Everyone has the ability to accomplish unique feats, everyone. You choose this. Become someone great in one other life. Forget about failing to many. Who cares? Doesn't matter when you start or finish, just start, no deviations, no excuses.

With all of the holiday cheer in the air, it's easy to overlook the ingredients in the foods. Ingredients such as salt, sugar, and fat - all of which leads to diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, strokes, heart disease, and cancer.

Did you know that there is growing scientific consensus that one of the most common types of sugar, fructose, can be toxic to the liver, just like alcohol? And unfortunately, this is the same type of sugar that you find in most sports drinks.

I had a guy come up to me once in the gym when I'm training arms and tell me that I should do curls this way. I looked at his arms and they were about fifteen inches. That would be like me walking up to Tom Platz and telling him how to squat!

If you don’t have a dream, then you have nothing to work for, nothing to get up in the morning for, no reason.. and no purpose to be. But friends we do have a dream and dreams do come true not because we keep believing but we keep working hard

Training has always been a hobby, and my whole life has revolved around training. It's something I truly love doing. I wanna do what I wanna do and this is something I wrestled with, because I have to make many sacrifices to do what I wanna do.

Your dreams will always be more important to you than anyone else, you can want something as much as you want but at the end of the day your mum doesn't care if your arms are 24 inches or not, but that doesn't mean you give up, chase your dreams.

It seems that, every day, a new brand is popping up, and everyone has become an expert on supplements and training. Hey, there's a lot of great brands and products out there, but there are also those just looking to grab a piece of the money pie.

You seeyou can beat a dog and it's going to do one of two things..it's gonna roll over and die or it's going to bite you and attack you. And I'm the kind of person..uh..whose the type of dog that will bite back..I wasn't going to roll over and die

I went from 185 lbs to 285 lbs, became a 7X Mr. Olympia, tying Arnold Schwarzenegger, and competed against the most determined and fittest athletes in the world. This took hard work, tremendous dedication, and knowing what, how, and when to train.

I trained for size in the off-season, but when it came time to get ready for a contest it was all about coming in shredded. The glutes must be striated, with the lower back shredded, no water anywhere, no loose skin. Like you are covered in cling-film.

You win the Mr. Olympia, you are the best in the world. There is no better than that. Some people will think back prior to the 1950s, where Mr. Universe was the top guy. They say, 'Are you Mr. Universe?' 'No, I'm Mr. Olympia, which is the best of all.'

Far too many bodybuilders spend too much time exercising the smaller muscle groups such as the biceps at the expense of the larger muscle groups such as the thighs, and then they wonder why it is that they never make gains in overall size and strength.

The more I have to do, the better off I am. I'm not really one to sit around and relax and take it easy. I always like having something to do. Even though I'm not competing, I'm going to be making a lot of appearances, doing guest posings and seminars.

I try to think of myself as a struggling competitor or specialist at my craft, much like a singer, dancer, comedian, or actor. So I'm struggling to do my craft and I'm continually trying to learn to do it better. I think that's what's really been my secret.

I don't really believe in cardio. I train with a very high intensity, which in turn gives it an aerobic effect. I like to use anaerobic resistance type movements or exercises. I don't believe in sitting on a Stairmaster or a bike for hours, that's just not me.

I didn't train for powerlifting. I trained as a bodybuilder. I had to train to stress the muscle and not because of what was on the bar. I think my strategy was a good one because I have no aches, pains, or lingering injuries from training today. I feel great.

Many bodybuilders sell themselves short. Erroneously attributing their lack of satisfactory progress to a poverty of the requisite genetic traits, instead of to their irrational training and dietary practices, they give up training. Don't make the same mistake

I mean, does anyone seriously think there are no drugs in Olympic sports just because they do some kind of testing? They are highly competitive sports with highly competitive people and just with competitive business people do whatever they can do to get ahead.

A lot of people put a lot of restrictions on their ability to develop. And that's fine for you if that's what you feel your limitations are, but I think it's wrong when you assume someone is not natural because you are imposing your limitations on someone else.

There are volumes and libraries of information in our minds and we are continually weighing information. We hear new things, we compare it with things we've heard before, and we take from it what we feel is pertinent and throw away what we feel isn't necessary.

My fans are just amazing, all over the world I've been greeted by people with smiles on their faces by what I do at the gym and what I do on stage, and how can I not be excited when i'm getting ready for a contest and how can I not be pumped even when I'm tired.

When you love something as much as I love bodybuilding you don't have to do much extra to push yourself, it just happens. There were some tough times and when those came up I just used my mental strength to push through knowing that my mind controlled everything.

When you promise yourself something, make a commitment, you can't give up. Because, when you're in the gym, you have to fulfill the promise you made to yourself. The people who can self motivate - in any field - are usually the ones who win. Regardless of talent.

I used to think that my career was to be a police officer, and that is what I was put here to do. But I always kept the faith and always worked hard on my goals and I finally found out on Sept. 25, 1998, why I was put here - (God) called me here to be Mr. Olympia.

I started messing around in my teen years but didn't really begin training properly until the age of 21. I did a lot of reading prior to that - Mike Mentzer, Arthur Jones and all other notable bodybuilding authors - and just came up with a routine that worked for me.

For the most part, I would say that I have always had a great love for the sport, just doing what I do. I think my success could be greatly attributed to that. I don't look at it like it's a job or anything like that. Its more like a hobby, something I have fun doing.

What am I doing with my life? Am I just going to some humdrum job that I don’t really want to be at, doing some minuscule task, getting paid to be a mindless drone? Or am I out there living life, on my terms, the way I want to live it, doing the things that I want to do?

You must understand that the workout does not actually produce muscular growth. The workout is merely a trigger that sets the body's growth mechanism into motion. It is the body itself, of course, that produces growth; but it does so only during a sufficient rest period.

I learned the ins and outs of the supplements business as a bodybuilder. I'd worked with some of the companies, and I knew a lot about the products. Some of them worked OK, and some of them didn't. I wanted all of them to work, not just for me, but for other people, too.

I didn't have my dad there and I had another mate who didn't have his father, and you kind of form your own little family and that's what gangs are, that's why you have so many gangs now because there are so many kids without fathers that they seek their own male bonding.

Champions are an example of what happens when you decide to leave the plane of average thinking, where you dare to dream and you dare to go after that dream, and you make these thoughts and ideas become more than something than just a dream. They actually become a vision.

After being taught sets and reps and working at it for a length of time you can't paint by numbers anymore. It must come from within. Any artist has an emotional contact with their work. A true bodybuilder doesn't just build muscle he creates muscle. You can't be a robot.

Personally, I like one hand preacher curls with dumbbells. You don't have to do 100 pound dumbbells to get a burn. Heck I can do 35- 45 dumbbells and get something out of it. It's also great for guys that travel. It's the one piece of equipment that most hotels always have.

Even when I was on vacation after the Olympia, I was looking for gym to train in. Not only was it 24 hours a day, it was 365 days a year. That may have been a little too extreme, but that is what got me there from that little backstreet gym in England to becoming Mr. Olympia.

I want to be bigger than everybody else, but I wouldn't want to be so big that people can't accept it. For instance, if you come in with 30-inch-arms, even your own peers aren't going to accept that. I wouldn't want to be that way. I wouldn't want to infinitely become unreal.

How intense could you be? Can you be intense enough to pick this 500Lbs off the floor? Are you intense enough to pick this 700Lbs up? Squat down to the floor and stand back up? So what if your eyes are bloodshot! So what if your bones feel like snapping! WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO!

Do cardio throughout the year at least three days a week for at least 30-40 minutes, whether it be first thing in the morning on an empty stomach or after a post-workout protein shake. Cardio won't kill your gains as much as you think; you'll see how much muscle you really have.

You've got to block out all distractions when you train. Your focus has to be 100% into the rep. You've got to get into a zone. You know you're in the zone when guys in the gym look you in the eye and then quickly turn away 'cause they see the fire. You've got to be all business.

Going to the gym was never about 'working out' like it is for most people. To me, It was a matter of life or death. It was either me or the weights-and I was going to win. I've always had that competitive streak, whether it was in the gym, on the stage, or In anything else I did.

Sri Chinmoy is truly unique and special. He has rediscovered the lost art of special strength feats and weightlifting. He has got the biggest, heaviest calf machine in the world. It is a miracle that this man can even support this kind of weight. He is really an inspiration to me.

If you take a hammer and hit something over and over again, it's gonna be destroyed. I don't wanna destroy my body cause I want my body to last me as long as it possible can. If you train hard and push it everyday, your body is going to wear out. So I give my body time to recover.

What I'm against is a sport that rewards mass for the sake of mass to the exclusion of all other physical properties of the physique. In other words, there comes a point where, if you keep adding muscle mass, the human body loses its beauty, shape and form. That's what I'm against.

So I had to change my mental outlook from, 'wow, this is Lee Haney, the icon we are all trying to aspire to,' to, 'this is the guy I am trying to beat.' I thought, 'I can't be in awe of this guy because, if that is your attitude then you're not going to have much chance of winning.'

So initially getting up on stage I was really nervous, I was like, 'wow, I'm going to be standing there and all these people are going to be looking at me?' But funnily enough it wasn't too traumatic. It felt quite natural because I felt I looked good and I knew how to do the poses.

Complex carbohydrates are always best, except, again, after a workout where you could take simple (sugar) carbohydrates to get an insulin spike. But at other times doing this is not very beneficial because insulin is a storage hormone and it's going to shunt everything into the muscle.

Just for the record, I'm in favor of drug testing EVERY year just as long as it's a level playing field. The problem arises that a lot of these substances are hard to detect. So, it's very difficult to have true, drug-free bodybuilding competition, especially on the professional level.

I idolized all of the bodybuilders who came from that old-school hardcore era. Those guys didn't need any fancy equipment; they trained with intensity and focus, regardless of the gym or other limitations. These guys could do presses with pails full of cement and still get a great workout.

Recovery is not a gift from clinicians, but the responsibility of us all. We must become confident in our own ability to change our lives, we must give up being reliant on others doing everything for us. We must have the confidence to give up being ill so that we can start being recovered.

You get as big as possible from becoming as strong as possible. When I started lifting I went into the gym with that ‘how much can I bench, curl, squat , and deadlift?’ attitude. That’s when I discovered how fast my strength could increase, and it made me crazy intense to get even stronger.

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