I wanted to be a big guy, I didn't want to be subtle. I dreamed of big deltoids, big breasts, big calves and thighs; I wanted every muscle to be gigantic. I dreamed of being a giant. Reg Park was my limit dreams, the biggest, most powerful man in bodybuilding.

At this time, I recharged my "batteries": I watched films with Steve Reeves, Mark Forrest, Brad Harris, Gordon Mitchell and Reg Park. I admired Reg Park more than anyone else. He looked solid and massive, exactly the way I thought a man should look. I remember the first time I saw him on screen. The film was called "Hercules and the Vampires", in this film the hero had to save the Earth from the invasion of thousands of bloodthirsty vampires. Reg Park was so great as Hercules that the movie just blew my mind. And sitting right here in the cinema, I realized that I would become the hero of this film. I wanted to look like Reg Park. I watched his every move, every gesture… Suddenly I noticed that the lights were already on in the auditorium and the audience was coming out into the street.

From that moment on, my whole life was spent under the impression of Reg Park. His appearance has become an ideal for me. His image is indelibly imprinted in my memory. All my friends liked Steve Reeves better, but I didn't like him. Reg Park looked much more massive, much more powerful than Steve Reeves. Steve Reeves seemed elegant, soft, neat. And I knew that elegance did not interest me. I wanted to be massive. The difference is the same here. Like between the smell of cologne and sweat.

I found everything I could about Reg Park. I bought every magazine that published his training programs. I found out when he started training, when and what he ate, how he lived and how he spent training. It was like an obsession: his image was in front of my eyes from the very first training. And the more I focused on this image, the more I trained and grew, the more I realized that for me it was quite real and possible to become like him; even Carl and Kurt were able to see it. They predicted that this would happen in five years.

But I didn't think I could wait five years. I had an irresistible desire to achieve this earlier. There were people who were satisfied with training two or three times a week, I quickly intensified my program to six workouts a week.

My father tuned in because of such fervor. "Don't do it, Arnold," he said, "you'll overtrain and overwork."

"I'm fine, I do everything gradually."

"Yes, what are you going to do with all these muscles, when will you build them?

I honestly answered: "I want to be the best bodybuilder in the world."

In response, he smiled and shook his head.

“Then I want to go to America and act in films. I want to be a film actor."

"In America?"

"Yes, to America."

He already screamed: “You are my God!” Then he went into the kitchen and said to my mother: "I think it's better to take him to the doctor, I don't think he's all right in the head."

He was sincerely worried about me, he felt - I'm not okay - and, of course, he was right. My desire and my behavior were abnormal. Normal people can be happy living ordinary lives. I was different. I thought life could be better than dragging along the path of a mediocre existence. I have always been fascinated by stories of greatness and power. Caesar, Napoleon - these names I knew and always remembered. I wanted to do something special to be recognized as the best. In bodybuilding, I saw the vehicle that would take me to the top, and I put all my energy into it.

I trained six days a week, constantly increasing the amount of weight I could lift and the amount of time I spent in the gym. I had a clear idea: to build a body like Reg Park. The image, the model in my memory, I had only to grow enough to fill this image. In my mind I already saw this amazing body. Well, as soon as I achieve this, I already knew what I would do next. I will act in films and build gyms all over the world. I will create an empire.

Reg Park has become a father figure to me. I pinned his pictures on all the walls of my room. I read everything about him that was printed in Germany. I had translations that Karl did from English. I looked at every photograph of him that I came across - I noted to myself the size of his chest, arms, hips, back and abs. It inspired me to train even more effectively. Whenever I felt my lungs burn as if they were on fire and my veins bulged with blood pressure, I loved the feeling. I knew that I was growing, taking another step towards becoming like Reg Park. I wanted his body and didn't care what I had to overcome to get there.

That winter, my father said that he did not allow me to go to the gym more than three times a week, he did not like that I was not at home every evening. To get around this ban, we built a gym at home together.

The house where we lived it was three hundred years. It was once built by some part of the royal family. When they left this house, they set the condition that two people would live in the house: the head of the regional police, and my father held this position, and the chief forester of the district. And for the last hundred years, it was these two people who lived in this house. Our family lived on the top floor, and the forester's family occupied the lower one.

The house was built like a castle. The floors were solid and the walls were about five feet thick. In this house it was possible to make an excellent hall. The floor and walls could bear the load of heavy weights. I got the basic equipment: benches and the simplest cable machines, specially welded to order. There was no heating in my hall and, of course, it was frosty there in the cold winter, but I did not pay attention to it. I trained there even when the temperature was below zero.

Three evenings a week I went to the gym in the city. Back then I had to walk or bike eight miles returning after ten at night, but those eight miles didn't bother me. I knew that they help develop the body, strengthen the legs and improve endurance.

The only real difficulty came during home workouts because I needed a partner. Already my experience of training on the lake gave me a strong confidence that training partners are needed. I need someone not only to teach, but also to inspire me. I trained better and harder if I had people around me who were as enthusiastic as I am. That first winter, I trained with Karl Gerst, the doctor who had helped me in the beginning. He helped me a lot not only as a translator. He knew everything about the body. He was serious and worked hard. We trained the same way, except for our goals and our nutrition: I wanted to gain weight and grow, and Carl wanted to lose weight. Carl gave me the stimulus I needed.

There were some days when something kind of pulled me back and I couldn't train as hard as other days. It was inexplicable to me. On some days everything went fine, and on others there was a continuous decline. During my down days, I couldn't even come close to my usual working weight. This puzzled me a lot. Carl and I discussed this fact. He was well versed in psychology (and at the age of fifteen I only heard the word, but his argumentation was quite logical and the essence of the matter served as the basis for my further reflections). “It's not in your body, Arnold. Your body cannot change so much in one day, from one day to the next. It's all in your head. On some days, you see your goals more clearly, and on down days, you need someone to help you tune in. It's like you're cycling behind a bus and you're caught in the airflow behind it. Then the wind helps you go. In general, on such days it is enough for someone to push you, to challenge you.

Karl was right. Every month I had at least a week when I really didn't feel like training, and then I asked myself: Why would I train intensively if I didn't feel like this? On days like these, Carl pushed me too. He told me: “Listen, I feel great today! I want to shake lying down. Let's do twenty-five sets instead of twenty. Maybe we can compete? Ten shillings to the one who squeezes this weight more times.

It worked great. He made me overcome obstacles, make my body move. It became very important for me that someone stood behind and said: “Come on, Arnold! Let's do one more repetition! And for me it became also important to help someone else. When I watched him train and cheered him up, something made me do the same hard set myself.

I have found that the secret to successful training is competition. And for me it was never