Cover Model Muscle Arnold Schwarzenegger
He’s outmuscled and outsmarted his way to the top of bodybuilding, Hollywood and politics. Now Arnold Schwarzenegger is ready for his next reinvention
Arnold Schwarzenegger is staring past the row of weight machines, past the chain-link fence that outlines Gold’s Gym in Venice, California. He’s been taking me through his five-round morning shoulder circuit, and now we’re supposed to be starting the fourth round, moving from exercise to exercise with no rest.
No matter. Two women beyond the fence just snapped iPhone pictures of him – and Schwarzenegger noticed. ‘Hello! How are you doing?’ he says. They ask if they can take pictures. ‘Of course,’ he tells them. ‘You’re in a public place. It’s a sidewalk. You can do whatever you want.’
Schwarzenegger pauses. ‘Did you take the picture? How did I look?’ The reply: ‘Awesome.’ ‘You just made my day,’ he says. The women smile. He wedges himself into a shoulder-press machine and pounds out 11 reps.
Immediately after that, he beckons fellow actor and friend Douglas Farrell over to flex for the cameras. When Farrell tightens his biceps, Schwarzenegger shakes his head. ‘Now flex.’ Farrell flexes his chest instead. Schwarzenegger nods. And when a powerlifter from Ohio, Cory Gregory (better known as @corygfitness on Instagram, with 197,000 followers), stops him, they shake hands. Minutes later, in the middle of his finishing arm circuit, Schwarzenegger stops doing dips so he can stand behind me during my preacher curls, hands on my biceps. ‘Think biceps,’ he says loudly. Then he leans in closer. ‘Make this,’ he whispers, ‘your best set ever.’ I crush 12 reps, and here he says, ‘Perfect.’ I freeze for a moment. Did he say that about me?
It’s a frenzied one-hour workout – and a brief glimpse into the latest iteration of a man who’s made a career out of reinventing himself. At age 75 (he turns 76 on 30 July), he’s no longer the effervescent ball of muscle who jumped from the Olympia stage to Hollywood to politics. But Updated Arnold still demands attention, and if Gold’s doesn’t prove that, then his 24 million Instagram followers and 6 million TikTok devotees do.
And it’s all because of his ability to adapt. He’s four decades removed from his bodybuilding prime and 20 years removed from his last big-screen Adonis moment (when he materialised out of thin air in a desert to open Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines). He mills around Gold’s like a rusted T-800, with lumbering steps and an ever-so-slightly hunched back. His ostrich-egg biceps have deflated a bit, and his elbows ache. He’s aware that the body that set the original actionhero standard is no more. When I ask him if he still hits all th
