When I heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger was going to make an appearance at the famed Muscle Beach in Venice, CA, I couldn’t help but be intrigued. He was promoting MusclePharm’s The Arnold Series, a weightlifting supplement line that he painstakingly created in a lab licensed his name to. But more importantly, it’s Arnold — so I showed up with the assurance that I’d have a chance to score an interview. As you can see, I wasn’t the only one who caught wind of the appearance.
Now, if you’ve never lathered yourself in baby oil, shoehorned yourself into a Speedo, and stood on a stage flexing your lats, you may be asking, “What the hell is Muscle Beach?” The short answer is that Muscle Beach is an outdoor weight room — yes, it is, in fact, on the beach — where insanely buff people train and give normal guys a complex about removing our shirts in public. (It’s enclosed by a see-through fence, and you need to be a member to use the equipment, just like any other gym.)
Back in the 1970s, Arnold and some of his humongous bodybuilding pals basically made Muscle Beach their home, working out and putting their Herculean physiques on display for all to gawk at. Arnold went on to become the most famous bodybuilder in history, one of the biggest movie stars in history, and a governor of California — which is home to Muscle Beach. So for him, it’s kind of like a “home away from home” type of thing.
