I've been working out at Muscle Beach since 2012. When I tell people this, they react one of two ways. Either they think I'm joking, or they picture the outdoor pen with the posing platform where bodybuilders in banana hammocks flex for tourists. That's not where I work out. That's the photo op. The actual gym is a small concrete building behind it, run by the city of Los Angeles, and it is — I will argue this with anyone — the best value gym in the city.
When I first joined, I was living on the Marina Peninsula in Venice. There weren't a lot of gyms you could run to from there. This was before the Westside got its current crop of boutique fitness spots — before every block had a cold plunge and a sauna and a membership that costs more than your phone bill. Back then, your options on the peninsula were drive somewhere or run to Muscle Beach. I ran to Muscle Beach.
The membership was cheap. Absurdly cheap. You could prepay for the year, and so every January — first week, sometimes January 1st — I'd go down and pay for the whole year up front. It became a ritual. New year, walk down to the beach, hand over the money, know that you'd be there every morning until the next January. That prepay was a commitment device that actually worked, because the money was gone and the gym was six blocks away and there was no reason not to go.
When I started going, the place was rough. The city hadn't done the equipment refresh yet — that came maybe five or six years ago. Before that, everything was old. Like, genuinely old. Benches with cracked padding. Cable machines that made sounds they shouldn't make. Dumbbells that didn't all match. The kind of gym where you learn to work around things instead of having everything perfect.
But there was this pull-up bar in the middle of the space. It was beautiful. Not because of how it was built, but because of what happened on it.
If you've spent any time at Muscle Beach, you know Ike Catcher. If you haven't, look him up. He's six-foot-nine, about 270 pounds, Austrian — former Mr. Vienna. He's been a fixture at Muscle Beach for years, and he is, without exaggeration, the most impressive human being I have ever watched exercise.
His routine is not something you can describe and have people believe you. He'll do fifteen or twenty pull-ups — full extension, slow and controlled, at 270 pounds — then drop down and hit thirty dips without pausing, then do something that looks like a gymnastics move on the bar that turns into a backflip, then somehow end up doing push-ups from the top of the bar in a position that shouldn't be physically possible. I have stood ten feet away and watched this and I still don't fully understand how a human that large moves like that.
Ike is also the kindest person at that gym. He believes in meditation, breathwork, living clean. He'll talk to anyone who approaches him, and a lot of people approach him — he gets asked for photos constantly, by tourists, by fitness people, by guys who just can't believe what they're seeing. He handles it all with patience. He's not performing. That's just what his workout looks like.
Here's what my experience of Muscle Beach actually looks like: Ike is on the pull-up bar doing something that belongs in a Marvel movie. A crowd has gathered. Phones are out. People are filming. And I am three feet away, on the bar next to him, struggling through my eighth pull-up.
I don't mean struggling in a humble-brag way. I mean my face is red and my form has collapsed and I'm making a noise that no one should make in public. And there's a German-speaking giant next to me doing things that defy physics, and there's a crowd watching him, and I am in the background of probably two hundred strangers' Instagram stories looking like a man who has made a terrible mistake.
This is the experience. This is what I'm recommending. And I'm recommending it because that energy — being around someone operating at a level so far beyond you that comparison is pointless — does something to you. Not in a motivational poster way. In a real, physical way. You train harder when you're next to someone who trains like that. You push through reps you'd have quit on at a normal gym because walking away while Ike is doing a one-arm pull-up at 270 pounds feels pathetic. The bar rises because the person next to you is on a different planet.
Let me make the practical case.
Cost. It's ten dollars a day. If you get the annual membership, it's significantly less. Find me another gym in Los Angeles — a city where a SoulCycle class costs forty dollars and a boutique membership runs two hundred a month — where you can train for ten dollars a day. You can't. It doesn't exist.
Equipment. Since the refresh, the equipment is actually solid. Not fancy. Not Instagram-gym pretty. But functional, maintained, and sufficient for any serious workout. Free weights, cables, benches, bars. Everything you need. Nothing you don't.
The outdoor factor. You're in Venice Beach. The doors are open. The air is salt and sunlight. You can hear the ocean between sets. On a clear morning, you can see the Santa Monica Mountains to the north. Try getting that at Equinox.
The people. This is the real one. Muscle Beach attracts a specific kind of person — not the person who wants to be seen working out, but the person who wants to work out and doesn't care who sees. You've got guys who've been coming there for thirty years. You've got professional athletes. You've got tourists who wandered in for one session and are now regulars. You've got Ike doing things on the pull-up bar that shouldn't be legal. The energy is not something you can manufacture. It's accumulated over decades, and it's there every single morning.
I worked out at Muscle Beach for years before I understood what it was giving me. It wasn't fitness — I could have gotten fit anywhere. It was a daily proximity to intensity. To people who took what they were doing seriously and didn't need anyone to validate it. To a guy like Ike who shows up every day and trains like he's preparing for something that the rest of us can't see, and does it with joy, and doesn't ask for anything in return except maybe a fist bump on the way out.
That energy leaks into the rest of your life. I don't know how to explain it better than that. You train in a place where the standard is impossibly high, and you start expecting more from yourself in everything else. Not in a hustle-culture, optimize-your-morning way. In a quiet, internal way. You just stop accepting your own excuses, because you spent an hour next to someone who doesn't have any.
The gym is still there. It still costs ten dollars. Ike is probably there right now. The pull-up bar is waiting.
You will not be the most impressive person in the room. That's the entire point.
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