You’d be hard pressed to find a bodybuilder who hasn’t heard of the six rules Arnold Schwarzenegger laid out. Arnold formulated six rules that could serve as the foundation for success and for making the most of yourself.
The six rules are: trust yourself, break the rules, don’t be afraid to fail, don’t listen to the naysayers who say “IT IS NOT POSSIBLE”, work hard and work like crazy, and give “something” back. There are as many interpretations of these rules as there are people.
Then again, there isn’t really much to interpret, since Arnold himself briefly explains what he means by each rule. The aim of today’s article is to give you my own interpretation of Arnold’s rules: an overview of how exactly I understand them and what I make of them.
1. Trust yourself
Belief in yourself is undoubtedly important when it comes to making your dreams real. Under his first rule, Arnold hints that you should look deep inside yourself and figure out who you truly want to be and what you want to do with real passion. Very true, but you shouldn’t be superficial or hasty when pursuing your wishes and recognizing your ambitions. What matters here is knowledge, a well-developed critical mind and as accurate a sense of reality as possible. Before you start setting any goals in stone, you need a good grasp of reality. In one interview, where goals, setting them and achieving them come up, Will Smith says: „What’s the point of being realistic?“ True, and I certainly subscribe to that philosophy, because my whole training career has been nothing but one long marathon of unrealistic challenges. So I agree (what’s the point of being realistic?), but even setting goals that seem unrealistic, and striving for them, definitely requires reaching a certain basic level first and having a favorable environment, which still means clarity and conviction about your self-confidence, willpower, abilities, opportunities and goals.
A very skinny ectomorph can certainly set becoming a bodybuilder and doing bodybuilding as a goal, but I’m not so sure that aiming straight away for 3rd place at the European Championships is the best driving force for a skinny beginner.
2. Break the rules
Although all six recommendations are very important on the road to results, I consider this second rule perhaps one of the most important of all. What should you take from it? The way I recognize, interpret and apply this rule is that to get a good result you occasionally have to do completely crazy things. And that applies to everything related to training. A few examples: we know that volume and intensity should typically be inversely related, so every now and then you have to do workouts where you simply ignore that principle. If you typically do, say, 5 sets of five reps of squats at 80-85%, then sometimes break the rule and squat 10, 15 or even 20 sets of five at 80%.
In the same way, try doing a crazy volume of pull-ups on some day or over a whole week. Or try training a body part on two or three days in a row from time to time. This rule covers all those things you do in training that are in some sense against logic, don’t obey the usual patterns or aren’t based on well-known training truths. You don’t always have to start a workout with basic exercises, or train only with the generally accepted optimal volume or recommended frequency. Breaking the rules often means taking the complete opposite approach to commonly accepted training truths.
3. Don’t be afraid to fail
Don’t be afraid to fail. I interpret this point, and try to follow it, on both the micro and the macro level. On the micro level, it means that if you want to get good, you have to take risks in your workouts. You put 120 kg on the barbell, you really want to do 10 squats, but you don’t know whether you’re capable of it. Your record so far is 7 squats with 120 kg, but you’d like to get ten. In turn, you start brooding over what the injury risks are, and so on. All these doubts and uncertainty shouldn’t become such an obstacle that you never try the new record set you dream of. In one interview, Tom Platz says the same thing: “There’s always risk involved in any success factor”, meaning that pursuing any success, progress or results always comes with risk. If we start avoiding our undertakings out of fear of failure in everything, or hold ourselves back out of fear of risks, we soon come to the conclusion that we can’t really do much at all. When training for success you have to do completely crazy things from time to time, as we established in the previous point. But, strange as it may sound, even doing crazy things has its rules, limits and certain patterns. The strangest thing to overhear is someone who wants to go very high or very far but doesn’t want to push too hard because they fear injury or muscle soreness. How hard should the last rep of a set be pushed so that, on the one hand, it’s productive and, on the other, doesn’t cause injuries? The million-dollar question, right? But that’s just the thing: nobody but you knows, and often it’s hard even for you to sense that limit.
To a greater or lesser degree, an effort of will always carries the risk of getting injured or of not getting there, which we can also equate with failure. So the question is how far to go with that effort of will. In theory we can say nice things like you should stop when your technique breaks down, but that’s theory. If my coveted record set is 10 squats with 200 kg, I’ve already done 8, and I feel that by sacrificing a bit of technique I can grind out those 10 reps, then I doubt you’d find a lifter who stops the set after the eighth rep. Of course, that means a risk of injury, but in many cases it doesn’t. In short, a trainee chasing a significant result has to be prepared to take the risk of injury and always reckon with the side effects that arise during or as a result of the effort. That risk is always there, even with the technically most correct reps.
At the macro level, I take this point to mean that you can’t always win. You must always be ready for things not to go the way you hoped. The silliest thing is to plan your victory in advance. You always have to be prepared for surprises. Of course, plans have to be made, competitions scheduled and form peaked, but it shouldn’t become a habit to compete only when there’s a chance of winning.
4. Don’t listen to those who say “IT’S NOT POSSIBLE”
Under this point, we probably all understand the same thing. Arnold says too that there are always people who, on hearing your goals or ideas, say “that’s not possible,” “it’s total utopia,” and so on. The funny thing is that quite a lot of people no longer consider even entirely realistic, ordinary things possible. On the one hand, it always strikes me as a bit tragicomic when people make themselves helpless and believe it; on the other, it annoys me that this learned helplessness is so widespread. As I said, people increasingly can’t cope with ever simpler efforts and challenges. Even as a small boy, hauling 3m birch and alder logs in the forest, I was annoyed by how the village men who had come to help were daunted by such simple logs. They didn’t believe I was capable of hauling alone to the woodpile logs that the two of them struggled to carry together. For me, other people’s inability and helplessness has always added strength and pushed me to try ever more challenging things. In fact, it’s quite an interesting phenomenon in general.
I have always experienced very powerfully, and made use of, the energy that comes from other people giving up and being unable to cope. This rule is closely tied to the “breaking the rules” point. In fact, I think these two rules fit together well. When you try to do something unconventional, there are always quite a few people who consider your undertaking impossible, because impossible undertakings usually mean breaking generally accepted rules. Examples include my 10 x 10s with different weights across different exercises, 104 squats with 100 kg, squatting 3x a day or every day, training every day for two weeks in a row, and so on. All kinds of unconventional undertakings belong here, including, for example, Silvar’s trek on foot from Tartu to Tallinn.
5. Put in the effort and work like a maniac
This is an unavoidable condition for getting anywhere at all. You may be talented, but even talent goes unrealized if you don’t do the work. After all, at the top, in whatever field, there are in many cases plenty of talents. But there can be only one winner, which means that even among the talented, the wheat has to be separated from the chaff. Not to mention if you aren’t the most talented. In fact, abnormal willpower and work ethic often matter more than talent. Will Smith puts it this way: “While the other guy’s sleeping, I’m working. While the other guy’s eating, I’m working.”
On talent and whether or not it shows, Will Smith has said: “There is no easy way round it no matter how talented you are your talent is going to fail you if your not skilled you know if you don’t study if you don’t work really hard and dedicate yourself to being better every single day.”
6. Give “something” back too
A noble and generous principle, one that probably also presumes having reached a certain spiritual level; not everyone may understand it. But I still believe that every normal person who has achieved something has such a sense of gratitude inside, whoever it is directed at and however it is expressed. I think this point too can be understood in several ways. One is gratitude, or a feeling of thankfulness, in your own mind; I believe that, as a rule, people thank God or some higher power for their success. After my own successes, I have always tried to keep certain inner promises, whether they concern what I do, my attitude or my behavior. I also try to express my gratitude, respect, obedience and awe toward the stronger, guiding heavenly powers by visiting church from time to time.
Arnold speaks rather of a more down-to-earth kind of gratitude and giving back: to your country, village, people, school, home, family and so on. That is, if you’ve become a big sports star, don’t turn arrogant and proud, but go back to your home area now and then, for example to your hometown school if you’re invited to give a talk or the like. Such giving back can take very different forms. I have tried to give back, for example, by writing on the competitor’s form on several occasions that I’m from Rakke. It is respect, publicity and recognition for my tiny home village, showing that there are fine people here too and that even from such a small place it’s possible to rise to the world-class sporting arena.
I also share my knowledge and experience; I’ve made training and nutrition plans for a symbolic fee or even completely free. Giving back can also take the form of being a role model, promoting your sport, coaching a training group, recruiting the next generation, and so on. If you look closely, you’ll see that all six rules are very closely intertwined.
In summary: set your goals clearly, be confident, trust yourself, take risks, don’t fear hard work, think a little unconventionally and be grateful.
Author: Janar Rückenberg
Come and train! ArtGym
