What I Told Him, Part Two



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This is Part Two. If you missed Part One, it's HERE.

Q. Describe your current training program. How does this compare to your 50s and 60s regime?

A. Fortunately, I love to train and it holds a primary place in my activities. Muscle building and weight training has, after all, defined my life and on occasion saved my life. I’m certain those who have worked with weights for 10 years or so will understand. These are dandy companions.

I train as intensely and with as much focus as I did when I was younger, full of vigor and fully intact. The only difference is I’m wiser (a neat way of saying less dumb) and train to accommodate my achieved development, age, injuries and ability to repair. The mind is there -- ready, willing and able; my body meets me much more than halfway.

In short, I trained six days a week for years (till 55), working each bodypart two and three times a week with volume and supersets, interwoven with low-rep and one-rep-max powerlifting methodologies. This effort was reduced to five days a week till age 60. Today (62) I train four days a week, two hours at a clip, with the same overall scheme.

I lean on the basics, as I always have, for solid and steady workouts. My routines are orderly and my movements meticulously performed with maximum focus. Yet within this rigidness there are feelings and common sense guiding me through my daily and weekly plans. Thus, I look like an astute old hound dog as I sniff my way around the gym floor in pursuit of the right exercises to uncover my workout. Seventy percent of my workout unfolds as planned; 30 percent is discovered along the way. There’s method in my madness.

I also seek maximum intensity within each set using a variety of wraps, and governed by wisdom -- that is, I take it to the ragged near-edge, being sure I don’t fall into a pile of broken pieces below. I like it that way, though my mother, rest her soul, would rather I didn’t play on steep cliffs.

Q. What is your view on aerobic training for both pre-contest and off-season purposes? Is it over-rated or under-rated as a tool for fat loss and muscle gain?

A. Aerobic exercise is a wonderful addition to weight training and should be included, as needed, to support one’s efforts in pursuing one’s goals.

It’s the “as needed” qualification of the above statement that causes eyes to cross. Too much running, climbing and swooping along and we interfere with allotted training time, energy and enthusiasm. Furthermore, and worse yet, we compromise muscle growth for the sake of fat burning.

We’re here to build muscle.

The conditioned masses have been guided to believe aerobic exercise is the safest and most direct way to achieve good health. For the heart and lungs maybe, but where’s the muscle and bone and body strength?. The truth is, only resistance training -- weight training -- fills this magnificent whole-health role.

The bodybuilder seeking muscle mass should do just that. Build muscle mass. Save the aerobic exercise for another time, when shedding fat, but not at the cost of muscle.

This is not acceptable? A little won’t hurt.

Q. In reading your biography you seemed to have become a very busy man, as bodybuilding increasingly gained in popularity. At separate times you toured with Elvis Presley and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Describe, if you will, your experiences of touring with these iconic figures. What were they like to tour with?

A. I am proud of both occasions to come alongside such phenomenal characters in contemporary history, two unlikely kings ruling vastly popular domains with charismatic magnificence.

Can you imagine attending 20 Elvis Presley concerts in 20 different towns in 21 days? Many of you are thinking, “Are you nuts?”

These were spectacular sold-out events at large auditoriums with people -- mostly gals -- literally climbing the wall to get closer to the action. Of course, there I am, assisting the producer of an Elvis documentary (“On Tour with Elvis,” later to win an award), backstage, onstage and shooting up close, at major airports and remote airfields, chasing the Elvis crew on their bus in a rental car like infamous paparazzi, cops frantically chasing the rental car full of amateur paparazzi frantically chasing the Elvis crew on their bus, getting releases from the local color and making sure everyone in the documentary crew was alive and awake each morning to go to destinations often unknown till we arrived.

Alas, Elvis was kept apart from the concert’s backup crews and roadies and managers. He flew on his own jet and arrived each night by a limo brigade at the venue’s secret-private-hidden-clandestine and well-guarded subterranean entrance. The King was quickly escorted to safe accommodations until he leapt on stage 30 minutes later. The rest was a wild, crazy and often moving ride. He tore the house down, as they say, everywhere he went. When Elvis and the band exhausted themselves, the curtains dropped and the announcer came to the mike with the immortalized words, “Elvis has left the building.”

I was invited aboard his aircraft where we shook hands and exchanged looks of physical recognition and rapport; that is, we were both physical people on the edge of our senses, and we identified. I was asked at another time if I’d like to join his crew of friendly sidekick bodyguards. Nice place for an outgoing, single guy who’s head isn’t on sideways. But me? No, but, gee, thanks, guys.

Arnold is another story. We met in 1968 when he first touched the hallowed soil of America. He was aiming high and I was shooting from the hip. Bodybuilding was his current thing and the bright-eyed Austrian was extremely enthusiastic. I was five years older, had done what I thought was enough in the competitive world and was looking -- admittedly, not very far -- for some kind of training contentment. As I revealed earlier, my ambitions simmered on the backburner.

Bodybuilding was growing in those days from a size small to a medium, and large was not very far ahead. Today, it is outgrowing triple extra-large and we’re all standing around waiting for it to burst. How big can bodybuilding and the bodybuilders get, we wonder. The same curiosities stirred our imaginations when Lee Haney stood on the posing platform before thousands of stunned and screaming spectators during the late 80s and humbly received his Mr. Olympia crowns.

I ignored the growth, but was eager to join Arnold when asked to travel to Hawaii for some bodybuilding exhibitions. There we spent a month goofing around with a New Zealand promoter planning a six-month tour of the western Pacific. Never mind the details; let’s just say it put Arnold and me through some extraordinary experiences with dear friends, Mits and Dot Kawashima, two sweet young lads of 9 and 11 who were entrusted (abandoned) to us for safe keeping by the... um... crooked promoter, who mysteriously left town the day after our Mr. Hawaii Islands Show without saying goodbye, and for good measure leaving with us a bad reputation and thousands of dollars of debt.

Men do not stand side-by-side one another under such stressful circumstances without getting acquainted. Throughout the weeks we swam, ran the beaches, trained, slept and ate, did laundry, partied and hiked the island of Maui. Ya gotta love Hawaii and its people. After apologies and arranging legitimate care for our young buddies, we pooled our resources ($1.67 in cash between us and one Draper credit card) and crawled home for some refuge.

Arnold and I did some trans-European and trans-US travels in 1970. These were heavily competitive times and things were rushed and fatiguing and complex. Your paths cross and you hit high-fives, have breakfast here and there -- London or New York -- and are off again.

You remember things like doing dips between the wings of an aircraft and leg-ups on the tarmac, while waiting for the pilot of a small private jet to arrive and take you and your companions from New York to Columbus for the Mr. Olympia -- your companions consisting of Boyer, Franco, Zane and Arnold.

You remember encouragement from the big Austrian Oak just when you need it most and his big laughter when the battles are hot. It’s good to have somebody covering your back. You learn simultaneously how to do the same.

If you’re gonna travel, travel with the best. That’s what I always say.

Q. I understand you have a strong Biblical faith. How does this faith influence your life?

A. Like protein, supersets and the gym influence my training, I cannot do without it. I’m a Bible-believing Christian, whose faith in Jesus Christ is foremost in my life. This means I praise him regularly, thank him for all I have and seek his guidance in all I do. It also means I recognize without recrimination what a weakling I am. That’s okay. I’m getting better every day. Exercise and eating right help.

Q. You have been part of the bodybuilding community for a while now. Where do you see bodybuilding as a sport heading? Are there any changes you would like to see?

Bodybuilding sort of reminds me of the NFL. The contenders who please the spectators and fans are becoming bigger and bigger brutes year after year. It’s a Triple XXX- extreme sport, and that’s what the crowd wants.

Of course, only the wild and crazy few can become or want to become or are willing to try to become that “bad.”

“Bad” is fine for football because the fans are content to sit in the stadium or before the TV, eat junk and scream. Not so fine for the bodybuilder who wants big muscles, but cannot identify with the characters marching before them onstage or across magazine covers. As so many sincere, hard training and pure musclebuilders of all ages say to me at the various expos I used to attend, “We have no more bodybuilding heroes,” or “There’s no one to look up to anymore, no one we want to emulate.”

Where have all the cowboys gone?

I don’t know where the sport is going. I hang onto my chunk of the activity and breathe life into it, as I am able, at the gym and in the magazine articles I write for Iron Man and Muscle & Fitness and Muscle Mag Int. My biggest effort is done through the internet.

Where is the sport heading? Not off a cliff, but it seems the brakes need to be applied soon. Drug use is out of control. The mags and their cast of champions represent -- or, misrepresent -- a vapor-thin fraction of the bodybuilding world today, and the real-deals and his or her needs and desires are neglected, ignored... worse yet, they’re sabotaged.

The majority wants to get back to the garden -- the rich and monstrous minority does not... and, for the moment, they rule. Let’s keep our eyes fixed on the tug-of-war.

Let’s fix what’s broke.

The End... DD


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