Dave Draper’s Musclebuilding Q&A

Could you tell me more about Vince Gironda? What was he like in person?

In my day it was cool to know and associate with the guys (Larry Scott, Zabo, Don Howorth, Bill MacArdle, Labra, Mozee and Vince and countless other characters) in a life-does-not-center-around-weights environment. We hung together, but didn’t talk shop.

Remember, I didn’t train at Vince’s North Hollywood Gym and that crew didn’t train at the Muscle Beach Dungeon. We were comrades, an unspoken weave of pride stitching us together. Musclemen were a vapor. To talk muscles amongst each other was not common. Personal training and dietary particulars drifted in the air like elemental particles ­ mythology, hearsay and stories.

Vince was always quiet, serene. I see him sitting on a curbside sharpening a stub of a pencil with a pocket knife. That’s us; we lean against a Hollywood studio’s brick wall (KHJ on Gower) waiting to be called for a screen test for The Gladiator.

He’s wearing a black long-sleeved wool shirt in another impression joining the fun in a car commercial, all of us packed in a sedan as the cameras roll.

He’s sitting back in the corner of his shadowy gym, observing and waiting in a white t-shirt. I heard he doesn’t like squats so I don’t dare do them when I visit if I could — no squat racks for miles. I’m not quiet; I have no mouth. My mind is in a can of tuna… it’s under my shirtsleeve.

Vince likes protein and intensity and perfection and form. Strictness is power. A big ass is the sign of a fool. Full range of motion, extend and contract, isolate, concentrate and it’s no laughing matter. He didn’t say so; he exuded it.

Vince, like many we know, is an image bigger than life. It’s all those years of chins and dips and relentlessness and mystery and acquired admiration.

Shoulda took notes.