Zane in the late ‘70s

Among the body building cognoscenti, Frank Zane — the Mr. Universe of 1971, Mr. Olympia of ’77, ’78, and ’79, and resident of La Mesa since ’97 — is a legend with few peers. His symmetry, proportion, and posing have led some to hold Zane in even higher esteem than they do Arnold, with whom he trained at the original Gold’s Gym in Venice, and who he also happened to tutor in algebra when the Austrian was new to the States and taking classes at Santa Monica City College. (Zane told me that Schwarzenegger would do “forced reps” with his math work just like he would with his lifts — pushing himself just a little beyond what he thought he could do each time.)

I met with Zane on a video call a few weeks ago. Now 82, he had a full head of gray hair and a neat goatee. He wore a large turquoise ring on his finger and beads around his wrist. On the wall behind him were three paintings of western landscapes: rivers, canyons, mountains. In front of that wall were four Buddha statues. The scene was, as a whole, very California.

Staying strong.

I was interested in the beads and the Buddhas, and asked him if he had some spiritual interests. “You might say that,” he said. “Let me ask you something. Is the cloud a member of the sky?” I hesitated, not knowing if the question was merely rhetorical, but answered affirmatively when I saw that he was waiting. “It is? Then I’m a Buddhist.” I nodded, affirming again. “If it’s not, then I’m not a Buddhist.” Zane paused and then added, “I’m really not anything. Whatever attracts me, I study it. I study up on things. I’m interested from a scholarly point of view.”

I was also curious about the math teaching that I mentioned above. Actually, Zane taught many students, most of them considerably smaller than the Governator. He worked as a school teacher for 13 years before his success in bodybuilding allowed him to retire from that line of work. It was amusing to imagine Zane in those days, nearing the zenith of his physical prime, with all that Olympian muscle squeezed into a button-down in front of a room full of ninth graders.

As he reflected on his past, I found myself wondering if aging, which is hard for everyone, was particularly so for a bodybuilder, a person whose physical form had been the focus of so much effort and attention, and had been the currency of fame and success. But Zane was serene on this point. Now, when he’s in the gym, he is there in the interests of feeling good and maintaining his conditioning. “I accept it as it is,” he said of aging. “I’m not really aware of what’s happening with age. I know I’m getting older, but I don’t really care. I’m still working out. I still have a good amount of strength. That’s enough for me. I don’t have any kind of ulterior goals anymore. I’ve basically won everything. I’m not in it for winning trophies any more, because I’ve already won them.”

While Zane may not be pursuing trophies anymore, he still offers guidance and training to some currently competing bodybuilders (and a few other folks) at his private gym. He balked when I used the word “retirement” in our conversation. “Retire from what? I’m just doing what I always did, so I don’t think about it as something I’d retire from.”