Hi, I’m Steve,
More than forty years after he retired from the bodybuilding stage, Arnold Schwarzenegger remains the most popular bodybuilder on the planet. Today’s gym goers continue to draw inspiration from those iconic black and white photos of the Austrian Oak in his prime. And there is still a huge fascination with how he trained to create his amazing physique.
In this article, we drill down on the Arnold Schwarzenegger 6 day workout split when he was in his prime. That takes us back to 1974, the year before he filmed Pumping Iron. That was also before he slimmed down for his role in Stay Hungry. Bodybuilding historians agree that the best Arnold Schwarzenegger we ever saw was onstage at that 1974 Mr. Olympia at Madison Square Garden in New York.
An Arnold Primer
Arnold Schwarzenegger was born on July 30, 1947, in Thal, a small village outside of Graz, Austria. His father was a police officer and a former German soldier. He raised Arnold and his older brother, Meinhard, with a firm hand.
As a boy, Arnold played soccer. But it was in 1961 when he met world weightlifting champion Yuri Vaslov in Vienna that he found his focus. From that point on, Arnold became obsessed with lifting weights. About the same time, he came across Kurt Marnul, a former Mr. Austria who became his mentor.
Arnold told Marnul, and anyone else who would listen, that he was going to become the best bodybuilder in the world. Arnold trained like a madman, even breaking into the gym in Graz one Sunday when he found it locked. His body responded and, by the age of 17, he had put on around 25 pounds of muscle.
When he turned 18, Arnold went into the army for his two years of compulsory service. He was stationed in a tank unit. It was during this time that he went AWOL to compete in the Junior Mr. Europe in Germany. He won the competition, later sneaking back onto the army base with his trophy in hand. He spent a week in the base prison for his trouble.