How Strong Is Arnold Schwarzenegger?

There was a time where you couldn't turn in any direction in pop culture without running into Arnold Schwarzenegger or the legions of parodies and imitations that followed after him. From the mid-1980s through the 1990s, he was at the peak of Hollywood stardom, headlining scores of tentpole movies. And in that same period, TV shows from "The Simpsons" to "Tiny Toon Adventures" had characters designed to have fun with "Arnie's" accent and machismo, the violent action films he was most famous for, and the sheer improbability of him reaching the heights that he did.

One of these parodies, from "Saturday Night Live," took its cues less from Schwarzenegger's film career than from the first stage of his life in the spotlight: His time as a bodybuilder. Schwarzenegger himself got in on the fun, popping in to castigate his "cousins" for not properly living up to his he-man example. His status in the bodybuilding world may have owed more to confidence and psychology than any outstanding leg up in the physique department (he used a psychological warfare trick to defeat his competitors). But just how strong was Schwarzenegger in his heyday?

It turns out that the man himself still knows his stats from his time on the circuit. In an interview with "The Pat McAfee Show," Schwarzenegger recalled his lifts. "My best bench press was 525, my best deadlift was 710, and my best squat was 610," he said.

Even before he was a bodybuilder, Arnold Schwarzenegger trained for strength and size. He was training even as a teenager. In the 1960s, he picked up several prizes for powerlifting in his native Austria, and by the time he achieved worldwide fame as a bodybuilder, he'd reworked his diet to hone his physique even further.

Schwarzenegger was happy with his bodybuilding lifting records and said so on "The Pat McAfee Show." As he put it, "it made me grow really fast." But in the same interview, the "Terminator" star conceded that his lifts weren't terribly impressive compared to what some bodybuilders have achieved in the years since he left the field. "I can tell you that, because today there's guys that are squatting with 700, 800 pounds and there's guys that bench press 600 pounds," he said.

Training regimens have shifted with time. There's been a push toward lifting heavy early on to build up muscle and more of an emphasis on strength than there was when Schwarzenegger was competing. "It's a different era," he conceded. And that's not just a matter of taste or opinion — there are research papers on lifting heavy to improve your physique.

Now in his 70s, Arnold Schwarzenegger clearly isn't going to pass his old lifting records, let alone match the bodybuilders of today. Aging hasn't been easy for the actor and one-time governor, in any sense. He's not charting at the top of Hollywood's box office anymore, he's out of step with his own political party, and any ambitions he had for higher office are frustrated by the Constitution. As for his physique, he just can't match what he once was. When the subject came up on "Howard Stern" in 2023, Schwarzenegger had a blunt response: "It just sucks."

But he still strives to keep in shape. He loves to bike (pictured), and he uses it to get to and from Gold's Gym, where, he told "The Pat McAfee Show," he works out for 45 minutes "every day." That daily workout still includes lifts. But it's more than old habits or vanity that motivate Schwarzenegger to keep up with his exercise. "We always need it," he said. "Remember: you rest, you rust. It's that simple."