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Here you will find the full body workout with which a young Arnold Schwarzenegger built his physique.
Arnold Schwarzenegger Full-body?
A bit of an Arnold fan knows that he was a fervent advocate of a training split and a very high training volume. However, I would not immediately recommend people to adopt his training schedule. Especially not when trying to do this naturally. The chance is then great that your body does not get enough recovery to grow.
However, the young Arnold, who had never heard of
anabolic steroids, initially built his impressive physique with routines based on those of his great idol Reg Park.
The Golden Six Routine
When Arnold tried to make his living to continue in bodybuilding, he trained in Munich where he also worked as a personal trainer. He advised his clients his ‘Golden Six’, a routine that would have been responsible for his own significant increase in muscle mass.
This routine consisted of 6 exercises, with the number of sets for the first 4 exercises increasing each month. So you started with 3 sets, did 4 sets after 3 months, and 6 sets after 6 months.
He advised doing this schedule three times a week, with a day of rest between each training day. You should follow the schedule itself for 3 months, then switch to another schedule. I assume that you would only reach 6 sets if you were to pick up the schedule for a second cycle of 3 months, starting immediately with a higher number of sets.
Once you can do more than 2 repetitions more than 10, you increase the weight.
As for rest, you should maintain 90 seconds for all exercises except for the squat, for which he advised 2 minutes.
A good training for muscle mass?
[table id=”table_0″ /]
| Oefening |
Sets |
Reps |
| Barbell Squat |
4 |
10 |
| Wide Grip Barbell Bench Press |
3 |
10 |
| Chin Up |
3 |
Max |
| Behind The Neck Overhead Press |
4 |
10 |
| Barbell Curl |
3 |
10 |
| Bent Knee Sit Up |
3-4 |
Max |
I personally wouldn’t do a full body workout, but I would especially recommend it for people who are just starting out or can only train a few times a week. Whether I would recommend these exercises, is another question.
I would probably replace the ‘Behind The Neck Overhead Press’ with a dumbbell shoulder press for safety reasons. It’s also noteworthy that Arnold isolated the biceps with a separate exercise, but not the triceps. Somewhere I understand it, Arnold had that classic obsession with big biceps so he apparently wanted to give them some extra attention.
If I were to recommend a full body workout anyway, I would probably replace the barbell curl with a
deadlift.
Finally, it’s important for the pull ups that you can add weight when you can do much more than ten repetitions. For example, with a dipping belt. For a client, I would probably replace the pull ups with a row exercise.
Somewhere, I dare to make suggestions for a schedule of the world’s most famous bodybuilder ever because I know that, 50 years later, we know a lot more about training and how muscles respond to it. However, for my suggestions, you certainly don’t need to have followed a study of kinesiology. Nevertheless, it remains a schedule of The Terminator, who would argue with that?
Old School Workout
So if you want to follow an old school training from an icon in bodybuilding, you can get started now. However, if you want a more up-to-date, personalized schedule, you can of course download the
FITsociety App and enlist one of the coaches.
