The Romano Factor

I thought my topic for this column should be what I find motivating about Arnold and what ingratiates him to my most ardent respect: his discipline.

Undeniably, success at bodybuilding, on any level, is built on a foundation of discipline. The best bodybuilder will always be the one who is the most disciplined. The guy who gets up at four a.m. every day to train before work, goes back to the gym at night after work to do cardio and abs, carries his meals with him and eats a carefully calculated melange of macronutrients every three hours is most likely going to be the guy who gets results. How assiduous the discipline is defines those results.

Discipline is the backbone of not only bodybuilding but also just about every aspiration you set out to achieve in life. Your level of discipline, however, is as much a test of strength as any rep scheme you come up with in a power rack. The stack that increases such strength is your conviction, your desire. This is a clear look into what makes Arnold tick, because just as in bodybuilding, the stronger you are, the greater the pain discipline brings.

To wit, Arnold recently told a story about his first contest in Stuttgart when he was 18. His father, a policeman, who fluffed off Arnold’s bodybuilding aspirations as something ludicrous and nuts, arranged with some friends to have Arnold deposited into the military. His father’s plan was for Arnold to train for a tank division, become a tank commander, marry a blond girl with braids named Helga, have two kids and live reasonably happily ever after in the same town where he was born. Well, we all know that wasn’t Arnold’s plan. After he saw a bodybuilding magazine with Reg Park as Hercules on the cover, he had his plan all laid out for him. That’s when he said he knew exactly what he needed to do. Five weeks into basic training, Arnold received an invitation to compete in the junior Mr. Europe Championships. This international competition was his ticket out. This is what he wanted. After much thought, he decided, “Whatever it takes to get there, I will do.”

Now, if any of you have ever gone through basic training, you know it is a most exhausting and grueling assemblage of active training and psychological trauma that leaves you nearly dead at the end of the day. Now, imagine waking up an hour before reveille to work out—an improvised workout of course; this was on the sly and there was no equipment other than what he could improvise—and then do another three hours at night after a arduous day of basic training! Discipline.

The only problem Arnold had was that he couldn’t leave without going AWOL, and the punishment when they caught you was solitary confinement until they decided what to do with you, and that could take months. Undaunted by the punishment, Arnold focused on the prize and snuck out of his barracks, hopped a freight train to cross the border into Germany, and made his way to Stuttgart the afternoon of the show. He borrowed a pair of posing trunks from the guy in the weight class under him (and wore them, as you could imagine, all faschmultzed), won the show, returned said trunks, hopped a train back to camp, and tried to blend back in. It didn’t turn out that way. Six days into solitary, Arnold was brought before the lieutenant and a few other officers.

After a stern and vocal browbeating, one of the officers asked Arnold if he had really won the competition. Their tune changed when he confirmed that he did. They love discipline in the military. So they decided to make an example of Arnold’s impressive application of it. They were very proud of him. His “punishment” was a job in the kitchen where he was given extra food and meat every day. They built him dumbbells and bars and weights and a bench to train with and gave him time to train—even a portable version they carried in his tank so he could work out on the fly. Arnold said he gained 25 pounds of solid muscle during his time there. It paved the way for the future. The military supported him because they admired his discipline.

How can anyone not admire discipline? From Shaolin monks, to Napoleon’s army, to Seal Team Six, the decorated athlete, or the scholar, we admire what their level of discipline allowed them to achieve. Closer to home, for us, the undisputed heavyweight champion of discipline is Arnold. Certainly, others sit among a pantheon of legends forged from discipline. But, for me, as a bodybuilder, Arnold sits at the head of the table. “Whatever it takes to get there, I will do.” And he did.

For more articles and stories about Arnold including his "Hardgainer's Training program", click here!