Hollywood veteran Arnold Schwarzenegger started off by walking 10 steps at a time to get back in shape following complications in his third open-heart surgery in 2018, eventually managing to resume shooting for Terminator 6 within three months, the 76-year-old has revealed in a video he shared on YouTube.

“It was a disaster. I was in the middle of a disaster. So now how do I get out of it? You have to shift gears. You collect yourself, shift gears and say, ‘Okay, what I need to do now is I gotta get out of this hospital’,” Schwarzenegger says in the video, sharing an old footage of him walking on a corridor in a hospital gown.

The doctors had to cut open the valves and arteries of his heart, shelving their initial plan for a non-invasive procedure, Schwarzenegger said, recalling how he was “freaking out” once the medical team informed him about his condition.

In the video shared on his YouTube channel The Pump, Schwarzenegger said that due to these complications, he required a longer and more challenging recovery period. “The bottom line is, you cannot roll the clock back.”

The actor, who later ventured into politics, remembers that after the surgery, his feet lost their coordination with the rest of his body, which made walking difficult.

Schwarzenegger mentioned that he had a “positive attitude” which enabled him to get back on his feet within three months and resume shooting Terminator 6.

The bodybuilder-turned-actor has been using his daily Pump Club newsletter to share stories from his long-running career. His anecdotes include advice on cultivating positive routines, enhancing physical fitness, and striving for personal objectives.

The former Mr Olympia was born with a heart problem known as aortic stenosis, which makes the heart pump harder in order to receive blood through the aortic valve. He underwent his first heart surgery in 1997 and had to go through a third one in 2018.