Arnold Schwarzenegger has inspired generations of bodybuilders, including the first Arnold Classic winner, Rich Gaspari.

In an interview with Muscle & Strength, former bodybuilder Rich Gaspari credited bodybuilding legend Arnold Schwarzenegger for influencing his own career.

Reflecting on his childhood, Gaspari recalled that his first encounter with professional bodybuilding was at the age of 11 when he stumbled upon a collection of Joe Weider Muscle Builder magazines in a friend’s basement.

"We went into his basement, and in his basement, he had all these muscle builder magazines, Joe Weider, muscle builder magazines. So I went down there and started looking at the magazines, and I saw pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger for the first time."

Gaspari recalled that he was a big fan of comic books like the Incredible Hulk and Superman. And being mesmerized by bodybuilders like Schwarzenegger, Franco Columbo, Robbie Robinson, and Frank Zayn, he thought these individuals appeared as real-life embodiments of the larger-than-life figures he admired.

The impact of those images was so profound that he decided then and there that he wanted to be a bodybuilder when he grew up.

What Rich Gaspari did next was incredible

After deciding at 11 that he wanted to become a professional bodybuilder when he grew up, he started training for it at 13 years old, and was already competing by the time he was 14.

He trained at a basement gym in Highland Park, New Jersey, and offered to clean bathrooms, scrub showers, maintain the steam room, and serve protein shakes in return for a free membership. He learned strength training by observing lifters.

"I started competing in shows from 14, 15, 16. And I every every time I went into a show, I would get better and better places until 18 when I won uh, the overall uh teenage uh it was called the Jersey, it's called physique, whatever it was, 81 or whatever it was that I won the show."

During the Nationals, he met Gold's Gym owner Ed Connors, who offered him a job in California. The greed to stay near Joe Weider motivated Gaspari to leave his premed studies at Rutgers University and move to California.

"Back then, you had to win the nationals, and then when you won the nationals, you had to win Mr. Universe. So, you only had if you didn't win Mr. Universe, you had to go back into the nationals to compete again. So I went that year, won the nationals won Mr. Universe."

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Written by

Ruwa Javed

Edited by

Oajaswini Prabhu