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Today’s Health Upgrade

• Arnold’s Corner: Monday motivation

• Does protein source matter as you age?

• The simple science of living a happier life

• An exclusive dinner invite

• Workout of the week

Arnold’s Corner
Monday Motivation: Make It Impossible To Fail

It is time for some tough love.

A lot of you are too fixed in your thinking.

You start by making a plan. Your first mistake is thinking the plan is the most important thing.

I’ll be even more brutally honest: many of you never get past this point. You research and you plan and you schedule and you think and you think and you think…

But you never DO.

Doing is the part that matters.

You’ve used all your mental energy preparing, and you never actually do the thing you prepared for.

But let’s say you aren’t the person who gets stuck here. You’re the planner who actually starts.

You have everything laid out. You will train Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You blocked it on your calendar.

It goes great the first week.

The second week you’re gaining momentum.

Then, in the third week, you get Monday done and think you’re starting to make this a habit. And then Wednesday, something hits. Your kid gets sick. You get sick. Work needs you early. Something always hits.

Your plan is thrown off. You’re pissed off. You’re frustrated. You’re disappointed. A lot of you give up. Because if you can’t stick to your plan, what’s the point? The plan was what was keeping you on track.

What if you changed everything? What if you took the power from the plan, and you became the reason you stay on track?

I have always been someone who loves improvising and hates scheduling. Ask my assistant, Lynn. It drives her crazy. She asks me when to put an appointment and hears, “Improvisation is the art of fieldwork.”

I believe improvisation is a key to my success.

Because the reality is that there is no such thing as a plan built for the real world, and people with fixed, rigid thinking freeze when their plans fail.

The military version of this is “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”

The Mike Tyson version is, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Life is going to punch you in the mouth.

It’s just going to happen. The best plan is made for a perfect world, and we don’t live in a perfect world.

I see this every day. I believe it’s why we see that 20% of the people who join the Pump Club app freeze at Workout 1. They never get going. I know they meant to do it. Nobody pays for a fitness app meaning to skip their first workout. I know they planned to do it.

They just froze when it came time for the actual doing. Maybe their kids interrupted their sleep. Maybe their boss called them.

Once perfection became impossible, they just surrendered. That’s the mindset I want to fight.

It isn’t easy to change your mindset to become more flexible. But it’s so important, I hope you’ll try. And I’ve got some tips to help.

First: I am not saying you shouldn’t have any plan. I am saying your plan needs flexibility built in. You have to learn to bend and not break.

Someone whose plan is, “I am going to train Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7:30 in the morning after the perfect night of sleep, right after I hydrate and eat the perfect workout meal” is doomed from the start. Someone whose plan is “I am going to train three days this week” is set up for success.

So make your plan. But make it impossible to fail.

We do this in the Pump Club app. All of the new people who have joined have been worried about missing workouts. And then we listened and learned from them: in their old fitness apps, if you missed a workout, you had to go back and make it up or you had to lose it.

They didn’t realize we already assume you will miss workouts, and if workout 1 is Monday, and you don’t show up Monday, workout 1 moves to Tuesday. Workout 1 will wait for you…forever. You can’t escape it. That’s because we know you won’t be perfect, but we also know that every workout is a building block we can’t let you miss.

We built in imperfection. That’s how I want you to build your own plans.

Second: when things come up that disrupt your plan, I want you to have a mantra. The biggest mistake you can make is getting pissed off when things don’t go your way. That sends you down a spiral that only ends in failure.

Say one of these to yourself.

Perfection is bullshit.
Progress over perfection.
Just keep moving forward.

When you get stuck in the past being upset about your plan failing again, you never let yourself do the work that changes who you are. The work changes you. We’ve shared all of that research that shows you can’t just have a vision of who you want to be, you have to do the work to prove to your brain that you’re becoming that person.

Finally: for those of you who fall into that category of always planning and never doing, we have to change it. Not tomorrow. That’s bullshit. That’s another plan where you won’t follow through.

Today. Do the workout this morning. Do it at lunch. Do it right when you get home before dinner.

Get out of your own way.

You cannot plan your way out of a rut or a freeze or being stuck. You have to act your way out.

You can’t think. You have to do.

Shakespeare said, “Joy’s soul lies in the doing.”

It’s time for you to become a doer. Not a planner.

What are you doing today? Not tomorrow. Not next Monday.

What are you doing today?

Together With Momentous 
Does An Aging Body Care About Protein Source? 

Two truths and a myth:

Truth #1: As you become older, muscle becomes harder to hold onto. 

Truth #2: You might need to give your body a little more protein or feed it more often to help offset a decline in muscle protein synthesis.

Myth: You need animal-based protein to get the results you desire. 

A new trial suggests that once you’re eating enough protein, the source may matter much less than advertised.

Adults between 50 and 70 had the same rate of muscle protein synthesis whether most of their protein came from plants or animals. The difference-maker wasn’t whey or pea protein. It was lifting.

Researchers assigned people to one of two controlled diets for 10 days. Both supplied about 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight each day, but one emphasized animal foods and whey, while the other leaned heavily on plant foods and pea protein.

Every other day, participants trained one leg with knee extensions and left the other leg alone.

Muscle protein synthesis was about 12 percent higher in the trained leg, regardless of which diet people ate. The animal-based diet delivered more leucine and other essential amino acids, yet produced no measurable advantage. 

And that reinforces what we continue to see in studies. It’s not that all proteins are interchangeable or equal. In fact, we know that some animal proteins have more essential amino acids. But we’re finding out that the difference might not influence outcomes. 

This was a small experiment, and the researchers measured the process of muscle protein synthesis, not actual muscle growth. The plant-based diet was carefully planned and supplemented with pea protein, so this isn’t evidence that any collection of plant foods will automatically get the job done.

But this study — along with other research — suggests once again that the story about protein and muscle preservation doesn’t have to be complicated: Get enough total protein (anywhere from 1.6 to 2.2 g/kg of goal body weight if you exercise, and as low as 1.2 g/kg if you’re inactive) from whatever source you’ll eat, train consistently, and you’ll see results.

Which is why we keep both Momentous Whey Protein Isolate and Momentous 100% Plant Protein in the rotation. 

Whey if you do dairy, plant if you don't. There’s nothing magical about a protein powder. But they offer a high-quality source of protein that tastes great and can be ready in a matter of minutes. 

The plant version is a pea-and-rice blend designed for a complete amino acid profile, not a single-source powder hoping to cover the bases. The whey protein is an isolate that removes almost all fat and lactose, giving you a powder that’s more than 90% pure protein. Both give you 20g per serving, without any gums, fillers, or artificial sweeteners. 

Most importantly, both are NSF Certified for Sport, so every batch is independently tested against its own label to ensure you get what you paid for, and you can be guaranteed that there are no banned substances and dangerous levels of heavy metals.

As an Arnold’s Pump Club reader, you get 35% OFF a subscription and 14% off a one-time purchase when you use the code “PUMPCLUB.”

Start Your Week Right 
Do You Have A Happiness Problem? Or An Awareness Issue?

Two people take the same walk: Same street, same trees, same weather. One takes in their surroundings, enjoys the moment, and arrives home a little lighter. The other never looks up from their phone and couldn't tell you a single thing they passed.

The difference wasn't the walk. It was the noticing. And noticing is a skill you can practice that affects how you feel and function.

People who spent a couple of weeks deliberately noticing the good and beautiful things around them ended up measurably happier and less down.

In a controlled study, people who were asked to pay attention to nature as they went about their lives reported significantly higher well-being and lower ill-being than a control group. 

That would be interesting on its own, but it’s not the only study that has seen this happen. Older research found that a daily 20-minute walk spent noticing anything positive — a color, a sound, a friendly face — lifted people's happiness in a single week. 

Psychologists call this savoring, and the research suggests it’s a trainable skill. Even better, the more you practice being aware of good moments, the more your brain starts doing it on its own.

We know that life is busy, stress is inevitable, and someone — whether work, your kids, or the bills you have to pay — is always asking you for something. 

But in the chaos of the week, the good stuff is still there; you just need to notice it.

If you want to put in the awareness reps, take one short walk with a single job: noticing the things around you. 

If you really want to notice, leave the phone in your pocket, hold off on the podcast, and just look. It might feel hard or boring, but that’s exactly what it takes to turn the mundane into something that’s meaningful. 

Giving Back
The Three Hours That Shape a Kid's Year

School lets out around three. Dinner lands around six. For millions of kids, those hours in between are the least supervised stretch of the day. They're also the ones that quietly decide the most.

The hours right after the last bell are when juvenile crime peaks. They're also when a safe place, a warm meal, and one adult who bothers to show up can change a kid's whole year, and much more. 

That gap is the entire reason for the existence of After-School All-Stars (ASAS). Since 1992, Arnold's non-profit has filled those hours with free after-school and summer programs. Tutoring, sports, arts, mentors, real meals, all for kids in high-poverty communities who'd otherwise be home alone. They help hundreds of thousands of students every year.

A kid who has somewhere to go, something to work on, and someone in their corner tends to stay in school, stay safe, and find doors they didn't know were there. That's not a slogan. It's what three decades of this work keeps proving.

On Thursday, September 10, Dolph Lundgren and ASAS will host the first annual All-Stars for Change. 

The event is at Novikov Beverly Hills and will feature a night of cocktails, dinner, live jazz, and a silent auction. Good food, good company, a room full of people who care about the same thing.

As members of Arnold’s Pump Club, we want to extend the official invite to the village.

Here's the best part: 100% of every ticket goes straight to After-School All-Stars programs. 

Here the details

When: Thursday, September 10 | 6:30-9:30 p.m.
Where: Novikov Beverly Hills
Tickets: $500
Attire: Black + Gold

Reserve your seat here

Come spend an evening eating well and helping many kids start the school year strong.

Fitness
Workout of the Week: Find Your Weakness

This week’s workout is designed to push you out of your comfort zone and help you identify areas for improvement. Each exercise is a single-leg or single-arm movement.

It will make it harder to avoid your strength imbalances, meaning you’ll know what you need to work on if you want to become stronger and more durable. One set goes for higher reps; the other for lower reps, so you can better understand whether the imbalance applies to muscular endurance, strength, or both. 

How To Do It

You have three different blocks. Go through each block as a circuit, doing one exercise after the other. Once you do all the sets, rest as explained, and then do another round. Before you begin, do 1-2 work-up sets using 50-60% of the weight you’ll use for the first set. 

The first working set will have higher reps. This doesn’t mean you go “light,” but it does mean it’ll be lighter than the second set. Then, the second set will have fewer reps and require heavier weight. 

Block 1: Alternate exercises with as little rest as possible, and then rest. Do 2-3 rounds total, and then move to the next block. 

1. Single-leg dumbbell Romanian deadlift (left leg): 10 reps, 5 reps

2. Single-arm dumbbell overhead press (right arm): 10 reps, 5 reps

3. Single-leg dumbbell Romanian deadlift (right leg): 10 reps, 5 reps

4. Single-arm dumbbell overhead press (left arm): 10 reps, 5 reps

Rest 2 minutes.

Block 2: Alternate exercises with as little rest as possible, and then rest. Do 2-3 rounds total, and then move to the next block. 

1. Dumbbell rear-foot elevated split squat (right leg): 10 reps, 5 reps

2. Single-arm dumbbell row (left arm): 10 reps, 5 reps

3. Dumbbell rear-foot elevated split squat (left leg): 10 reps, 5 reps

4. Single-arm dumbbell row (right arm): 10 reps, 5 reps

Rest 2 minutes.

Block 3: Walk with a dumbbell in one hand. Stay as upright as possible, and intentionally walk slowly. Notice if your torso leans sideways or if your grip fails faster on one hand. For the longer duration, use a lighter dumbbell. And for the shorter duration, use a heavier weight.

1. Suitcase carry (right arm): 40 seconds, 20 seconds

2. Suitcase carry (left arm): 40 seconds, 20 seconds

Give it a try, and start your week strong!

The Positive Corner of The Internet
About Arnold’s Pump Club Editorial Standards

We do things a bit differently here, starting with transparency.

1. The Content: All APC emails are researched, written, and fact-checked by the APC editors (see bottom of the email), with written contributions from Arnold (noted with “Arnold’s Corner”). Links take you to original studies (not second-hand sources).

2. Does AI play a role? Not for the primary content, but it is used in two ways. The main items are original content written by the APC team. The summaries at the end are AI-generated based on the human-written content above. We also use an AI tool to edit and review our interpretations of the research, ensuring scientific accuracy. We don’t assume AI is right, but we use technology to hold ourselves accountable.

3. Yes, we have partners (all clearly noted by “Together With”). Why? Because it allows us to keep the APC emails free. We first test products, and then reach out to potential partners who offer ways to help you improve every day. The bar is set high, and to date, we have turned down millions in ad deals. (Example: we will not partner with any non-certified supplements or those without evidence in human trials). If we won’t buy the product, we won’t recommend it to you. And if there’s no evidence it works, then there’s no place for it here.

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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger​

Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell