Jocko Podcast - 427: Work Hard and Be Useful. With Arnold Schwarzenegger

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

Join >Jocko Underground< Jocko and Arnold talk hard work, tenacity, paying attention, and developing skills to succeed. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austrian and American actor, businessman, filmmaker, former politician, and former professional bodybuilder known for his roles in high-profile action movies.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 427 with Echo Charles and me Jocker Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I bet you and I have a lot in common. We're not the strongest, smartest, or richest people we know. We're not the fastest or most connected. We're not the best looking or most talented. We don't have the best genetics.

But what we do have is something a lot of those other people will never have, the will to work. if there's one unavoidable truth in this world, it's that there is no substitute for putting in the work. There is no shortcut or growth hack or magic pill that can get you around the hard work of doing your job well, of winning something you care about, or of making your dreams come true. People have tried to cut corners and skip steps in this process

for as long as hard work has been hard. Eventually, those people either fall behind or get left in the dust because working your ass off is the only thing that works 100% of the time for 100% of the things worth achieving. Work works. That is the bottom line. No matter what you do, no matter who you are, my entire life has been shaped by that single idea. And that right there is an excerpt from a book.

called Be Useful, Seven Tools for Life by Arnold Schwarzenegger. And if you don't know anything about Arnold Schwarzenegger, well, he won Mr. Universe bodybuilding competition at age 20, then won Mr. Olympia seven times. He brought bodybuilding to the masses through his victories and through his film pumping iron. He then took over Hollywood with hit movies. like Conan the Barbarian, the Terminator, the entire Terminator series, Commando, Predator, Twins, Total Recall, True Lies, The Expendables, and dozens of other movies. He's written articles.

He's written books. He was the chairman of the president's counsel on physical fitness and sports. He created after-school all-stars to help kids stay out of trouble. He helped grow and inspire and coach in the Special Olympics. He's built several businesses. He served two terms as my governor here in California. He has a new Netflix documentary series about his life. He's been called the Austrian Oak, Schwarzy, and the governorator.

And that was the intro that I had planned Echo Charles to use when we got to sit down with Arnold Schwarzenegger. But as he showed up in his office, which is kind of like a little mini museum, a little history museum. And when he showed up, we all just sat down. We started talking. And at some point, I looked over you and said, let's hit record. So we hit record. And the podcast kicked off. So this is a conversation with myself, Echo Charles, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Some good lessons to learn. Because you never know what happens at what time. We already missed 10 minutes of really good history. But this is where you've heard of any liberalites right there. So she's in a very, very famous photographer who became very famous during the 70s when she did all of the covers of the famous famous musicians for Rolling Stone. And then she, you know, so she was in the exclusive contract for Jan Winner, who, the magazine as the publisher. Great guy. And so I got to know her because she came down to

South Africa in 1975, four Roaring Stone to take pictures of the Mr. Olympia competition that I won. And she photographed us and photographed behind the scenes and everything like this. Her expertise was not to pose us or anything. It was just to catch shots that were behind the scenes but just spectacular combinations of things. She just had an eye. And, but anyway, her strength was, and the photographs that were always the best when she said, I'm done. So you were photographing, I remember we were doing this photo shoots with Dalai Potton in Nashville.

And then we did another photo shoot in New York at the studio. That's great. I'm done. So she puts the camera away and I walk over and I said, and Dalbatten says, let me see those biceps. I'm hitting a bicep shot. And Annie Liverwood says, oh, this is great. This is great.

It's just quickly go over there. This is just for myself. But it's just go behind her and do the double bicep again. And Dolly, you just go with your arms back. So it looks like they're your biceps. And this is really great. And she's just little camera, not the big one, the Hustlplot or the Rolex, not another, just the little one,

Lika. And this is funny. This is, oh, this is funny. Oh, God, that makes me laugh. This is for myself. That was the shot that was standing on the fucking cover. Would it just because people would like relax? Look it is.

Look it is. Put it in front of the lens so they have it. Exactly. That's the one right there. Yeah. Exactly. But anyway, so this is a, so it's an art. It's an art to find the moments, you know, and everything. And she was an expert, the same in South Africa when she was down there.

I mean, she says, can I come into your room? I was in there naked, right? And I said, yeah, sure. And so she came in and she was photographing away. And now you see my big book, the Arnold book, all those ass shots. She didn't do front stuff or anything like that. She would not do that. But, I mean, just shots that you get away with and tastefully and stuff like that.

And so she just was always there. and Franco and I and all the guys really included her and she was just really good in infiltrating and getting the shots you know she's just an expert in that which is weird now because right now every single person has a camera running all the time in their phone they're always taking pictures of everything it's like it's almost oversaturated well now now everyone does it It's a different ballgame. The quality is not the same. And all of the stuff, Andy Libowitz will always be Andy Libelowitz. I remember she came with Andy Warhol to our wedding, to Hanisport.

And both of them, Andy Warho and her were taking pictures there at the wedding, kind of, you know, not kind of behind the scenes, stuff, and just what they saw. And they were fantastic photographs. So they're just very talented. There's no one the day they would go and will be able to be at the same wedding and get the same shots, you know, with the same kind of layouts and stuff like that.

It was just, it was just, they always knew exactly when to put out that little, because she had this little like a camera where she didn't have to do anything, and so did Andy Warhol. It's just like this. But a lot of times not looking through it because they're looking through it means

I'm serious about this photograph. No. It was like any would just have his camera here. He said, this is a good idea. He was just do this. And, you know, he says, he's never going to catch anything here. How he's going to go and see anything

if he doesn't look through? And so he don't think it seriously. But the fact is he took great shots. And he had always his tape recorder there. All the time. One hand, the tape recorder, and then the other hand, you know, camera so he just could record his entire life at all times. I mean, think about that. So this is

weird shit for us, for us. But I mean, this were kind of like the original podcasters, you know, that would get this stuff out there somehow because he had the magazine, the interview magazine. And he and you know, he loved me and he thought the world of bodybuilding, the whole idea of creating yourself and mording yourself. He was fascinated by that. Not to do it, to be an artist on your own body, as he always put it. He says, you know, I'm an artist on the canvas, but you're an artist on your body. You're shaping your body. Like you're using dumbbells and barbells and machines as if you use, they use clay and then, you know, different tools. stood and shaped the clay

to make a sculpture. So he was fascinated about all of this stuff. Yeah. Not too many people have Annie Leibowitz and Andy Warhol at their wedding taking pictures. That's no, no, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, we had everybody there. You know,

it was like, it was amazing. Some other, Oprah Winfrey was at that time still a rising star. And so she had her show in Chicago and she went from Baltimore to Chicago

and then she had a show there and kind of became very popular there but she was a rising star so she was a good friend of Maria's and she came to the wedding and so there was all kinds of and Barbara Walters and all this kind of people a lot of people that are dead now already

you know I mean this just shows you your age the people from me wedding are wiped out of age. But it was a really great wedding. They really have done a great job in hand. It's Puerto Maria's parents and her relatives. They didn't know how to do something like that. Well, that's like American royalty, right?

Yeah, yeah. But they have taste. They have a really good taste. You know, with parties and events. And then they have such a rich kind of a... friends, not rich in as far as money, but rich meaning such a variety of different people, from politics, from the non-profit sector, from the profit sector, the private sector, from every sector, it was just then from domestic and foreign and everything.

It was just people from all over the world and from various different sectors. Just, you know, we had like 500 some people there. the way. It was crazy. I didn't recognize half of them, I have to say. Did you look around at some point thinking yourself like, what am I doing here? It was not. It was like, I mean, I felt great that because I have such a, my people that I invited, they were from entertainment, they were from bodybuilding, they were from my past. So it was not as kind of rich of a variety. of different people than they knew. And so I think that together with my type of people that I knew

and the kind of people that they knew, it made it really the best kind of mix. And it was fantastic. It was really fantastic. I mean, I enjoyed literally every minute of it, of that wedding. I had such a great time because they just did such a great job. Yeah, that's amazing to be sitting here with you and having, you know, I watched all that from the outside, you know.

This is somebody that grew up here. And again, like for me, that was the merging of two worlds, right? Sort of the royalty of that family. And then you and what you had done at that time, it was pretty amazing to watch for the outside. And we don't have kings and queens in America, you know, but. Yeah, exactly. We had you, I guess. So normally when we do these things,

especially when I have a book, something like this that you wrote, I like to read some of the book and kind of introduce some of the topics and then maybe talk about them in a little bit more detail. That's sort of what I would normally do. Yeah, yeah.

Wherever you can mix it up, you're going to do whatever you want. Yeah, but if you start talking, we're going to listen. Yeah, yeah, but no, no, just to... I mean, you know, I never like to look back because it's just

there's really not much in it for me, right? It's just, I always like to look forward. It's kind of like, do I want to look out the windshield or do I want to look through the rear view mirror when I drive a car? I rather look forward because I know where I'm going then rather than I always look at the back. And so that's the way it is with my life.

So the only time that I really think about the past is when we do an interview like that. Or when I write a book like being useful, or totally recall the book that came out of 10 years ago, or when we did the documentary for Netflix, we had to sit down like for 40-some hours and answer questions. So that's when I had to think back.

Or when they say, can you get those photographs for the documentary? So now I have to go through my hundred bloods, photo albums and get them all scanned and then go through all that. So that's when I really, the only time I think back, because other than that I never do. It's not, it's just by nature that it's not like I have something against it, it's just that I don't feel comfortable, I feel like it's a waste of time and it just doesn't take me there. You know, so I never go and look at my photo albums and never look at, you know, kind of old

letters, I never think much about any of that. I just, I would just have a plan for tomorrow and for the next week or the next month or the next year or whether I want to go. And they sat you down for 40 hours for that? Yeah, yeah, because what happens is that, you know, they interview you, they say, we need you for, you know, five sessions, four hours each. And then afterwards they say, you know, God, when you started talking about your childhood and about your father and it is, I found this fascinating. Can we talk some more about that? Can we do a whole session just than that? Then they add, because they find something that you said, they found they didn't

think about ahead of time, or they didn't know. And neither did I. You know, because I never think about these things, except then when someone drills down on it, I never paid my attention to it and never mentioned it to anyone. And I said, it's fascinating. Your father was an alcoholic. I said, well, they didn't really call it that in Austria. I said, they just said that someone that got drunk once a week and came home and was like brutalizing everybody for one time and the rest of the time he was very sweet and very nice.

And that's an alcoholic. This is fascinating. So how many times did he hit you? How did he hit you? And then one thing became, went to the next. And then always said, you talk about it. So, but it's not by nature that I even think about that. Or that I think about it in a negative way.

Right. I mean, I think about him in a positive way because, hell, if he wouldn't have treated me the way he did, I would have stayed there. Yeah. Shit. Imagine that, me having to stay in Austria. And that would have been one of the regular guys over there,

which is fine for them, but I mean, it's not for me. I had kind of like, I was very ambitious and had big plans. So that upbringing kind of made me realize I got to get away from home. I got to escape to America. I got to get away from all of that. So it was a big plus. I'd look at it as a plus rather than a negative. Do you think that the big ambitions came from being in that environment where your dad was, you know,

maybe not the nicest dad on some nights? Yeah, I mean, he would beat us and he was, you know, take off his belt and hit us with the belt or with the branches. You know, there would be different degrees of punishments and all this stuff. But the next day we laughed about it. I mean, not he, but I mean, my brother and I, we laughed about it. And said, how much did you hear it? When he made the branches wet, that really hurt.

I said, my ass is still sore. Look at the lines I have on my ass. And my brother says, yeah, but the belt, what do you think? The belt buckle. He caught me on my foyer. The belt buckle, got it. You know, so we were like comparing with who had more kind of a, you know, the leftovers.

And as far as, you know, kind of marks and stuff like that, yeah. Yeah. No, that documentary was, I mean, Dave went into some awesome detail in that. But, yeah, that idea that you had of, I got to get to America. You know, you saw Reg Park. That can, you just thought, that's me. I could do this. Yeah, because I mean, I think that Reg Park, who grew up in Leeds, England, in a factory town, just like Graz was where I grew up.

And he made it. You know, he found a bodybuilding gym where he worked out some dungeon. And he worked out there and hours and hours every day, sweating. And that's all he had. And that's all he thought about was just working out. His father was telling him he has to be a businessman. His mother said that they have to be a nice man and be successful. And, you know, he just, I think his mother was.

was Jewish and his father was not. I think that's what it was, you see. And so anyway, she was a wonderful woman. I mean, we visited her later on when I became a champion. We went up to visit them and to see where it all began in Leeds. And his father was not alive anymore, but his mother was and so I met her and a wonderful, wonderful woman and so it was really great to see that he

just through struggle and believing in himself in a kind of hours and hours of working out he made it, he became Mr. Great Britain he became the Britain's strongest man, he was bench

pressing 500 pounds which was the record in Europe at that time and he was squaring with 600 pounds and deadlifting at tremendous weights and all this stuff. So I admired all this, the strength and all this stuff. So I said, well, if he can do that hours and hours a day, then that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm just going to go and put the hours into it.

And off we went and trained and trained and trained. And then things happened. Did you have information about like his actual workouts? Yeah. Where'd you get that from? So there was a magazine that came out in 1962. Just when I started working out, I just started working out and lifting weights.

And there was this magazine in a store that had Reg Park on the cover. And it was basically him as a Hercules. Just enormous. Not like the regular bodybuilders, you know, that were kind of ripped notice, but he had this wide, and these huge lads and big thighs and all this and it was Hercules.

It was as undercover as Hercules and it said, this is how Mr. Universe became Hercules. And so it actually very little in there about how it became Hercules. It talked more about how did he become Mr. Universe? How did he train? And so I copied this, I mean I couldn't copy everything, because I didn't have certain machines, like I didn't have a pulley machine, and I didn't have a leg extension machine, I didn't have a calf machine,

I didn't have a lake curl machine, I didn't have any of that. I was just training in a weightlifting club, and we weren't not even allowed to do bodybuilding exercises. So we had to kind of like do first our regular weightlifting training, and then when we were finished with that, and we crossed off all the marks, down on the wall, you know, the five sets of cleans and then five sets of churks, and then five sets of presses and five sets of snatch and all the Olympic lifting movements and deadlift and shoulder shrugs, you know, they pull up to get the strength in the shoulders and traps. After we did all that, then we were allowed to go to the chin up.

bar and they do chin-ups and to do some curls and to do some triceps extension so most of the body building itself I was actually doing it home and the weightlifting cup I was doing most of the weight lifting and the power lifting bench breaths deadlift squads and in those days there was some power lifting competitions where the three disciplines were bench press, squat and curl. They call it a cheating curl. So you pick up in the bar with the 45 pound plates on the outside, and it will be curling that.

So a matter of fact, when I used to go to England, because I got so good at that, because it was part of the power lifting championship, So I did that out on stage before I was posing, before I was doing my posing exhibition. So let's say, when I was Mr. Universe, they invited me to England to pose at the Mr. Great Britain competition, and beforehand they would have me do deadlift and some curls.

And I would be doing with 275. I remember a few reps curls. and people loved all that and that was deadlifting 650 pounds or so then late on the I was working up with Franco over here got all the way up to 710

in the deadlift and Franco was even better than that he was like 730 or so even though he only weighed 180 it's crazy but any case so we had we had a great time and I was

I was kind of copping Ridge Park whatever I could copy. And it was really great because he did say three sets of incline press with dumbbells, then three sets of incline breasts with a barbell. Well, he had a rack so he could take it off the rack and do incline breast. I didn't have a rack. So we had to kind of put a board against the wall

and then clean the way it didn't fall back, do that incline, did that abdominal board, so to speak. And then we did that the incline press. So we kind of improvised a little bit, but it all worked out fine. It made me stronger in cleaning and in lifting and all of this stuff. And so I trained, I did his leg workout and his calf workout and all this stuff. But then when I met him, so I was 19 years old when I met him for the first time,

and he came over to England from South Africa because he lived South Africa, even though he was British, but he married a woman from South Africa. And so he came periodically to England from South Africa. And one day I was staying at my friend's house, Wag Bennett, and Reg Park came to visit. He just arrived to 10 o'clock at night from South Africa, and then at 1 o'clock in the morning he came over to the house to work out because he's a gym down below.

a public gym. It was like it was a dungeon. And so Reg came over and there I met Reg Park my island for the first time. I was 19 years old and I just won second in the Mr. Universe contest, literally like just two months before. And I met him, I worked out with him at one in the morning. And it was like a dream come true. You can imagine being in the media, your idol, right? And so then that's when he invited me and he said, listen, this year,

he says, you have to, this coming year, you have to win the Mr. Universe contest. He says, I won it with the age of 23 or whatever he was. He says, you could be the youngest Mr. Universe ever with the age of 20. He says, if you win, I'm going to bring you down to South Africa and you do a bunch of posing exhibitions for me, make some money.

And that's exactly what happened. You know, I took this, I mean, as I said, that I could win to Mr. Universe. So that means I could win. And so I was absolutely convinced that I'm going to win. It's my year. and I trained like hours and hours every day. And sure enough, I won with the University with the age of 20.

And I went down to South Africa that following December three months later and did a bunch of posing exhibitions and all that stuff. And he took me around South Africa. It was like fantastic. And that's what led us to then go to the Federation and convinced the federation to have the Mr. Olympia contest eventually down there. And so the IFB, which is the International Federation of Bodybuilding,

negotiated with the South African government because no sports, international sports, were allowed down there because of apartheid. And so they negotiated then to let the judges be mixed blacks, whites, colored. In South Africa there's a different category. It's colored people and then there's black people.

Got it. And then there's Asian people and there's Indian people. So it was five or six categories at that time. And so Ben Weeder was very adamant that there will be no competition

with the IFPB if it is not mixed. But it had to be mixed on every level. So it had to be the judges had to be mixed, the audience had to be mixed, and the competitors have to be mixed, and the sponsors have to be mixed. So it's all the categories. And there was a guy but the name of Dr. Cornhoff. And he was a very open-minded character.

Because he, whenever I went down for Ridge Park to South Africa, that Dr. Cornhoff, who was the Minister of Mining, of Sports and of Immigration, he told me that I have to go to the downships and go to the black areas and also pose. And so they brought me in with cages like an animal to the middle of town, there's this little black towns. And they were celebrating. that someone came in from the outside and visited them. They were drunk.

They were celebrating and screaming. Nothing was safe. And they brought me in those cages so that the ice they protected. Bottles were flying, everything. Not to hurt me. No one was able to drive me. It was just celebrating.

They were just so excited about someone from the outside coming in and visiting them. and paying attention to them. And so I would do this posing exhibition. I mean, it was like an experience in a half, let me tell you something. I mean, I was scared every time I went in there. Because it was also night.

The action was at night. I mean, it was like 11 o'clock at night, we would go to these places. It won in a morning. And so this is a kind of experience. So Reg Park was responsible for getting me down to the South Africa and eventually we there had the missed Olympic contest, Olympia contest is Dr. Kornoff then helped us to bring everyone together and we had in Pretoria, in the capital of South Africa. We had the Mr. Olympia in 1975 where Rolling Stone came down

and then was kind of covering it. They wanted to do a cover story, which didn't end up being a cover story because Jimmy Carter won, supertoucher. Tuesday. And so he won in 1976 several states in a row and became kind of like the guy to win the Democratic Convention and eventually become president of the United States. So he, they decided that there was enough of a news event for him to win all the states that they bumped me off the cover and they put him on the cover, which was totally fear. Great story that the Thompson wrote about Jimmy Carter. And so it was all good. It was totally feared.

It was a much bigger deal than I was. And even though I like being on a cover, I remember that it is what happens every so often. When you start, they promise you a cover. Then no one ever can promise your cover. They can say we will work hard to get you on a cover. Like for instance, there was Time magazine, and Newsweek they had me when Pumping Island came out and I think it was was it 77 or 76

when Gary Gilmore was shot and executed in Utah so anyway so it was the first execution 76 late 76 right oh July 76 okay so anyway so I was supposed to be on a cover in 76. All around pumping iron? Yeah, all around pumping iron, exactly. And I became kind of like this new kind of a sensation in America, like a guy that with muscles that actually can talk. So there was the sensation, right? So I because nobody ever hired the publicist until that time and no one wanted to talk to the press, because they were always fuck up somehow. So here I came and I had a personality and I was into the idea of selling bodybuilding and marketing it the right way since I studied that as a kid to be a market and to be a

business person and how do you kind of like communicate and launch an idea. So I studied that all a time and so when my time came I said I was like now I'm going to use that in bodybuilding. So we were trying to get all the covers and all the precedents. So there was this explosion in bodybuilding and also about me, you know, like we Andy Warho and Jamie Wires painting me and Lira Neiman painting me and me getting invited at all those parties, Studio 54 and, you know, hanging out with Mick Jagger. It was like, it was just like this big explosion.

Bodybuilding all of a sudden was accepted and to the Mr. Olympia competition after the Mr. Olympic competition, at Madison Square Garden in 1974, all these actors came to the party, Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty and Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman and all. I mean, it was like, bodybuilding has arrived, right? So there was a big breakthrough. And it was finally, you know, because I just couldn't stand it anymore.

The stupid stuff that people would say about bodybuilding, the press, not because they were just mean-spirited, There was maybe a little bit there, a jealousy, feeling inadequate around the body, whether they had a good body, or they had abs and muscularity. But they also kind of didn't understand it. So they made up shit.

You know, they're all gay. You know, this is a substitute for some other shortcomings. They're stupid and the narcissists, and you're going to die early if you work out, all this kind of stupid stuff. So I said, oh, there's so much to work with to kind of dispel some of those stereotypical things. So that was my job then.

You know, I got full hard to huddled the end of the whole thing. But I mean, it was like the 70s was like the decade where it was the big explosion. And then the 80s was, of course, the big explosion of then the action movies. Because now, because of bodybuilding, I got into the movies and then we did Conan the Barbarian

and with Conan the Barbarian. And with Conan the Barbarian. And with Conan the Biberian, it launched my career as an actor internationally. I went to every country in the world. And I basically just promoted the shit out of it. And then all of a sudden, people said, oh my God, there's a guy with the body. And then all of a sudden they gave me all this action scripts, Terminator, and then commander, then running man, raid heat, and true lies.

And then finally I had to kind of say, hey, what a part of the comedy? That's when the twins came about in kindergarten cop and journey on those kind of things. Yeah, that's a, I remember a term when I was a kid, they would say you would get muscle bound if you lifted too much weights. Oh, you get muscle bound. You won't be able to do anything anymore. And that was like the negative press about lifting weights about bodybuilding. That was a real thing you had to overcome. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.

And, you know, it's like athletes have proven. later on that yes you could get muscle bound if you don't do your sport at the same time but that if you do weight training and you do your sport that it only can enhance your performance and we have seen it then from then on we saw the shot putters all of a sudden you know breaking records after records we saw how much better the football got from weightlifting and from strength training. We saw how great the wrestlers got from all of that. And we saw all the athletes all of a sudden picking up.

Bruce Janner, I mean, was before he won the Olympics in the DeKatlan, up in Montreal. I mean, he was working out with weights really, really heavy. And he was one of the first athletes that was that kind of had the sensitivity to understand, yes, if I combine speed with strength that can only be helping me, rather than just have speed and no strength.

So he worked on the strength and he kept working on the speed. And he outperformed everybody. And we saw then later on, Wendhaler-Feld was like one of the first boxes that really got serious. into the weight lifting and then all of a sudden started beating everybody, you know. And Mike Tyson and those guys were all lifting heavy weights and really serious weight.

I mean, and they became ferocious fighters and really enormous. Ken Norton of those guys. I mean, they all really started getting into it. And so, you know, it was an easy thing when those athletes were performing so well, it was an easy thing to prove that is not true. That is not true. And then of course in rehab, they used, you know, throughout the 80s and 90s, heavily weight resistance training. You know, the rehab, your knee after knee injury,

after surgery or replacement, knee replacement, all of it was all weight training, weight resistance training and rehab. So all the hospitals all over the country started having, you know, weight rooms, not massive, not tons of, weights but weights so that you can you know kind of do weight resistance and then eventually became a time like in the 90s where the military also started getting into the weight room and I remember I was the chairman of the president's council on physical fitness and

sports on the bush and then I sat down with Bush and because he was he was he was into weight training. He was working out regularly at Camp David and he was at the White House, way before he started his meetings. And so I used to work out with him. And so he said to me, he says, I don't know, there was a New York Times piece. I said, yes. And he says, where the guys in Iraq were working out with sandbags. So I said, you know why they're working out with sandbags? He says, no. I said, well, first of all, because resistance training is good. I said, but the other reason is because you haven't sent them any barbells and dumbbells yet. I say, what do you think? They would not rather lift with dumbbells and barbells than the workout

with sandbags? He says, can you organize that? I said, you're talking to the right guy. So I said, I'm going to go and I'm going to go and ask for donations. And so I called every manufacturer of weight equipment. And I got 40 tons of weights together. And now they put it all together in a crate. And then Colin Powell came to me and says, Arnold, I'm not going to be that stupid and ship this over with a ship. He says, but you never have heard that. I'm going to fly the fucking thing over there.

So it's going to be there in two days. From here to Germany, from Germany, from Lansstool or whatever is, to Iraq. He says, it's going to be over there in two days. And we're going to distribute it nicely. I'm going to put someone in charge and then all of a sudden, three weeks later, I was getting letters from guys there on the front line saying, thank you, Arnold, for helping us get those weights. We just received weights.

We're now working out in the barracks with the dumbbells and with the barbells and all this stuff. We don't have enough, obviously, because there's so many of us that the weight training is. But it is a great, great beginning. Thank you so much. So I mean this is the kind of stuff to be on. And then after that, I tell you, I went then back in, I went to Iraq and the second round, the second war, in 2003. And I brought to the men and women the Terminator movie, Terminator 3.

I wanted them to be the first ones to see it before anyone else, any critic or anyone else sees it. I was very fanatic about that. And so I went to various different places over there to show them the movie. And that's when I saw all of a sudden gyms where they were working out. And the craziest thing was when I went back again in 2009, when it was a nine, I went back there. And now I saw a gym. gymnasiums that were much bigger than any gymnasium in the world. I mean, I've never ever seen a gymnasium where walk in where there was a tent, almost the size of a half of football field,

and the entire tent was, there was literally like 20 bench press benches with the barbells on top. There was like 50 life cycles and stair masters and dreadmills. And everything was like 20 or 10 or 50 or something like that. It was insane. And that's when I realized, as I might as in the 90s already, I realized that we have now gotten to the point in the world, especially in America, but in some cases in the world,

where there is no fire station that has not weights. There's no police station that didn't have weights. There was no military station that didn't have weights. No camp, no nothing that didn't have weights. And there's no YMCA that didn't have weights, no WCA didn't have weights, no club, no football team that didn't have weights,

no basketball team that didn't have weights, no college team, no high school team. Everyone had weights. And on top of it, when I traveled around the world and went to hotels, it didn't matter if it was in India or in London or in Paris or in Dubai. Everyone had weights. Every hotel had a wait room. So this is what happened in a period of like 30 years from the 70s to the 90s.

It was an explosion in every direction. and, you know, when I wrote the book, Be Useful, that was my way of being useful. I said to myself, I believe in this. I feel passionate about this. And there is something in there for everybody because I felt like the bigger I make the sport, the healthier the people are going to get.

But at the same time, the more money the bodybuilders are going to make. because the reason why the football players are making so many millions of dollars is because everyone is watching it. So if bodybuilding would be watched better at many people, they would be making the same amount of money. So therefore it has all the two bit one thing and that is how do we get the general public

sold on the idea of its coup deuce of muscles in their competitions there, there's the Mr. Olympiad, there's the Mr. Universe, the World Championships, miss the World Competition, Mr. International, Mr. America, American Championship, there's different federations. You can tune in wherever you want. Here it is.

And the Arnold's classic. You know, my competition that I've been holding up for 35 years. So this is also, it was all about, it had many effects. It made people healthier. It gave them something to do. It made them join a village, so to speak, because so many people are lost, does you know. You know, that's why there's so much

benefit when you once belong to the military. Because you belong to a village, you belong to a community, a togetherness, and the rest of your life, you will always think back

at that time and you will have those connections and those bodies out there. I mean, when I think, the amount of times that I think about when I was in the Austrian army. Now it's obviously not like the American army but just the little things

I am never ever worried. I mean you know what kind of a great feeling that is that you never have to worry because it doesn't matter what it is if it is ironing a shirt I know how to do sewing on a button I know how to do shortening the sleeves of her fucking pants, I know how to do.

Driving the biggest vehicle, I've driven tanks. The biggest vehicle that doesn't scare me, I drive any vehicle, the ash car, whenever you give me through the smallest alley in Beverly Hills, I'm not worried about banging into anything. I have an ash cache. I drive it in the littlest kind of the streets. It doesn't worry me. My tank, I go out and drive it, And there is a 50-ton tank that can destroy anything. I drive it.

I spin it around and go, and we have fun with the tank. I mean, everything that I learned, I was crawling up. And like I said, not with the danger like you guys did where you were actually on the front. That's a whole other ballgame. And I can imagine how much courage that gives you. But just me crawling up hills in forests, in the rain in the middle of the night, a 10 o'clock at night with a gun in my hand, and crawling up and someone standing in front of you with the flashlight and screaming at you for fucking two hours.

You're crawling, you have dirt, you have mud going through here and stuff like that. Or when you fuck up with the tank, that you have to go and release the emergency hatch on the bottom. on the bottom and you crawl out and then you crawl out to the tank and it's raining outside in the mud then you climb up the other side up the top the turrent down through it again to your driver's seat

and out again and do that 50 fucking times if you screw up so this is the kind of things that I went through you know so it's like okay I've gone through so much torture in the military, you know, and pain at 4.30 in the morning getting up and running endless amount of times

around this football field that was in front of our military, of our Kassian military base. And all of this. So you go through that and you say to yourself, you know, I was so blessed that someone taught me with the age of 18 that if we give you misery and pain and discomfort and torture, that this will help you for the rest of your life.

It's almost kind of like an investment. You know, because from then on, you say, you say, okay, now things don't bother me. You know, nothing bothers me because I've gone through all of this stuff. And this is why I tell so many young kids today, I said, you're making a big mistake to always look for comfort. Because comfort is the evil of everything. Comfort is not good. Looking for the easy way out is not good. You say, we got to go and confront kind of resistance.

And it's like Nietzsche said, you know, that what does not kill you will make you stronger. And this is exactly what it is. You know, if we can overcome kind of like all those obstacles, you know, then we get strong. and we can do much more and we look at the world totally differently and we don't whine about every little thing

and so this is, I mean, so I think what has happened to me in the military this one year, I was only one year, from 18 to 19 in the military and then of course the training that I was able to do there, the weightlifting, because they hailed sports. And so they let me train in the afternoon when everyone else was washing the tanks in the morning.

We were driving the tanks. And in the afternoon, they said, for you, it's better to train. And so I had my gym, I had my barbells and my benches and everything at that military station. I trained for a few hours while they were washing my tank

and the oiling up all the different areas where you have to loop and put all the grease in it all the time. So this is the kind of thing. It's kind of like, so I can totally relate in a way to what you guys went through because I went through it with small percentage and it helped me so much so I know how much it helps you. Yeah. Yeah, and I think one of the things that made the military start to adopt so much of lifting, working out was, number one, obviously you get the physical benefits, but the mental benefits too,

of going and exerting yourself is, it makes every part of your day better when you start off that way. And then like you said, when you're working out with your other guys and you're doing hard stuff together, it brings you close together. So you're gonna have that community feeling even more in the military when you're working out with guys.

When you get with a group of people and you do hard things together, you get, you become closer. That's what it's about. So that really benefited, for my, Basically, my whole career, we were lifting weights. Like, that's what you go to, you want to talk about having weights. You go to a SEAL team.

Like, they have weights. It's awesome. That's where people congregate. That's what we're doing. And people do a whole variety of, some guys were triathlete type guys. Some guys were big powerlifting guys. Some guys were functional strength guys. But everyone's in there doing it.

And the weird thing is right now is you have problems with recruiting. because there's people in America that aren't into fitness, that don't recognize how important it is. How do you think that's happening, that on the one hand we have the most knowledge we've ever had, the most opportunity because there's gyms on every corner, we have all these opportunities, and yet there's people that are not even fit to be in the military

because they haven't worked out, and they're 20 years old. What do you think of that? I think that it has to do with parenting. You know, because I think that if you are a parent, you go out with your kids when they're like three, four years old, and you run around with them and you do things into fun things, go take them on hikes, take them skiing, if you have the money, because skiing sometimes can be expensive,

take them swimming, you know, do things with them, you know, and have them. them join clubs later on, if it is wrestling club or if it is a boxing club or whatever it is, or gymnastics, whatever it is, every kid you figure out as time goes on what they're into. And every kid is into something else, but they find something that they're into. And so I think the parenting is lacking a lot of times because this is all leadership, because I remember with my kids, I had two of my kids that were not so much into the physical thing, But we still found things to do.

And they became great skiers and they became great on the ice ring and doing ice skating and stuff like that. They were great in swimming. And then others excelled in everything. In baseball, in basketball, and football and all of that. So it really depends on the kids. But you can really push kids and really make them feel like, oh, there's so much joy with being fit and going out and playing games

and doing sports and stuff like that. So I think it's leadership at home that is missing a lot of times. And of course, as you know, there's a lot of kids that grow up with, you know, both parents are working. And that's why we started, you know, 30-some years ago after-school programs so that, you know, that the kids have a place to go after school where they can go and get homework assistance. because there's no one home helping them. They will get their tutoring after 3 o'clock between 3 and 6

and where they get the sports programs, where they get their fitness programs, the exercise, the arts programs, you know, playing music instruments and doing painting or whatever they're into. So all of this stuff is to kind of like assist the parents where both of the parents are working, that there's someone there for this and there's some adult. supervision for those kids. So that's

why I started after school programs 30 some years ago and it has become a huge, huge hit. Yeah. Your book, this new book that you wrote, it's called Be Useful, Seven Tools for Life. And you start off, the first one, the first tool that you talk about in here is having a vision. And you say in the book, so many of our best people are lost, so many

of the good ones don't know what they're doing with their lives. They're unhealthy. They're unhappy. 70% of them hate their jobs, their relationships are unrewarding, they don't smile, they don't laugh, they have no energy, they feel useless, they feel helpless, as if life we're pushing them down a road to nowhere. If you know what to look for, you will see people like this everywhere. Maybe even you when you look in the mirror. It's okay, you're not broken, neither are they. This is just what happens when you don't have a clear vision for your life and you've taken either whatever you can get or whatever you thought you deserved. We can fix that because everything,

good, all great change starts with a clear vision. So you've been doing that. I mean, what you already talked about, you saw Reg Park, that was your vision. You saw Hollywood. That was your vision. When did you figure out that that was the methodology a person needs to have in order to move forward? I figured it out with bodybuilding because not only did I have the vision of Ridge Park, because I had it in a magazine right in front of them. A literal vision. But I, what was the most powerful thing was that I could see myself

on that stage, on that Mr. Universe stage, like Reg Park, but me. And winning. And so it was the most extraordinary thing, how real it was. I saw the photograph of Reg Park standing there with, in the background, the thousands of people applauding, that's why I'm going to stand.

I don't know when, but I'm going to stand on that stage. And I'm going to go and win the Mr. Universe trophy. And so I was absolutely convinced, and I could only compare it always to how people feel when they're religious. And they're absolutely convinced, you know, that, hey, I'm not worried about dying. I know where God is going to take me and they're absolutely convinced about that and God is going to guide me and I

go through some difficult times but God is going to be by my side and they have kind of almost a relaxed feeling about it no matter what trouble they go through and I felt exactly like that because I never was worried about it it was not kind of like I was scrambling saying oh my God is another year past

I hope that I got closer to my corner no it was kind of like every set that I was doing, every exercise that I was doing, every rep that I was doing, I felt like great joy because it was like a rep, a set, a weight that get me one step closer to my goal, to make my goal become a reality. So this was like I'm chasing this thing and I'm having a great time because every single time I get closer and closer. So it was like, that's where people, People always said when they came journalists that would come to the gym and say, you're the only one that is always smiling at having a good time in the gym.

I said, well, I have a good reason to smile and says, why? I said, because every time I go to the gym, I get one step closer to winning the Mr. Olympia title, winning the Mr. Universe title. I mean, so to me it's like kind of coming in here, it sucks me one step closer, one step closer, one step closer. And so I know where I'm going. And so this is why there is a certain joy. there and I didn't pay much attention to it just to realize that I always had a certain calmness about it. But then when I got into the movie business, I felt kind of like I have

to kind of dissect now and analyze what did they do in bodybuilding that made it work? Because everyone here in Hollywood says, Arnold, it's never going to happen. You're never going to become a star. You never become a leading man. You have a accent, your body is too big, your name, Schwartz and Schnitzler, whatever. I mean, who the fuck can pronounce that? I said, what do you think they're going to put on the billboard someday, you know, Schwarzenegger or something like that? Forget it. I mean, you have to have a snappy name like John Wayne. I mean, it's all kind of like Clint Eastwood. There's a cool name Charles Bronson.

There's a really American name. I said, is there going to happen with you? So there was always no, no, no. And that's why one of the rules in the book also is Don't listen to the naysayers. But it's always no, no, no. And I say, I said, okay, in bodybuilding, I heard the same thing. Arnold, it would never be a bodybuilding champion because you're an Austrian. You become a ski champion, maybe.

But not a bodybuilding champion. This is American stuff. It's British stuff. They do that. Not that we're here. And so what did I do? I said, I said, I visualized myself as Mr. Universe. I said, and then everything I did,

I worked my ass off to get closer and closer every workout. So this is what I have to do. I get five hours I worked out. So I'm going to go work five hours a day now on becoming an actor. But instead of doing five sets of curls and five sets of deadlift and five sets of bench players and five sets of chinups and all this stuff,

I'm going to do an hour of accent removal because they said that because of my accent is going to be an obstacle. And I'm going to go and take an hour of English classes, then an hour of acting classes, an hour of stunts, and an hour of this and I say I'm going to do five hours a day every day. I said, and I'm going to visualize myself as another clean Eastwood. And I'm going to go and get in the movies and I'm going to do big parts like that. All like Regge Park.

Rich Park was Mr. Universe and then became Hercules. I said, wouldn't that be great? So I mean, I had the idols there so now it was just me to believe that I can be like that. And I believed

it because I used the same method as they used in body building, I used now and applied it to acting. And I worked my ass off, I believed in myself, and I moved close and closer, and every time someone said, it's not going to happen, it's not going to happen. I got one step closer, and eventually,

I was doing a Hercules movie, Hercules in New York, the comedy. It was like hilarious. But I was in front of the camera, and I was starring. And then there was Lucille Ball called me a few years later and asked me to do happy anniversary and goodbye, which was a TV show with Art Carney, a two-hour TV show. She says, I want you to play the masseur in there. It's a seven-minute part. She says, if you do that while, I says, everyone would know who you are. So I did it. And it became a huge hit. And then from that I got then streets of San Francisco.

Then I did stay hungry with Sally Fields and Jeff Bridges, Bob Rayferson directing. Then we did pumping iron. Then I did the villain with Kirk Douglas and with Anne Margaret. And things started picking up. And I started guest starring and co-starring with those guys. Then I did the Jane Mansfield store. where I played Mickey Haggide, which was a Hungarian bodybuilder,

who had an accent just like me, because Hungary, Budapest, where he came from, in Vienna, very close together. It used to be the same empire, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. So they used to belong together. So he married Jane Mansfield. So now they wanted me to do the Jane Mansfield, so I played Mickey Hagede. And he was delighted. He was still alive at that time.

He was delighted that I'm playing him. So now I'm having this starring role on a TV, a major TV show with Lonnie Anderson, who was the biggest TV star, female TV star at that time. And so this is, and then I was doing Conan the Barbarian. So everything that they said, it would be impossible, all of a sudden changed. And when they asked John Millier, as the director of Conan the Barbarian,

how did you get to the idea to have Schwarzenegger star in Conan the Barbarian? I mean, the last movie you did was the Winton the Lion with John Connery and we're Candaceberg and now we're hiding Schwarzenegger

and you came in what kind of a leap is that? And he says if we wouldn't have had Schwarzenegger we would have had to build one because Conan was a heroic guy that by Frank Flissetta painted him.

So to do justice to that, the only one that was around with Schwarzenegger. And he was an actor at the same time. So I was so happy to find someone with a body like that. So exactly what they said is going to backfire on me was an asset. And the same thing was also with Terminator when they asked Jim Cameron, what made Terminator go through the roof and becomes so popular? And he says, well, be honest with you, besides Arnold's body,

it was his accent. his accent. He says, because he talks like a machine. He says, and that made it believable. He says, with his body the way when he came out of this thing and we saw him, they're naked on top of Los Angeles looking down, he says, we saw that this is not a regular body that we're seeing on the screen. This is a machine. And then when we heard him talk, that confirmed that he was a machine. He says, that's what sort of thing. It was totally, so now of a sudden, They said the body and the accent, the very thing that they said would not work. All of a sudden worked, you know.

So those are the kind of things. So I just applied the same rules with positivity. But as I said, the key thing is that we know where we are going. No matter how difficult it is, we got to know where we're going. Because I don't know if you have seen people that, foreigners that come over to Hollywood and you see them getting off the bus, you know, the tourist bus, and then they get to the intersection and then they kind of like, they look around. Kind of like, where should I start? Look at all the shops. Oh my God, this is all, ah, guys, where is everyone going? Where, where, where? Should we? Should we? Should we cross the, in the same, so this is, so they don't know what to do.

So this is what a huge amount of people have that look. Not to look for the next store. This is just a symbolic thing. But in reality about life, they say, ah, should you go to college? Should you go and join a football team? Should they train? Should I meet up with my friends? Should I go to another country, another state?

you've got to have a vision because as soon as you have a vision and as soon as you have a gore which means you have to be really in touch with your passion and what is inside rather than just keep looking at that iPad

and that iPhone and checking out what everyone else is doing well you're not going to get an idea what everyone else is doing no you have to find out what you are going to do. Forget about everyone else. Let's find out what you're going to do.

And so this is why I say, find your passion, find the place where you want to go no matter how difficult it is, and it makes it fun then to chase after that vision. And, you know, so to me,

what I did here with the book, be useful is I talk about those things because if you can do everything else. You can work your ass off and you can be a good person, you can save your money, and you can do all of this stuff, but if you don't know where you're going, you're going, you're going to fail. Imagine that a team of planes are taking off from the aircraft carrier. They're out. Great scene, right? We always see it in Top Gun and stuff like that. It's the only way we've got to go and see it. ordinary folks like us, right?

And then say, now imagine you say stop, freeze frame. Plains are hanging out there and they hear. And now they say, but they don't know where to go and what to do. Do you think this is going to be a successful mission? No, it's over. It's over. No matter how sophisticated that airplane is,

no matter how well the people worked on the deck to get those planes out there, which is a miracle how they do that. But if the pilots don't know what to do after they take off, and they all go in different directions, and no one is in sync, but this is what your life is like if you take off and you don't know where you're going.

And it starts already in high school, It starts way back because we got to know when we go to college. It's wonderful to go to college. But if you don't know why you go to college, don't go. Go and become an apprentice in some other kind of a field. Like I did. I was an apprentice as a salesman. And I went to college later on when I figured it out what I want to do.

but I mean it's like you got to know I've had kids that would go to college and say what do you study? I study English I said what's wrong with English nothing it's just something that I can use for anything later on

because I don't know yet what am I studying I said what the fuck is that you're 18 years old and you don't know what you want to do later on in life but how long is it going to take you to figure that one out You know, you get to know, do you want to be a lawyer? I mean, my nephew, Patrick Knapp, I sat down with his daughter. She says, I would like to go to USC.

I said, that's fantastic. I say, I help any way I can. I said, you know, make sure they have all A's. You know, have a 4.0 average. I obviously can't get in. I said, what do you want to study there? She says, I want to study business and get myself ready for law. Because as soon as I'm graduated, I want to go there to law school.

I want to be an entertainment lawyer. Wow. You know how much joy I had? That there was an 18-year-old, she was not yet 18, but there's almost 18-year-old girl that figured it out. And in her eyes, when you saw her eyes, how excited she was that she's going to go to college, and she's going to graduate after four years in business

and then she's going to become a lawyer. And not only she's a lawyer like floating around, entertainment lawyer like my dad. Now we're talking. So this is what I'm talking about. It just makes it for her journey from now on finishing her high school this year and then going to college. It's going to be so much fun because she knows where she's going.

So that's what I'm talking about. And it's like the vision that you had dictated to you the work you were going to have to do. Because there's some people that have a vision, but they don't want to do the work. Well, but here's the thing that if you have a very clear vision and you're absolutely convinced and have the faith in your vision, then all the work that you need to do becomes easier because there's a purpose for it. You see what I'm saying? Because the worst thing is, you know how many people are in the gym and they're sitting on the life cycling and they're going, they do a life cycle?

I said, let me ask you, why are you training? And he said, oh, my doctor said, I need to lose some weight. Well, that's no core. A goal is if you say, this summer, I'm going to be 20 pounds lighter and I'm going to have a six pack and I'm going to have some muscle separation, stuff like that, and I'm going to have the chicks all freak out when they see this. body. Now it sounds stupid the goal, but it works. It works. So you have to have a specific goal, whatever it is, how crazy it is. So for someone to go and every day write the

life saying because the doctor taught them to is not good. That person has to kind of sit down and see themselves in a better shape, see themselves on the beach and see the people around them say, look you always say, look at this guy. Because can you believe that? Son of a bitch is showing off his fucking six pad. You know, sir, look at that.

So that's the vision you should have, how people are jealous. And maybe even someone is trying to kick sand in your face and you just bury his face under the sand. Right? I mean, all this stuff you could It's all stupid visions, but they work. They work.

This is why Charles Atlas was so successful with his kicking sand in the face because it's the most basic thing, and it worked, and that he sold hundreds of millions of courses because of the same kind of image that people had. So there was a gorgeous shoot for. I'm going to be next year on the beach, and I'm going to be so muscular, and then all the girls are going to come by and say,

Oh, I want him. It's crazy stuff, but it means it works. Yeah, yeah. So this is why I say, have a vision. An expression that you use in the book, pardon my German, Ven shon, ben-denshan? Is that right?

Yeah, it's perfect. You said it perfect. It means if you go and do something, you might as well just go all the way with it. You just go all out. If you're going to do something, do it. Do it, exactly. And so it's a common thing

that people say in Austria and in Germany and in Switzerland. And so I wanted people to know that that's what I always heard, that's what I always said. And someone says, well, why do you train five hours a day? I said, Vangian, Dengon. You know, if I go and go for the Mr. Universe contest, I'm going to win. You know, there's no losing here. You know, I'm going to go all out. And so that was the idea. And the same is also in acting. I always went all out and acting. And you know what is interesting because you talk about the vision. I out of nowhere when in 2003, when the economy here in California went down, when we had blackouts and when we had no political direction really, and we had

really real problems here, the people were moving out their businesses from California People were moving away from California. I always said and saw myself as the governor. I didn't say it to anybody. But more and more, I was in the middle of promoting my movie Terminator 3. Like I was telling you, I was in Iraq, and I was in Kuwait, and there was in different places, you know, showing them, you know, the movie. And then I came back here and I promoted it, you know, in front.

France, in England, the Germany, and everywhere like that, and all over America. It then came out in America and Mexico. I remember traveling to Mexico and promoting it in Mexico and rose. And then as I was doing all of this, I said myself, I'm having always like two visions here. Focusing on a Terminator movie and making this the most successful movie, making sure that it grows us more money than any other movie this year. And I have also this vision of being governor.

And sure enough, as soon as I was finished with the promotion, I went on the tonight show and I announced it. And I had no team yet. Nothing. But I mean, so it was the same thing kind of like, but I didn't worry about it. Even when they said, you said, but you have no team, how can you go and start getting it?

I said, I put the team together. Don't worry about it. The election is not until two months from now. So I announced on August 6th and then October 7th was the election. Two months later. And I won. So it was the same thing. This is the work that I had to do. This is what I needed to do to get there.

And this is exactly what I did. I was sitting literally to 1 o'clock in the morning every day by my swimming pool with a team of guys that came in in shifts to teach me about how California is run and what went south in California and to learn about, you know, pensions and to learn about labor and to learn about prisons,

about law enforcement, about guns, and about gun safety and this and all of the different things that they needed to know so that they could have a debate when we go to the debates. And so, you know, so it was the same thing. I just had a very clear vision to become governor and that's what it became a reality.

Yeah, but again, you did the work. Oh, yeah. You did the work. You did the work. Yeah. That's why I say in my book, Work You Have So. Yeah, yeah. It's like Ted Turner always said, right?

Early to bed, early to rise, worked like hell and advertise. You know, so this is it. Did you, when you were working in a tile store, it was a tile store, right? It was a hardware store. A hardware store. So they had the fake tiles,

and they had real tiles. So the people that couldn't afford, like there was a lot of people in Austria in that time they couldn't afford real tiles on the kitchen so they had this wooden boards that looked like tiles but they put that on and it was like half the price and stuff. But I sold all of that

and I learned how to sell and how to figure out very quickly when a couple came in do you sell and talk to the woman or do the guy and how do you identify that very quickly?

And so I learned how to be sensitive. And I just say, how can I help you and all this stuff? And then eventually, you know, they would say, well, we are here to, we want to put some tiles in our kitchen and also upstairs in our bathroom, in our shower. What do you recommend? And I would show them the various different things. And then I will go and do the quiz.

So I know who to talk to here, to both or the one or the other. And then I said, well, what color you actually? thinking about. And then he says, what do you think, honey? So then I do. She says, well, pink. I think that for upstairs we should pink. You should have pink. He says, and for the kitchen also pink? And she says, no, are you crazy? The kitchen is white. We got to have white. You know, my friends have upstairs for the bathroom. They just got some black towel, which also looks very attractive, but pink is really the color. I like pink.

And he says, okay, wherever she wants, he would say. You know, I pay, but she makes the decision. So I knew right away, okay, then so now I took her around and I said, you would love this color here. Let me show you. And let me show you the difference being the real tile and the fake tile. And let me show you this and show it with that.

And then if you need, do you have anyone, by the way, already, that is installing it? Who is installing it? She says, I don't have anybody. Ah, came to the right guy. I have three names here. This is the three names. He says, with the real tiles,

with the cardboard, is this, and blah, blah, blah. So I talked mostly to her, and she felt like absolutely delighted. I couldn't do any wrong now because for the first time, she felt like someone took her seriously. Because in most cases,

with the way Austria used to be, was kind of very male-oriented, and chauvinistic. And so the male knew everything. They thought. In reality, I know from my house, when I grew up, my mother, for instance, ran the finances in our house. My father couldn't order a candle to her.

Or when it comes to writing, she was the spelling master of the house. Even when he did, he was in uniform and he was doing his police work and he wrote his reports, he asked my mother many times for a spelling, how to spell it was a certain way and stuff like that. and stuff like that. So she was clearly in charge of those things. And but she didn't dwell on it. She didn't believe that he's the king, the king of the house and stuff like that. So that's what women used to do.

But so this woman was delighted that I paid all this attention. And I told her this and says, I'm going to get some new tiles coming in next week on Wednesday. If you come back on Wednesday, then I can make sure that you get the same color white. Because there's sometimes there are different shades of, white. I said, now I'm worried about that. I said, come back next week, then I get a new kind of delivery, and it's all the same white and blah. And so she was delighted. She wrote out the order. He paid for it. It was a successful sell, but I learned that from my boss. When he said to me, he says, watch when I sell now. And he always asked me, says, did you see now how I figured out

that he was in charge and not she? And then the next time he says, did you see why I figured out that she was in charge and not him and all of this stuff. And so I would learn that. And so all of those things were very important to be for the rest of my life. Because every time you sell anything, you've got to know who you're talking to. You're talking to the women and you talk to the guys. You talk to young or you talk to old. You talk to conservative people or to one liberal people.

You talk to color people or white people. All of this kind of stuff you have to kind of know and get a feel for the whole thing because everything changes a little bit here and there. Yeah, there's pragmatic. So the book has all kinds of information in it, but there's pragmatic stuff that you can actually use. You put in the book, one of them in this chapter, in this tool, which is sell, sell, sell.

You say bridging. Bridging is a communication technique that anyone can use to take control of a hostile discussion or to avoid a question you don't want to answer. And then you go on and you give an example, you're running for governor. And someone says, Arnold, you've never run for office before at any level. What makes you think you're equipped to run the biggest state in the country? country. And your answer is, that's a great question. But you know, a better question is how can the greatest state in the country afford to continue to down this road with the same kind of

politicians who got us in this mess in the first place? That's a crafty little move. Yeah, yeah. So in the political arena, that is a crafty little move. In general, to give an example, like something that they used way back when I did my first interviews, I would go, let's say, on a Murph Griffin show or on a tonight show. And the guy would ask me and I would be on there to let's say promote to stay hungry, the movie. And I come on there and then and he says,

so tell me, I mean you still have this fantastic physique and I know you do the movie just now but when did you work, start working out and why? So without saying it but in my mind now, I said to myself, okay, if I tell him that I started with the age of 15, it's not going to sell one more ticket for the movie Stay Hungry.

I say, if I tell him that I started working out because I saw Rach Park, it's like no one knows who Rich Park is, and it's not going to sell a ticket either. And so I went through all of this stuff within a split of a second, and said, me said, this is all a waste, so I have to go and bridge. So what I basically, at that time, I didn't even know the terminology. I just said to myself, okay, here's what I'm going to say. I said, this is a really great question. I said, I started with 15, but what was interesting is,

I did not know then that I'm going to use this body in a movie like Stay Hungry, the one that's coming out this Friday. I tell you, in that movie, I convinced the producer and the director to not only have me as the Mr. Universe, and winning the Mr. Universe title, And to get a little bit of inside look in the background of bodybuilding and how those guys work out and the intrigues and all this stuff. But I also had convinced them to have like 50 other bodybuilders running through the city of Birmingham, Alabama. I mean, think about it, 50 bodybuilders running through Birmingham, Alabama on top of buses and this and that.

And it was an absolute crazy scene that we'd be having there. And I never thought that the day I started working out, that we're going to celebrate bodybuilding like that, and then we're going to show it to the people, and they're all going to see it in a movie called Stay Hungry. So now I mention the name the second time. So this is how I sold, and at the same time I quickly answered,

I started with 15, and went right over to the thing. So to me, what is interesting always is, is every question is a potential good question. No matter how shitty it sounds, when someone says it, you know. It's like it's a, someone can go and say to me, he says, Arnold, I mean, didn't you feel terrible? When you got divorced, it was kind of a failure.

And I said, you're absolutely right. But that's what is really interesting about it is that the documentary called Arnold, which Netflix is bringing out next week, I say it gets into details and it dissects exactly what happened there. I'm not going to say it now. I said, because I maybe don't want to see the documentary.

But I mean, go and see that. I said, it's fascinating of what led up to that whole thing and where was the big explosion and bang it was over. I said, by the way, I still regret. But I mean, so that's what you do, right? Instead of just blowing it, I want to sell at the same time, having a shitty question,

I want to turn it into a productive answer. And that is what it's all about. That's an amazing thing about this book right here that I'm reading. It's called Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger. You see, I don't want to use the name Be Useful. What did you want to use for that? Well, because if I say be useful, you know, five times, then people know that, okay, I'm hyping the book, be useful.

and I want the people to kind of a little bit more discovered the book when they go to the bookstore. They say, where's to be useful section? And then go and say to somebody, hey, I want to get 10 copies of being useful. And the guy says, oh, they, I only have five. He says, have to order another five. And he says, well, order 10 more because now I want to get 15. And so this is how you then promote be useful.

One of the things I wanted to jump in here to, because I think is a really important lesson that you got in the book. The tool is called shift gears in the book. And one of the things, and I know people that are in the bodybuilding will relate to this, but even if you're not, sometimes you lose. And sometimes things don't work out the way you want them to. And what do you do in those situations? In this situation here, you lost to Frank Zane in 1968. You blamed everybody else. Your first reaction was, blame everyone else, blame the judges, blame the fact that you had to travel, blame the fact that you had bad at food in the air, blame all these other things you did that for a night the next morning you pretty much woke up and said all right What happened? What do I need to change? And you actually go and bring Frank Zane to two where here in California? Yeah

To train with you so you can figure out what he did so he could never beat you again. That's a great reframing of a of a bad situation Well, I think that what is fun is to be able to laugh at yourself. So in this particular case, I mean, imagine you lose the Mr. Universe. You just won a week before a Mr. Universe contest, the second Mr. Universe contest. Now he's coming to America and there is another federation that has also a Mr. Universe contest. universe contest and you say, might as well grab that one too very quickly while I'm at it. And I lose. It was a total shocker. But what is laughable about it is even though I cried all night, as I said in the book, right? I cried all night. But that's something to be

that is laughable because our brain works a certain way. First of all, kind of feel sorry for me. Look what a victim. to Miami. Arnold is coming over here from Europe. He doesn't speak the language. He's all alone in Miami and he's suffering here and they're treating him really badly and there's this prejudice judges that are just of course looking for American bodybuilders but not for Europeans hating European bodybuilders and they make him loose now and they're telling him he was a little bit too fat and he didn't have the definition and now I'm all here by myself lying in bed with Roy Callender with my black friend that was competing with me in a Mr. Europe contest and Mr.

universe and traveled all over the world with me. And luckily I had him to cry on to the time and I'm crying all night and I say can he believe that I lost the competition. So it's funny because you have to be able to get to a point where you can laugh at that and say, the mind pulls interesting tricks. Now I woke up. Now I'm with the program. Now I'm seeing reality. Now I don't see anymore.

I was perfect. And they fucked me. And Frank Zane is a terrible person. He put a trick on me and all of that. I said, no. This is over now. We went past this stage where we are trying to defend ourselves

and kind of make ourselves feel good. Now is the stage of reality. And then you actually feel good, better than when you were kind of going through the kind of being a victim stage. And so I went through this stage where I said, I feel good. Now I see it clearly.

Frank Zain is a teacher. He's teaching kids. There's nothing wrong with him. And he had a fucking great body. He weighed 185. And I weighed 225. but he was more ripped. Yes, I was bigger, but he was more ripped. And he had a tan, I didn't have a tan. His posing was better.

So why shouldn't he get points for that? Let's assume for a second, he got 20 points for definition and I could, let's say, 18. Let's say, get 20 points for posing and I got maybe 18. And maybe he got, I got 20 points for size and he got 18. So he's still one by two points. I say, it's all pencils out. He is the fear winner. So I said, but I mean, I have, I don't have the experience to train in order to get this kind of a body. So I'm going to humbly ask him if he will be willing to come out to California and to work out with me and maybe I can learn a thing or two.

And he came out to California. I always loved going to World Court's gym. I want to go to a Gorge Gym. I'm going to, that would be great to train. Can you put me up? I said, yeah, you can stay in my place. So he came out, he stayed in my place for two, three weeks until he found his own apartment.

And then we worked out together like crazy. We had the greatest time. I took him out for lunch and for dinner and for breakfast and all that stuff. With the most wonderful time. And I got to see, firsthand the exercises he does for his serratus, the exercises he does for his abdominals, the kind of food that he eats in order to get so defined, and on and on and on,

and we became best of friends. As a matter of fact, so much so that we, that he made me promise not to compete against him. And I said, this is not what I'm looking for. I said, do you have to understand? Even though you beat me, but I'm looking for the bigger stuff. I'm looking for Sergio Oliver. He's the Mr. Olympia. That is the guy I need in order to really sit on top of the world. And he said, that's good. I'm getting at that. That's good. He says, because next year I want to compete in the Mr. Universe in the amateur in London. And I don't want you to compete in that. I said, no, I won't compete in that.

So we went together to the Mr. Universe in 1969, a year later. We trained together with Franco. And I went to New York, won my third Mr. Universe contest, the one that he won a year before. I won that one. Then I took him to the Mr. Universe contest in London, to the other federation, and he ended in that one, the amateur,

and he won that one. So we both now won one. So there was not like trying to take something from him or him from me. And then the year after that, I came back and then I beat Sergio Oliver. And I won the Mr. Olympia. From then on, that one could beat me in him. So that was it.

So we all worked it out. Now, we did compete again against each other because eventually we ran into each other in Mr. Olympia because he was winning Mr. Olympia three times. And the fourth time when he tried was 19. in 80, I came back and competed again after five years of retirement. And so that's where we ran into each other again. And I could not tell anyone that I'm competing because it was listed as a judge at that

Mr. Olympic competition. And so only the day when we had the judge's meeting, I said, you know something, guys, I'm not going to judge tomorrow, I'm going to compete tomorrow. And they said, what? it was kind of a big surprise. So at that point, no other body brother would pull out. So they just then competed against me. And I was lucky enough to win.

Now, from a training perspective, you always hear that, like, that level of definition and that level of shred is more based usually on diet than on your working out. What did you change? Was it the working out change? Or did you actually shift your diet somewhat? I think there were a few basic things like milk products that Frank Zane and Franco both were them very adamant about for me to cut out.

And for me, cutting out the milk products alone helped me a lot to get more defined. The other thing was to have desserts. I had no concept really at that time about desserts and all that stuff. and I just would eat desserts after every meal and they said carat desserts three months before. And that's what we did. Even though the night before the Olympia or before the Mr. Universe,

Frank and I would go to the House of Pies here on Fifth Street, across the street from Sukkis in Santa Monica, and we would eat a whole cherry pie. But it was like because we were so starved of carbohydrates that it somehow, we blew it. But it didn't hurt anymore. It was too late. Because the next day we went to New York for the Mr. Olympia contest and we won.

And he won his Mr. Universe and Mr. World Condice and I won the Mr. Olympia and everything was standing fine. But I learned a little bit about that, but I was never really a diet expert. I got my definition from over-training. So everyone in a bodybuilding world would say that that many sets, to 35 sets of body parts like I did three times a week, that that was definitely overtraining. And to me, I never knew exactly how to do it without the 35 sets.

And the reason is because I felt kind of like every exercise, had a specific purpose. And so when I was doing chests, and I was doing five sets, let's say, of bench press, then I did five sets of barbell incline press, then I did five sets of dumbbell incline press, then I did five sets of flies, then did five sets of pullovers with the dumbbell.

then on a Nautilus machine, on a portable machine. And then it did the cable crosses for the striations. And it went on and on. Each exercise was for specific purpose. It's the same thing with back. Yes, I was doing my chin-ups, white grip. But it did five sets in the back, five sets in the front. But then I remember Frank Zane said,

you want to get the intercastles and the Ceraradus, you got to do close-crib chin-ups. So we did the close-crip chin-ups in order to get the Cereris. But then it was bent over rowing. It was the T-bar rowing with the big blades on it, the pounded against the chest, boom, boom, like this. But then it was also the barbell rowing where I could lift it further up in order to reach the chest with the bar and off a block or off a bench, standing on top of a bench or a bench. block and then there was the cable rowing because they go way to the front and way to the back

and so this is how you go on and on and on that pull downs. So it was 35 cents. So I'm going to go now. So each one was hitting a certain area and that's how I got my definition rather than by burning of fat I was working it all. Just working. And just you know just burning. They said I burned like five thousand. What was it? 50 tons of weights every day. And it was like thousands of calories we were burned during the workout. And then there was abs.

And it just went on and on and on. But anyway, it was good. So with me, it was mostly overtraining that created in the definition. So for all those people out there that I've heard the mantra, which is you can't out train a bad diet, Arnold says, yes, you can.

You can outtrain a bad diet. You can out trade a bad diet. You can outrain some cherry pie. They may be a ride because it wasn't a bad diet. It just wasn't a good diet. So like I said, I was never severe. There were some guys that would be really strict

all year round. And there will be like Chuck cholera and people like that that had abs throughout the whole year. Pierre Van denstein, the Belgian bodybuilder who missed the universe. It just was like, ripped. I was never ripped like that. So I mean, these guys, they will be really in the diet, but they will be lean, they don't have the size and all that stuff. So, but you know, so I mean,

it's like in life, we can only take ideas and suggestions to improve. But you cannot ever copy anyone. It is a big mistake because you have to find out how your mind operates. You have to find out how your body operates. I mean, it would be a mistake for me to copy exactly Frank Sain's training or Franco-Colomba's training. Franka did only 10 sets of thighs because its thighs got big very, very quickly and I had to add this long thighs and had to do much more. So everyone trained differently. So the idea to tell someone, here's what you do for bench press, this is what you do for chest, this is what you do for back. These are the ideas to say, this exercise hits the lower lads, this exercise hits the upper lads, this exercise hits the center of the back.

When you row back, this gets the center. So the more you hold it back there, the more you develop the muscles on the back. And this is how he developed the lower back. by doing good morning exercise with the thumbbell, the barbell, and the down behind your neck and all that stuff. So you can give people this idea, but then what, how many sets and how many reps they do for each one of them? They have to figure that out because everybody has weak points

and everyone's weak points are different. You know, mine was always hard to get the tricep or to get thighs. So for Frank, it was hard to get the longer bicep. He was at the short bice with a longer bicep. and to get the outer calves, and he could never straighten out his bow legs and stuff like that. So everyone had their weak points,

so you had to kind of get exercises for the inner thigh to make it visually appear not as bow-legged, but more straight. And the way he posed. So we have to, every situation is different. And so this is the important thing is, an ant is like you have an idea, You give people an idea of how to train for every single area of the body.

But then you have to let, then you give them suggestions how many sets, but then they have to figure it out themselves. It's like I was at Vince's gym in the valley. And I said to Vince, why are you doing this stupid exercise? I was like lying on the bench and he had a dumbbell here, and he was going out like this. I said, what the fuck is that? And he says, tried.

So I tried it. And he says, how many sets? I said, five. And he says, no, no. You got to try it 20 sets, 20 reps. Because then you would know the moral which part of your trice hurts.

So I did 20 sets. 20 reps, like an idiot outside. And the next day, this muscle here, the tricep that separates the back from the bicep was like twitching, going absolutely crazy. So now I knew that is what it is for. I never knew. After all the years in winning Mr. Universe,

twice and all this stuff, I was training over there, I did not know that. So it just shows to you that we do exercises and exercises and exercises, but we don't know exactly for which part it really works. And your bone structure will tell you that. So this is why you have to experiment with your own body. You've got to go and do some days your squats with your toes pointed out, very close together, further apart,

and the 20 sets of 20 reps and then you would know the next day we had heard you know since it's almost kind of like a Leonardo da Vinci where you dissect and go into the minute details and be kind of a lab technician and try to figure out your own body

rather than just copy so this is what I always say to people say you've got to figure out your own body and everyone has to do something that makes some change changes or some little alteration. Yet there are basic things that are the same. But I mean, it's like how many people don't know

that your bicep gets developed by not only curling, but also turning the wrist. So what I did was I ended up putting more weight on the inside than on the outside. So that when I curl up like that, it was really hard to get this dump bill in here because this weight was weighing down and that is kind of like putting it in and it cramped my bice. I said, son of a bitch, I'm having such a cramp,

had to straighten it out right away and all that stuff. So most people don't know that. So this is the little subtle things that you have to give people. And the same is also with what motivates you to function well and to be happy and to be successful and to be fulfilled and all of that stuff, you've got to figure that out what makes you tick. Yes, there's some basic rules. You can read my book here and all of that stuff, but it's still not everything. There's still things that you have to figure out for yourself in order to really get good at things and really reach your potential and reach all of your goals. That's just the bottom line. it's bodybuilding, whether it's trying to find out what you're going to do with your life,

how you're going to become happy, how you're going to become successful. Sure, there's guidelines you can follow in this book, in other books, but you're going to have to make adjustments to make it work for you. That's what we have to do. Yeah. Absolutely. That's a bottom line. Well, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for taking. I know we took up a little extra time, but thank you. Thank you for. This was fun to schmooze with you guys, because it was not like an interview kind of, I think what makes you very attractive and fun is that you're almost kind of, you know, I thought we're sitting now for half an hour and now we've been sitting

for what is it like an hour and 50 minutes, 45 minutes. So I totally missed that. Yeah, yeah. But only because I thought that we had a, we were just sitting at a coffee shop and schmoozing and having a good time and discussing those things. You know, so there's a different, between that and an interview when they come and says, let me ask a very interesting question. When did you decide to write this book?

This is kind of like, the way people come with you, you just have to turn in CNN or Fox. I have those things. That's how they usually word the questions. After 12 minutes, you wonder when they can get out of that. Well, the crazy thing about podcasts, we have

we've done some episodes I think our longest is five and a half hours long but you know we're sitting there talking to someone that was in Iraq or in Afghanistan that we're going through the details of that it's it's exactly what you're talking about you're basically sitting around sharing war stories and time just goes by really quick

next thing you know you look at you watch and it's been two three four hours and there you go and what's cool about this what's cool about podcasts is people listen to them when they're mowing the lawn when they're working out No, no, I can totally see that. Yeah. Well, thanks for taking the time.

How much you guys working out? I work out, so I'll work out in the morning. You know, I would say a good workout for me. If I have my time, I'll do like an hour and a half of lifting. I usually go for a run after that, and then I train jujitsu at night. And jih Tjitsu's, what did you say? Jitzu's like you're explosive, but it's also cardio. It's a little bit of both.

And that's kind of my day. What about you? Yeah, like five, six days a week, one hour, one hour half, total, I would say. After this interview, I'm upping it. Yeah, I mean, 35 sets. 35 sets per body part. That's the new standard. Looking at your guys' arms, I don't think you should up this.

Perfect sense. Because, I mean, it's like, I don't even know if you can carry concealed weapons in California without a permit. I mean, those guns are big, pretty big. That's all I can tell you. Well, it's interesting. It's interesting, you know, what you were talking about today with the explosion of fitness and bodybuilding. I mean, think about your role in that.

If you wouldn't have done Conan, if you wouldn't have done pumping iron, like that stuff just wouldn't have happened. And, you know, our guns probably wouldn't be where they are today if it wasn't for that. Right, right. Well, I'm glad that's being useful. Yeah, exactly.

I'm saying it's like a... The interesting thing about all of this is that when you get into it, it's the last thing you think about is helping anybody. And then all of a sudden, somehow you develop into this person that you didn't know. Like I found out, even when I did not know everything, but just helping somebody, else made me feel good. And I started getting into that, like, training other people that eventually I took that job in Munich to be the trainer in a bodybuilding gym.

And I just found it just so full of joy for myself to work out to be able to help the 300 members that they had there. And they'd have them come in one after the next and come to me. What would you do for the upper pegs? What would you do for the calves? or do it different and you just help for hours and hours and hours every day. And then eventually, you know, this whole thing then spreads to, by the coincidence, to Special Olympics, you know, when it became the train of Special Olympics,

then it started getting the President's Council of Physical Fitness. We all of a sudden the President sends you around to order schools and to promote, you know, fitness in the schools and to get more public, to get more kind of physical education classes in the classrooms, and all of that. And so that after school programs, so one thing leads to the next. And eventually you get so high on the idea

of helping people that then you run for governor. Right? I mean, and you give up literally like your 20, 25, $30 million for a movie instead of, you know, getting nothing and getting dumped on all the way along. He did this wrong, he did it wrong. Why did I do that? But I mean, it's just, it's just in your calling.

It's just like he was there. There's a really interesting theme in the book. And I thought you were going to point out. You actually didn't point it out. In the beginning, like the first chapter you talk about looking in the mirror, looking in your eyes and telling yourself the truth. But you're really focused on you've got to look in the mirror and see who you are. And the last chapter is break the mirrors and don't focus on yourself.

And it's helping other people out. It's that, the way that's tied together in the book, it's, it also kind of, I think, takes a person through their lives. Like you said, when you're young, you're kind of like focused on what can I do. And then you're looking at yourself. You've got to tell yourself the truth. You've got to figure out what your vision is. But then eventually you get to a point where you've got to smash that mirror and you look to help other people.

And that's really what you've done with your life. Yeah. And I talked about Sergeant Shriver, right? Because when he said that at his commencement speech, I thought it was like so meaningful to me. or the guys like me because we deal with the mirror and then all of a sudden to hear

smash that mirror that makes you always look at yourself and you will see the millions of people behind that mirror that need your help. I said what the fuck? I mean I got to go and I have to have this written somewhere. As soon as I hear the speech I said I got to write this down

I said because this is such a like you just said, such an opposite and that's why we put it in the book there first to talk about the mirror then to talk about smashing the mirror and what a great way of ending up Yep, it is indeed so thanks for joining us

If you're out there listening yeah look in the mirror, tell yourself the truth and then smash that mirror and see who else you can help out thanks Arnold. Appreciate it. Thank you thank you guys thank you for your service It was an honor to serve

And with that well we actually left the building this time yeah Arnold was still in the building we left the building we're back down here in San Diego how to go it went well yeah so kind of with every moment that passes by it kind of hits you like okay you know we you know we grew up in like essentially the same era where it's like okay what was the first one pumping iron and Conan that was the first one and then commando I saw I saw Conan the destroyer the destroyer In the theater. The Destroyer.

Yep. Not Conan the Barbarian. I didn't see that in the theater. Yeah. Because that might have come out, what, 83? Yeah. So I don't think I was old enough for that one. But I saw Conan Destroyer in the theater.

Yeah. Predator was obviously a big one. I saw Predator in the theater. Yeah. Because like the guys. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The special rescue team, not assassins, by the way.

Jack. Really new son of a big thing. But oh, yeah. So with every passing moment, you kind of remember all this stuff. Like, you know, like we all like how you said, oh, yeah, I watched the kind of the destroyer in the theater. You're like, you remember that. So it's like, oh, and here's the guy right here. Same.

He's saying. And he's walking us through all this stuff. So it's like, yeah, it's kind of a trip, I'd say. But yeah. Yeah. And like there's so many facets to go down. Like, we didn't talk about Joe Weeder. Joe Weeder, me as a 13 year old drinking Joe Wheater super weight gain 2000.

Yeah. Right? No, we didn't. We didn't talk about that. That's the whole thing. That is a whole thing. That is a whole thing. That's what was happening.

Yeah. It's interesting that so I, you know, I have some friends. They text me or whatever and they all say the same thing, which is the same for me where it's essentially like the number one reason that most of us wanted to be big and strong and started like lifting weights when we're teenagers and stuff is because of Arnold. Because of like all the movies and pretty much all of them. Even like twins. You ever watch twins? Yeah. You're kind of like, yeah, it's a funny movie and everything.

But bro, I kind of want to lift and be big like that. You know, like kind of no matter what the movie is, you want to be like that, you know? So, yeah, that was real. Interesting. In the book, he made the most money off of twins of all of his movies. Really?

Yeah. Because whatever somebody didn't believe in it, which is a big theme for him. People say, oh, you're not going to be able to do this. Your accent's too thick, you're too big. Whatever they say to him. Yeah. You're going to run for governor?

Are you kidding me? It's only, it's going to be in two weeks. He just goes and does it. Well, with twins, and this is all in the book, they say, They're saying, hey, you're an action star, you can't do comedy. And so no one wanted to do the film. So he basically did a deal where he made the money off the back end,

and the film ended up doing awesome. So that's where, that's the movie he's made the most money from, is that movie. That's pretty crazy, right? Oh, yeah. You would think, you'd think Terminator because that's the one that everybody quotes and replicates and all the, you know, all the, all the, you know, the sequel and all that kind of stuff. Huh, that's crazy I watch twins in the theater

Okay Were you pumped when you watch it? Yeah Oh yeah Yeah He's got other stuff going on Hey if you haven't watched that We talked about it a little bit today

But that Netflix special Arnold Which I watched really good Yeah He's got an app He's got like a workout app It's called The Pump I got it I've been checking it out

It's pretty cool Some good workouts in there Lots of sets Lots of reps. Were you surprised by 35 sets? I was not 30. I didn't know the number, but I knew that they did a lot. Yeah, yeah.

So when I was young, we had pumping iron. That came out the year I was born, by the way, pumping iron. But we had it on a videotape. So it was pumping iron, Star Wars, and then Conan the Barbarian. All in one tape. All in one tape. You know, the super long player. I don't know.

It's like the condensed for like quality. Yeah, quality was low. Yeah, yeah. But we got nine movies on one cassette. It was good quality to look. at, but, you know, the data rate or out of whatever, the equivalent would be nowadays. But, yeah, so, bro, I knew about that kind of stuff. I knew about, like, Lou Frigna, like, about lifting and all that stuff or whatever.

And, you know, you watch it later as an adult and you kind of mask it onto your workup program. And you're like, okay, all right, these are, you know, but they're pros, so I dig it. That's what we're doing. So, awesome to sit down, talk with him. Just very cool. And, yeah, his office. there is like what do you what did you have as you walked in right it was a life-sized freeze from

batman that guy yeah mr freeze mr freeze then it was uh the predator life-sized predator monster which is bigger than you'd think so here and i don't want to go too deep down the rabbit hole but i think we're about to yeah so i was um so i was talking to the guys there as well and i didn't even actually realize this but I know a lot about all that stuff so predator um was played by a guy he's like seven feet tall okay yeah so you know the predator's huge in the movie but you think it's a movie so of course they make them look huge and tall or whatever but the real guy who played it's the same guy who played in harry and the henderson's you know harry and the henderson the bigfoot movie the guy who played big foot okay seven feet tall he played the predator so when you see the

predator the full-sized predator and he's seven feet tall which he is you're like okay is he is he a jacked guy the guy that played it no like kind of kind of tall, skinny black guy. Who played, who played Chubaka? A different guy or the same guy? No, no, different guy. Yeah, he was more of, actually, the guy who played Predator was a tall black guy, and Chubacca was a white guy.

But, yeah, I forget their names, though. Okay. But nonetheless, the point is. We remember the characters. Yeah, so the Predator, which originally was supposed to be played by Van Dam, by the way, who was not seven feet tall. Jean-Claude Van Damme. John Claude Van Dam was supposed to be the predator.

How come he didn't stick with the role? Because during that time, the predator was going to be nothing but special effects. So he wore a red suit, right? So the blue background and the red suit. So he'd be running around in this red suit. They'd do CGI, or I guess it wasn't CGI back then, but, you know, maybe it was. But nonetheless, it'd be a special effect.

It wouldn't be him, you know, it'd be a special effect. So after a while he was running right, it didn't look good either, by the way. So it was kind of a decision where John Claude didn't like it. And then kind of the director and stuff was like, this isn't going to work. And John Claude was like, what? I'm not going to be shown in all this stuff or whatever. You find out later, I guess.

So they were like, oh, we're going to do something else. Then they pivoted and got the iconic. Yeah, I think it would have been weird to have the alien dude doing like karate type stuff. Yeah, he wasn't doing karate. Are you sure about that? Because why would you bring in Van Dam if he wasn't be doing some splits and whatnot? Well, keep in mind, this was 1980. Would you be impressed if the predator was doing splits?

Well, he was running and jumping around. Yeah. So it's like athletic stuff. But, yeah, I mean, maybe he was doing that. But that was before Van Dam became Van Dam, no. Oh, okay. So, yeah, that's how it went down. But obviously, you know, Predator is like the Predator, Alien.

What they call it? The real name's like, Ocha, Yautja, or something like that. Anyway, yeah, you want to know this kind of stuff. But. You're going too deep for me. I understand. But that look is, like, part of the iconic nature of the whole predator. You know, it's almost like you can't imagine something else besides that one, you know?

Yeah. That's what it feels like. Check. And then there was the life size Terminator and the Life Size Terminator, like both Arnold Terminator and then just the straight metal Terminator. Yeah, that was cool to see.

Well, that was awesome. Cool to sit down. Definitely cool to talk about working out. Talk about fuel. We're working out. Yeah. So are you going to modify any of your workouts? I am definitely upping my sets.

Now, I did think about this. I was like 35 sets, but when I do pull-ups, I do, sometimes I'll do 20. sets just of pull-ups sometimes even 25 to 30 sets of just pull-ups yeah just pull-ups just wide-grip pull-ups so now if I start rotating in maybe some closer grip maybe some bent-over row like some other stuff yeah I think it's that that's my next move that's what I'm doing yeah that more sets that feels like that was the idea behind the approach because

remember what he was saying he was like yeah I'm gonna do five sets of rows five sets a you know freaking T-bar five sets and he's like and after a while 35 sets because you do seven exercise five so it's it was more it seemed like anyway uh it was more about the hitting the muscle and all these different angles you know for about five sets he was getting fired up wasn't he was getting fired up talking about working out and if you notice if you notice it it's it almost sorted itself out that i got the impression anyway that the working out and the bodybuilding part of things was kind of the core of everything you know he said that and it's in the book he said that hey i learned this lesson i got to work hard i learned this lesson i got to try to

things. I learned this lesson. Everyone's a little bit different. Yeah. Even, and we didn't get too much into it, but like on the political side, when he was the governor, he was reaching out and trying to figure out compromises on how to actually make things happen instead of just having a big stalemate. So he brought people into his cabinet or, you know, into his administration, into his administration that were left leaning, right? And people were like, oh, what are you doing? He's like, oh, I'm trying to figure out how to make this work, basically. So it was and that's all in that there's one one of his rules was shut your mouth and listen like that's basically

Yeah, what he did was okay. I know what my opinion is. What's their opinion? Let's figure out how to make these things work. So Awesome. That's what we're doing. We're working out. We're figuring out how to make things work. Gonna need some fuel. I'm drinking some milk right now. You're drinking some go. Some go. So if you want some good fuel for your body for your system for your Terminator soul, Joccofuel.com Go and get some protein, go to get some go. Go and get some greens, which the cool thing about greens is, look, bringing the whole vegetable scenario in

is just a... It's a lot sometimes. You know what I mean? It's a lot sometimes. Are you fired up to eat vegetables? Like, excited about it? Under very few circumstances, am I fired up to eat vegetables?

So if there's a circumstance where you're fired up to eat vegetables, cool. Yeah. Take advantage of it. I'm down to eat vegetables. But given your question, you're correct. Yeah.

So sometimes it's more of a chore. Sometimes, yes. But you still need them. Yeah. Greens. Get the greens. And believe it or not, we made the greens taste good, naturally sweetened, good to go. Jock Fuel.com, joint warfare, super krill, time war, take this stuff.

It's going to help you across the board. I was talking to someone the other day. And I was like, dude, you need to take time war. You need to take it. It's going to make you feel so much better because it helps. every aspect. So that's what we're doing. joccofuel.com.

You can also get this stuff at Wawa, vitamin shop, G&C, military commissaries, Afees, Haniford, dash stores in Maryland, Wakefern, ShopRite, H-EB down in Texas. They might, you know, H-E-B might start having a new section just called Jocko Fuel.

Thanks to you all down there in Texas. And Meyer, same thing. They might have, oh, just go to the Jocco Fuel section, because that's what we're doing. Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, shields and then small gyms everywhere whether you got a jih Tzu gym whether you got a crossfit gym we're actually in gold's gym speaking of Arnold Schwarzenegger gold's gym a bunch of gold's gym bringing us in there people want the good

stuff they want the clean stuff if you want stuff inside your gym and you own a gym email jf sales at joccofuel.com or if you are a member at a gym and you want this stuff tell your tell your gym owner to email jf sales at joccofuel.com that's what we're doing also origin usa If you're going to need clothing at some juncture, sometimes you need workout clothing, we got you, origin USA.com. Sometimes you need jihitoo clothing, we got you, origin USA.com. And sometimes you need work clothing, we got you, origin USA.com.

And sometimes you need going out to dinner with your wife clothing. We got you. Tier one. So there we go. So basically we got you. 24 hours a day, we got you. We got you covered, and we got you covered with stuff that's made 100% in America. So never mind, all the slave labor that's happening overseas, don't worry about that.

You're not participating in that. You're not participating in the destruction of the environment, which is what's happening. Because they dye their genes. They take the excess dye and dump it into the river, goes to the ocean, kills everything. We're not doing that. This is made in America. We have some regulations here to protect the environment. other people say

oh we don't want to follow those regulations we'll make this stuff overseas and then you know what they say but we'll give one percent to the back to the environment what's good is that how does that one percent does that pull the poisons that you put

into rivers does it pull them out no it doesn't buy the best originusa.com that's what we're doing it's true also jocko has a store

it's called jaco store discipline we're representing you know we're still in the past We're always going to be on the past. So yeah, if you want to represent this, where you get your stuff. Hats, hoodies. Shirts, of course. Oh, whatever shirt you need on that one.

Also, we have the shirt locker. This is a subscription scenario, different design every month. People seem to like it. You'll notice the layers as far as layers go. Here, also back to just the store. New Discipline Equals Freedom shirt is out. It's a new one. Brand new.

No one's ever seen it. Tell us the layers will vision. Actually, there's no layers. It's just enough. other version of the representation of discipline equals freedom but actually i sorry my mistake it's not out yet it will be out soon though so it's in the process but if you want to be on the alert for the first wave the first a dish sign up on the email list on jacca store.com if that's what you want the email list what do you go to the website and sign up to the website right at the bottom yeah it doesn't

really it doesn't you know a lot of what do you call e-commerce right store online stores where they'll have the pop up or whatever so yeah it's not that in your face it's over it's kind of the bottom you just scroll down it's actually pretty easy like anything else but yeah sign up for that get the alert boom you be on the first a dish of the discipline equals freedom version four did the shirt locker shirt you were telling me about land yeah no in in the wild march first march first it lands but you seem like you're excited about we're very excited that's the sugar coated lies well sugar coated lies yes represented in a new way you know in a in a good way we'll say new way yeah I mean technically they're all new so cool but you know it's it's it's real put this way it's represented appropriately

me. I'd say. Awesome. Also, you're going to need some steak. You're definitely going to need some steak. If you're getting jacked, you need steak, you need protein. That's what we're doing. Go to primalbeef.com or go to Colorado Craftbeef.com to awesome companies that are giving you the goods.

The best steak you're going to get. The best burger you're going to get. That's what we're doing. So check out primalbeef.com or Colorado Craftbeef.com. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also, jocco underground.com. We're about to record one of those. Check that out.

Also, we got YouTube. We got psychological warfare. We got flipside canvas. I have written a bunch of books about leadership. And I've written a bunch of kids' books. Check out the kids' books. Way of the Warrior Kid. It's a whole series.

Check that out. Also, Eschelon Front. We have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to Eschlonfront.com. If you need help inside your organization, that's what we do. We have live events. And we also work specifically with companies over longer periods of time

to get them aligned with their leadership. And then you as an individual human, you might need leadership in your life. Well, let me rephrase that. You need leadership in your life. You need to be a leader. Whether you're interacting with your kids, interacting with your spouse,

interacting with your friends, interacting at work, with your family, whatever the case may be, you need to know how to lead. Leadership is a skill that you can learn. And for you as an individual, we've got the Extreme Ownership Academy. Go to Extreme Ownership.com

and take, There's a couple free courses on there. Just take those at a minimum. They're just free just to understand what we do. And then if you feel like you need some more, get some more. You see something? You like something? Get something.

That's the way it used to be, right? I dig it. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, Mark Lee's mom. Mama Lee, she's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. Also, heroes and horses.org, taking veterans up into the mountains to let them find themselves

and Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood.org. If you want to connect with us, Arnold, he's on the interwebs. He's got schwartzenegger.com. And he's also on Instagram. He's also on TwitterX. I'm calling it TwitterX. Cover the bases. Yeah.

He's there at Schwarzenegger and then Facebook and YouTube. He's at Arnold Schwarzenegger. Of course, also, if you want to connect with Echo and myself, Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at Jocka Willing. Just be careful because Infinite Scroll will grab you and you'll waste a bunch of time and we don't have any time to waste. So just watch out for that algorithm. And also we are able to do this, what we get to do, what we do here,

because our military personnel are out there around the world protecting us and protecting our way of life. So thanks to all of you. Also, thanks to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all other first responders. Thank you for what you do every day to keep us safe. We appreciate it. And the last thing I want to do for everybody, and you just remind you of two things from our Arnold's life and from his book and they're related and I talked about him a little bit. First thing is look in the mirror. Look in the mirror. See yourself for who you really are.

Something I talk about a lot. You've got to tell yourself the truth. So look in the mirror. Look at yourself in the eyes and tell yourself the truth. Who are you? Are you doing what you should be doing? Are you working hard enough to become who you know you should. should become.

So that's number one. Look in the mirror. Then number two, smash that mirror. Smash that mirror. Stop focusing on yourself and see what you can give. See who you can help.

And what you give, you will get back. It's not about you. So go out there, get after it, and be useful. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. out.