Top 169 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Bodybuilders

I refuse to believe today will be just another day in my life. All that I am. All that I will become will be written through my thoughts and my actions. I've conditioned my mind. Trained my body. Sacrificed my soul. There will be obstacles. Doubters. Mistakes. But nothing comes to those who wait. Every champion was once a contender that refused to give up.

Trust me when you love something you don't need motivation.

In order to lead the orchestra, you must first turn your back to the crowd.

The more you're obsessed by something, the better chance you have of achieving it.

Bodybuilding is the closest we have to the fountain of youth.

I learned from a very young age that no one owes you anything and nobody's gonna give you a damn thing. But you can have anything you want, if you work hard enough for it.

When you promise yourself something, make a commitment, you can't give up. Because, when you're in the gym, you have to fulfill the promise you made to yourself. The people who can self motivate - in any field - are usually the ones who win. Regardless of talent.

I get all excited when I think that someone's 1-900 sex call from a cell phone might be passing through my body right now.

To make a muscle grow, you must force it to go beyond its capabilities. The most potent way to apply that force is to train to failure. Training to failure means...the muscles are forced to grow stronger and bigger

You will train always for a hundred terrific reasons. Quit and it will be for no good reason at all.

If you don't follow a good nutritional plan, you're bodybuilding with one arm behind your back.

I still believe one of the most important choices is how we treat others. What good does it do you to build a huge muscular, impressive body if you are small and underdeveloped on the inside? I’ve always felt that success begins on the inside and reaching our true potential gets blocked when we are small-spirited.

Intensity builds immensity

Life is movement. Once you stop moving, you're dead. Choose life.

If I wanted to get my arms as big as I could possibly get them, I would probably do around 20 sets of 4 exercises and 5 sets each for the triceps and 20 sets for the biceps per workout 3 times a week. That would be around 60 sets of triceps and 60 sets of biceps work per week. I would keep the reps between 6 and 8 and I would do all basic movements where I'd handle as heavy a weight as possible. I'd consume nutritious food that had calories in and just flat out eat!

I don't believe in bodybuilders using steroids. If a man doesn't have enough male hormones in his system to create, a nice hard, muscular body, he should take up ping pong.

Far too many bodybuilders spend too much time exercising the smaller muscle groups such as the biceps at the expense of the larger muscle groups such as the thighs, and then they wonder why it is that they never make gains in overall size and strength.

You've got to block out all distractions when you train. Your focus has to be 100% into the rep. You've got to get into a zone. You know you're in the zone when guys in the gym look you in the eye and then quickly turn away 'cause they see the fire. You've got to be all business.

You seeyou can beat a dog and it's going to do one of two things..it's gonna roll over and die or it's going to bite you and attack you. And I'm the kind of person..uh..whose the type of dog that will bite back..I wasn't going to roll over and die

I don't do this to be healthy, I do this to get big muscles.

Bodybuilding isn’t 90 minutes in the gym..it’s a lifestyle

A few days before the [Mr. America] contest we heard rumors about a man who had throngs of people following him along the Lake Michigan Beach front, and we couldn't imagine who could draw crowds by merely walking along the beach!

I'm not the kind of guy who tries to run between the drops. Sometimes you gotta get a little wet to reach your destination

I don't have a favorite body part nor do I have a favorite exercise. Everyone who is honest prefers machines over free-weights, because machines are more convenient and cause less muscle pain and require less concentration and are generally less dangerous. BUT, if you like to have real gains you have to train hard and heavy, and you have to chose always the LEAST favorite exercises which actually give you the best possible results. So go for the least favorite exercises, the free weights... and go for the muscle pain!

I think your posing and your onstage presentation is yet another piece of the craft. So anytime you get onstage to show the muscles and show the finished work, that should be looked at with the same kind of respect and appreciation. I'm glad everybody else appreciates it, but I still want to get better.

I want to be bigger than everybody else, but I wouldn't want to be so big that people can't accept it. For instance, if you come in with 30-inch-arms, even your own peers aren't going to accept that. I wouldn't want to be that way. I wouldn't want to infinitely become unreal.

I'm very hungry and there's still a lot to do. Rather than look at what I've conquered already and say "yeah, that was the greatest so far," right now I just stay hungry and keep moving forward.

The truth I've discovered is that you don't have to lift enormous weights to grow muscle. By using stricter form, slower negatives, and stretching between sets you can get an incredible pump in all your workouts. Numbers are an abstraction, especially to muscles. Your body doesn't know the absolute weight of what you lift, it only recognizes how heavy it feels. The secret is to make lighter weights feel heavier.

Civilisation has, indeed, become a slaughtering-car crowned by a grinning effigy of Comfort, before which man blindly and voluntarily hurls himself in his own ignorance.

Do not let yourself be contaminated by others' ideas of what is best for you. Cast aside the shackles of destructive thinking.

Did you know that there is growing scientific consensus that one of the most common types of sugar, fructose, can be toxic to the liver, just like alcohol? And unfortunately, this is the same type of sugar that you find in most sports drinks.

Luck Doesn't exist, only hard (work) works

Yes it is better to keep training even if your muscle is still sore.

That last rep where you're trying as hard as you can and you barely make it! That is what turns on the growth mechanism in your body. That last almost impossible rep where you're bearing your teeth, you're shaking all over, you need assistance! That rep is very special, that rep is very different. There's something special going on inside your body when that happens.

I always go heavy and I always go to failure.

To be a good bodybuilder you must be a good observer.

I train for two reasons. Number one, I love working out, and number two, I want to win. You can't win if you don't train to the best of your ability.

Bodybuilding is an art, your body is the canvas, weights are your brush and nutrition is your paint. We all have the ability to turn a self portrait into a masterpiece.

You get as big as possible from becoming as strong as possible. When I started lifting I went into the gym with that ‘how much can I bench, curl, squat , and deadlift?’ attitude. That’s when I discovered how fast my strength could increase, and it made me crazy intense to get even stronger.

Work harder than anyone you know, and be lucky enough to be blessed with the genetics it takes.

Continuity is how you build a physique.

If you fully believe you will be successful and can visualize yourself being successful, you will succeed

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.

Man, is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of mind and body.

Your dreams will always be more important to you than anyone else, you can want something as much as you want but at the end of the day your mum doesn't care if your arms are 24 inches or not, but that doesn't mean you give up, chase your dreams.

Use what you have in your gym. Try to do my training program, you will lose your fat and gain muscles at the same time.

You have to think it before you can do it. The mind is what makes it all possible

There are volumes and libraries of information in our minds and we are continually weighing information. We hear new things, we compare it with things we've heard before, and we take from it what we feel is pertinent and throw away what we feel isn't necessary.

Man's proper stature is not one of mediocrity, failure, frustration, or defeat, but one of achievement, strength, and nobility. In short, man can and ought to be a hero.

Plain free-weight squats work better for me than anything.

I've made many good friends in bodybuilding, though there are few I'd trust to oil my back.

A lot of guys have better genes but if you work hard and consistently, you can outperform them.

Everyone has the ability to accomplish unique feats, everyone. You choose this. Become someone great in one other life. Forget about failing to many. Who cares? Doesn't matter when you start or finish, just start, no deviations, no excuses.

We are here to learn and to make our dreams realized.

It's important that you do full movements for your triceps, because locking out is when your triceps work their hardest. Flex and squeeze at the contraction of each rep to hit all three triceps heads.

When your arms are bigger than your head, something is wrong.

To be successful in bodybuilding you have to be a good observer

A bodybuilder is a sculptor who carries with him his own material.

Champions are an example of what happens when you decide to leave the plane of average thinking, where you dare to dream and you dare to go after that dream, and you make these thoughts and ideas become more than something than just a dream. They actually become a vision.

Back in the day I took a lot of supplements and tons of amino acids. Still do. But back then it was pretty unusual. That's how I got the nickname The Chemist.