Did Arnold Schwarzenegger Have Rest Days?

Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of the most famous bodybuilders of all time.

He inspired a lot of people to take up weight training, and there are always lots of questions about what he did to build his physique, whether he took rest days, how much cardio he did, how much rest he took between sets, and so on.

Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t follow the same workout routine for his entire bodybuilding career. Rather, it evolved over time as he learned what worked best for him and his body.

That is, the training routine Arnold used as a beginner was different to the type of training he did with a few Mr Olympia contests under his belt.

Arnold’s workout split would also change depending on whether he was in the off-season or training for a bodybuilding contest or film.

Did Arnold Schwarzenegger Take Rest Days?

Arnold Schwarzenegger did take rest days during his bodybuilding career. Most of his workout routines involve going to the gym six days a week, sometimes twice a day, with a rest day on Sunday.

What did Arnold Schwarzenegger’s workout routine look like?

Schwarzenegger’s workout routine involve both a high frequency and high volume of training. He was in the gym lifting weights six days a week, often twice a day.

For most muscle groups, he typically performed 3-4 different exercises, 3-5 sets per exercise, using a wide variety of loads and rep ranges.

Some of the exercises he liked to do include squats, deadlifts, standing calf raises, lunges, leg curls, flat barbell bench press, incline barbell bench press, t-bar rows, barbell presses, good mornings, close-grip bench press, dumbbell curls and barbell curls.

The so-called Arnold Split, for example, involves three different workouts — one for your chest and back, one for your shoulders, biceps and triceps, and one for your legs. The major muscle groups (chest, back and legs) are worked twice a week.

Here’s what it looks like:

• Monday: Chest/Back
• Tuesday: Shoulders/Arms
• Wednesday: Legs
• Thursday: Chest/Back
• Friday: Shoulders/Arms
• Saturday: Legs
• Sunday: Rest Day

Calves and abs were trained every day.

However, there’s no rule that says your training routine has to fit neatly into a seven-day week. Most training programs are set up that way, more out of convention and convenience than anything else.

Personally, I much prefer to take a rest day after training my legs, which is typically the hardest and most demanding workout of the week.

This means the routine doesn’t match perfectly with a 7-day week and runs over an 8-day period instead.

Here’s what it looks like:

• Day 1: Chest & Back
• Day 2: Shoulders & Arms
• Day 3: Legs
• Day 4: Rest Day
• Day 5: Chest & Back
• Day 6: Shoulders & Arms
• Day 7: Legs
• Day 8: Rest Day

However, the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger took rest days is largely irrelevant, because you’re not Arnold. 

You don’t have the same genetics or Herculean work ethic. You’re not training 4-6 hours a day, six days a week. And you’re probably not benefiting from the same levels of pharmaceutical assistance either.

Did Arnold Schwarzenegger have rest days? Yes.

Should you take rest days? Also, yes. 

And by a rest day, I’m not saying you have to sit on your arse all day. 

Personally, I like to exercise every day. It helps to clear my head, makes me more productive, and leaves me feeling a whole lot better.

However, this doesn’t mean I’m doing the same type of exercise from one day to the next.

Oftentimes I’ll go for an easy ride on my bike, with my heart rate floating around 60 percent or so of its maximum.

It’s not a rest day in the sense that I’m avoiding exercise completely. But it is a rest day in the sense that I’m giving my body a break from hard training, such as lifting weights, high-intensity interval training and so on.

In fact, this type of cardio may well help recovery by promoting blood flow to the muscles without causing further damage. 

Low-to-moderate intensity cardio (such as cycling) for 20-30 minutes the day after a heavy leg workout, for example, will often reduce delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) and may accelerate the rate at which muscle damage is repaired [1, 2].

This increase in blood flow delivers more nutrients to the muscles, as well as clearing away some of the wreckage caused by all the squatting, deadlifting and leg pressing you did the day before.

How long did Arnold Schwarzenegger rest between sets?

Arnold liked to keep his rest periods between sets relatively short, around 60 seconds or so. His reasoning for doing so goes like this:

“Try to keep your rest periods between sets down to a minute or less. In the first minute after a weight training exercise you recover 72 percent of your strength, and by three minutes you have recovered all you are going to recover without extended rest. You don’t want to allow your muscles to recover too much between sets – just enough to be able to continue your workout and to keep forcing the body to innervate more and more muscle tissue.”

However, recent research shows that longer rest periods actually work better for muscle growth. That is, most studies comparing short (60 seconds or less) with longer (2-3 minutes) rest periods show superior gains in both size and strength with the latter. You can read more about the science on rest periods and muscle growth here.