180 Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder
and you must continue to use them as you progress. The first
exercise, the bench press, is absolutely necessary for a big
chest. There is no exercise to replace it. I started doing the
bench press when I was fifteen and I've been doing it now for
fourteen years.
These exercises are to be done three times a week, with one
day between workouts for mending and setting. Basically, the
theory is simple. In the beginning you will be training your
whole body in one day. This should be followed by a rest day
because it takes forty-eight hours for the muscles to recuperate,
to rebuild to their normal size and grow bigger. If you trained a
muscle every day it would slowly deteriorate—you would be just
tearing it down and not rebuilding it. Also, you need forty-eight
hours to let the joints recuperate. Since, in the beginning, you
will do basic movements for every muscle at each workout, you
need a day of rest between your sessions in the gym.
The basic exercises will appear throughout the entire training
program. There are no alternatives to these exercises. For exam-
ple, even, bodybuilder has to do squats from the time he starts
until he finishes. You can't build your legs without the squat.
The detail stuff that gives you more definition is fine, but the
basic thigh muscle can only be developed and maintained by
doing heavy squats. If you try to get away from them the size of
the muscle will go down. Barbell curls, triceps extensions be-
hind the neck, calf raises, sit-ups are the same—you can't get
around them. Basic exercises work directly on the muscle. You
fall into a groove and don't even have to think about anything
except the pump and the form of the exercise. With the compli-
cated exercises, you have to concentrate all your thought on the
exercise and not the muscle. I think the reason some bodybuild-
ers use delicate exercises, which I call chicken exercises, is that
they don't feel confident with the basic movements or with
themselves. The bench press seems so simple, they think they
should do something more complicated. But you can't use as
much weight when you make the exercise difficult, so it takes
away from the meaning of heavy training.
It all goes back to mental attitude, back to being confident in
your program. You have to believe that sooner or later you will
achieve the body you want. You won't waste your time searching