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 enlarge | Author: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy Used: $2.60
You Save: $11.40 (81%)
New (31) Used (37) from $2.60
Avg. Customer Rating:  64 reviews
Sales Rank: 17298
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.2 x 0.6
ISBN: 0671797484
Dewey Decimal Number: 646.75
EAN: 9780671797485
ASIN: 0671797484
Publication Date: January 1, 1993
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Light Marks on Edges of Book, Text Completely Uneffected and 100% Readable, Tight Binding , Immediate Shipping, Email Notification, Professional Service, MILLIONS Served, SATISFACTION GUARANTEED!
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| Customer Reviews:
 How One Book "Shaped" A Life.... October 11, 2006
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
I received this book in 1980 when I was fifteen years old. The funny thing is, I don't really remember how it came to me. Did I receive it as a gift? Did I buy it? I don't really remember, all I remember is that I owned a copy of this book and it really changed my life.
I didn't have too many male influences in my life at the time. My dad during this time in my life was kind of absent. He was there physically, but not emotionally. I know now that he was still grieving the loss of my mother that had happened five years earlier, but when I was fifteen, I had no idea. I just thought and felt like I was somehow a burden in his life. When I was fifteen I was kinduv gawky. Think of Napoleon Dynamite without the glasses and the curly hair. I was 6'tall and weighed a whopping 105lbs....106 lbs if I didn't go to the bathroom that day. I was constantly teased and taunted about how skinny I was. I remember wanting to dig a hole in the backyard and not coming out of it until I was "really old" like 25...
But somehow this book appeared in my life and it was like I was given something magical. I literally "devoured" it. Maybe that's why I was so thin, I ate books rather than protein. But after reading it I decided that I wanted to workout. I had perfect symmetry. My arms, my chest, and my legs were all 13" around. So, I dragged out my dad's old weight bench and his barbells and dumbells and started working out with the advice I got from this book. At first, I worked out in secret. I didn't want to hear anything negative. I was so fragile. Not just physically, but emotionally and mentally, as well. The slightest comment could send me into a tailspin. So I worked out as soon as I got home from school when I knew I would be alone for at least two hours. Before working out I would just lay on the workout bench with my eyes closed and I just imagined myself being in great shape. In my mind I would "hear" people telling me how great I looked, how strong I had become, how "buffed" I was. I was visualizing my desired outcome even before I knew anything about visualizing. And when I had completed my little "mind trip" I started working out and I always seemed to have really great workouts. I mean, I had fun. It seemed like every workout I was getting stronger and stronger. In no time at all, I went from 105 lbs to 135 lbs. Other people began to notice changes in me. I noticed changes, as well. I seemed more confident and more relaxed. For the first time in my life, people actually wanted me on their teams in P.E. What was that all about? It felt great, but it also felt weird.
I kept reading this book and anything else that had to do with Arnold, Frank Zane, and Dennis Tinnerino(my favorite bodybuilders at the time). I finally let people in on my "secret" that I was working out. I joined a real gym when I was 16 and got even more results. But I noticed that I was no longer having fun working out. I almost made it like an obsession. I felt like I had to workout. I had to improve. I had to get better than I was previously. If for some reason I felt tired one day and didn't want to workout, I made myself feel like a loser because of it. I became really hyper-critical of myself and my efforts. At 18, I felt I had reached the "end of the road" of what I could do naturally and so I started taking steroids. I got really strong and really big really fast but I noticed that I was always angry and always upset. I really never put the two together.
A few months before my 22nd birthday, I had what some call an emotional breakdown but what I like to now term as an emotional breakthrough. I stopped taking steroids and immediately I saw myself getting smaller and weaker. All the gains I had made seemed to vanish overnight and I became even more depressed. I wanted to kill myself and I actually attempted suicide. I swallowed over 60 sleeping pills and drank a 750ml bottle of vodka, when I came to and I realized that my plan failed I became even more despondent.
And then about a few months later I was sitting in my dad's garage and I saw this book sitting in a box of other things that were mine and I looked at it and just smiled. I remembered how I loved to workout just because. I didn't have some magnificent obsession other than just wanting to workout. I read Arnold's book again and even though I must've read his words about training the mind twenty times before, nothing seemed to stick but somehow this time they grabbed hold of me and I had a realization that the body is absolutely nothing without the mind...without the soul...without the spirit...and it dawned on me that what the mind can believe, the body will acheieve. The body is simply a vehicle that the mind uses. And so I started working out again, but this time the focus was on having fun and enjoying the process. I didn't want to be a competitive bodybuilder. I wanted to be in great shape and look good with my shirt off, but I had no desire to stand up on stage in my underwear doing all kinds of poses and once I defined my focus, I began immediately getting into better and better shape.
But not only did I apply this "mind stuff" to working out, I applied it to every area of my life. And it worked in those areas, as well! You see, what makes Arnold such a genius is that he has focus and determination. He has natural gifts and abilities, but he uses them. We all have gifts and talents and abilities but instead of capitalizing on them, we say, "Oh, if only I won the lottery..." We won the lottery the day we were born. We had about a one in a seven billion chance of being the people we are today. Talk about odds!
People think that Arnold is lucky and that he had all the "breaks". Y'know what I am beginning to understand more and more? We make our own luck...we create our own breaks...there is nothing against us...EVER! We must learn to use our minds in the right way. We must envision successful results. I was a 15 year old kid and I was imagining myself getting results and I did! I had no idea what I was doing and yet it worked! The question is not whether or not will vision create an outcome, the question is, what kind of vision are we holding? Because whatever our vision is, we will receive an outcome that is in alignment with our mental image.
I urge you to buy this book. Hey, I don't like Arnold as Governor, either. But I still admire his tenacity, his determination, and his focus. He truly is a great success story...
The Pump.. It's Great Right? July 31, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
The Education of a Bodybuilder is one of the greatest books I've read. Obviously it's in no comparison to say MacBeth or something like that, but it is as entertaining as it is educational. In the first portion of the book Arnold tells his life story of how he got into bodybuilding, his trial and error process, and ultimately leads up to his first Olmpia win. There are many great stories in between that make both for a good laugh, and also serve as motivation. Secondly, there is a section in the middle that has many of his photos from various contests, teen-Olmypia's. The last part of the book is an intro to certain styles of lifting and techniques, followed by some programs/splits to use as you progress. Overall, I'de say it's the best book I've ever read but that may be because I idolize Arnold and respect the work ethnic he had to become in my eyes the greatest bodybuilder of all time. Either way, I think anyone even semi-interested in exercise, bodybuiling or even a good read will thoroughly enjoy it.
The Inspiration of Arnold June 25, 2006
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
Arnold is a very gifted motivator. He can easily inspire anyone to change their lifestyle on the spot. He could demand that you don't eat donuts to improve your health and you would stop eating them. How does somebody do that? Here in `Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder" you get 130 pages of everything you could ever want to know about what makes Arnold tick, right up until his 1970 IFBB Mr.Olympia three titles in one year grand slam. If you are looking for a complete modern biography with his films and political achievements, then you may want to go elsewhere, but this book is from the horse's mouth about how he got famous in the first place. I wouldn't doubt much of what is written as it is not too outlandish and has tons of supporting photographs that document his historical record. Some of his peak measurements are a little bit embellished but that is only cribbing when you get into the mind of the Austrian Oak. Arnold's first visit to the gym is always a great story to hear again, about how he felt weights for the first time and the pain of training to failure. This book has some really early photographs of Arnold at 16, 17, 18 and 19 that show his progress. Yes he was gifted, but he used his gifts and he used them well. He describes how even his cop dad and worrying mother tried to desperately talk him out of bodybuilding and how Arnold developed his own psychological conditioning that many people confused with some sort of psychopathology. This was at a time when bodybuilding was looked down upon and that people who trained that way where called freaks and where believed to be muscle-bound. Arnold talks about his early life with his bodybuilding friends, how he lost his faith in God, put faith in himself instead, how he disciplined his lifestyle, his early love life, how we treated women, what he did at school, how he discovered his idol Reg Park, how he become an army tank driver, how he spent some time in a military prison, how he trained at home, his first contest and how we won, the media's response, his first sponsorship disaster, the homosexuals who tried to seduce him, his first job as a gym manager, his routines, his first plane trip to compete, meeting his idols, his training partners, his business partner Joe Weider and what he did to make it to the top. It is all here and is as every bit as inspirational as you could hope it would be. If you have any doubts about what you can do, then this book will iron them out for you and get you in the mood for more. There are photographs in this book that you will not find elsewhere but if you have his "Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding" then you will find a few photographs that are shared between the two, but I was still surprised at how many photographs here I have never seen before. The stuff with Arnold as a teenager is absolutely mind blowing. His biceps are like basketballs. If it is inspiration you want then I can not recommend this book enough. The eye candy is astonishing. Well over 100 photographs in here, although in black and white, it doesn't matter because the muscle definition looks better that way.
The book does have a downside that you will only learn with experience the hard way or by luck of having someone tell you certain truths that you probably don't want to hear, but should. For 100-130 pages it is all about Arnold and that is great but the remaining 100 page about how to get big like Arnold are to be ignored. The best muscle building information is on pages 87-91 when he talks about power lifting with Franco Columbu but not in enough detail to teach you how to make gains. The problem with the last 100 pages is that the form is absolutely terrible. There are exercises in this book that are no longer used by modern bodybuilding because of the dangers involved. I also own "Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding", another absolutely brilliantly inspirational book that is 800 pages of dedicated bodybuilding information. I could not recommend them enough but not without these serious warning attached plus that fact that back in the 60s and 70s these guys where all doing steroids in huge quantities, consuming muscle enhancing drugs to boost up their already gifted physiques and genetics. We are not like these people and their training methods do not work for us. Arnold does tell you that it is best to bulk up first and then shape the body but when it comes to explaining how this is done both "Arnold" and "Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding" miss the mark and instead introduce you to hundreds of exercises that are not for bulking up, some of which are so dangerous it is hard to imagine they are still in print today. Arnold does give you some of the right ideas though, like progressive weight training resistance (which he never actually teaches in the end), which should be done with the big three lifts (Squats, Deadlifts and Bench presses), with lots of recovery time (do these exercises only two times a week max, once a week is a lot, sometimes once every two weeks is better), rather than his twice a day working out routine. Countless trainees never make it because they don't understand how different people like Arnold are to us and how much drugs they used. I know I should not pitch other books here but I think I should because the form in this book is too bad to be left the way it is. Personally I would recommend that you look for a writer called Stuart McRobert and read his "The Insider's Tell-all handbook on Weight Training Technique" for form and the right exercises to do and his other book "Brawn" which describes various progressive lifting principles with the big three lifts and how to recovery properly. I mean I will always go back to Arnold's tomes for the inspiration but when it comes to doing it right, go elsewhere, and do take that advice. Overall this is an amazing book. Shame it doesn't go past 1970 but the documentary movie "Pumping Iron" seems to cover that before Arnie hits the movies. Guess we just need to watch the bonus materials in his films to find out what happened next. I am not complaining. Arnold all the way.
*Updates*
- The metabolic diet at the end of the book is not bad, eating six times a day is healthy, but it is a gainers diet. Cut back on some of the fatty parts of each meal when you want to loose fat.
The Best 10 Dollars I Ever Spent April 24, 2006
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
What an inspirational book! This should be handed down from father to son in every family. It's not just about bodybuilding, it's about being a man; believing in yourself; having the courage to go after what you want; not letting nay-sayers stand in your way. After reading this book, I've stayed on my training program longer than ever before and have lost a lot of fat and gained a lot of muscle. I feel myself getting stronger and more confident every day. I have a long way to go, but I know I will succeed because for the first time in my life; I believe in myself.
Thanks Arnold!
Arnold Never Ages March 24, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Even thought this book was orginially published in 1977 the information in it is very relevant to the bodybuilder of today. Arnold's plans while simple and clearly spelled will definately pack on the muscles and give you the body you are looking for. It is like training one on one with Arnold. If you want to grow and get the body you have always wanted this book is for you.
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