Team Up To Train
How Training Partners Help The Champs Win

By Joe Weider
Muscle & Fitness Magazine, September 1989

Nearly 35 years ago I brought a powerful young man to the United States. This personable bodybuilder was Reg Park. I recognized in him personality and physical traits that told me one day he could be a great champion.

When Park arrived, he had the qualities of great potential, qualities that others lacked. He had tremendous desire, but I knew that he needed guidance, not just from me, but from a good training partner. I introduced Reg to Abe Goldberg’s Gym in New York City, where Marvin Eder was training.
What a muscleman he was! At 5’8”, Eder was a rock-hard 205 pounds. Big, solid and powerful, he was so far ahead of his contemporaries that he seemed almost a freak of nature. Some say to this day that pound for pound, Marvin was the strongest man of all time. Marvin’s desire bordered on fanaticism. He was the perfect man to test the resolve of young Mr. Park!

Soon we were all watching two madmen train. They never missed a session together. Their workouts are etched in my mind as classic torture sessions. The principles and workouts I suggested to them were enough to make a gorilla an invalid. An interesting bit of history - one of the methods of muscle flushing I suggested to them, the idea of alternating sets of two different exercises for different bodyparts (such as curls for biceps and pushdowns for triceps) became known as Weider Supersets.

I remember thinking I would never see such intensity of training again, but, boy, was I wrong! Reg Park went on to win many great titles and make Hercules and Goliath movies. Today he remains a full-blown legend, one of the 10 greatest bodybuilders of all time. Even so, the blistering training-partner pace established by Marvin Eder and Reg Park was later supplanted by an even more furious training pace by two other training partners, the great Arnold Schwarzenegger and charismatic Dave Draper, the Blond Bomber, as I dubbed him.

Arnold came to America at my request and with my support and help, we he was just 19. Dave Draper had worked for my company when we were located in New Jersey and he had already moved to Santa Monica and was managing one of my West Coast outlets. It didn’t take long before these two unbelievable men hooked up at Gold’s Gym.

In those days, both men were very casual about life, but very tenacious about training. They trained like their lives depended on it. Today Arnold is very structured in his life. He has to be very attentive to detail and scheduling. If he is not, he can’t attend to his business and film meetings and productions. But, back in the late 60s and early 70s, Arnold’s life structure was based around eating, sunning and tanning. Dave Draper was a real rebel, a free spirit in search of himself and the higher meaning of life. He called his training free-styling. What it meant was when Dave and Arnold met in the gym they made full use of my Instinctive Training Principle.

Dave and Arnold trained with a definite purpose in mind. In other words, if they were training legs, you can believe that every weight and every pulley and every machine in the gym go used and abused, but they weren’t slaves to a totally fixed program. If Dave was feeling his Wheaties, he might push Arnold to a front squat record for reps. If Arnold was feeling strong, he’d challenge Dave in the back squats. It went on and on.

You have to appreciate that their union as great training partners pushed them and made them great muscle men. Both men were very strong. I still have many of my old journals describing these workouts, the training sessions these two made together. Picking out a page, I see on a six-day-a-week schedule, they trained on a double split (!), where they did the following on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, for example:

BACK, BICEPS & FOREARMS

Dave and Arnold started with wide-grip chins for five sets of 10-12 reps, each going right after the other. Then they did five more sets with the triangle handle and a close grip. Neither man used extra weight. Next were pulldowns. Using a wide grip and pulling behind their heads, they did six sets of 10 reps. On this exercise, Dave really excelled, using over 300 pounds. Next were bent-over rows while standing on a bench, another six set of 10-12 reps. Finally, just for back, they alternated sets of barbell pullovers with more wide-grip pullups (five sets of 10-12 reps each).

Count’em up! For back alone, they did 32 sets!
From there they moved on to biceps and forearms. They did five sets of eight reps in the standing barbell curl, five sets of eight reps in the seated alternate dumbbell curl and six sets of the preacher (Scott) curl, five sets of 10 reps in the reverse curl and five supersets of the reverse wrist curl and regular wrist curl. That’s another 31 sets. Altogether, 63 sets in their morning workout!

In their evening workout, Arnold and Dave did chest and calves. Here’s what they did for chest: 12 sets of 10 down to one rep of bench presses (my Pyramid Progression Principle). Their weights? 225 x 10, 275 x 8, 315 x 6, 335 x 6, 365 x 6, 385 x 4, 405 x 2, 425 x 1. Then they went down to 315 for 3-4 sets of eight reps. After that they did inclines (six sets of eight reps with over 265 pounds done very fast), flyes on the flat bench for six sets of eight reps (here Arnold excelled, using up to 100-pound dumbbells!) and finally incline cable crossovers, 5-6 sets of 8-10 reps. Altogether, 30 sets for chest. They then burned through a half-hour session of nonstop calf pumping.

On these days they did about 110 sets. Now that’s called tough partner training!

Dave and Arnold were both known for their upper-body development, but I recall that their lower body training really sent shivers up my spine. Because when he first came to America and even before when he finished second to Chet Yorton in a NABBA Mr. Universe show, Arnold did not have great thighs or calves. He took some ribbing about this. He became obsessed with building up his calves and thighs. Draper was not known for his legs either. He had his big back and biceps, but clearly he desired t build up his smaller lower body. So, you can imagine the nature of the workouts, when these two megastars got together to “buddy-bomb” their lower bodies!

They put so much effort into their squatting that it was frightening. Nowadays, it’s more in vogue to squat just to parallel and to pump out the reps with lighter weights. Not so for Dave and Arnold. They attacked the big barbells.

They used so much weight and they went down all the way. Both men were of about the same strength, but they always pushed each other to handle more weights or to do more sets or break each other’s repetition records. In the squat, they’d warm up with 135 pounds, each doing 10-15 reps. Then 275 pounds for 12 reps each. Then a higher weight - usually 325 pounds, where they each did 10 deep squats. Up and up it went: 365 pounds for eight reps, 385 for eight more reps, 405 for another eight, 425, 445, 465 pounds, each for another set of 6-8 repetitions. The bars would bend around their bodies and they’d slowly sink so low their butts would almost touch the floor, but keeping good form, they’d drive back up, rep after mind-boggling rep!

The front squat was no different. Yes this is a particularly difficult exercise, being very uncomfortable and requiring good flexibility, but it made little difference to Arnold and Dave. Both men would start with 135 pounds and do 15-20 reps (sometimes Arnold would even do his barefoot!), then on to 225 pounds, 275, 295 and up to 315 pounds for 6-8 reps. No doubt about it, these two partners were strong and ornery and the bar suffered from it.

Of course, Arnold and Dave did all the other leg exercises too - with a passion. Set after set of leg presses, hack squats, sissy squats, leg extensions, lying leg curls, standing leg curls, donkey calf raises, seated calf raises, toe presses on the leg machines and regular calf raises. Their training partner magic made them grow and each man developed to his maximum. They became two of bodybuilding’s most enduring stars.

Training partner cohesion and great gains didn’t end with Dave and Arnold just as it hadn’t stopped with Reg Park and Marvin Eder.

Back in 1982 at the Men’s NPC Nationals, a young man stepped forward to establish himself as perhaps the greatest Nationals champion we have ever had. His name? Lee Haney. As I sat in the audience that year I realized I was watching some great things. In the couples competition, a young woman named Cory Everson, who teamed with her new husband Jeff to win, really stood out. She went on to become our greatest Ms. Olympia and Jeff is my editor in chief at MUSCLE & FITNESS. That was a good training partner team!

Then, in the men’s competition, three great bodybuilders came forward, Matt Mendenhall, Bob Paris and Haney. Mendenhall took second behind Haney. Haney went on to win the IFBB Amateur World and the 1984 Mr. Olympia. He has now won five straight Mr. Olympia titles.

Little did I know then that Lee was to be half of another great training partner team.

In 1983, a young man later dubbed the Dragonslayer finished fifth in the heavyweight class of the NPC Men’s Nationals. Although well developed, at that time Rich Gaspari didn’t show any special promise to become one of the all-time great bodybuilders. However, the next year, he won the light-heavyweight class at the Nationals and the IFBB Amateur World. Today, he is probably the most consistent of all our professionals. He enters his share of contests each year, coming into each contest better than before and always in tiptop shape.

Why was Gaspari able to improve so much from 1983 to the end of 1984? The answer, I believe, was his training partner. How was Lee Haney able to go from a third place in the 1983 Mr. Olympia to first in 1984, blowing everyone away the moment he walked onstage? Could it have been because of his training partner?

That’s right, from the end of 1983 to the big contests in late ‘84, Rich Gaspari and Lee Haney were training partners at the Gold’s Gym in Reseda and World Gym in Santa Monica. They’d meet every day (sometimes twice a day) at these gyms and they’d blast away. Haney, in his satirical way, routinely chided Gaspari (just like bodybuilders of 20 years ago used to do to a young Arnold). Lee called Rich a fat boy and told him he’d never win the Nationals looking like a Pillsbury creation.

Rich, not gifted genetically with a tremendous body structure like Lee Haney’s, more than compensated with a tremendous drive and ability to work long and hard. Haney had never experienced this kind of training. Gaspari drove Lee until the big man almost went back to Atlanta! At any rate, their buddy-bombing (they even shared an apartment - where Gaspari sang Italian love songs at 5a.m. in the shower - to Lee’s dismay), drove them to great heights. Gaspari took the 1984 light-heavyweight class at the Nationals and Haney won the 1984 Mr. Olympia. Now they are the two top dogs in men’s pro bodybuilding.

I know some great champions (notably Frank Zane) prefer to train by themselves, but even in his heyday, Frank partnered with Arnold, Dave and others and made exceptional gains. I do not believe the solitary bodybuilder is capable of creating the emotional intensity possible with a training partner. If you are having some trouble concentrating or getting motivated, or aren’t making the gains you think you should be, consider finding a good training partner. You just might go all the way to the top!