Wow, Channing Tatum was wearing a thong way before Magic Mike.

This pic comes all the way from the last millennium, when the hunk was in a body building contest for Tampa Catholic High School in 1998 (check out that Speedo!).

We’ve seen the 35-year-old actor play high schoolers in movies like She’s the Man and 21 Jump Street, but now we have the real deal.

In an interview with GQ Channing shared why he is passionate about working out, “Truthfully, this is how I approach my work out: I want to be the best athlete I can possibly be. If I can out-perform some of the better athletes then I’m happy. When I look at the NFL or the NBA, these guys look how I want to look – it’s useable, functional muscle.”

The buff bae is so dedicated to bodybuilding he even sculpted his muscles to resemble the real life Mark Schultz for a role in 2014’s critically acclaimed film Foxcatcher.

Schultz told The Oregonian,”We worked out, and I gave him some exercises to do to widen his lats. He knew how to make his neck and his arms bigger but the thing that people noticed about me was how wide my lats were. I told him to just walk around flexing your lats all the time. Even when you’re sitting down just flex them and you’ll be surprised how wide they’ll get. He did, and if you look at him in the movie his lats are really wide.”