Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We need more people like Bill Phillips in the world. People who live each day with a passion to help other people. The kind of person who will motivate you beyond what you thought was possible and the kind of person who will celebrate your success with you.
I didn't leave bodybuilding until I felt that I had gone as far as I could go. It will be the same with my film career. When I feel the time is right, I will then consider public service. I feel that the highest honor comes from serving people and your country.
When you love something as much as I love bodybuilding you don't have to do much extra to push yourself, it just happens. There were some tough times and when those came up I just used my mental strength to push through knowing that my mind controlled everything.
I started messing around in my teen years but didn't really begin training properly until the age of 21. I did a lot of reading prior to that - Mike Mentzer, Arthur Jones and all other notable bodybuilding authors - and just came up with a routine that worked for me.
Experiencing pain in your muscles and aching, that's what makes the muscle grow. and that divides one from being a champion and one from not being a champion. If you can go through this pain barrier, you may get to be a champion. If You can't go through it, forget it.
People tell me I'm a perfectionist. They tell me I'm too extreme and that I work too hard. I tell them, that is all I know how to do. I was taught to give my best effort in everything I do and demand perfection and raise the standard of excellence to a whole new level.
The reason I have entered into bodybuilding and weightlifting is to inspire everybody to pray and meditate so they can bring to the fore their own inner strength. If everybody brings to the fore his own inner strength, the world will eventually be inundated with peace.
Someone could have an outstanding comprehension of a bodybuilding diet and a background in nutrition but not have the work ethic and desire to put it into practice. That person won’t be as successful as the person who understands some basics and puts them into action regularly.
Going to the gym was never about 'working out' like it is for most people. To me, It was a matter of life or death. It was either me or the weights-and I was going to win. I've always had that competitive streak, whether it was in the gym, on the stage, or In anything else I did.
People can say whatever they want about the sport of bodybuilding, but to get prepared to do a contest or even think about doing a contest, or even to get into decent shape, it requires a certain amount of discipline, and it comes from taking a new year's resolution to a lifestyle.
What I'm against is a sport that rewards mass for the sake of mass to the exclusion of all other physical properties of the physique. In other words, there comes a point where, if you keep adding muscle mass, the human body loses its beauty, shape and form. That's what I'm against.
Just for the record, I'm in favor of drug testing EVERY year just as long as it's a level playing field. The problem arises that a lot of these substances are hard to detect. So, it's very difficult to have true, drug-free bodybuilding competition, especially on the professional level.
Bodybuilding has been the tool that single-handedly taught a little black boy from the projects to use his mind to achieve success. it taught me to see things for what they can be. I had 17-inch arms; I imagined them to be 24 inches. The power of my mind allowed me to achieve what I imagined.
The treatment from the Arnold Classic to the Olympia is, of course, a little bit different, but overall the quality of the shows and the way they are put on... I think they are the same. It's just that the Olympia has been around for so long, and it is considered the Super Bowl of bodybuilding.
I'm always positive when it comes to professional bodybuilding, hell I'm Mr. Olympia for God's sake. If I'm number one in our sport and I have a negative attitude then our sport don't need me and I don't need our sport. There are problems and controversy in all sports. That's really unavoidable.
I think sports and bodybuilding were the only things that saved me from getting beat up. People are not pleased, for whatever reason, when you can answer all the questions in class. If not for the respect I got from track, cross-country, wrestling and bodybuilding, it would have been a disaster.
The bodybuilding world has lost one of its greatest legends. I had a chance to speak with Steve Michalik a year ago at The Upper State Bodybuilding competition. We laughed and shared our personal opinions about bodybuilding [today's scene and how it was in the past]. Steve, we'll miss you. R.I.P.
I always go heavy and I always go to failure. Even when I tell myself I'm gonna go easy, once I get to the gym and start working, I never end up going easy. I hate leaving the floor feeling like I could have done more weight or more reps. I just love working out and going further than I ever did before.
One set at extreme intensity does the muscle-building job. It must be stressed that the one final, all-out set I do takes me to the very limit of my capabilities. If you feel you can attempt a second set, then you couldn’t have been pulling out all the stops during the first set. It's not pretty, but it works.
People ask me why I work so hard and why I have this compassion to reach the top and be great. I respond by telling them, "I work insanely hard because people said I couldn't do it." When someone tells me I can't do something, or that I'll never achieve my goals and visions, I am determined to prove them wrong.
I have a good sense of my body in a bathing suit around people who appreciate what I'm doing, like a contest. Then I'm proud. On television I am proud. But on a beach most people are not experts. The general public doesn't know how to look. How proud can you be when they don't even know what they're looking at?
When I played basketball, I spent hours On the court practicing. When i became a body-builder, I was in the gym all the time. Like most beginners, I didn't really know what I was doing, but the more I did it, the more I loved it. I guess you could say I was a gym rat. Seeing my body change made me come back for more.
You have thousands of choices and decisions to make everyday. You have the right to not go to the gym, you the right to follow poor nutritional habits, you have the right to overwork yourself and not get enough sleep. You must accept the fact that your physique has suffered because of the choices that you make everyday.
I never set limits or created mental barriers. You may have read that I imagined my biceps as big as mountain peaks when I did my curling exercises. This visualization process was essential if I was to gain the kind of mass and size I needed to win the mr Olympia contest against monsters like Sergio Olivia and Lou ferrigno.
There are some girls who are turned on by my body, and some others who are turned off. but for the majority i just use it as a conversation piece. like someone walking a cheetah down 42nd street would have a natural conversation piece. then when they get to talking to me they see i am not mean but gentle to them and thats all they want to know
Mostly, I was into powerlifting when I was in high school. And I just continued to train the same way I was taught - to powerlift. Once I started doing bodybuilding, there were no real differences, just different exercises. A different way of training with more repetitions, but it was still the same lifting of very heavy weights to get stronger.
I take exercise for each part of the body: arms, legs, back and whatever muscles are required to keep the body fit. I do at least 20 different exercises daily for my upper and lower body. Then I come here every morning to do calf raises and play tennis. If there is time in the afternoon, I play tennis again. At least three hours I spend on weightlifting and bodybuilding.
My understanding about nutrition is not what I'd like it to be, so for a long time my dieting strategy was very crude. It's only very recently that I started to accept different ideas like using vegetables and natural seasonings that don't compromise the sodium and caloric value of the food while at the same time giving it some flavor. I'm still evolving; everybody is or at least should be in bodybuilding.
It is harder to be a lifter than a bodybuilder...lifting is purely masculine whereas bodybuilding entails feminine traits. Bodybuilding reminds me of a woman getting ready to go somewhere. Can you tell me that greasing your body up and posing in front of a mirror is masculine? A bodybuilder puts strength secondary to his physique, whereas the lifter puts strength foremost because it is more masculine to do so.
The greatest feeling you can get in a gym or the most satisfying feeling you can get in the gym is the pump. Let's say you train your biceps, blood is rushing in to your muscles and that's what we call the pump. Your muscles get a really tight feeling like your skin is going to explode any minute and its really tight and its like someone is blowing air into your muscle and it just blows up and it feels different, it feels fantastic.
All singers, no matter how gifted, should always try to go improve. And all students begin in the same place despite the level of their talent. It's like bodybuilding: All people who train use similar exercises no matter how naturally physically endowed a person may be. I have worked with many of the most brilliant singers in modern music and it's always the case that they have a great deal of under-realized potential no matter how amazing their abilities.
The mind is incredible. Once you've gained mastery over it, channeling its powers positively for your purposes, you can do anything. I mean anything. The secret is to make your mind work for you not against you. This means constantly being positive. Constantly setting up challenges you can meet either today, next week, or next month. "I can't..." should be permanently stricken from your vocabulary, especially the vocabulary of your thoughts. You must see yourself always growing and improving.
The better you get, the less you run around showing off as a muscle guy. You know, you wear regular shirts-not always trying to show off what you have. You talk less about it. It's like you have a little BMW - you want to race the hell out of this car, because you know it's just going 110. But if you see guys driving a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, they slide around at 60 on the freeway because they know if they press on that accelerator they are going to go 170. These things are the same in every field.