Top 30 Phil Heath Quotes

I’m not trying to be average.

The body is dynamic. You can eat something and get bloated in minutes.

For me, I’ve always tried to be a stand-up individual.

Do cardio throughout the year at least three days a week for at least 30-40 minutes, whether it be first thing in the morning on an empty stomach or after a post-workout protein shake. Cardio won’t kill your gains as much as you think; you’ll see how much muscle you really have.

Whatever I put into my body, I want it to be the best.

If you can get to the gym 4-5 days a week, that would be perfect. You can still do chest/tri’s, back/bi’s, legs, shoulders, and make the fifth day a cleanup day, meaning focus on body parts you may be weaker in.

It’s not that I don’t want big triceps, but the truth is, I’ve never had much difficulty adding mass to them.

I believe you need to take enough rest to lift heavy weights, but if it takes you 5-10 minutes to rest and get psyched up for a big lift, I don’t know if that’s going to be good.

We all go through things in life, and it’s just how you deal with it. Try to stay positive throughout the worst.

I received a lot of criticism early in my career, but people didn’t realize that I’d only been training for three years when I turned pro.

Gifted Nutrition was able to show me that they had FDA-compliant ingredients in their supplements. I thought that was really huge, especially when you are trying to show people that you are a natural athlete.

I despised basketball for a long time.

When you see me at the show, I’m smiling because I want you to know I can do this all day.

I never thought I could win Mr. Olympia when I started my career in 2002.

There’s no way in hell I could have achieved what I have without being a good student and listening to the wisdom of others who have been doing this a lot longer than I have.

I’ve done, on video, 150-pound dumbbells in each hand -I think it was, like, twenty two reps – on an incline.

There were actually a couple of times I fell asleep at the gym on accident after a workout, but it was still late enough, so I went home and caught some sleep.

I think I was one of those kids that, at the age of 13, start filling out a little bit: I was the kid that had the chest, the arms, the calves, especially, with these big legs like an adult.

If you want something you’ve never had before, you gotta be willing to do something you’ve never done before.

You can’t be around people who appease you all the time.

I see guys who are in the gym all the time, but their bodies are not a reflection of that. They look the same from year to year, and that has to do with the fact that they’re not evaluating the effect of their efforts.

When it comes to personal appearance, people are quick to cast judgment on people who look better than them. It’s part of the human inferiority complex.

Since I first signed with AMI’s Weider Publications in 2005, everything has turned to gold.

I went from 185 lbs to 285 lbs, became a 7X Mr. Olympia, tying Arnold Schwarzenegger, and competed against the most determined and fittest athletes in the world. This took hard work, tremendous dedication, and knowing what, how, and when to train.

Constant tension should be applied to the last five reps of every working set, meaning, do the first 5-6 reps normal tempo, and the last few reps should be held for at least two seconds at the peak of the contraction. This allows your muscles to have more time under tension, and you work different muscle fibers.

Some ladies like muscle.

Dropsets overload the muscle with shorter rest periods and increasing volume, which you need to grow.

I train as smart as I can. I’m not concerned what others think. I do what works for me.

When I decided to become a bodybuilder, I actually marked down a date. It was Oct. 8, 2002. The rest is pretty much history. It was an amazing feeling to know that I had the potential to become a champion.

I grew up as an only child, so I like being by myself. So I train predominantly – 98 percent of the time – by myself.