Quotes on Bodybuilding

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.

Strength is the product of struggle, you must do what others don't to achieve what others won't.

The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.

The greatest feeling you can get in a gym or the most satisfying feeling you can get in the gym is the pump. Let's say you train your biceps, blood is rushing in to your muscles and that's what we call the pump. Your muscles get a really tight feeling like your skin is going to explode any minute and its really tight and its like someone is blowing air into your muscle and it just blows up and it feels different, it feels fantastic.

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

The success I have achieved in bodybuilding, motion pictures, and business would not have been possible without the generosity of the American people and the freedom here to pursue your dreams.

The resistance that you fight physically in the gym and the resistance that you fight in life can only build a strong character.

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.

Vision creates faith and faith creates willpower.

The unique thing about bodybuilding is that when I compete it is just me on a stage alone. There is no field, no bat, no ball, no skis, no skates. All other athletes have to use equipment, like a football. But I don't use anything in competition except myself. It's just me up there. Me alone. No coach. No nothing.

The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That's what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they'll go through the pain no matter what happens.

Experiencing pain in your muscles and aching, that's what makes the muscle grow. and that divides one from being a champion and one from not being a champion. If you can go through this pain barrier, you may get to be a champion. If You can't go through it, forget it.

Most bodybuilders only have a hazy notion of what they want to look like. They do not say, 'I am going to be a winner.' The negative impulses around the gym can be incredible. I would hear bodybuilders complaining, 'Oh,no! Not another set!' That destroyed them. I have always believed that if you're training for nothing, you're wasting your effort!

Each workout is like a brick in a building, and every time you go in there and do a half-ass workout, you're not laying a brick down. Somebody else is.

Always asked, 'Whats the key to success?' The key is, there is no key. Be humble, hungry and always be the hardest worker in the room.

You have to remember something: Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn.

Start wide, expand further, and never look back.

If my life was a movie, no one would believe it.

The will must be stronger than the skill.

There is only one person responsible for the quality of life you live and that person is you.

Modern bodybuilding is ritual, religion, sport, art, and science, awash in Western chemistry and mathematics. Defying nature, it surpasses it.