In October 1980, some of the legendary professional bodybuilders gathered at the Sydney Opera House for the Mr. Olympia competition. Many fans believed that either Chris Dickerson, Mike Mentzer, or Boyer Coe would win the title. Enter Arnold Schwarzenegger, who completely changed the situation.

After six consecutive Mr. Olympia titles, Schwarzenegger retired in 1975 to pursue acting. In 1980, he returned to the competition after only 8 weeks of training and won his 7th Mr. Olympia title. During that time, Schwarzenegger was training for the movie Conan the Barbarian.

Now, decades later, on July 25, the Arnold Sports Festival Instagram account shared Arnold’s training philosophy through a short clip of him from before his 1980s return. In the caption, it read, “Would be his final bodybuilding competition.”

In the Instagram clip, Arnold was seen doing the barbell bench press, where he opened up about his workout approach.

“When I train, it really depends on what body part I train. You know, what I think about. But it always has to be something that has involved in some form or the other with self-hypnosis. You know, I really psych myself up for it because otherwise it's impossible to squat with 400, 500 pounds.”

According to him, it is hard to do and often feels boring. To manage that situation, his strategy was to “create a certain excitement.”

“You think about your next set, you think about the particular muscle that you're training, you try to isolate the muscle. You try to pump it up, you let blood go into this area and stuff like that.”

The Instagram caption also stated that the clip was from the documentary called "The Comeback."

It was directed by Kit Laughlin, starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, and was released in 1980. It captured the comeback journey of the Austrian Oak at Mr. Olympia.

In addition to this, what was Schwarzenegger’s approach to working out at that time?

Arnold Schwarzenegger's training routine during the 1980 Mr. Olympia

On July 22, 2022, the YouTube account of Golden Era Bookworm discussed Schwarzenegger's fitness approach for the movie Conan the Barbarian when he decided to enter the contest.

“Around eight weeks ago, to start training very hard with the objective in mind to get in my best possible shape for the film I'm going to do, which is Conan the Barbarian, and we're going to start shooting the first few scenes in October, and so I really wanted to be muscular”.

Along with workouts, he also began training in dancing and sword handling. But as the Mr. Olympia approached, people began to think that Arnold would participate in the competition.

“So, three weeks or two weeks ago I decided, well, I think it would be kind of an interesting challenge really to uh do something in eight weeks that most of the guys do uh in preparing a year or two years in advance”.

The video highlighted that to achieve a physique like Conan the Barbarian's, Arnold focused on a circuit-style routine and worked out 6 days a week. That routine mostly focused on his legs and shoulders.

According to the video, Arnold’s workout at that time likely included movements such as:

Upper body

• Military presses
• Lat pulldowns
• Chin ups
• Bench press
• Rear delt raises
• Dumbbell lateral raises
• Barbell rows
• Triceps extensions
• Upright rows
• Easy curl bar biceps curls.

Lower body

• Back squats
• Leg curls
• Standing calf machine toe raises
• Leg extension
• Front squats
• Leg press
• Seated calf machine raises.

Written by

Supradeep Dutta