Arnold Schwarzenegger's son Joseph Baena looks like his twin, and they have the same appreciation and dedication to fitness. On Tuesday, the 27-year-old shared a hilarious reel that included a throwback photo of him as a teenager. "Kind of tired, might skip the gym today," he wrote over the video.
After lying on the couch, he put up a shirtless video of himself as a teenager, which instantly got him off the couch and ready to train. Joseph shared a little bit of his story in the caption, "People sometimes forget that I used to be chubby in high school," he wrote.
According to Joseph, he got cut from the basketball and soccer teams because he "couldn’t keep up with the other kids."
He found solace in swimming. "Swim didn’t have tryouts, thankfully, and completely changed my life forever. That was my introduction to Fitness and training," he explained. "Everyone starts somewhere, but starting is the most important."
The comments on the video were pretty amazing. "Lil bro was definitely on some juice (boxes)," "You can’t, you’re the TerminaSON you gotta do it," read some of the best comments.
The top liked one said, "Mom's cooking must have been [fire]." Joseph's mom is Mildred Baena, who was the former housekeeper of Arnold and his then-wife, Maria Shriver. She is from Guatemala, so Joseph probably grew up munching on tortillas, frijoles, and tamales.
The Schwarzenegger road to fitness
He's not the only Schwarzenegger who has struggled with weight throughout childhood. His half-older brother Christopher has been on his own health journey, losing over 30 pounds. The 27-year-old has been losing weight for a few years and looks great.
Arnold recently opened up about it, telling The Times in June he had to figure out how to navigate it as a father. “I could never go and say to him, ‘You’re overweight,'" he told the outlet.
They introduced healthy foods and to "always go to the gym and all of that kind of stuff," but it was a decision he had to make on his own later in life. “And then, out of nowhere, he decided that he wanted to be lean. And now he is,” the 77-year-old said. “So that is, of course, fantastic, the self-discipline and the self-motivation. I always felt one day it would have to come from him - and it did.”
In May, Christopher opened up about his weight, saying, “I just saw how much my weight was prohibiting me from doing the everyday activities," like the ability to go skydiving. There has been speculation that he used weight loss drugs like Ozempic, but he has not openly said he's used it, crediting cutting out bread during Lent as one of the reasons he lost 30 pounds in two months.