Arnold Schwarzenegger is the most famous bodybuilder athlete ever, and for some, the king of bodybuilding. His life is a literal movie, his accomplishments in sport, cinema and politics seems all to come from different persons.

Of course, he became a legendary figure of the weight training scene and as such, his training, diet, methods and little secrets have all been shared again and again. The Golden Era split, the muscle shocking, special isolation exercises, the high volume training,… All of these built and entertain the myth of this legend.

But before all of that, before the Venice Beach sunny training pictures, the never ending pump sessions, there was an aspiring young austrian teenager who started to train just like all the silver era athletes he was looking at in magazines : simple, basic full body training, named “The Golden Six”.

Arnold Schwarzenegger early training

Beginning training in the early 60’s with not much equipment available, however, his obligatory service in the Austrian army allowed him to be put in physical training very early, and gave him the opportunity to accumulate lots of work and daily habit with simple military bodyweight training and conditioning.

After that, he was able to move to weight training, with sturdy, basic iron and barbell, yet, very effective. And just like his idol, Reg Park, he would then stick to a full body training split, 3 times per week, with an occasional bonus training in the woods on sunday’s while enjoying barbecues with friends.

As a beginner, this is the best recipe for fast muscle and strength progression, allowing the body to rest enough, training hard on exercises that offer the most amount of results and complete body development. As intermediate and advanced lifters, the huge bonus lies in the recovery and unability to do too much exercises and “garbage volume”. You are forced to do what works and what is as efficient as possible.

That is what I personally recommend too in my Free Beginner Training Guide.

The Golden Six

A Full Body Training split can be very intimidating at first, you feel like you need to absolutely train every muscles and every angles of your body; that isn’t the case. You need simple yet effective, smart yet easy exercises selection to achieve total body stimuli and grow from it. Not too much, not too little. Arnold did that perfectly while creating his program, named “The Golden Six”.

He took 6 of his most favorite exercises who would allow him to train nearly his full body, and go hard on them, with minimal equipment requirements. Here are those golden six :

Barbell Bench Press :

Literally “the” bodybuilding movement per excellence, it is a basic, effective and badass way to build your whole pectoral musculature along with your triceps, anterior delt and some decent stimulus on all around shoulder/pectoral girdle stabilization muscles. However, be mindful to shoulder discomfort as it is quite unforgiving when greater poundages are being used.

As a beginner don’t sweat it, just use proper form, range of motion and don’t test your 1RM max every day. Just lie down on a flat bench, keep your feet stable on the ground, back and core tight, get the barbell down anywhere from mid to lower chest and press it back up. Don’t let your elbow get out or your wrist break and extend under load, and that is it.

Barbell Squat :

If there would be just one exercise to do for strength training, bodybuilding, athlete conditioning, that would be squats. Simply put a barbell on your traps and squat down, then get back up. That’s how you can work and assist on your strength, power, athleticism, proprioception, lower body joints mobility and core tightness and overall rigidity. In term of bodybuilding purposes, this will be your go-to movement for quadriceps and glutes.

If you have trouble to go deep down, elevate your ankles with little plates or wooden block, or buy weightlifting shoes. Going down to parallel is fine and a good checkpoint for a good ratio between risk reward on this exercise.

Behind the Neck Press :

Despite the bad rep behind the neck/head exercises have, they aren’t nearly as dangerous as most describe them, and certainly not more dangerous than usual movements such as the two named above. It requires greater external shoulder and thoracic spine mobility, all the while strengthening and maintaining it, with a perfect pressing angle for more lateral deltoid fibers stimulus and stretch on the whole shoulder complex.

Seated or standing the goal is the same : press a barbell above head and lower it down behind your head as low as possible while letting the shoulder blades move in and down, then out and up. I recommend you to not go lower than ear line for the most gains with as little risk as possible, just like the parallel squatting. Use a wide grip, your arm shoud look like a Y at the top, and your forearm should be more or less perpendicular to the floor at the bottom.

Barbell Curl :

One of the most impressive and yet simple exercise someone can do is just to pick up a barbell and curl it like you lift a chick in your arms. Working the biceps hard and being a great upper back and core exercise too, barbell curling is one of the go-to exercise for big arms. However, your form needs to stay good on them, no swinging, no bouncing, you should have control and full-body tightness at all time. If for any reason you feel a discomfort in your wrist, elbow or shoulder with a straight bar, use an EZ barbell. Use a shoulder width or so grip, don’t overthink it !

Chin-Up/Pull-Up

Arnold was known to be massive, but that came with a big flaw which was his waistline. Wide, blocky, flat abs, it wasn’t the most appealing part of his physique and he learned to showcase it the best he could. Apart of making sure it is the smallest and most tight as possible via different methods, what he made sure to do was to build everything around as big as possible to make it appear smaller by illusion. One of the best way to do so is to build wide, gigantic lats to build a v taper that hides the sun when posing. And what he credited the most like thousands of athletes for this are Chin-Up and Pull-Up.

Whatever grip width and style you choose, your overall back and arm muscles will have no choice but to work hard, and that is one of the most simple thing you can do to make them grow big and fast. If supinated, more work on the biceps and lats, if pronated, more work on forearms and teres major, neutral is a happy medium, behind the head is pure external lats fibers and teres major, front wide grip is more or less the same, and even the long head portion of the triceps will have to contribute.

Arnold would do them for maximum amount of reps at bodyweight, or would choose a total repetition goal (like 50 total reps) and do as many sets as possible to get there. I recommend to go with bodyweight training until you can bang out multiple 10-12 reps per set, then it is time to add weight for better strength and muscle growth.

Sit-Up

Basic exercise for hip flexor and anterior core work, you just make sure your feet are blocked and stable and get your torso up and down while keeping everything tight. Primary for hip flexor, there is a decent amount of work required on your core since you need to neither flex or extend the spine. Crunches are better for rectus abdominis work (the six pack), sit-up are better for athleticism and overall “core” work. Many legends of the sport would do thousands of them for hours as their cardio and to keep their waist line tight and muscular.

 

The Golden Six Full Body Training goes like this :

• Squat : 4×8-10
• Bench Press : 3×8-10
• Chin-Up : 3x max reps to failure at BW
• BTN Press : 3×8-10
• Barbell Curl : 3×8-10
• Sit-Up : 3-4x max rep to failure at BW

My Review of the Golden Six Full Body Training

As a full body training, the Golden Six is decent overall. About all major muscle groups are targeted, the routine is pretty smart, and accessible by many; you only need a flat bench, a barbell, some iron, somewhere to squat, somewhere to hang yourself for chin-ups and somewhere to stick your feet for sit-up. For neophytes, we all have to start somewhere, no need for perfection, optimization, etc. You need to actually start somewhere.

However, we have to talk about the nuances and cons of this full body training.

The first one is that there is little to no posterior chain work, meaning, little to no glutes, hamstring and low back work. The second big issue I have with the Golden Six is the lack of shoulder balance movements : bench press, behind the neck press and even curl are heavy on the anterior delt involvement. But the lateral and posterior delt portions are barely targeted. A wide-grip bench press will help for lateral fibers, behind the neck press is very good to hit them, however, the rear delt is severely under worked, and we do not have much to target it, except for some stabilisation on pressing and assistance on the pulling.

We have little upper back work, no rowing, which can lead to lack of muscles right in the center of the back basically. Finally it lacks any triceps and calves isolation work, and knee health wise, the gap between knee flexors and extensors strength will at one point be an issue, so leg curling wouldn’t be too much to implement.

Also, doing these same exercises, again and again, thrice per week, can easily lead to plateaus, boredom and overuse injuries, like tendinopathy or synovial build up, even osteoarthrosis.

Here is what I would do to make it better.

The Golden Six Full Body Training Revisited

The first thing I would do, without making it harder to accommodate for most, is to include more variation and new exercises; for example, using dumbbells and other angles to train, like incline pressing, dips, rowing etc.

Without completely making a new program, it is easy to keep the philosophy of the Golden Six, which is basic, simple yet effective, and create one or two more alternated productive and safer full body training. Thus, this become a very good option for both beginner and early/mid intermediate lifters who don’t want to get a headache and keep things simple ie, getting progressively stronger on key movements for muscle growth, just like our bodybuilding forefathers did.

Here is my proposition for that :

Workout A :

• Barbell Back Squat (to parallel) : 4×8-10
• Wide Grip Bench Press (wider than shoulder width) : 3×8-10
• Supinated Chin-Up : 3x max BW sets
• BTN Press : 3×8-10
• Barbell Curl : 3×8-10
• Sit-Up : 3x max reps at BW

Workout B :

• Romanian Deadlift : 3×8-10
• Lying Leg Curl : 3×8-10
• Close Grip Bench Press : 3×8-10
• Neutral Chin-Up : 3x max BW or 3×8-10 weighted
• Rear Delt DB Raises : 3×12-15, use an incline bench around 30°
• Pull Over Triceps : 3×8-10, use an EZ Bar or DB for joints comfort

Workout C :

• Front Squat (as deep as possible) : 4×6-8
• Bent Over Row (torso around 60° angle) : 3×7-10
• Dips : 3x max reps at BW or 3×8-10 weighted
• DB Seated Shoulder Press : 3×8-10
• DB Seated Curl : 3×8-10/arm
• Hanging Knee-Bent Leg Raises : 3x max reps at BW

As you can see, nothing magical or new, just hard work on movements we know that works, and without any fancy equipment.

Conclusion

Despite all the recipes available today to get your dream body, the ingredients have been, are and will always be hard work, commitment and discipline. You will found all of that in the Golden Six full body training.

If you need help with your own goals, consider checking out my services and we might soon be working together to help you reach those goals faster and better.

Please be sure to tell me what you think of this routine, and I will see you soon on another article.

Come with me if you want to lift,

Your light keeper,

Hersovyac.