#417 Arnold Schwarzenegger

**David Senra** (0:00)
It was the summer I turned 15, a magical season for me because that year, I discovered exactly what I wanted to do with my life. It was more than a young boy's mere pipe dream of a distant hazy future, confused fantasies of being a fireman, detective, sailor, test pilot, or spy. I knew, I knew I was going to be a bodybuilder. It wasn't simply that either. I would be the best bodybuilder in the world, the greatest. I'm not exactly sure why I chose bodybuilding, except that I loved it. I loved it from the first moment my fingers closed around a barbell, and I felt the challenge and exhilaration of hoisting the heavy steel plates above my head. I had always been involved in sports through my father. With my father's encouragement, I first got into organized competitive sports when I was 10
However, by the time I was 13, team sports no longer satisfied me.
I was already off on an individual trip.
I disliked it when we won a game and I didn't get personal recognition. The only time I really felt rewarded was when I was singled out as being the best. So I decided to try individual sports.
I still remember my first visit to the bodybuilding gym. There was before me, my life. The answer I had been seeking, it clicked. Once I started, it didn't take long. I was literally addicted. I love the feel of the cold iron and steel warming to my touch and the sounds and the smells of the gym.
I still love it. I remember the first real workout I had as vividly as if it were last night. I rode my bike to the gym, which was eight miles from the village where I lived. I used barbells, dumbbells and machines. The guys warned me that I'd get sore, but it didn't seem to be having any effect. I thought I must be beyond that. Then after the workout, I started riding home and I fell off my bike. I was so weak, I couldn't make my hands hold on. I had no feeling in my legs. They were noodles. I was numb, my whole body buzzing. This was my first experience with weight training and I was crazy for it. The next morning, I couldn't even lift my arm to comb my hair. Each time I tried, pain shot through every muscle in my shoulder and arm. What's wrong, Arnold? My mother asked. I'm just sore, I told her. My muscles are stiff. But my mother kept on. Why, Arnold? Why would you want to do this to yourself? I couldn't be bothered with what my mother felt. Seeing new changes in my body, feeling them, turned me on. I felt my muscles aching. I learned that this pain meant progress.
Each time my muscles were sore from a workout, I knew they were growing. I could not have chosen a less popular sport. My school friends thought I was crazy, but I didn't care. My only thoughts were of going ahead and building muscles. I remember certain people trying to put negative thoughts into my mind, trying to persuade me to slow down. But I had found the thing to which I wanted to devote my total energies, and there was no stopping me. My drive was unusual. I talked differently than my friends. I was hungrier for success than anyone I knew.
I started to live for being in the gym, and when he wasn't working on the gym, he'd be reading all these bodybuilding magazines, and this is where he finds his hero. In one of those magazines, I saw my first photograph of Reg Park. I dreamed about being gigantic. Reg Park was the epitome of that dream. Reg Park looked so magnificent in the role of Hercules that I was transfixed, and I was sitting there in the theater, and I knew that that was going to be me.
I would look like Reg Park. I would study everything that he did. From that point on, my life was utterly dominated by Reg Park. His image was my ideal. It was fixed in my mind. I found out everything I could about Reg Park. I bought all the magazines that published his programs. I learned how he started training, what he ate, how he lived, and how he did his workouts. I became obsessed with Reg Park. He was the image in front of me from the time I started training. The more I focused in on this image and worked and grew, the more I saw it was real impossible for me to be like him. People around me predicted that it could happen within five years, but I didn't think I could wait five years. I had this insatiable drive to get there sooner.