Welcome to the positive corner of the internet. Every weekday, we help you make sense of the complex world of wellness by analyzing the headlines, simplifying the latest research, and providing quick tips designed to help you stay healthier in under 5 minutes. If you were forwarded this message, you can get the free daily email here.
Today’s Health Upgrade
Monday motivation
Start your week right
What are you doing Saturday?
Workout of the week
A Little Wiser (In Less Than 10 Minutes)
Arnold’s Pump Club Podcast is a daily dose of wisdom and positivity. You can subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Arnold’s Corner
Monday Motivation: The Connection Muscle
I want to start by sharing some recent headlines I’ve seen in our writers’ room meetings for the Pump Club:
“Social connection linked to improved health and reduced risk of early death” — World Health Organization reports 1 in 6 people worldwide experience loneliness; it’s tied to worse health outcomes.
“New APA Poll: One in Three Americans Feels Lonely Every Week” — American Psychiatric Association finds 30 % of U.S. adults report weekly loneliness; younger adults especially.
“‘An uphill battle’: why are mid-life men struggling to make friends?” — A growing “friendship recession” shows adult men often have fewer close friends now than decades ago.
“Younger Men in the U.S. Among the Loneliest in West” — Gallup finds young men under 35 report the highest levels of isolation and loneliness in recent survey
It’s a pretty brutal, scary list, and we could keep going and make the whole newsletter today headlines about how people feel lonely, disconnected.
But you know that I have a rule: I don’t complain about anything when I don’t have a solution.
This week, I want to challenge all of you to find a morning and go to a gym. A real gym. A public gym.
When I look back at my life, I haven’t had trouble connecting with people. And when I look at where I made my connections, it was all in the gym.
From the Graz Weightlifting team, to meeting Franco and becoming training partners in Munich and then best friends for life, to the days you’ve all seen in Pumping Iron with Franco, Dave Draper, Frank Zane, and all the Gold’s Gym guys, the gym wasn’t just a place to train.
It was my community.
It still is. When people see me in public gyms, which is where I train when I travel and when I’m at home, they say, “You must have a private VIP gym or a home gym?”
I do have a beautiful home gym. And whenever I’m on the road, a concierge will tell me about some beautiful private fitness studio. It doesn’t matter. I want to have the connection.
Even today, in my 70s, I make new friends at the gym. If I trained at home, I wouldn’t have met Stu and Leon who showed me some of the best bagel places in LA.
I can already hear what you’re thinking. “That’s you, Arnold. You’re outgoing. I’m not.”
I wasn’t the kid who raised my hand in school. I became outgoing the same way I got better at everything else I’ve ever done: I did the reps. You better believe I’ve been nervous and uncomfortable.
The sad reality is, the pandemic gave everybody a lot of reps of being disconnected, so now it’s even harder for people to come back. You’ve built home gyms and habits of training alone. I get it, and there is a place for it. Sometimes I don’t have time for the bike ride to the gym, and I have to train at home.
What I’m challenging you to do this week is to venture out once. Go train in a public gym. Work in with people. Spot each other. Connect. Or just train alone amongst other people and feel their energy.
Then I’m challenging you to do it again next week. I want you to keep showing up at gym, even if you do 80 percent of your training at home.
Because I started this newsletter to help you be healthier. That means fitness and nutrition and supplements, but it also means taking care of your mental health.
When people are literally dying earlier because they aren’t connecting, it is time to make a change.
There is a crew I see a few times a week, every week at the gym. They exemplify what I’m talking about, so I asked Ketch and Adam to do a quick interview with them.
They are all different ages. They didn’t know each other before the gym. And now, 3 to 4 times a week, there they are together. Hitting monster deadlifts and benches and squats. Pushing each other to be stronger.
They inspire the hell out of me, so I wanted to share that inspiration with you.
They don’t just inspire me because they’re deadlifting over 600. They inspire me because they haven’t given in to this modern disconnection epidemic. They built new connections. Just by showing up to a gym.
So this week, my challenge to all of you is simply to make a connection. Venture out. Start rebuilding your connecting muscles.
If you’ve gotten used to solitude, it won’t be comfortable. That’s OK. Training to get stronger isn’t comfortable either, but we do it because we know it makes us better.
And for any of you who already train with a crew in your gym like my powerlifting friends, I have a request:
Film a short video telling the story of your gym crew, and send it in to us. Make the subject line “Connecting Muscle” so we can find it, but we will showcase some of the gym crews around the world to help inspire the million people reading this.
Get those connection reps. You can do it.
Start Your Week Right
The Mindset That Keeps You Stronger as You Age
We often think strength is built from reps in the gym. But new research suggests you might need to work on your mindset, too.
If you want to maintain strength and slow the physical breakdowns associated with aging, maintaining an optimistic outlook can be a competitive advantage.
In a 4-year study of nearly 6,000 participants aged 62 to 90, researchers discovered that optimism wasn’t just about feeling good, it predicted real, measurable differences in physical function. Compared to the least optimistic, those with the highest optimism had lower odds of slowing down or losing mobility and strength.
In fact, those with the most optimistic outlook were up to 50 percent less likely to develop weak grip strength.
These results held even after accounting for exercise, diet, chronic illness, and depression. In other words, optimism itself appeared to help preserve strength and independence.
Researchers believe optimism reduces chronic stress and inflammation, keeps the nervous system better regulated, and supports heart and immune health, all of which protect muscle and mobility. Only about a quarter of the effect was explained by lifestyle habits, suggesting optimism works through biological pathways too.
If you want to build a more optimistic mindset, here are a few ways you can start:
Each morning, write down three things you’re grateful for.
Reframe setbacks as opportunities to learn.
Visualize positive outcomes for your goals once a week.
Just like lifting weights, optimism is a skill you can strengthen over time, and it might help you stay stronger, longer.
Community
APC Meetup
Need help building the connection muscles Arnold discussed above? Maybe you should clear your calendar for Saturday morning at the famous Muscle Beach in Venice, CA.
On Saturday, October 25th, Arnold’s Pump Club is teaming up with GORUCK for a one-of-a-kind event.
The APC team will be there, and we’ll be rucking, deadlifting, coaching, and connecting.
Come for the ruck, stay for a new PR and hands-on teaching with Pump Club coaches, and celebrate with drinks and food.
As an APC subscriber, you get 30% OFF the event with code PUMPCLUBLA30.
We hope to see you there.
Fitness
Workout Of The Week
Last week, we gave you a workout of single-leg and single-arm exercises. And the reaction? People couldn’t believe the challenge, the pump, and how much stronger they felt — even when using less weight.
So this week, we’re giving you a new variation. Instead of supersetting upper body and lower body exercises (like last week), this workout pairs your front-side muscles with your back-side muscles (reciprocal movements).
Perform each exercise and you’ll feel stronger, steadier, and more in tune with how your body moves.
How To Do It
Perform each pair as a superset, meaning you do them back-to-back with little rest between movements. After you finish the second exercise in the pair, rest for 90 to 120 seconds, and repeat. Perform 2 to 3 rounds per pair before moving to the next superset.
Superset 1: Push + Pull (Chest & Back)
Single-Arm Floor Press: 8-10 reps per arm
Single-Arm Dumbbell Row: 10-12 reps per arm
Rest: 90-120 seconds after you finish both exercises. Do 2-3 rounds total.
Superset 2: Quads + Hamstring (Legs)
Rear-Foot Elevated Split Squat: 8-10 reps per leg
Single-Leg Romanian Deadlift: 8-10 reps per leg
Rest: 90-120 seconds after you finish both exercises. Do 2-3 rounds total.
Superset 3: Vertical Push + Pull (Shoulders & Lats)
Single-Arm Overhead Press: 6-8 reps per arm
Half-Kneeling Single-Arm Lat Pulldown: 10-12 reps per arm
Rest: 90-120 seconds after you finish both exercises. Do 2-3 rounds total.
Finisher
Single-Arm Farmer Carry: 40-60 seconds per side × 2 rounds
Give it a try, and start your week strong.
Better Today
Take any of these tips from today’s email and put them into action:
How Going to a Public Gym Can Fight Loneliness and Build Real Connections: You can combat the growing loneliness epidemic by training at a public gym instead of at home, where natural connections happen through shared workouts, spotting partners, and community energy—just like the lifelong friendships Arnold built from Graz to Gold's Gym.
Why Optimistic People Stay Stronger Longer (And How to Build an Optimistic Mindset): Research on 6,000 adults reveals that optimistic people are up to 50% less likely to develop weak grip strength and lose mobility.
Share Your Gym Crew Connection Story with Arnold's Pump Club Community: Arnold wants to showcase gym crews from around the world who've built real friendships through training together, so he's asking readers to film short videos about their workout communities and send them in with the subject line "Connecting Muscle" to inspire over a million Pump Club members.
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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell
