Welcome to the positive corner of the internet. Here’s a daily digest 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

Arnold’s Corner: It’s Time
The Original TRT
Workouts of the Week

Arnold’s Podcast

Motivation every day. Want Arnold to help you start your day? Each morning, we post a new podcast with tips you’ll find in the daily email and bonus stories, wisdom, and motivation from Arnold. Listen to Arnold's Pump Club podcast. It's like the daily newsletter but with additional narration and thoughts from Arnold. You can subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Arnold’s Corner: It’s Time

It’s time! I know all of you have been patiently waiting, and today, we are opening up The Pump app to the whole village.

Head to thepump.app to download and use the referral code ARNOLD to get in.

[Note: If you get an error, give it a few minutes and try again. We’ve prepared the servers for you, but the developers told us there are so many of you that if everybody clicks at once, it won’t matter, there will be outages. Honestly, I love that our village is that big. But it might take a few tries!]

We opened to our 5,000 founding members in April, and we were excited that all those spots sold out in less than 72 hours. We have worked nonstop ever since, and our founding members gave us unbelievable advice. They’ve helped pump up the app by finding bugs, suggesting features, and telling us where they want us to focus. I always say no one is self-made, and when this app becomes the greatest fitness app of all time, I want you to remember that it was a team effort.

Beyond helping to refine the app while they refined their bodies with our workout programs, I want to thank our founding members for something else: they have turned the community in The Pump into the Positive Corner of the Internet.

It is one thing for us to make this newsletter the positive corner because we control what goes in it. Still, everybody told us that it would be impossible to keep this positivity going when we opened up a community to comments. Well, when you see the comments, you’ll see that our founding members believe in my rule about not listening to the naysayers. They share wins, struggles, feelings, and relentlessly, like a Terminator, they pump each other up. I am really proud of the workout programs, habit builder, and the technical parts of the app, but I am most proud of all of you just spreading joy and support every day.

It really feels like the camaraderie I have always loved about the gym — just a lot of people coming together on their own missions, and everybody has one thing in common: they’re looking to be better today than they were yesterday.

Now, it’s time to grow beyond the 5,000. And I want to be clear that our goal is to maintain that positive feeling. We will have a zero-tolerance policy for any trolling, and that’s why right now, we are only opening up the app village to the newsletter village. You guys know what we are all about.

Here’s what you can expect in the Pump:

Training

This is the best workout program you’ve ever had. Just trust me. This isn’t like the fitness apps that let you go from one program to another because that’s not how you will progress. And I would rather have 100,000 users with amazing progress than a million frustrated they’re stagnant.

I help guide you through all the workouts with exercise videos and instructional tips. We lock you into a program called The Foundation for your first 90 days. Along with different plans based on your gender, you get a different plan based on whether you have access to a gym or you want to do bodyweight training, whether you are just starting from scratch, you’re intermediate, or you’ve been training forever, and whether your goal is getting bigger or getting leaner. But everybody starts with a 90-day foundation customized to your goals, so you’re all in this together.

This is funny now that our founding group is on to their second or third program, but you wouldn’t believe how many messages we got in the first week or two after opening: “Arnold, this looks too easy…” It was fantastic watching those messages change to messages about how much progress they were seeing compared to their old way of training. And to messages saying, “That damn Arnold crushed me, but it feels good.”

Habits

We created a habit builder feature that lets you do what we always push in this newsletter: pick a vision, pick a daily goal to get closer to that vision, and mark it off every day. We limit you to 3 daily actions so you don’t get crazy and build too big of a routine and fail, but we finally launched this last week, and the members are saying it is helping them meet their goals from playing music to not snacking after dinner.

Support and Accountability

This is the best community on the entire internet. I do a Q&A almost every week, and I can’t wait to answer your questions. We also have Q&A’s with top experts, and Adam and Daniel are there to help you overcome all your hurdles. That’s in addition to challenges and articles about health, fitness, and nutrition. And there is one constant: the comment sections are pure inspiration.

But you don’t have to listen to me. Check it out for yourself. When you join, there is a 7-day free trial, but I guarantee you'll be hooked once you try the workouts and interact with the village. Go to thepump.app. Use referral code: ARNOLD.

We wanted the positive corner of the internet to be accessible, so the price is lower than that famous social media site that can’t decide on a name but always leaves you angry. The difference is you’ll always feel good when you close The Pump.

Now, nothing changes for those who don’t think you’re ready for an app with a designed program or those who only want free workouts. We’ll always have the workout of the week and all the motivation and information you’re used to right here for free. That’s my commitment to you.

But if you are in that group that doesn’t feel ready, today’s workout of the week is our first workout for the Starting from Scratch Foundation from the app just to give you a taste and let you know that we live by my motto that fitness is truly for everyone. And since it would be rude to leave everybody else out, we are also including an intermediate and an advanced workout.

Remember, these are 90-day programs, and this is a snapshot. All the programs are based on my programming. They get harder every week because that’s the definition of progressive resistance training, but one thing I’ve reminded the app village over and over — if it ever feels easy, you need to up the weights or up your intensity. If you are taking a set just short of failure, it should never feel easy.

I look forward to seeing all of you in The Pump!

The Original TRT

What’s the fastest way to improve your hormones? Before you try supplements or other pharmaceutical interventions, there’s one change you can make that repeatedly leads to significant results.

A 46-year research review suggests that getting leaner can boost your natural testosterone.

Suffering from low testosterone can disrupt your day-to-day life, such as suffering from low energy, mood disruptions, sleep trouble, less muscle, and decreased libido.

The scientists conducted a comprehensive review and found that lifestyle changes can be the quickest and most effective way to turn things around. In particular, losing fat and becoming leaner can boost testosterone by an average of 30 percent.

But it goes deeper than that. The more fat you lose, the more testosterone tends to spike. According to performance coach Dan Garner, studies focusing on testosterone have found that:

Losing 5 percent of your weight results in a 58 ng/dL increase in testosterone.
Losing about 10 percent of weight results in an 84 ng/dL increase in testosterone.
Losing approximately 30 percent of your weight results in a 251 ng/dL increase in testosterone.

As Garner points out: “Body fat contains an enzyme called aromatase, which converts testosterone into estrogen, the primary female sex hormone. As a man's body fat percentage increases, so does the activity of this enzyme -- so adding a testosterone booster to a body with existing elevated aromatase activity is just as likely to give you more estrogen as testosterone.”

There’s nothing wrong if you and your doctor determine you need hormone replacement therapy, such as TRT. But, often, this is a step to take after you’ve exhausted all lifestyle interventions. It’s an “easy button” that misses the bigger picture and can cover up problems that cause your low testosterone in the first place. When you don’t address disruptive lifestyle behaviors, you’re likely setting yourself up for more health issues down the road.

By focusing on diet and training changes that reduce body fat and build muscle, your testosterone will increase, your entire health will also improve, and you’ll start looking and feeling better.

Workouts of the Week

As Arnold promised above, here’s a snapshot of three different workouts in The Pump app. Remember, when you join the app, you complete a questionnaire to help customize a plan based on a few variables, including your experience, goals, and access to a gym. Each week, you get updated plans that help you progress the workouts based on Arnold’s workout philosophy. Whether or not you join the app, we’ll provide a free workout every Monday.

Beginner

1. Chair squats: 3 x 10 reps

2. Bench plank: 3 x 10 seconds

3. Bodyweight squat: 3 x 8 reps

4. Assisted (incline) pushup: 3 x 8 reps

5. Hip raise: 3 x 8 reps

Intermediate

1. Barbell squat: 3 sets x 10 reps

2A. Dumbbell bench press: 2 x 10 reps

2B. 2-arm Dumbbell row: 2 x 10 reps

3A. Dumbbell straight leg deadlift: 2 x 10 reps

3B. Dumbbell front squat: 2 x 10 reps