Arnold

by Arnold Schwarzenegger

  I realized, too, that every muscle had to be separated from the next muscle. Some of the standard exercises didn’t seem to work for me, so I had to develop exercises that would chisel into those muscle areas. Everything had to be separated, but it had to be tied together. What this meant in simple terms is that when you pose you ought to seem connected, but where your muscles connect there should be a split. For instance, the pectoral muscles and the deltoids should work together but there should be a definite groove where the two meet. Separation. Until that time, I had concentrated on mass and never bothered much about separation. I began to work to separate the muscles and get definition, which has to do with the configuration of the muscle itself.

  I sought exercises that would burn off every gram of fat between the muscles. I went at it like a scientist. I had to find a way to separate the deltoid from the trapezius. I developed an upward rowing exercise which I did on the beach with heavy weights. Then I came up with an exercise to separate the pectorals from the deltoid, which I called front raises with dumbbells. I did dips to separate the pectorals from the abdominals.

  My calves were still weak. I started training them before I did the rest of my workout, so I could put more weight on the machine and really blast them. If I couldn’t get enough weight on the machine, I got the biggest guy in the gym to sit on top of it. I began flexing my thighs, flexing my calves. I did a lot of tensing after each workout, employing it as a kind of super-isometrics. I posed before a mirror constantly. I spent hours lying in the sun to burn off the fat tissue just under the skin.

  Now every time I did an exhibition people would say, “I can’t believe the improvement you’ve made, Arnold. You’re getting more definition. All of a sudden you don’t look so rough any more. More quality is coming out.” I got feedback on those changes and I dug it. I could tense my legs now and see that my calves had come in. This gave me even greater confidence and drive. I recorded my progress on the charts I’d been keeping. And I pushed myself harder.

  The reason for the acceleration in the final few weeks was that I had heard rumors of a new rival. Dennis Tinnerino had just won Mr. America and was already spoken of in some circles as the new Mr. Universe. I got his pictures and checked them: he looked fantastic. Still, he didn’t have great arms, and I felt I had a better back and chest. But I recognized that his legs were better developed than mine. I had worked hard, but it’s impossible to transform legs very much in a single year. I felt I could almost equal him in legs, and in the other areas I felt I had him—hands down.

  I compared myself with Tinnerino’s pictures—although photographs are very deceiving. I was even more critical of myself than ever. I was taping my measurements and weighing myself every few days now. I was cutting myself down for the competition. Two weeks before the contest I did an exhibition in Wales. People told me I looked fantastic. But they had magazines with cover photographs of Dennis Tinnerino, and they were skeptical of my chances. They kept saying, “This is the guy you have to beat, Arnold. Look at how cut he is, look at his definition.” Tinnerino was the contender. I didn’t know if Chet Yorton was coming back or not, but it didn’t matter because now I could beat him easily. Dennis Tinnerino was obviously my biggest threat.

  When I returned to London from Wales, I trained one afternoon with Ricky Wayne. He was living in London and editing the English version of Muscle Builder magazine. He shook his head and said Tinnerino was so cut up, so incredible, that I didn’t have a chance. I felt the sting of Ricky’s words. He saw it and shrugged. That’s the way it was. I refused to believe it. Ricky went on to compound it with Tinnerino’s statistics. Measurements have always been exaggerated in muscle magazines, so I wasn’t worried about the measurements. But I could see from the photographs that Tinnerino was finished. He was stunning.

  “Okay,” I thought, “he looks like a winner but I’m going to beat him anyway.” I went back to Munich with less than two weeks until contest time. I trained harder than ever. I even went to the gym the morning of the day before the contest and put in three grueling hours. Then I caught a flight to London. I landed at midnight and decided not to go to bed. I was so busy psyching myself up for the contest, I couldn’t have slept anyway. Besides, I felt that staying up all night would burn off an extra few calories around my waist.

  At six the next morning I took the elevator down to the street. Already a crowd of bodybuilders was standing in front of the Royal Hotel. They’d probably all been too nervous to sleep, too.

  Tinnerino had come over from America with his manager, Leo Stern. Stern had taken him away from the whole scene, to create suspense, to keep people from seeing him before the contest.

  My friend Wag Bennett, who was one of the judges, met me that morning. He was helping me, giving me instructions, psyching me up. He had seen Tinnerino and agreed it would be close. I had brought a photographer friend with me, Albert Busek, and I sent him out as a spy to locate Tinnerino and see how he looked. Obviously, I was uneasy. Albert persuaded Leo Stern to let him in to take some pictures of Tinnerino. When he returned I could see he’d been impressed. “Arnold,” he said, almost as if he wished he didn’t have to tell me, “Tinnerino is incredible.”

  Finally that morning at the prejudging I saw Tinnerino myself. He had come down to watch the short and medium men compete. We talked briefly. But it was one of those situations where we were trying to psych each other out. He asked me how I was and I said, “Fantastic!” I leaned closer. “It’s the kind of day when you know you’re going to win.” I smiled and let my body open out slowly. I felt cocky. But I meant it. I was going to beat him.

  The prejudging of the tall men’s class was in the afternoon at one o’clock. I went up to take a nap at lunchtime and didn’t wake up until exactly one o’clock, when I heard Albert pounding on my door. He was yelling at me, saying I was going to be disqualified if I wasn’t onstage in ten minutes. I woke up in a daze, grabbed my posing trunks, and ran downstairs—the lineup was standing there, ready, waiting. I ran by, and it was kind of great. I mean there they all were, all pumped up, this awesome proliferation of muscles, and I was coming in cold and they knew it. I took a look at Dennis Tinnerino and I wasn’t all that impressed. He was in shape, he was cut, but he could have been bigger and better. That’s what I thought.

  I changed clothes quickly, smoothed on a little oil, and hurried back to the platform. I didn’t have time to pump up at all. But I had begun to get that feeling of magnificence I always have at a contest. I took a place in line right next to Tinnerino. He was the man to beat. I didn’t want the judges to make any mistakes because they couldn’t compare us. I heard all kinds of noise, everybody was talking about us. There was so much talking going on, the judges stopped calling poses. It was a strange moment. I remember checking out the lineup, getting my sights set on the competition. It was a cluster of bodies that might have been polished brass, skin burnished with oil until it shone in the stage light. Finally they quieted the people down and started calling for poses again. After the lineup came the individual posing. It was run off according to height, the shorter ones first. I was tallest, so I was last, after Tinnerino. That meant I would be the final attraction. Perfect.

  I watched every move Tinnerino made. He posed and got a lot of applause. He was very professional; he had spent time on all the details—trunks, hairstyle, everything. But I knew I could upstage him. Tall, easy, confident, I moved like a cat onto the posing platform. I felt good. My body was pumped and tight, blood surging out to every capillary. I just felt that there was no way Tinnerino could beat me. And I generated that onstage.

  When I hit my first arm pose the place fell apart; everybody started roaring. I swept into a back pose and the same thing happened. I limited my routine to ten poses (normally I’d do fifteen to twenty poses). I used only my best shots and left out anything I thought had even the slightest weak point. I did a side-back down position, changed to a side chest shot, another back pose, a straight-on back shot, then fi
nished with a side biceps pose. I had people screaming and whistling and hollering. I came back to the front for another double biceps pose. Then I finished off with the Most Muscular pose. Everybody started applauding and applauding and going crazy. Usually at the prejudging applause is not allowed because it might influence the judges. But the people couldn’t hold themselves back. This was my pump-up. Blood was rushing to every single area of my body. I didn’t need to do anything physical any more to pump up.

  The time came for the pose-off. After the individual posing, the judges called out the top six guys; they stand you in a line and call out the poses you are to do. They asked for a double biceps pose. I knew I had everyone beat there. Then a lat spread. I felt good with that one. Next they asked for a side chest pose. I knew I had the best chest. Then they asked for abdominals. Dennis Tinnerino had me in the abdominals; he had tight, quilted abdominals. He also beat me on calves. Then we were allowed to do our favorite poses. And all my rehearsing really helped me. I stood right next to Tinnerino and watched him constantly out of the corner of my eye. When he showed his abs or thighs, I hit a biceps pose; when he twisted to flex his calves, I drew myself up in a dramatic side-chest-back pose. I wiped everybody, including Tinnerino, off the stage. I got the best reaction—it was the first time I remember people really screaming, “Arnold! Arnold!”

  The judges came over afterward and complimented me. Without being too obvious, they gave me a great deal of special attention. Some judges felt I was better in every single muscle. From this, I was almost certain I’d won. Still, Tinnerino had me in certain areas. But I had a better posing routine, a better all-around presentation. The winner would not be announced until the next day, at the actual show. That meant waiting. People kept coming up and telling me I was the most sensational thing they’d ever seen. I liked hearing that, of course. But it was the judges’ decision that counted, and I was waiting for the show the next evening.

  Bodybuilders and fans hung around me that whole day. Everybody already assumed I was the winner. They started treating me as Mr. Universe. That was one of the great experiences of my life. But it was unsettling too. I still didn’t know for sure whether or not I was the winner. I went to my room. But I couldn’t stay in. I took the elevator down to the lobby of the hotel. Again, people congratulated me. “Don’t worry, Arnold, you’ve got it.” All I could do was wait and not let on that not a single cell in my body would accept second place. I walked around, let people compliment me, and listened to the comments they thought I couldn’t hear. I confess I loved it when they called me a monster. “Look,” they’d hiss. “It’s Arnold. He’s an animal.”

  The next night, for the final show when the winners would be announced and from them the Mr. Universe selected, I made sure I was not caught sleeping. Backstage, the atmosphere was intensely theatrical. I found the dressing room for the tall men’s class. I started pumping up half an hour before the show, working especially on all the things I thought were my weak points. I did chin-ups on water pipes—the first one was hot and I burned my hands. I did towel-pulls, handstand push-ups, regular pushups, dips between chairs, curls with towels, using any kind of a resistance movement I could for a pump. I got somebody to press down on my arms so I could do lateral raises, and force blood into the area of the deltoids, just to get the blood circulating. I did calf raises with one leg, sissy squats, just going down partway with my back straight, to put a little blood in the frontal thigh—I didn’t want to pump the thigh too much, otherwise I’d lose it again before I went onstage.

  We were like gladiators. There was oil all over the place; people were speaking different languages; French, English, Portuguese, German, Arabic. Across the room somebody did a stretching exercise and nearly ripped out a water pipe. I stepped across the room and bent it back in place, as though I were the only one strong enough to do it. I knew guys were watching me. I was flexing. I was being domineering, the winner. Then one of the officials stuck his head in the doorway and yelled, “Okay, tall men out! Stand out in line.”

  “All right, Arnold,” I said to myself. “This is it.”

  For some reason, waiting there beside the folds of velour curtain in the old theater, I found myself thinking back to my first contest—Mr. Europe Junior. I’d gone to Stuttgart with no posing experience, AWOL from the Army, wearing one of their bad haircuts, in borrowed posing trunks, and I’d won. It struck me how far I’d come in such a short time. . . .

  As soon as I began posing I got thundering applause from the British audience. What I was doing now was mostly for exhibition and my routine became ballet. I had to come back for an encore. I was the only guy who had to pose a second time. They announced the height class winners. I won in the tall men, which automatically made me the winner, because I knew I had only had to beat Dennis Tinnerino. And I’d done that.

  All the height class winners were standing there, the short, medium and tall winners. The crowd was going crazy. Again they were yelling, “Arnold! Arnold!” I felt their energy, their enthusiasm running through my body like this fantastic pump. It seemed my body just grew and grew. Finally the announcer got the crowd quieted down enough so he could announce third place, second place and the winner, Mr. Universe 1967.

  “Arnold Schwarzenegger—”

  I heard my name and stepped up on the platform. The applause was like thunder roaring through the auditorium. People were shouting and clamoring. I looked at the lineup of bodybuilders and said to myself, “My god, I did it. I beat them all.” It was the first time in a year I had allowed myself to acknowledge how good they looked. There were ninety bodybuilders there from all over the world. And I had beaten them all. A million things went through my mind at that moment. It’s like when you have an accident or when you’re just about to fall. A whole lifetime goes through your mind in a single second. You picture yourself being dead, or you imagine what might happen to your family.

  After they announced the winners it took a few minutes to hand out the trophies. I looked out at the audience. They were screaming, flashbulbs were going off, I was caught up in the strange, unreal splendor of it. I thought, This is what you have been training for, this moment. There was just no way I could take it all in. It was like confronting something impossible to lift. I tried to come down, to realize what it meant. “What is happening right now, now,” I told myself, “is the most important moment in your life.” It was what I had meant when I made up my mind at the age of ten to be the greatest person in one field. I was twenty years old and I was already the greatest and the best.

  At nineteen years old

  I repeated it over to myself: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr. Universe 1967.

  Chapter Six

  Sunday morning I went downstairs for breakfast. It was a scene out of a Marx Brothers film. In the dining room I saw at least fifty bodybuilders wearing their special jackets with wide padded shoulders. Some guys were having ten eggs, some guys two steaks, some guys only two eggs because they were on a diet. One guy was eating fifteen pieces of toast. As soon as I walked in, everybody started waving at me. They crowded around my table. They were very affectionate, especially the Arabs. They came over and kissed me and hugged me. They were happy for my success. Someone leaned across the table and said, “Okay, Arnold, the next one is Sergio Oliva.”

  “What?”

  “No,” said someone else, “the next one is Bill Pearl.”

  They mentioned all the great names of the bodybuilding world who were still out there in front of me, guys I still had to beat. Which totally blew my mind. I was Mr. Universe, but I wasn’t. They had to explain it to me. I was Mr. Universe, but a few months before there’d been another Mr. Universe contest, run by the IFBB, another bodybuilding federation. The winner of that had been Sergio Oliva, a black bodybuilder from Cuba. The truth was, there were three Mr. Universes. One was Bill Pearl, who had won the NABBA professional Mr. Universe title, while I’d won the NABBA amateur Mr. Universe title. There was the IFBB Mr. Universe, Sergio Oliva
. (There are two different international bodybuilding federations, the National Amateur Bodybuilding Association and the IFBB, which is the International Federation of Bodybuilding. Both have Mr. Universe contests.) Then, too, there was Ricky Wayne, who had just won the Mr. World contest in New York. Sergio Oliva had also won the Mr. Olympia contest.

  Posing with Bill Pearl after winning my first Mr. Universe contest, 1967

  At least I knew this much: I was now one of the four top bodybuilders in the world. Which was an accomplishment. But there were three other guys out there I had to beat to let everybody know I was indisputably the best. I had achieved one goal, which was winning a Mr. Universe title. But I had to go on. Otherwise I wouldn’t be satisfied. Take the Olympics, for example. The guy who wins the Olympic medal has done a great thing, but he’s not the best in the world. You’re only best when you beat all the competition. Because some guy might have an injury, or some guy couldn’t make it to the meet—say he over slept (I knew that could happen) and he couldn’t make it, as with the runner who missed the 100 yard sprint in 1972. There are certain things you can win and still not be sure you are the best. So if it’s important for you to be the best and not just the winner, and it was for me, then you go on. That was my next challenge, to be the best, the ultimate winner. I vowed to keep going on and on and on until everybody in the world said, “Yes, it’s him. It’s Arnold, he’s the best.”

  But that Sunday morning I was inundated with questions. “How do you train?” “Why is your chest so big?” “Why won’t mine grow?” “Why are your biceps so huge?” “How did you improve your thighs so much in one year, Arnold?”