Dr. Ken Leistner's response to GQ Magazine, November, 2000

Will the Real Dave Draper Please Stand?

I read an article that was supposed to be about David Draper, a well known bodybuilder, in the November, 2000, issue of Gentleman's Quarterly. While this isn't a magazine I would usually purchase or pick up while sitting in a physician's office, I was aware that it had a reputation for "good" reporting and writing. The piece of fiction I read regarding Draper left me with the impression that I had met a man, thought I knew quite a bit about him, but must have been fooled or otherwise completely misinformed.

The Dave Draper I first met had parked himself in the cramped back room of Leroy Colbert's health food store on Broadway and Eighty-fourth Street in Manhattan in the early 1960s. Lee's store was one of few "health food" establishments and certainl, one of perhaps three or four in the entire metropolitan area that catered to the specific needs of bodybuilders. As a young high school student desperate to get bigger and stronger, I would hitchhike from Long Beach to Far Rockaway and then take the subway into the City, a laborious and lengthy trip that I always found worthwhile. Leroy and his wife Jackie were the most accommodating of individuals and Jackie knew as much about bodybuilding (with Rock Stonewall as her brother) and probably more about nutrition that Lee did. Leroy would find the time, no matter how busy he was, to sit and talk, demonstrate, and encourage.

Dave was one of the fellows who occasionally visited and I remember him sitting there one day as we all ate huge hero sandwiches and pounded down quarts of milk, listening to the wisdom of Colbert. I next met Dave at Weider's store in Santa Monica when my friend Jack and I drove out there in the late 1960s. Leroy was the one who told us to look Dave up; "He'll hook you up, don't worry." Dave could not have been nicer, giving us time to talk about training, finding a place to stay, and what to expect when dealing with life on the West Coast.

We would occasionally see him at Gold's, his new training headquarters since the closure of the Dungeon. The weights from the original Muscle Beach had found their way down to the basement of this fleabag hotel and for years this was Dave's sanctuary. Here he took his overbulked body and literally carved it into the prototypical "writhing mass of sinew." He did what everyone talked and wrote about: He got huge, and then he cut it up, veiny, vascular, and hard as stone. This was the allure of Draper, not the beach bunny b.s., not the Betty Weider come-ons, not Joe's hype about "you're missing out if you're not here with us" patter, designed to sell, and sell, and sell.

GQ's author may have been one of many, as he describes it, to fall for the hype of the sun and surf lifestyle but we knew what the deal was. Dave Draper lived the life not of California dreamin', but of every guy in every basement trying to get bigger, stronger, and harder. Dave was clear, in everything you read about him, obviously clear, that he preferred the training, not the glamour. He preferred the "doing," the go if you will, not the show. He preferred the solitude of the Dungeon which is why he wasn't in the social or training whirl of Vince's, Pearl's, or the new Gold's where all the photographers and hangers-on were.

Yes, after his self-imposed exile, life wasn't always good. You can't be an alcoholic and have it "good." The weights won out however and its insulting to imply that Draper drank, Draper continued to train, he was okay in time. Dave fought the fight, and the discipline, sacrifice, hard-as-the-weights-he-trained-with fortitude is what won out and brought him back from the brink. He learned the lessons that "for real" weight training is supposed to teach you. In his case, the platitudes become the truth, the guiding truth that brought him back, and most never, ever make it back.

He still did it his way too, walked his path, and did not sell himself out to the commercial interests even though that would have been the easiest way to make his comeback. He took his knowledge and his sincere desire to have others get out of it what he had and opened a gym. He opened Dave Draper. It wasn't the equipment, it was Dave that made the difference. Read his book, it's there—the excitement that hasn't changed since he first picked up a barbell; the enthusiasm for the smallest of gains; the understanding that his and everyone's greatest work is that done on oneself. This is what he brought to his gym and then to his other gym. This is what he and Laree have brought to his website.

A money making venture? Please, that insult is perhaps worse than any others. Dave is the guy who sat in the back of Leroy's store listening and learning. Dave is the guy sitting in "his store," giving back fifty, one hundred, one thousand times over to anyone who asks, anyone who stands where he once did, trying to improve. In an age of quick buck dot com artists, Dave is still the real deal. The information was hard-earned and the philosophy, the guiding light on the path to self discovery shines through him because this is what he's giving. He's not selling it, i'ts just there. Dave Draper? This is Dave Draper, to me, to many, to anyone who takes but a brief time to notice.

Click HERE to read Dr. Ken's review of Brother Iron, Sister Steel