Written by Ron Harris
08 March 2018

15NN106-ARNOLD

Arnold Schwarzenegger On Diet

His Off-season & Pre-contest Diet

 

 

We like to think that we as bodybuilders have made tremendous leaps in the area of nutrition over the last four decades, and in many ways we have. Thanks to a greater interest in general in society about how we eat and how various foods affect our health, appearance and performance, even the average person on the street has a greater awareness and base level of knowledge about nutrition than he did in generations past. Bodybuilders have always been a few steps ahead of even the medical world when it comes to the subject, since we use our bodies as experiments to see how various nutrients and combinations thereof affect our physiques for better or worse. Smugly, I had assumed that Arnold Schwarzenegger and his peers were quite backward compared to modern-day bodybuilders in terms of their information and theories on nutrition. That’s why I was quite surprised to see how much of their practices still hold up today. In the book Arnold’s Bodybuilding For Men, Arnold lays out some very solid advice that can be applied just as successfully in 2018 as it was in 1974.

First, let’s look at the off-season practice of “bulking up.” We often think of it as an old-school practice. In the 1940s and all the way through the 1960s, it was commonplace for bodybuilders to gain excess amounts of body fat in their quest to make gains. In addition to eating mainly whole eggs, red meat and potatoes, it was also typical to drink a gallon of whole milk every day— and in some cases, even heavy cream! By the 1970s, most had abandoned that practice. Arnold actually sternly advised against getting too heavy in our quest to grow:

“One hint I can give is not to ‘bulk up,’ or let yourself put on a lot of extra fat weight during your training that will only have to be dieted off for the contest. Bodybuilders are apt to do this because being heavier makes them feel bigger, but this is an illusion— that extra weight is not working muscle and it does them no good whatsoever.

“Both Franco and I used to prepare for a contest actually under our competition weights, and thus had to gain five pounds or so in the final week. This meant we didn’t have to restrict our diets too much, and we ended up feeling better and stronger, and looking a lot better. Bulking up, I believe, is a mistake, and now that there is a Grand Prix circuit of professional contests, which the pros have to be ready for week after week, the practice of becoming overweight and then dieting severely is getting to be a thing of the past.”

A couple of things need to be mentioned here. Today’s bodybuilders often cycle steroids continuously, with brief breaks here and there to allow their systems to detoxify. In Arnold’s era, it was practically unheard of to use drugs that often. In the off-season, they would usually train naturally and stayed lean. Bodyweights would come down significantly. Thus, Arnold was known for being a lean 210-215 in his off-season, and would only introduce gear into the equation when it was time to prepare for the Mr. Olympia, where he competed at anywhere from 225-240 pounds. It’s true that it took longer to make muscular gains with this practice, and that gains were probably limited overall since these men didn’t have the advantage of heavy drugs and heavy food intake for much of the year. But then again, size at all costs was not the prevailing notion in those days. Bigger was not better— better was better. The idea of limiting fat gain still makes a lot of sense today, regardless. Whether or not you need to remain lean for any competitions or appearances, extra body fat will only make things harder for you when the time does come to trim down for any reason. You’re better off staying in decent shape, even as your sole purpose for certain phases of your year is to grow.

Arnold also had some choice words about dieting:

“Dieting for bodybuilding requires discipline. To keep your relative fat weight down, you simply can’t eat as much as you would like. Even when you are getting enough nutrients, you may still feel deprived. One way to ease this is to take up some form of high-calorie workout in addition to your training in the gym. Remember, for every 100 calories you burn up running or riding a bicycle, that is another 100 calories you can add to your diet without gaining any weight.”

The practice of doing cardio as part of contest preparation really didn’t come into vogue until the late 1980s, oddly enough. Perhaps not coincidentally, cardio took on greater prominence as “bulking up” to ever-heavier off-season weights became routine. When you stay in decent shape year-round, very little cardio is needed to achieve contest condition. Speaking of condition, this statement from Arnold was clearly way ahead of its time:

“When you have two bodybuilders of equal development, it is the one with the cuts— the most definition— who is going to win.”

This is truer now than it ever has been. Cuts and details win shows, especially from the back. You can have a lineup of competitors that all look ripped from the front, but when they turn around, the hamstrings and glutes separate the few who are in sickening condition from the rest, and the winner will be one of them. To hit that coveted near-zero body fat percentage, stay fairly lean all year, add in as much cardio as needed, and be sure to diet on no more calories than you actually need, regardless of your hunger or cravings.

 

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