(piano music)

- [Arnold] Not every legend is a myth.

Some are flesh and blood.

Some legends walk among us.

But, they aren't born, they are built.

Legends are made from iron and sweat,

mind and muscle, blood and vision, and victory.

Legends and champions, they grow,

they win, they conquer.

There's a legend behind every legacy.

There's a blueprint behind every legend.

I'm Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This is my blueprint.

(piano music)

(film reel rattling)

- [Narrator] Arnold Schwarzenegger, 28 years old,

six foot two, two hundred and 40 pounds.

Mr. Olympia for the past five years.

He is preparing to defend his title

this year for the last time.

- All Mr. Universes from the past five years or so

come and get together in one contest and we find out

who's the best of all the Mr. Universes.

So they created the Mr. Olympia contest,

which is then the top contest,

and then whoever wins that is the top bodybuilder.

- And you are the top bodybuilder.

- Right, yeah.

- I think that everyone knows

when they get into training

that you're not going to go and

become a champion from one day to the next.

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

(inspirational piano music)

And then the important thing is,

did you train the proper way,

which is to train the basics,

if it is the squats, if the two arm curl,

if it's the bend over rowing, if it's the clean

and the press, the bench press, the incline press,

the dumbbell press, all of those basic exercises,

and that's what you need to do,

especially the last three months before a competition.

You've got to shock the muscle,

shock the muscle and shock the muscle

with different kind of training principles.

Expose your weak points.

You're gonna go and hit those marks,

and then you move the bar higher.

Then you move the bar higher,

and you feel that with hard work,

you can achieve the goals

and you can become successful.

(inspirational orchestra music)

(film reel rattling)

- [Arnold] The important thing for people

to recognize is that not everyone

wants to be a champion.

Not everyone has the desire to stand on stage,

to stay up there on stage and win Mr. Universe

or Mr. America or the World's Best Built Man

and Mr. Olympia and all of those kind of titles.

No. But they can apply the same principles.

One thing I can tell you.

There's major mistakes that are

being made today in bodybuilding

by not covering those basic exercises.

Because today men are going to the gymnasium,

I don't see anymore the kids learning about

the cleaning and pressing or they to the two arm snatch

and they do the upward rowing from the floor up,

and all of those kind of exercises

that are so important to create the traps

and to create the lower back.

(film rattling)

I think that the three exercises for chest today

I have always done.

The first year when I started training

and the last 10 when I was training,

is bench press, incline press in different levels,

so to start low, medium and high, and then flys.

I mean, to me the flys was an exercise that gave me

the full pectoral muscle development,

because I went all the way out

and almost hitting the ground and I was a big believer

in expanding the chest as much as possible

and giving that stretch,

because remember with muscles the important thing

always is to get the stretch and to get the flex.

And so, to me, that going all the way out

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

and then to come in and then to have

the dumbbells touch and then flex like you're

doing the most muscular on top, and then going out again,

those are the kind of exercises to me that were like,

you could not replace them with any machine.

This was it.

One of the main things, of course,

in order to create size and

to create muscle growth,

which sometimes the body will hit a wall.

What that basically means is that the body is saying,

"Look, I know all your tricks,

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

"and then I know you're gonna walk over to the

"chin-up bar and do chin-ups,

"and then I know you're coming back

"to the bench press and then you

"go to the chin-up bar and come back to the bench press.

"I know that routine.

"I know exactly everything you do

"and I am prepared for that."

So you have to go and use the shocking principle.

(intense orchestra music)

The body, and if this chest knows

that I'm gonna start with 135 and then I go to 225

and do 275, I'm gonna go and start now with 315,

and I'm gonna do 20 reps with 315.

And then I'm gonna go and have the guys

pull off plates and then have 225 left,

and then I'm gonna do another 10 reps.

And then I'm gonna have them take off

another 45 pound plate and then I have 135 left,

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

Or maybe if I can, do 15 or 20 reps,

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

Then always you will find that

your pectoral muscle is shaking after that.

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

and it is being tortured and it is in pain,

because you've now shocked the muscle.

(film rattling)

Bend over rowing with a barbell and the t-bar rowing.

I mean, any kind of a rowing exercise

that uses the thickness, those are the exercises

I always relied to, again, from the beginning to the end.

There's a lot of bodybuilders that have

a kind of a deficiency when it comes to the

lower back and to the striation of the lower back,

which you only get from stiff legged deadlift

and from regular deadlift, and from bend over rowing

and all the stuff without supporting your chest.

You've got to let your body free

and let the lower back hold you up while

you're doing the bend over rowing.

We did off the bench balancing on the bench

up to 315 pounds bend over rowing,

because that's what gave you that strength

in the back and gave you the thickness of the back,

because remember when you train the back

you need the width and you need the thickness,

but you need the thickness in the lower part of the back,

you need the thickness in the top of the back

and the outer back and in the center back,

so you've got to train and to find exercises

for all of these different things.

Curls, barbell curls.

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

Many times we would start out with the weight,

with a heavy weight and do just one rep.

Then I have them pull off plates and do curl,

but just enough that I can now do two reps.

Then pull off plates and do the three reps,

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

And so this is how I would go up until,

without ever putting the bar down,

to really let the bicep know,

"you don't know what's coming,

"you're not gonna get used

"to my training method.

"I'm gonna have all kinds

"of tricks up my sleeve."

I mean, it was absolutely essential

to do the barbell curl to create

the thickness of the bicep,

to do the dumbbell curl on the incline bench,

and to do the concentration curl.

Because the concentration curl isolated the biceps

with the heavy weights, not with light weight,

but do heavy weight, but to isolate it

and to really concentrate and to create

that peak on the outside of the bicep

that they need when you do your back shots.

The tricep was a lot of narrow bench press

in the early days, then triceps extensions down

and then overhead tricep extension with one arm

and with both arms and then also tricep extension

out of bar where you let the head go under the bar

and press out and use your own body weight.

Shoulders. Dumbbell presses, barbell presses

in the front and in the back.

I mean, we always did the rear press

behind the neck kind of presses.

The military presses, the dumbbell press,

which is now called the Arnold Press,

because there was a certain way that it was done

in order to really create the stretch

of the front deltoid.

We come down with the elbow here,

not just to here, but they come all the way down

and then to rotate out and go up and to get the full flex.

And then lateral raises, and especially

bent over lateral raises on the bench,

that's a 45-degree bench.

This is a specialty that I've

learned at Vince Gironda's gym.

He had this cutout on the face where you could

still breathe, where you don't have to look

sideways but you can breathe.

But it is 45 degrees and to turn your wrist outward

like this and it is a fantastic rear deltoid exercise.

We many times went into the gym just one day a week

where we went to 110-pound dumbbells

and we did dumbbell presses, we did six reps.

That's all we could do, six reps.

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

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

Then picked up the 80s and we went

all the way down to the 40s and barely

could to six reps then with the 40s.

But I can tell you that I did not know

where to put my arm, because my deltoids were screaming.

They were in pain. Why?

Because I shocked the muscle.

(film rattling)

Squats is I think the most important

exercise to create thighs, big thighs.

Squats, rear squats, front squats,

leg extensions, lunges, stiff legged deadlifts,

or good morning exercise with stiff legs,

and a lot of leg curls.

Then sometimes in order to shock the body and the muscle,

we would switch from squats to leg press,

so just load up the leg press machine and do

a lot of leg press and stuff like that.

(film rattling)

There will be regular ab training that we did for abs,

which is just leg raises.

We did straight legs, leg raises with bent knees,

sit-ups, roman chair sit-ups,

which gives you the 500 reps,

which was an absolute necessity,

and we all believe in, and then crunches.

Everything fits together now,

and all I have to do now

is get my posing routine down more perfect,

which is almost impossible to do, you know.