Like a great athlete, we must have a very clear vision of what we want to accomplish before we make a move. Vision, in preparation for an action, is as important as the action itself.

I never set limits or created mental barriers. You may have read that I imagined my biceps as big as mountain peaks when I did my curling exercises. This visualization process was essential if I was to gain the kind of mass and size I needed to win the mr Olympia contest against monsters like Sergio Olivia and Lou ferrigno.

I'm always focussed on the actual work, and I think that's a much more succinct way to describe what you care about than any speech I could ever make.

I will persist. I will always take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another.

The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow.

For years, I believed that anything worth doing was worth doing early. In graduate school, I submitted my dissertation two years in advance. In college, I wrote my papers weeks early and finished my thesis four months before the due date. My roommates joked that I had a productive form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.