5 min read"CAN YOUR CONGRESSMAN bench 225?,” Andrew Uz asks in an Instagram reel, pointing straight at the camera. “Or is he about 70 years old and low energy?”
Clad in a suit and striped tie, the 25-year old then lies back to reveal a bench, where he knocks out some reps with two plates as “Hail to the Chief” plays in the background. The video is a joke, but also it isn’t: Uz really is running for a seat in Utah’s House of Representatives.
He’s not the first politician to lean into America’s love for the gym, either: Mayors from Miami, Senators from New Jersey, multiple Cabinet secretaries, and midterm candidates from New York to Texas to California have taken to social media in the past year to show you they do even lift, bro.
With Uz, the trend has reached a new level: He’s not a lawyer, a community activist, or a career Hill staffer. He’s literally a bodybuilder and an IFBB professional after winning his division in Classic Physique at the 2025 Amateur Olympia in Las Vegas.
And it all started as a lark. Uz originally signed up to run for the state’s District 35 House seat because no one was running. But now? He has a real, full-fledged campaign on his hands.
“Even If I Lose… I Win.”
BEFORE UZ MOVED into the political arena, Abdul El-Sayed, a 41-year old running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, was showcasing his morning lifts, runs, and rucks on social media. The guy has even showed up in a training video with Dr. Mike Israetel. El-Sayed has showcased his fitness throughout his campaign in part because he believes in speaking to an under-addressed portion of the public.
“I think those of us who pay a lot of attention to politics assume that everybody pays a lot of attention to politics … which is, of course, a cardinal sin of politics,” El-Sayed says. “I want to go where I have a shared interest with folks… a place where those folks are and they’re paying attention, because I believe in a politics that’s relevant to everybody.”
Not all of those conversations have been friendly. In July, El-Sayed posted a video of himself benching 315 pounds, then got into a Twitter spat with a reporter about his form and the total on the bar. But the onetime D1 lacrosse player says that as a candidate, even that interaction was a net positive.
“It’s a way to get people paying attention to the things I really want them to pay attention to,” he says. “If you followed me because I smashed down a reporter about how much weight I lifted, then maybe you’ll follow me and listen to what I have to say about Medicare for all, or breaking the corporate chokehold on our politics.”
Back in Utah, Uz says he also hopes his bodybuilding background connects him with unconventional voters. Online fitness videos have already turned him on to other candidates he wasn’t aware of—and have become their own type of political flex and discourse. After posting his video on benching 225, Bernard Taylor, a firefighter and Congressional candidate from Florida, remixed Uz’s video and showed himself benching even more.
“Seeing that, I knew very little about his politics, or about him, but it really made me like him as a person,” Uz says. “If I can motivate these people to get interested in politics, even if I lose, it’ll still be a win.”
What Uz hopes that message conveys to those voters is, in a way, also related to bodybuilding.
“As a bodybuilder, I’m judged based on how I show up on stage that day. I don’t get judged on my promises. I don’t get judged on my intentions. The only thing that matters is what I deliver,” he says. When voters look at him, he says he hopes they see that “this is somebody who has discipline. This is somebody who has work ethic and can put in work consistently over a period of time … where you don’t really see changes in a day, a week, or maybe even a month.”
"People right now are seeking leaders that are going to do the hard. And fitness is about doing the hard," says New York congressional candidate Cait Conley. “It’s about pushing through the pain for progress.” The West Point graduate debuted her campaign with a smoky, slow-mo video bench pressing with chains.
For a while there, Conley had a video series she called Reps and Real Talk. “I think people are really craving authenticity from leaders, both in and out of politics.”
El-Sayed and Uz frame their clips in the same way, doing their best to use the gym to inject personality into their messaging.“One mistake that politicians make is they try to cosplay a politician rather than just being who they are, and bringing that with them to the campaign,” El-Sayed says. “If you’re authentically somebody who works out, be who you are. And if you’re not… don’t pretend like you’re somebody who authentically works out.”
“People aren’t stupid,” Uz says. “People are able to see through what’s real or not.
Are You Even Young Enough to Bench, Bro?
Uz’s benching video—and his candidacy—hit on something that voters do say they want. But it’s not the line about putting up 225. It’s the idea candidates who are not just strong, but young.
When Pew surveyed American voters in 2023, 79 percent said they were in favor of age limits for politicians elected to national office. And while our government may have grown a tad younger over the years, there are still a lot of olds among our statesmen and stateswomen. Donald Trump is the oldest president ever inaugurated, a record he took after Joe Biden set the mark the term before him. Six senators were born between 1928 and 1945, compared to just five born after 1980. And in the House, 17 members are over the age of 80, compared to just one representative who’s 30 or younger.
“For younger Americans and younger people, fitness is a really big part of life,” Conley says. “This is something that younger Americans are engaged in in real ways.”
Showing that you’re fit may not be about how much ya bench, but just that you can still bench.
“There’s more to my campaign than just working out,” Uz says, “but I think a lot of people, especially young people, love to see the idea of somebody with vigor and energy getting into politics.”
