AS A SEVEN-TIME Mr. Olympia champion, Arnold Schwarzenegger sculpted one of the most famous physiques in the world—and during his peak bodybuilding era, his compound lifts were in pretty excellent shape too. In a recent conversation on The Pat McAfee Show, Schwarzenegger shared his PR stats on the big three:
“My best bench press was 525 (238 kg), my best deadlift was 710 (322 kg), and my best squat was 610 (277 kg),” he said. “So those were my lifts then, but I have to say they are not at all great compared to what some of the bodybuilders and lifters are doing today, I can tell you that, because today there’s guys that are squatting with 700, 800 pounds (300-350 kg) and there’s guys that bench press 600 pounds (270 k)g.”
“They’ve really gotten much better, but you know time moves on, people get better all the time, their muscles are better now, and thicker, with more definition and stuff,” he continued. “So it’s a different era. But I was very happy with my lifts that I had then, and it made me grow really fast.”
While he might not be lifting quite so heavy these days, Schwarzenegger still famously hits the weights six times a week. “I go every day to the gym, I ride on my bike, I go down to Gold’s Gym, I work out 45 minutes and then I ride the bike back,” he said. “That’s something I do every day… Remember: you rest, you rust. It’s that simple.”
Now 76 years old, Schwarzenegger has accepted that his physique will never again look the way it did back in the late ’70s and early ’80s. “It sucks,” he told Howard Stern in October, although he added: “It still looks better than the majority of bodies.”
This article first appeared on menshealth.com
