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Today’s Health Upgrade

• Arnold’s Corner: Monday Motivation

• Maybe you need a fresh start

• Why downtime is not wasted

• Workout of the week

Arnold’s Corner
Monday Motivation: Slow Down And Find The Joy

I took one thing at a time this week.

Everything hit at once. The movie, the book, the commercials. I told Ketch the schedule was brutal, but if we took it one day at a time and checked things off as we went, we could slow it down.

Since I got back from Oktoberfest, nothing has stopped. I went straight into a commercial shoot for Man with the Bag, on top of my recording sessions for the new audiobook and press days for the movie and the book.

On Saturday night, we raised 8.75 million dollars for After-School All-Stars at my annual fundraiser at my house. At my age, an event that keeps you up until 2 in the morning hits hard.

Monday morning, it was back to the studio to film with Alan Ritchson to promote Man with the Bag. I still hadn't recovered. I'll admit it: I skipped the gym before the shoot.

Tuesday, the alumni from my administration gathered to celebrate the 20th anniversary of AB 32, the historic environmental law I talked about last week. I couldn't take it easy. I was on stage speaking, with journalists and historians in the audience who are writing about what we did and paying attention. I was back in the gym before the event, though.

Wednesday, I drove to Long Beach to join the current Governor at the California Economic Summit. It turned into a mini-reunion: some of the Highway Patrol guys who were the best drivers on my security detail when I was Governor are now in charge of the entire detail. We all keep moving up!

Thursday, I was back in the studio for voiceover work on a project that has to stay top secret for a while.

When we finished, Ketch and I sat down for coffee, and I said, "See, it looked bad on Monday, but we took it one thing at a time and got through.”

We slowed it all down.

That's been on my mind all week, because this week we rebuilt the workout schedule in our Pump Club app, and it comes from the same place.

From the beginning, I never wanted anyone to stress about what days they trained. I hated the idea.

You've heard me say progress, not perfection. You know perfection is bogus. It doesn't exist.

But it goes deeper than that.

I don't believe that someone who is worrying about whether they train Monday or Tuesday can possibly set themselves up for success. They are stressing about something that does not matter.

My whole team knows how many times they start to get bogged down in the details, and I chime in: "It doesn't f—ing matter."

I don't believe in getting stuck in the weeds. You get tangled up and lose sight of the important stuff.

When you stop worrying about the details, you have more energy for what matters.

Losing the worry doesn't just protect your battery. It protects your joy.

And let me tell you something: your joy is crucial to your success.

I didn't beat the other great bodybuilders of the Golden Era because I showed up for my workouts on schedule. I beat them because I showed up filled with joy to conquer my workouts, not just to get through them.

That's what Charles Gaines and George Butler said when they started working on the book Pumping Iron. Everybody else was stressed, miserable, just checking a box.

I was smiling. Carefree. Joyful.

Don't get me wrong: I was more intense than anyone when I was doing my sets, but I was also having the time of my life.

Perfectionism sucks the joy out of everything.

All of that worry and stress costs something. It burns the battery you should be using in your sets. That kills your intensity.

Worse, it locks your joy away where you can't find it.

When you chase perfection, you have to think about everything. Joy and thinking don't go together. Joy requires a carefree mind.

What I call joy, I've learned the experts call flow. It's that feeling when the work stops being work, and you're just part of it.

I like joy better.

Joy requires being 100% here. In the set you're doing right now. In the joke with the person next to you between sets. In the workout that's pushing you toward your big visions.

You can't mentally leave the room and start planning your week with joy. That's stress and worry taking over.

Joy isn't planned. It's lived.

I know a lot of you might say, "Arnold, easy for you to tell us to worry less." So I asked the team to find what the studies say.

This is another case where treating the gym as my lab for 60 years put me ahead of the science.

Scientists split perfectionism into two things.

One is having high standards. Wanting to be great. That works. Athletes with high standards perform better.

The other is worrying. Fear of mistakes. Stressing about whether everything is just right. The same research found worrying doesn't make anyone perform better.

In fact, it wipes out the benefit of the high standards. High standards only predicted better performance when worry was low.

And it gets worse: another study found the worrying type of perfectionism is strongly linked to burnout.

High standards, no worry. That's the success formula. Because that is where joy lives.

You should want to beat last week's numbers in the set you're doing right now. But don't waste one second worrying about Tuesday.

Researchers at the University of Michigan found something else. When people can't follow their exercise plan perfectly, a lot of them don't adjust it. They skip the workout completely. They choose nothing instead of something.

And what about missing a day? Researchers who studied how people build habits found that missing one day did not hurt the habit. What hurt was being inconsistent over the long run.

So Professor Schwarzenegger and the science agree.

That's why we rebuilt the schedule in the app.

There's nothing to plan anymore. If you can't train today, you tap "Not today," and your workout waits for you. One button instead of a calendar to manage.

Wherever you train, the lesson is the same.

Protect your battery. Save your energy for your sets. Miss a day and come back ready to conquer the next one.

Take it one thing at a time.

You can stop stressing.

You can find the joy in training.

It lives in every set.

Together With NOBULL
Fresh Start: The Mindset Shift That Brings Out Your Best

Around this time every year, something happens. Training slips a little. The holidays are close enough to see. And a voice triggers an instinct that helps you rationalize slowing down as January approaches.

Researchers at Wharton have a name for that instinct. They call it the fresh start effect, and it can work for good, but it can also make you put off what you could achieve today. 

When a new period started, people were more likely to act like the person they wanted to be.

Gym visits jumped about 33% at the start of a new week. New months brought a bump, too, and for students, new semesters brought the biggest one.

The researchers’ explanation: a landmark lets you file your misses under an old version of you. Last week’s skipped workouts belong to last week. You get a clean page.

Which means January isn’t the only fresh start. Monday is a landmark. So is a birthday. Follow-up research suggests you can create your own, like the first day of spring or the first cold morning of fall, by treating it as a new beginning.

A fresh start gets you in the door. It doesn’t keep you there.

When researchers studied people trying to stick with their New Year’s resolutions, the ones who stuck with them weren’t the ones who cared most about the long-term payoff. They were the ones who enjoyed the work in the moment. (Once again, Professor Schwarzenegger is correct).

The same pattern held across four more studies on exercise, studying, and healthy eating. Immediate rewards predicted persistence. The long-term benefit, the reason most people set the goal in the first place, helped people set goals but did little to predict who kept going.

So if you want to take advantage of this to create more success, pair the landmark with small, immediate wins. A playlist you only play when you lift. A training partner who makes the session more fun. Gear you actually like putting on.

That last one sounds shallow. It isn’t, as long as the gear is good.

We’ve tested a lot of training shoes, and the NOBULL Outwork line keeps landing at the top. 

The original Outwork is a nearly indestructible platform built for heavy barbell work. The Outwork Flex keeps that same grounded base but is designed for more hybrid training and fitness classes that blend strength, cardio, and dynamic movement. 

The timing works too. NOBULL just dropped new Outwork colors.

This week only, APC readers get 35% off Outwork with code APC35. It works sitewide with no exclusions, so it covers anything else you’ve had your eye on. Shop the new colors here.

You don’t need a new year. You need a Monday, and a reason to show up for the next one.

Start Your Week Right
Stop Treating Downtime as Wasted Time

At the start of a new week, productivity usually means doing more. Fill the calendar. Get ahead. Waste less time.

That sounds disciplined. It can also work against you.

Treating leisure as wasteful can make it less enjoyable, even though being able to mentally disconnect from work is linked to less exhaustion and better sleep. 

In other words, time off doesn’t need to accomplish something to have value.

Researchers tested the theory by having people read a short message framing leisure as a waste of time, then watch a funny video. Their enjoyment dropped from about 64 to 55 on a 100-point scale.

The same pattern appeared outside the experiment. People who already believed leisure was wasteful enjoyed parties, television and time with friends less. That belief was also linked to more depression, anxiety and stress, although the researchers couldn’t determine what came first. 

Anxiety and stress could make downtime feel wasteful rather than the other way around.

Exercise and meditation were exceptions. Because those activities have an obvious purpose, people who disliked “wasting time” still enjoyed them. The penalty showed up most clearly with leisure pursued simply because it was fun.

The researchers also tried making leisure sound productive. That prevented the drop in enjoyment, but it didn’t increase it. Giving fun another job only helped so much.

Too much structure can create a similar problem. In earlier research, people enjoyed a coffee break less when it was scheduled for an exact time than when it fell within a loose two-hour window. Put fun on the calendar like a meeting, and it can start to feel like one.

It may also offer a recovery benefit. Across 38,000 workers, mentally switching off after work was associated with less exhaustion and better sleep.

While it helps to schedule some things to make sure it happens, it might help to leave one loose window per week. It could be as simple as planning something for “Sunday afternoon,” rather than “2:00 p.m.” and then make sure you do something you enjoy with no goal attached. If that feels wasteful, that may be the part that needs to change.

Fitness
Workout of the Week

A note for Pump Club app members: every week, we get questions about the workouts you see here and those in your program. These are generic workouts designed with many of the principles and methods you see in the app. But a one-off workout is not the same as a customized program. Your app programs are designed for your goals, workout experience, and schedule. These programs are free for everyone, as part of Arnold’s crusade to make fitness accessible for all. 

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This has become a month of workout ladders. You’ve been enjoying the recent trend, but many of you asked for a bodyweight version. Ask, and you shall receive.

How to do it:

This workout is a ladder, meaning you’ll do one set of each exercise for the listed reps, then another, and another until time is up. Because it’s bodyweight, we’ll start with higher reps and then lower the reps as fatigue increases. 

Set a 20-minute timer and rest as needed. If you don’t need rest, keep going. The workout is over when the time is up. If you can do more than 3 rounds in 20 minutes, keep going and add more sets (as shown below)

• Round 1: 15 reps

• Round 2: 12 reps

• Round 3: 10 reps

Some of you might stop here, but if there’s still time on the clock:

• Round 4: 8 reps

• Round 5: 6 reps

Exercise 1: Bodyweight squat
Exercise 2: Pushups
Exercise 3: Alternating reverse lunges (reps are for each leg)
Exercise 4: Superman pullup (or inverted row if you have equipment)

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 we use it 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