Tricks of the Trade

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I’ve got a few new tricks, bombers. Tricks work when discipline fails. Everybody’s gotta have tricks.

Trick one, personally sneaky: I preface the newsletter by saying I’m going to the gym in an hour for a workout, and then go on with some slop about secret routines to build muscle mass, maximum definition and superior strength.

The statement, “I’m going to the gym,” pronounced by me, written in ink, declared before the entire world constitutes a truth, a fact, and assures I shall indeed travel to the Weight Room and attend the necessary rigors before the iron, come hell or high water. Honor, like guilt, rules.

Trick two, a slight of hand: We shall be offering a question and answer format in the newsletters for some weeks to come. It seems I want to write a novel (Excuse me... this is not a laughing matter and I’d appreciate some self-control and respect, thank you... sheesh!) and the QnA plan will provide instruction and motivation, and condense my time in originating a weekly theme for IronOnline.

Presto! Available time to write about Bat and Crazy: crimestoppers, dashing good guys bashing bad guys; muscleheads with knuckles and Glocks.

A pair of rogue undercover cops, Bat and Crazy roam the City’s small neighborhood streets, vanquishing dirt bags, scum and dope dealers. Their cover is the Y Street gym near the East River, a handsome dungeon with all the necessary torture racks and iron you could dream of. The people are good, no jerks, and their office of operation is secreted behind a defunct posing mirror in the far corner.

When not breaking heads, they’re training with their buds.

Like this morning, out of the blue... before I even warm up, Bobby the Butler comes up to me and asks, “What supplements did you take in the day, Big D, and what supps do you take today?

I said, “Bobby B, I just got here and you have this humongous question... a good question, though... thoughtful. It used to be so simple, my man. Train like a gorilla, eat like an ape and add red meat. Take a vitamin and mineral tablet. Then along came man and science, marketers and big trouble.

My mom had my brothers and me on supplemental vitamins and minerals as soon as we could swallow a pill. They came mail order from a pioneer nutritionist on the radio, Carlton Fredericks. After I moved to California in 1963 and started to train on another level (can you say madman or madness, insane or insanity?), I added a glandular protein powder, Nuprocol, to my short list. A Weider one-a-day (5 times a day, just in case) and Energol (wheat germ, rice germ and soy germ oils) were the other two. My menu was correctly adjusted soon after a few weeks of education at the Dungeon with George Eifferman and the savvy Muscle Beach muscleheads.

Nuprocol was a mix of milk protein (60%) and defatted, dehydrated animal glands (40%) concocted by Joe McGuigan, a Ventura Boulevard nutritional nut. I loved it as one loves a thing they are certain is making them stronger and harder, healthier and more energetic without delay. No hype. Just a neurotic kid training like a raging bull suddenly released from his stall.

A bud, Ray Raridon, and I produced our own version of Nuprocol and called it, cleverly, Dave Draper’s Mr. America Glandular Protein. Daring entrepreneurs, we bumped the vital and expensive glandular ingredients to a pure 100% and advertised in IronMan. The blend tasted like rotten dirt, and when mixed with low-fat milk we had mud. Face that every morning at 5:30 six days a week for three years before you blast it at the Dungeon, Bucko. I dare ya.

We became our own best customers. I became Mr. Universe and my potential was burgeoning.

Somewhere along the line, I had tried a batch of Blair’s protein and his choline and inositol supplements provided by Rheo H, the man himself. It was a generous gift and I ran out in a month. Empty cupboard. Funds were tight; I was working two jobs and baby needed shoes. The supps were fun while they lasted, but my personal experience with Blair’s products was not sufficient to make a valid determination of their value or cause me to invest. They were popular with Scott and Howorth and Boudreaux.

Fast forward to 1990 when Laree and I and a couple of friends built our World Gyms in Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley -- great gyms for the savvy musclebuilder. My eating habit was the same as the Dungeon days and the original Joe Gold’s Gym days of yore, as indicated in Brother Iron Sister Steel and on the website, but the supplementation was moderately modified.

Here’s my current:

Vitamin D

Super Spectrim brand time-release vitamins and minerals without iron, Vitamin C, Amino Ammo amino acids

Anabol Naturals brand Creatine and NitroMax (BCAAs + glutamine)

NOW brand full-spectrum minerals, CoQ10, Vitamin E, Omega 3s

Dave Draper Bomber Blend

There is hype in the nutritional market that rivals Wall Street. I haven’t leafed through a muscle mag since Lee Haney was on the cover, call me old-fashioned. The multi-page ads featuring muscle-mass-enhancing products endorsed by extraordinarily large lifters about to burst under the load of an Olympic bar with five or six plates clinging to its ends bent over thick backs and the raging pronouncements the manufacturers make about the latest scientific breakthrough is a stack of exaggerations, often referred to by the FDA as lies. Gee whiz. And they’re expensive with unpronounceable multi-syllable ingredients and mysterious processes of intercellular activity that no one can decipher or find on record.

I pass. Might have speed or hormone precursors or bugs.

Give me a protein shake with 16 ounces of reduced-fat milk, 2 to 4 scoops of Bomber Blend (no other, thanks), a raw fertile egg from a free-ranging chicken, a banana, a scoop of ice, a teaspoon of creatine and teaspoon of Nitro Max Amino acids. Boom-Zoom.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a bomber.

I take my supps in the AM and PM, and the shake when I need it and want it: breakfast, before and after a workout, meal replacement when seeking weight loss without muscle and energy loss, when seeking muscle mass and power gain without bloating or fat gain.

Take me to your Iron.

Meanwhile, back at the hangar among wings and propellers, the Bomber polishes his black and silver bi-plane... highly air-o-bic.

Godspeed... Dave

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