Like father, like son. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son Joseph Baena is following in his dad’s footsteps as an elite champion bodybuilder.
Baena, 28, took part in his first-ever bodybuilding competition at Saturday’s NPC Natural Colorado State event and he won first place in multiple categories.
A banner day for Baena
Baena captured first place in the Men’s Open Bodybuilding Heavy Weight Class, Men’s Classic Physique True Novice, and Men’s Classic Physique Novice while earning silver in the Men’s Classic Physique Open Class C, during Saturday’s NPC Natural Colorado State competition.
“Mission accomplished,” Baena captioned the Instagram post documenting his accomplishment.
While he still has a way to go to equal Arnold’s seven Mr. Olympia titles, Baena’s hard work in the gym is obviously paying off.
Baena’s impressive body transformation
Being a bodybuilder takes an incredible amount of hard work, but it’s also easy to look at Baena and assume he always looked this way thanks to his genetics.
That isn’t the case though, he explained in a July 2025 Instagram post.
“People sometimes forget that I used to be chubby in high school. I got cut from my basketball and soccer team because I couldn’t keep up with the other kids,” Baena captioned the post. “Swim didn’t have tryouts thankfully and completely changed my life forever. That was my introduction to Fitness and training. Everyone starts somewhere but starting is the most important.”
In 2022, Baena, who is also an actor like his dad, discussed his childhood bullying at the hands of his “closest friends.”
“And so, from my closest friends, it wasn’t like outside people or people that I didn’t know, or popular kids or whatever,” Baena told PEOPLE. “It was my closest friends that were the ones that bullied me the most and made fun of me for being overweight and all these kind of things.”
“So, that was really a big struggle for me in finding myself and figuring out and creating that ambition to change my weight and my physique and all these kind of things,” he added.
This story was originally published by Men’s Journal on Mar 29, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Men’s Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
