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After less than a year of training, Arnold made his first contest appearance ever, in a weightlifting competition held in a beer hall (!) by the Athletic Union in Graz, his hometown. He cleaned and pressed 150 pounds. “The crowd gave a big cheer,” he wrote in his 2012 autobiography Total Recall. “The applause had an effect like I’d never imagined.” Buoyed by the audience, Arnold pressed 185 on his next attempt—“35 pounds more than I ever had before... I discovered that I performed much, much better in front of others.”