-blowing biceps development! In reality Arnold trained his triceps with just as much intensity as he did any other body part. Arnold stuck to the basic mass-building exercises for his tricep workouts.

He loved to perform exercises like close-grip bench presses, skull crushers and overhead triceps extensions. These were the exercises he got his best results from. You also have to keep in mind that Arnold performed a TON of pressing exercises for his chest and shoulders.

It may not look like a lot of volume compared to a Jay Cutler style arm workout but this simple triceps routine worked like magic for Arnold. Arnold trained his quads, hamstrings and calves twice per week on Wednesday and Saturday. Arnold started off his leg workout by training his quadriceps. Arnold was a big believer in back squats and front squats for building up his legs. Sometimes Arnold would place a small wooden board under his heels while he squatted.

This type of heels elevated squat makes your quadriceps work much harder and is a great strategy to use if you are a taller lifter. After squatting Arnold used all sorts of different machines to train his quadriceps including 45 degree leg presses, vertical leg presses, machine hack squats and leg extensions. Sometimes he also performed walking dumbbell lunges to bring up his quads. Arnold tried just about everything to bring up his legs at one point or another!

Arnold was known for his high-volume training style. His workouts took as much as hours to complete. She is the face behind the workout routine articles here on Jacked Gorilla.

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This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Connect with us. Recommended Supplement Stack. We earn a commission if you click this link and make a purchase at no additional cost to you. Olympia, I am training to stay as lean as possible, so I go through those exercises as a circuit with almost no rest," he says.

Schwarzenegger added that if your goal is to build more muscle, do fewer reps and instead of a circuit, do the exercises as a superset. That said, he concludes the answer by recommending everyone experiment and find out what works best for them, rather than simply copy and paste his routine. If what works for Arnold doesn't work for you, then it might have a negative impact on your motivation. Ultimately, the best routine is the one that keeps you coming back.

United States. For a good while, he trained delts first in workouts that also included arms, explaining that his delts were naturally weak and needed to be worked when fresh. You would have been hard-pressed to find Arnold training shoulders in the same workout as chest, as many people do. He often worked traps after delts in the same workout.

Training tips Arnold often split his quad workouts into two sessions, doing the first three thigh exercises in the morning and the last one or two in the evening. This assured that every exercise was performed at utmost intensity. Despite the intensity of his leg training, Arnold usually kept his rest periods between sets short—no more than one minute. Sometimes he would do leg curls in the middle of his quad workout after front squats and before leg presses to give the front of his thighs a short break.

He estimated that it takes a weight gain of about 10lbs to add an inch to the arms. To accomplish this, he would increase his calorie intake by 1,—2, calories a day over his typical diet. A typical rep for Arnold entailed lowering the weight slowly on the negative and exploding it up on the positive. During most of his career, Arnold trained arms two to three days per week with very high volume.

He was even known to devote one to two hours to his triceps alone. Biceps 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.

He felt that going very heavy was the best way to gain size, and if a little body English was required to get the weight up, so be it. To achieve full development, Arnold always included in his routine at least one exercise such as a dumbbell curl in which his palm rotated up supinated as he lifted the weight. Even though biceps are a relatively small muscle group, Arnold typically trained them at about the same volume as bigger body parts, and with the heaviest weights he could possibly manage.

He was even known to train abs twice a day when he wanted to make a noticeable difference in a short time. He was careful to avoid weighted oblique crunches, for fear they would build up muscle in that area and make his waistline bigger. He usually trained abs at the end of his workout, after calves—the other body part he felt needed more frequent training to spur the necessary development.

Anything that would shock the stubborn calves was fair game: high reps, low reps, super short rest periods 15—30 seconds , supersets, you name it. For the most part, his calves exercises took the calves through a full range of motion—down for a full stretch, then up till they nearly cramped.