Welcome to the positive corner of the internet. Every weekday, we make sense of the confusing world of wellness by analyzing the headlines, simplifying the latest research, and offering quick tips designed to make you healthier in less than 5 minutes. If you were forwarded this message, you can get the free daily email here.
Today’s Health Upgrade
Monday motivation
Remove the friction, fuel your growth
Instant upgrade: The happiness button
Workout of the week
Arnold’s Podcast
Want more stories from Arnold? Every day, Arnold’s Pump Club Podcast opens with a story, perspective, and wisdom from Arnold that you won’t find in the newsletter. And, you’ll hear a recap of the day’s items. You can subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Arnold’s Corner
Monday Motivation
It is never too late to start.
I want you to repeat that to yourself right now: it is never too late to start.
One of the most common comments I see is: “I wish I had trained when I was young enough” or “I’m just too old or out of shape to start.”
You are not too old, you are not too out of shape, but you are too good at making an excuses.
There is a lot of talk about how we all lose muscle as we age. I don’t need studies to know that it’s true.
But I want to be 100 percent clear on something: muscle and strength loss is not inevitable.
You’ve heard me say, “You rest, you rust.”
Studies and my own experience tell me that we can stay strong AND get strong as we age — it just takes work.
We shared a study recently that showed that showed that people in their 90s gained muscle and strength after 8 weeks of intense resistance training.
These were not 90 year-old former Olympians. They were regular 90 year-olds in a nursing home who didn’t move much.
And after only 8 weeks of strength training, they gained almost 10 percent more muscle mass — the amount you’re expected to lose in 5 to 10 years as you age. They reversed a decade of muscle loss in 2 months!
Even better, their strength almost tripled, and their walking speed improved by 48 percent.
It is never too late.
If I told you that there was a pill that would:
preserve and increase muscle and strength
increase bone health
reduce pain in daily activities
reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease
protect against cognitive decline
reduce the risk of osteoporosis
fight anxiety and depression
fight cancer
You would ask your doctor for that pill immediately.
But this isn’t a pill you can find in your doctor’s office.
The only place you can find it is in a gym — or even in the comfort of your own bedroom doing bodyweight resistance training.
It doesn’t require insurance and it’s available to everyone. All it requires is your time and discipline.
It also requires you to stop making excuses, to stop telling yourself that training isn’t for people like you.
Fitness is for everyone. It’s the only magic pill I know.
In my half-century of promoting resistance training, I’ve seen people discover the benefits of fitness at every age, from their 20s to their 90s.
In The Pump, I get to hear thousands of success stories every week. These stories blow me away and make me so proud of our village for taking control of their own health.
Look at this one I just saw over the weekend:
That could be you.
You just have to repeat after me: It is never too late to start.
Now…what are you waiting for? Get going.
Together With Brex
Remove The Friction, Fuel Your Growth
The highest performers, whether in fitness or finance, know that sustainable success doesn’t just happen. It’s built on grit, drive, and commitment.
But high performance isn’t just about working harder — it’s about working smarter. It’s about optimizing effort for maximum results. That’s why the most effective finance teams remove friction, automate the busywork, and focus their energy where it matters most: fueling growth.
Brex is the modern finance platform that helps finance leaders push the limits of what’s possible with built-in controls and AI-powered automation, eliminating inefficiencies and unlocking new levels of performance.
Elite performers from the fastest-growing AI startups to the best global enterprises use Brex to set the pace because they:
Automate the grind. Free your team from manual reconciliations, expense reviews, and data entry so they can focus on strategy.
Let AI complement human work. AI-powered spend policies, GL coding, and anomaly detection ensure accuracy and efficiency without extra effort.
Operate on real-time insights. Clean, up-to-the-minute data eliminates errors and drives smarter decisions so you can make every dollar count.
Never stop optimizing. The best finance teams don’t settle — they continuously refine, improve, and scale because every incremental gain adds up.
You’ve worked hard to build the foundation for financial success. Now, go full performance mode with Brex.
Brex eliminates 60 percent of manual finance tasks, enabling teams to spend smarter, move faster, and grow with confidence. Check out Brex to get started.
Mindset
You Might Never Look At Your Phone The Same Way
What would happen to your brain if you could turn down the frequency of every buzz, ping, and notification on your phone?
A new study suggests that turning off mobile internet on your smartphone can significantly improve attention span, reduce stress, and boost overall well-being.
Researchers wanted to understand how mobile internet access impacts our cognitive and emotional health. They had participants download an app that blocked all internet access, including browsers and social media, only allowing calls and text messages.
One group used the app for two weeks and then got back internet access. The other group stayed on the app — and offline on their phones — for four weeks.
In both groups, 91 percent of the participants improved on at least one of the cognitive outcomes, and 71 percent had better mental health outcomes after the break.
People in the blocking group reported reduced depressive symptoms, lower stress and anxiety, and higher life satisfaction. The improvements in attention were not just self-reported—participants also scored better on lab-based tests of sustained focus.
If you need convincing to find a way to tone down your phone usage, the researchers found that less time on your phone improved attention spans as much as reversing 10 years of age-related cognitive decline.
The researchers believe mobile internet—especially social media, news, and streaming—is the biggest culprit in distracting behaviors. By removing access to those tempting apps, people naturally spent less time on their phones.
Maybe most interestingly, the break from being hyper-connected changed their behavior. Instead of replacing that time with TV or streaming, they spent more time interacting face-to-face with friends, getting out in nature, and picking up other hobbies such as exercise and reading.
If you feel like your brain is constantly jumping between tasks or you’re always a little stressed, try turning off mobile internet for a few hours a day or even for a week. You’ll still have access to texts and calls, but removing the gateway to endless distractions might be exactly what your mind needs to feel sharper, calmer, and more in control.
Mental Health
Instant Upgrade: The Happiness Button
You’ve probably heard that kindness is good for the soul. But it also might be the key ingredient to happiness and well-being.
A meta-analysis of 27 studies found that performing acts of kindness significantly improves your well-being — across emotional, psychological, and even physical domains.
Across all studies, kindness had a significant positive effect on well-being comparable to practicing gratitude or mindfulness, but the benefits appeared to compound and increase over time.
The researchers found that the type of kindness mattered too. Acts that involved direct interaction — like helping a neighbor or volunteering in person — were more effective than anonymous or monetary giving. The most significant effects were seen when kindness was frequent, intentional, and varied rather than repetitive or routine.
The reason is simple: Kindness promotes social connection, which we know is a key driver of well-being. But that’s not all. Helping others may give people a greater sense of purpose and agency, and it can lead to positive feedback loops, where one kind act inspires more kindness in return — both from others and from the person themselves.
If you’re feeling down, overwhelmed, or just want a happiness boost, the science says one of the simplest solutions is to do something for someone else.
Fitness
Workout Of The Week
If you want to get stronger, the name of the game is progressive overload. Instead of focusing on exhaustion or soreness, emphasize adding a little more weight and your body will respond to the challenge.
This workout is designed to do just that — help you build strength on every major lift by managing overall fatigue.
How it works
You’re going to do five exercises each workout, each focused on a different movement pattern.
Exercise 1: Pulling (rows, pullups)
Exercise 2: Pushing (chest press, shoulder press)
Exercise 3: Hinging (deadlift variations, hip thrust, good mornings)
Exercise 4: Squatting (any type of squat or lunge)
Exercise 5: Loaded carry (farmer’s walk or suitcase carry)
You’ll do 2 to 3 work-up (warmup) sets, and then get into your working sets. Each day, you’ll adjust the number of sets and reps. As the reps decrease, the weight you use should increase.
Day 1: 2 sets of 6 reps per exercise
Day 2: 3 sets of 5 reps per exercise
Day 3: 4 sets of 4 reps per exercise on day 3.
*For the loaded carries, you’ll set time or distance, and increase it each workout (20 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, for example).
Each workout, you want to increase the weight to more than what you did the prior workout.
So, you could build a workout that looks like the following:
Use the sets and reps above, train hard, and then call it a day. Each individual muscle might not feel overly fatigued — and that’s the point. You want to get stronger each workout.
But, the real secret is selecting the right weight and using the “first set mindset” where you’re not holding back and saving strength.
Give it a try and start your week strong!
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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell
