![]() ![]() “Arnold said, ‘Once you hit 26, it’s all downhill with the body,’ ” Wachter recalled. Paul Wachter, a friend and business partner, first met him in 1981, when Wachter was about to turn 25. “We have a mutual friend,” tried another intruder, and Schwarzenegger scowled, muttering indecipherably, possibly in German.Īs someone who spent years perfecting his body, Schwarzenegger has always been attuned to the nuances of decline. ![]() “Don’t worry about it,” Schwarzenegger said, blowing them off. A few tourists from Germany defied protocol and approached the bench, asking for selfies. “This is one of the few places where Arnold is treated normally,” said Daniel Ketchell, Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff, who hovered between us. I did a few reps myself on an adjacent machine, to blend in.įor the most part, the muscled minions at Gold’s left the king alone. He did light bench presses, pectoral work on an incline chest machine, and some lat pull-downs. He was focused today (a Thursday) on his back and chest muscles. He likes to emphasize a different body part each day of the week. Now the aging leviathan jumped into a series of light repetitions. “It’s as satisfying to me as coming is, as in having sex with a woman and coming … So can you believe how much I am in heaven?” “The most satisfying feeling you can get in the gym is the pump,” he says in the movie. Schwarzenegger, then 28, was the star of the film and a testament to the idea that humans could mold themselves into gods-bulging comic-book gods, but gods nonetheless. “Everybody wants to live forever,” went the opening refrain of the title song. I knew it only as a movie, the 1977 documentary about the fanatical culture of bodybuilding. I didn’t even realize that Pumping Iron was a book. She was topless in the shot.” Perhaps I recognized her? Not immediately, no. “She’s actually the girl who is sitting on my shoulder in the Pumping Iron book. “Say hi to Heide,” Schwarzenegger told me, pointing to 82-year-old Heide Sutter, who was working out in a skintight tracksuit. The Venice Gold’s is a tourist attraction but also a serious gym-loud with the usual clanking and grunting, and redolent with the pickled scent of sweat. Schwarzenegger will always be synonymous with the place, and with the spectacle of specimens at nearby Muscle Beach. We made it intact to Gold’s Gym in Venice, the birthplace of bodybuilding in the ’60s and ’70s, and a cathedral to the sport ever since. Everyone’s got their beautiful, beautiful jobs and professions.” These days, Schwarzenegger’s own beautiful profession is to essentially be an emeritus version of himself. We do the garbage man, the construction worker. “It’s like a Norman Rockwell,” Schwarzenegger told me. ![]() Universe, Terminator, Barbarian, Governor of California, etc.-one of the strangest and most potent alloys of American celebrity ever forged-can reconnect with something in the neighborhood of a pedestrian existence. He describes his ride as a kind of vigorous nostalgia trip, a time when the former Mr. Schwarzenegger does not wear a helmet and seems to enjoy being recognized, startling commuters with drive-by cameos. “Heyyyy, Mister Arnold!” the double-taking driver of a landscaping van shouted out his window. Drivers honked and yelled at the speeding cyclist in the lead until they realized who he was. I braked hard and, being neither an action hero nor a stunt double, barely stayed upright. He zipped through intersections with cars screeching behind him. Schwarzenegger can be selective in his observance of traffic signals. It is also, I learned while following behind him on that foggy day in October, a terrifying expedition.Ĭheck out more from this issue and find your next story to read. The bike ride is his favorite part of the morning. From there he sets out on the three-mile bike ride to Gold’s Gym, where he has been lifting on and off since the late ’60s. At 7:40, he puts a bike on the back of a Suburban and heads from his Los Angeles, California, mansion to the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica. He makes coffee, putters around, feeds Whiskey (his miniature horse) and Lulu (his miniature donkey), shovels their overnight manure into a barrel, drinks his coffee, checks his email, and maybe plays a quick game of chess online. I had joined him one morning as he rushed through his daily routine. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday.
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