Why Arnold Schwarzenegger, 79, makes this 30-somethings heart race

Fitness used to be about the pleasure of having a body.Now it’s about the science of optimizing one.Search the biggest fitness influencers and you’ll find them discussing VO2 max, sleep scores and individualized training protocols.

They seem intent on reducing the body to a series of numbers.Not Arnold Schwarzenegger.The biggest news, opinion and culture shaping California right now.

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Never miss a story The man famously compared “the pump,” the feeling of blood rushing into a muscle, to an orgasm.To watch him in the 1977 documentary “Pumping Iron” is to witness a masterclass in discipline, but also bodybuilding as a kind of spiritual ecstasy.Sweating bodies with faces turned to the California sun, the clang of hot iron.

You can almost smell the salt and metal.But I admit, I’m biased.California Post News: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, WhatsApp, LinkedInCalifornia Post Sports Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, XCalifornia Post Opinion California Post Newsletters: Sign up here!California Post App: Download here!Home delivery: Sign up here!Page Six Hollywood: Sign up here!In a city always obsessed with the newest thing, I find myself in my early 30s with an unexpected crush on 79-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger.A crush born, of course, at 61-year-old Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach.The place where he trained to win Mr.

Olympia seven times.One morning I was at the squat rack under a photograph of Arnold Schwarzenegger when Arnold Schwarzenegger walked into the gym.It must be strange to enter a place where the walls are covered with images of your younger self.Yet at 79, the man himself was still all teeth and animal muscle, radiating a tangible warmth even from 40 feet away as he clapped his friends on the back.I had an immediate, visceral reaction.

I pulled out my phone and Googled: Is Arno...