Try The Terminator’s Workout Set

Credit: Hulton Archive
“I’ll be back-boned.”

Here’s a fun fact: Arnold Schwarzenegger got his first acting role in the film Hercules in New York because his agent told the producers that he had tons of stage experience. What his agent failed to mention was that he was referring to bodybuilding stage experience. But hey, he still got the role, though from what I hear, he hates that movie.

When you think of buff dudes with attitudes, ol’ Arnold is usually one of the first that come to mind. The guy’s in his seventies, yet he’s still pretty ripped, and that’s because he loves working out. While the coronavirus may be forcing him to stay home, he isn’t stopping, and neither should you. If you’re feeling inspired, try a few entries from Arnold’s playbook.

Arnold’s philosophy is that you don’t need a gym to get in shape, it just helps. When he was growing up in the Austrian countryside, he sure didn’t have a gym; he did pull-ups from trees and chopped wood. Simple exercises like squats, push-ups, sit-ups, and bent-over twists work just fine, but the key ingredient is form. Maintaining perfect form will put a little hot sauce on a seemingly simple exercise, and doing fifty reps of that perfect form will work you like nobody’s business.

Arnold has stressed, however, that it’s okay to make modifications if you genuinely can’t do an exercise. “Don’t let your ego do the movements for you,” he wrote. “You might want to show off to me or your friends and do 50 push-ups in one set, but if you can’t do them with perfect form, I’ll be more impressed by 5 sets of 10 perfect push-ups.”