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Today’s Health Upgrade

• Arnold’s Corner: Monday Motivation

• Memory support

• How to avoid your old habits

• Workout of the week

Arnold’s Corner 
Monday Motivation: Laugh At Yourself

I’ve had a big week of doing things that make me uncomfortable.

I have a new book coming out early next year.

I know a lot of you imagine that I don’t have struggles. I have more money than I could ever spend; I have a wonderful life. A lot of you see me as the king of confidence.

But put me in front of a microphone and ask me to read a book, and that confidence disappears. The struggle starts.

I’ve talked about it before. I am not a good reader.

When I was a kid and got called on, it was a disaster, and the teachers couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me.

I have to memorize my scripts for movies and read my speeches 20-30 times to be confident.

So this new idea that the author reads their entire book out loud? It’s a nightmare for me.

But I do it anyway.

Imagine if I told all of you every week to embrace discomfort, and then the second I faced it myself, I ran away?

I make my way through it with the same advice we share with all of you.

I practice like crazy. (Reps!)

I get started instead of putting it off. They wanted to record next month. I said, let’s just start. (Procrastination just delays the pain.)

I break my sessions into smaller chunks. (Don’t try to eat the whole apple in one bite.)

And I remember to laugh, to turn off that voice that says people are judging me, probably saying to themselves, “This guy was a movie star and a Governor?”

Because the reality is you record them with an audience. A producer, a script supervisor, an engineer, a tech person on your side, and a whole team.

You know they’ve done the same thing with people who are great readers a million times, and now they have to watch you bumble all over the place.

You’ve got two choices: make it worse for yourself or laugh about it.

I can’t change the reality: I’m a bad reader, and I have to do this. The hard way or the easy way.

I can choose to schvitz and stress and beat myself up.

Or I can choose to laugh and move forward.

And you should too.

It doesn’t change what we do. It changes how we feel about what we do.

We all have a part of our brain that wants us to take ourselves too seriously. I can’t tell you how important it is to learn to turn that off.

That part of my brain wants to bring me back to 1955, a book on my desk in front of me, sweat starting to drop, classmates judging, my teacher throwing chalk at me because she thinks I’m purposely messing up.

That part of my brain wants me to feel the weight of my past and everything else. It makes you too heavy to possibly move forward. Every step carries something.

I have to lighten the load.

So I choose to laugh.

And then I look around, and everyone else laughs, too. Not at me. With me. The amazing producer, Nithya, tells me I’m doing a great job. The engineer and the tech help me and laugh with me through the whole session.

Nithya stops me when I screw up and corrects me. Like I always tell all of you, none of us are self-made. We need a community around us. We all need to be lifted up by others. Even me.

And it’s more fun when we are laughing.

We keep moving forward.

My laughter takes the load off.

You can lighten the load too.

So many of you fear doing something uncomfortable or new. You hold back.

It happens in fitness every day.

The beginners tell themselves they aren’t ready. The people who have been training for years tell themselves they have nothing to learn.

You’re both wrong, and you’re only holding yourselves back.

Learn to lighten the load. Laugh about it.

You’re a beginner doing lunges for the first time, and you fall over? Laugh at yourself.

You’re advanced, and you learn that you’ve been doing your squats just a little shallow for a decade. Laugh at yourself.

This is not just a gym thing.

It happens at work. It happens in relationships. It happens in life.

How much stress would you remove from your job if when you felt nervous, you just laughed and realized whatever is in front of you isn’t the big thing you’ve made it out to be?

How many silly fights would you avoid at home if you stopped yourself to laugh? “Really, this dish in the sink is what I’m going to ruin my day over?”

Taking yourself too seriously doesn’t just add stress to your life. It closes you off to growth. You protect yourself from the discomfort instead of accepting it and finding a way forward.

Learn to laugh.

I am telling you, as soon as you learn to take yourself less seriously, your personal growth will explode.

The weight of that seriousness holds you back more than you know. It’s an anchor around your neck.

So this week, that’s my challenge to you.

Join me and laugh at yourself.

Take everything a little less seriously.

And tell me about it. Reply to this email or post in the app: what’s one thing you’ve been taking too seriously, and what happened when you laughed at it instead?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Together With Momentous 
Can Creatine Support Memory in Alzheimer's?

Every once in a while, research hints at something that could change the way we approach one of the toughest health challenges. That's the promise behind a new study testing creatine. This time, scientists didn’t focus on it as a workout booster.

A new pilot study suggests creatine might potentially support memory in people living with Alzheimer's disease.

In a small trial, taking creatine increased brain levels and showed early signs of improved cognition.

In the study, 20 patients with Alzheimer's took 20 grams of creatine monohydrate daily for 8 weeks. Nearly everyone followed the plan closely, blood tests confirmed creatine levels rose, and brain scans showed an 11 percent increase in brain creatine.

Even more intriguing, participants performed better on global and fluid cognition scores, as well as on specific tasks like memory sorting, reading, and attention.

In Alzheimer's disease, cells often struggle to keep up. Creatine helps recycle ATP (the body's main fuel source), possibly giving neurons a little extra support.

Despite the excitement, this was a single-arm pilot study with no control group. That means we can't say for sure whether creatine caused the improvements, or whether other factors (like simply taking the same tests a second time) played a role. The researchers themselves stressed that much larger, controlled trials are needed before drawing conclusions.

For now, it's encouraging to see creatine being tested beyond the gym. And since creatine is already one of the most researched supplements for strength, recovery, and healthy aging, this adds another reason it might support overall resilience.

If you're healthy, a daily dose of 5 to 10 grams of creatine monohydrate is safe and well supported for muscle gains and potential cognitive benefits.

If you’re looking for the best, safest, and most effective creatine, we recommend Momentous. 

Their Signature Spec Creatine is made in a pharmaceutical facility rather than a standard chemical plant, and is water-washed with reverse osmosis rather than the chemical rinses most of the category still uses. 

It's also NSF Certified for Sport®, which means every batch is independently tested against 290 banned substances and confirmed to match what's printed on the label. 

Compared to other premium creatine, impurities dropped 10x, and heavy metal limits got 2-5x tighter than the industry's already-premium bar, plus new screening for PFAS and microplastics that most competitors skip entirely.

APC readers can get the brand-new Signature Spec for 35% off a subscription or 14% off a one-time purchase. Just use the code “PUMPCLUB” at checkout. 

Start Your Week Right
How to Bulletproof Change (And Prevent Falling Into Bad Habits)

Lasting change rarely fails because you're weak. It fails because human nature can easily work against you. 

Your brain is wired to chase the shortcut, to reward applause more than effort, and to go looking for a reason to quit the second you slip. On a long enough timeline, motivation and willpower are no match for that wiring.

So the goal isn't to try harder. It's to build a plan that's bulletproof against your own tendencies.

We’ve shared that "if-then plans" are wildly effective at creating change because they help close the gap between wanting and doing. 

But even if you do that, you still might need to protect your plan from the three ways human nature tries to talk you out of it.

Most advice suggests announcing your goal, so you'll feel accountable. But researchers found that when people announced an identity goal — "I'm becoming a runner" — and others took notice, they followed through less than people who kept it to themselves. 

The nod of approval you need is in the reps. (And that popular claim that an "accountability appointment" makes you 95% more likely to succeed? There's no real study behind it; just a number copied from blog to blog.) 

That’s not to say don’t declare; it’s to go public with the action, not the identity. "Ask me every Sunday whether I trained three times" beats "I'm getting in the best shape of my life."

Once you do that, work on preventing motivation from being your weakness. Because no matter how motivated you feel, the science is almost undeniable that it will fade.

When researchers tracked people as they built everyday habits, the behavior became more automatic the more they repeated it in the same context — think a walk after breakfast or a glass of water with lunch. How long it took varied enormously (weeks for some, months for others), which is why "21 days to a habit" is a myth. Keep showing up in the same slot, and the choice gradually starts making itself.

Finally, change your mindset about slip-ups and “failures.” The thing that ends most streaks isn't the missed workout; it's the story afterward ("well, I blew it"), and the spiral that follows. 

Scientists have found that missing a single day doesn’t derail progress at all. One slip is just one slip, unless you let it become the whole story.

Here's your challenge this week. Take your goal, build an if-then plan, and bulletproof it:

1. Have one person keep you accountable: "Ask me Sunday if I walked after dinner four times" — instead of announcing who you're becoming.

2. Make sure the habits are truly habitual and predictable: same time, same state, same circumstances. 

3. And prepare for the bounce-back when life doesn’t agree with your best plans: "If I miss a day, then I get right back to it the next one. No guilt, no doubling up."

You're not hoping human nature cooperates. You're building a plan that works even when it doesn't. That's what makes change stick.

Fitness
Workout of the Week: Own Every Rep

Last week, we went after the muscles you tend to ignore. This week, we're not changing the exercises. Instead, we're changing how you do them. 

Because one of the biggest weaknesses we see isn't a missing movement. It's momentum, cheating the full range of motion, and maximizing tension.

Anyone in the app knows our job is to do all the thinking for you when it comes to fitness, nutrition, and habit-building. We create customized programs based on your goals, equipment, and experience, but they are adaptable and can adjust to any situation.

But there’s a reason we do live coaching calls each week and constantly update the exercise library: some swaps and adjustments don’t address the real problem, which is cheating the movement.

Bouncing out of the bottom of a squat, half-repping a press, and yanking rows might feel hard, but it’s missing out on the strength and muscle-building magic. When you let momentum do the work, the muscle you're trying to build gets a break, and that's exactly where you leave gains on the table.

How To Do It

This week, we take momentum away.  Each exercise will require you to control the move and hold in certain positions. For example, on squats and presses, you'll pause for 2 seconds in the bottom position (the deepest, hardest, most stretched point of the lift). 

On rows and pull-ups, you'll hold the squeeze at the top for 2 seconds. Then, out of every pause, you drive as fast and explosively as you can. 

Controlled and contracted where it's hard, fast where it counts. That combination keeps the muscle under tension the entire set and forces it to do the work your momentum might hide.

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

The first set will have higher reps, and therefore use a lighter weight. The second set will have fewer reps, and therefore use a heavier weight.

You'll likely need a little less weight than usual because the pause will make it harder in the best way.

Block 1: Alternate exercises with as little rest as possible, then rest. Do 1 set, rest, repeat a second time, and then move to the next block.

1. Barbell front squat (2-sec pause at the bottom): 10 reps, 5 reps

2. Pull-ups* (2-sec squeeze at the top): as many reps as possible on both sets

3. Incline dumbbell chest press (2-sec pause at the bottom): 10 reps, 5 reps

Rest 2 minutes

*If you can’t do pull-ups, replace with inverted rows, eccentric pull-ups (negatives), or lat pulldowns.

Block 2: Alternate exercises with as little rest as possible, then rest. Do 1 set, rest, repeat a second time, and then move to the next block.

1. Dumbbell rear-foot elevated split squat (2-sec pause at the bottom, right leg): 10 reps, 5 reps

2. Dumbbell rear-foot elevated split squat (2-sec pause at the bottom, left leg): 10 reps, 5 reps

3. Hanging leg raise (2-sec hold at the top): 2 sets x 10 reps

Rest 2 minutes

Block 3: Alternate exercises with as little rest as possible, then rest. Do 2 sets total, then you're done.

1. Barbell stiff-leg deadlift (3-second lowering for the stretch): 10 reps, 5 reps

2. Barbell bent-over row (2-sec squeeze at the top): 10 reps, 5 reps

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