Arnold Schwarzenegger's Full Body Workout

Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s full body workout

When we think of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s training style we think of his super long, split body routines. But when Arnold first started training he did full body workouts and he recommends full body training for new lifters. So today we are going to take a look at the full body workout that Arnold did when he was starting out, how he recommends progressing it and what we might be able to do to improve upon it.

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Arnold was heavily influenced by Reg Park who’s beginner 5x5 program not only impacted Arnold, but as we talked about in my 5x5 training video many popular programs that are done today.

Reg Parks program had an A and B workout, but Arnold simplified this even further. Having only one workout that consisted of 6 exercises done 3 times a week this workout was call The Golden Six after these 6 exercises:

First was the barbell squat with 4 sets of 10 reps making sure your bringing your upper thigh parallel to the floor in the bottom position

Next was the barbell bench press. Arnold’s favorite upper body exercise. He recommended a wide grip lowering the bar with control and no bouncing it off your chest. Do this for 3 sets of 10 reps

After this he would do chin ups with a wide grip doing many reps as possible for 3 sets

Behind the neck presses were Arnold’s preference, but let’s just go with shoulder presses as behind the neck puts our shoulders in a potentially bad position. Here emphasis on lowering the weight slowly and no pause in the bottom position. 4 sets of 10.

Barbell curls are next and he wants a full range of motion on this exercise without any cheating on the reps. 3 sets of 10

The final exercise is bent knee sit ups. For as many reps as possible without stopping for 3 to 4 sets.

The recommended rest time between sets is 2 minutes and to make it progressive you would increase the weight once you were able to get at least 12 repetitions.

First let’s talk about what is good in this program. It is a simple program based on compound movements, great for a beginner looking to put on muscle. It also isn’t to long, it would take about an hour to complete.

Arnold recommended doing it for at least 3 months and then suggested a good way to advance it would be to increase the sets on all of the exercises except the sit ups to five sets then after 6 months increase it to 6 sets. This is a great way to increase overall training volume. Which is a major driver when it comes to muscle growth.

This is something I’m doing in my own full body workout. Every few weeks I add a set, then once I hit a point where I’m overreaching I back off the number of sets change the rep range and take a bit of a deload, then start to add sets back in.

With Reg Parks program he would add new exercises to the program to advance it and this is where we could improve Arnold’s program. One of the first things we notice with this plan is there are 2 pushing movements and only one pulling.

In addition to chin ups it would make sense to add in bent over rows to round out the back a bit more.

This workout doesn’t have any direct Tricep work and Arnold says this is because of the 2 pushing movements and theses give the triceps enough work. Still I think our triceps would benefit from the extra work. And I probably shouldn’t have mentioned triceps before one of the most popular mass builders, deadlifts or at the very least add in Romanian Deadlifts.

The more exercises we add in the longer the workout starts to get and this is where having an A and B workout comes in. In my own program I started with an A and B workout and took some time to really master those moves and now I’ve added in a C workout which makes it a much more complete program. The simplest example I can give, is I do flat bench on Monday, incline on Wednesday and dips on Friday. Which provides complete stimulation of the muscle fibres for the chest, from all directions.

Starting with a simple program based on compound movements like The Golden Six, can provide us with a solid foundation to build on. So, we can keep working out while having fun