What exercise? I'm going to be all exercise questions.

You look great, by the way. You look fantastic. Well, thank you. Thank you. I mean, because I think you've always been like the walking advocate for health and fitness for years and years. But I think one of the things is like as people age, so many people go away from training. You just see it all the time. But you're somebody who obviously you're the standard for lifting, but you still train. And it's something where I feel like somebody who is getting into their 50s or 60s and 70s, it's like you keep

training and you look great, man. But I cannot even take credit for it because, you know, the people always say, you're just a discipline. I have no discipline. It's just who you are. No, I'm addicted. Oh, you're addicted. It's an addiction. It's kind of like, I cannot even imagine the mornings without riding down to the gym with the bike and then working out. If I don have it like sometimes it doesn't work out because there's a morning schedule right away or something like then i miss it all day and i'm kind of lost in the way so it's like it's an addiction so i think that for the my entire life the 60 years that i've been working out now it's all because it's an addiction it's kind of like I have to yeah I have to go to the gym in order to feel good and because it's I always tell people I said the difference is like when I come down with my bike it's like going through a black and white movie then as soon as I work out and I ride back my bike to the to the hotel and I have some breakfast it becomes a colorful movie. It becomes colored. Everything is more beautiful. Everything is brighter. I look at life differently. Everything is positive and everything like this. So it's just that the workout and having done now something for yourself and having pumped up and having struggled a little bit, it makes you feel good for the rest of the day. Yeah.

So this is what I needed. You were at the precipice of bodybuilding and working out. What exercises showed up in your career that you were like, you're like, wait, what are they? I heard you talk about tricep extensions one time. I think they might have been in your book. And I was like, well, all the exercises showed up. Like all the stuff we just know as, I still do Arnold presses and you created that. But what other exercises showed up when you were working out and you're like, oh, this is brand new and I love it. Well, first of all, let me tell you, I was so fortunate that

I worked out and began my workouts in a weightlifting club. Why? Because I learned quickly that the basic exercises are extremely important. You know, like deadlift, the curl, the barbell curl, bench press, incline press, dumbbell press, deadlift. All of this stuff is basic stuff that is nothing with machines, but it's just with basic weight that if you build that and if you really use that, that you really can build the body, everything from ground up. Those are the basic exercises or cleaning the weight and then pressing it, snatching the weight up in one motion, all of this stuff is just so good. You know, so that to me was always the key thing. I always tell people, you know, you always, you learn how to do everything the perfect way for the rest of your life with the other machines because, you know, the basic exercises. So to me, the basics are the most important thing. Then the other thing is, when you talk about what I found out was, I said to myself, I was looking at my bicep and I said to myself, well, whenever I go like that, it flexes. I turn the wrist and the bicep flexes. I said, so therefore the motion is not just up and down, but it's also to turn the wrist. So now I put an inside of the dumbbell an extra two to five pounds. So now when I curl up like that, I struggle turning the wrist. And therefore, I get more of a cut and more of a height in my bicep. So this was something that no one could see because no one counts the blades and says, why is Arnold using on the left side only four blades and then on the right side there's five blades or something? They don't do that, right? So you can do that in a very, very subtle way. And then eventually I started explaining it. I said, look, I figured this out a long time ago. And I looked at the anatomy book and even talked about it, that one of the jobs that the biceps has is to turn the wrist. And so I said, well, here we are. I mean, we got to go and load up on the inside and do the turning of the dumbbell. So there's certain things that you can't do with just having a barbell because you don't turn. So people that are using a barbell and using a bridge or bench can only get a certain size bicep, but never can really get the height. So the height and the peak you only can get if you turn the wrist. With dumbbells. If you use dumbbells, exactly. Wow. That's right. Those are little things that you learn. And the key thing is also when eventually when you get into competition that you really figure out your own body because there is no routine that is exactly the same for everybody. You know, this is like buying gloves or buying shoes. There's different sizes, you know, and different colors and all that stuff. And the same is with the working out that, you know, like Frank and Franco, he had shorter thighs. So, therefore, he never had to do as much squats as I had to do. I had long legs, so I had to do twice as much leg work than Franco did. So even though we trained together, we sometimes split, and Franco was working more on calves or working more on his kind of like biceps problems that he had that I didn't have, and I had leg problems that he didn't have and stuff like that. So you have to kind of realize that everybody is built differently and everyone has different needs. And this is exactly the same, again, with everything. You cannot go and have one way of teaching someone a language. There's some people that are doing much better when you give them pictures and show them what the words are. Sometimes when you have them watch TV. Sometimes when you have conversations. Everyone operates differently. And so this is what you have to realize, that everyone is somewhat different. There are some common rules, but don't get stuck on those. Just figure out yourself what works for you.

Wow. I wanted

to ask you this because I've always been fascinated. Everybody who's ever trained, played sports, experiences cramps at some point right like you've had and there's you know it's usually that you're depleted from of sodium you need electrolytes in your system do you would you guys cramp in bodybuilding shows i would because you're flexing so hard i always wondered well

there was this problem at the day of the competition. And the reason was because you're trying to get rid of the fluid in your body. So doing exactly that, what you shouldn't do. I mean, you should do it in order to win, but you shouldn't do it because of health reasons. It's not really good. And then you're going to engage the muscles. So there's guys that actually have huge cramps on stage. They do. I've seen that. And this is also the time when you tell people to kind of lay off water so that they do cramp up and you win. And you win. How would you not have them? Like what's the way that you would? Well, I just never went that extreme with the whole thing. Oh, okay. So I said to myself, you know, if I lose because I have too much fluid, I'd rather keep a little bit of fluid because I know I have to do – the pre-charging sometimes takes three hours. Okay. So that means that you're posing for three hours. Yeah. You know, legs and calves and show me your back. And then these idiots ask you the same thing again. Oh, number seven and number nine, number two, number one. You come together, stand together closely and now do a back pose. Okay, didn't we just do a back pose? You know, it's like for the 15th time. Yeah. And he says, okay, turn around. Now we want to see your side chest pose and then okay now let's see the vacuum and they suck in your stomach you know and so you do this over and over and over because they want to compare with the different guys right and not just always the same yeah and so you stand out there for hours and now you go back at night when it's the final round, and you get judged by your posing and by your total performance. So now you have to do it again. So you can get cramped up. So the key, though, is don't be so dramatic. Don't be so dramatic. I, for instance, I remember in 1980, at the Missed Olympia, I came third in the pre-judging because I still had too much fluid. And the judges came to me and said, I'm sorry to tell you, but you're not going to win tonight. And I said, no, shit. I said, what's wrong? He says, you're not as sharp as you were the last time we saw you. This, of course, now five years later, I know that we understand that, but I just want you to know it's not going to happen. So I went literally into a sauna when I went back after the pre-judging. I went into a sauna at the hotel, and I posed for an hour to sweat out more fluid. And then I went back at night, and I was sharper. And then I did my best job, made the posing routine, and I ended up winning. Wow. Yeah. So you have to really find the right level so you don't kind of cramp up and you can't pose anymore and lose,

but still have, you know, kind of be sharp enough.