Arnold Schwarzenegger on how he recovered from his 2018 open-heart surgery in 3.5 months


Arnold Schwarzenegger opens up on how he managed to recover in just 3.5 months by giving himself easy challenges he considered “reps”.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

If you’re a big fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger, you should subscribe to his free Pump Club newsletter. Arnold and his crew usually include exercises, recipes and general all-around health advice, furthering Arnie’s life-long goal of promoting physical fitness and health. One common feature of the newsletter are Arnold’s thoughts on motivation, with Arnie a big advocate of doing what you can to stay fit, even if it just means an easy walk around the block. In his latest newsletter, which dropped today, Arnold details how he started training again after his 2018 open heart surgery.

He said that the key for him was to start “training” himself immediately, even if the “training” initially involved little more than walks around the nursing station at the hospital or walks around his property, along with breathing exercises. He considered these exercises “reps” and “sets,” just like he would if he were lifting weights, and sure enough, within three and a half months, he was on-set filming Terminator: Dark Fate.

Schwarzenegger also showed unreleased footage that he took at the time. Check it out:

As Arnie himself says, “I don’t love seeing myself with the walker. But I want you to know that even if you think you’re too old, too out of shape, or too unhealthy, we all have times when we have to start from nothing. Remember: it doesn’t matter where you start. All that matters is that you start.”

If you want to subscribe to Arnold’s Pump Club (and you really should), you can subscribe here. When Arnie says it’s free he means it, and it’s one of the few newsletters you can subscribe to that won’t fill your inbox with spam either. Arnie sincerely wants people to lead better, healthier lives; this newsletter is an excellent example.