TrainingInDaDesert
Total Posts: 19
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mudmandon
Total Posts: 9
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Dr.Ken
Total Posts: 127
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I've written full articles in Iron Man re: my time at Zuver's. Jack and I were there when the house that the gym was located in on Hamilton Ave first opened. We were the first guys to use the showers as the tiles were put in the day before. For a while, we lived in the little trailer behind the house, urinating out the back door into the vacant lot or walking down to the gas station that was on the corner (the big street that went down towards the wealthy area/town where Nixon used to live and hang out). For $30.00 a month, it was a good deal! We helped Bob rush over to the Freeway to load a section of guard rail that was torn out in an accident. We got it before the highway crew removed it and it became an incline bench! It was a great place to get big and strong although Bob did have quite a few competitive bodybuilders on the premises. Great, supportive atmosphere with religious music blasting the entire time. Sept. 1988 Iron Man has full article I wrote.
Dr. Ken
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Laree
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I *told* Frank you'd have a story for this one! haha. You know, Frank, I think Bill Luttrell will have more for you on the address because he was a member there, I think until it closed. He just started with a new firm last week, though, so may not be around much. Holler again soon if you don't hear from him. Most of the Zuver's equipment is up in Oregon, owned by a guy named George-something, who bought it from a friend of Brad and Eileen Craig's (the folks who put on the Emerald Cup in Seattle each year), if that's any help. :~)
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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Hold on kids, here come a bunch of my scans of Zuver Gym pics!
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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Yep they will be coming for several posts...buckle up and enjoy!
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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Another gang shot!
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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Better than a key to the city, Artie Zeller takes the key to Zuvers!(all the shot's are Artie's of course)
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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Now "that's" a gym!
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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The door was a little hard to open...but it probally served as a good warm-up!
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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The hall of fame!
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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Early in the "top squat" development stages......
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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Forget adding weight, how much did that hook weigh?
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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Truly Zuver's was a one of a kind place!
Thankfully I did get a chance to visit the gym in 1977, and a vivid memory!
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Tim Wescott
Total Posts: 52
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Jeff, I never get tired of those pics of Zuvers.I would have had a field day there!!
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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And we can't forget the worlds largest dumbell!
(And no that's not a snide remark about the late Mike Mentzer)
I remember trying to move the thing...didn't budge.
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Wicked Willie
Total Posts: 16864
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That's just TOO cool....
"I'm in good shape for the shape I'm in."
"Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life:
no man comes to the Father, but by me." John 14:6 |
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Tim Mendelsohn
Total Posts: 1557
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meateater
Total Posts: 149
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I realy like them too. being a young lifter I realy like to see some of the history of BB that u never see like u do in other sports.
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Laree
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SCORE!!! The following are four photos I got and am posting for Doc Ken. (Jeff, eat your heart out, man, 'cause you don't have these I guarantee it!)
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Dr.Ken
Total Posts: 127
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July 1970, standing in front of Zuver's Gym, still a converted house.
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Dr.Ken
Total Posts: 127
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Sometime in 1968, half squats (to the bench laid across the lower pins of the rack) with a ridiculous weight, certainly enough to aggravate the living beejeezus out of my two fractured vertebrae!
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Dr.Ken
Total Posts: 127
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June 1968, one hand deadlift of the 500 pound Big Blob. When I had completed the lift, Bob (Zuver) sort of yawned and said, "yeah, that's okay but when (Paul) Anderson was here, he did it half a dozen times or so. In street clothes!"
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Dr.Ken
Total Posts: 127
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July 1, 1968: I took about a dozen attempts on this day, a continuation of all of the times I missed lifting this 225 or 250 pound barrel that was 3/4 of the way filled with water. It continuously shifted and I had horrible "cleaning" technique. I rolled the thing up my chest and face and it was as painful as it sounds. With Jack yelling encouragement such as "forget it, you'll kill yourself" and others saying "enough already, put it down before you get hurt", I finally clean and jerked the thing. Bob and Jim Waters who I guess kept track of these things, told me I was "the twelfth man to do it" with Pat Casey completing it a few weeks before I did.
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Bill Luttrell
Total Posts: 7
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Laree mentioned this, and I am really short of time right now to add much, but I was there from 1973 until the successor Zuver's on 19th in Costa Mesa and one on El Toro road in what is now Lake Forest, closed. The move to the newer gyms from Hamilton Street (Bob's house) was sometime in around 1978. I would say the newer gyms lasted about 2 years before the whole thing closed. The photos posted are from the late 60's, but nothing on Hamilton Street changed until the end. I went by the property maybe 8 years ago and the stone door was still there on the gym building. The place was a complete dump, but man there was a bunch of iron in there and many characters using it to its fullest. By the early 70's, I recall 5 world record holding powerlifters training there. In the late 70's, it became much more of a bodybuilding gym. A very serious one. Good times.
There was a thread I posted on ironage (Henrik?) not long ago on this subject that I will try to find that discussed where the equipment went.
Bill
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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Quote:
Laree said:
SCORE!!! The following are four photos I got and am posting for Doc Ken. (Jeff, eat your heart out, man, 'cause you don't have these I guarantee it!)
But now I do! ;)
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Tim Wescott
Total Posts: 52
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Wow Dr. Ken,that is impressive to say the least.
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mudmandon
Total Posts: 9
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That's the big blob at Zuver's gym that I was telling Dave and Laree about. I remember watching Bob Zuver pick that up with one hand and walk around with it. This was around 1967-8. I remeber it sat on a platform scale that went up to 500 hundred pounds. I never got it off the scale completely but I got the needle down to 150 lbs. or so. I love these photos of that old gym. It's a shame that place ended up dismantled. I look at those plates that Zuver had made up with his name on them and just wonder what those would cost today. Thanks for sharing these Jeff and Laree.
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Dr.Ken
Total Posts: 127
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When Kathy and I opened the Iron Island Gym, we had York weights only at that time, perhaps 12,000 pounds worth. York was the standard for decades and the 45 and 35 pound plates were milled. We weighed the plates when we loaned them out to someone who was running a PL meet in pounds (we also had two full kilo sets and one bumper set for the Olympic lifters). All of the 45s that they used on the meet platform and warmup room, perhaps twenty or so, which was a good random selection from what was on the gym floor, weighed within 2-4 oz. of the stated weight, using the same model scale that was used in the O lifting competition at the Barcelona Olympic games. They were dead-on! We wanted plates like Zuver had, because just like you, I thought they were the coolest. Bob had a small area foundry making them and I had bought unfinished plates at Bell Foundry in LA during the weight shortage of 1974 when the EPA closed perhaps 80% of domestic foundries with the change in air pollution control lawas. We decided to go to York and proposed that they make me 230 "Iron Island" 45 pound plates. They did after first making "our" mold and casting the plates. They were great and I still have a few of them in the garage that we use. It gave us distinction, similar to that of Zuver's. At the time, York did not make custom plates but after doing our's, they did a batch for the Univ of Hawaii, and then made it a policy while Vic Standish ran the foundry, to make custom plates. They closed the foundry a year ago so that's a lost opportunity. However, back then, our mold cost $1200.00 and they wanted a minimum order of 100 plates of that specific denomination. I am sure that a foundry would make the plates (perhaps not mill them as York did with our Iron Island 45s so that they too were accurate in weight) after first casting a mold for you. I would estimate the cost of the mold relative to the inflation and consumer goods increases that have occured in the past ten years or so. I think the overall cost of the plates, when their standard Olympic plates of that time sold for $.90 per pound retail, came out to $1.42 per pound, including the cost of the mold which we included in the first batch of 180 plates (a later order of 50 plates made the total 230). I hope this gives you an idea of the cost.
Dr. Ken
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Kimbah
Total Posts: 148
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These photos and stories are just amazing! Thanks so much to Laree and Jeff for posting them. And special thanks to Dr Ken for the fantastic stories of those days. Kimbah
| One of the secrets to success is to not let temporary setbacks defeat us. |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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And whadda ya know...a couple I overlooked!
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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Now "that's" what can a pull down machine!
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Laree
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Hey, here's a post from Bill Luttrell that Henrik dug up over at IronAge:
<< Bill do you have any idea what happened to all that great equipment ? thanks. >>
I think most of the "unique" equipment (like the Big Lat Machine, the "Big Bench" etc.) that was custom made by Bob for the Hamilton Street gym stayed there. I'm not sure what happened to it, but it would have been hard to move simply because it was so heavy. It never made it to the newer gym on 19th Street in Costa Mesa or El Toro.
However, the equipment from those later gyms were sort of a hybrid of the Zuver's brand, including the 50 lb. plates (instead of 45's), along with "newer" benches and pulleys in the more modern trend. Very heavy duty stuff, though. The machines were "plate loaded" much like today's Hammer Strength. Bob should have taken out a patent.
The gyms started to struggle around 1980 or '81. One day, Dave Schorr and I showed up to train at El Toro and the equipment was gone, and the doors were locked. It seems Bob had two partners who were OC Sheriffs. They got tired of not getting paid, so they showed up one night with a truck and took the stuff. From there, it went to South Coast Health Club in Laguna Niguel. I think some of the Costa Mesa stuff ended up at Superbodies in Newport Beach. The gym members split up accordingly. Those of us in South OC went to South Coast and trained there until somewhere around 1990, when it went under. Newport types went to Superbodies. Rudy Ascerno, Zuver's manager through the 70's, went there. The later owner of South Coast, John Corona, sold the equipment off piecemeal. I think it scattered further to the winds from after that.
As for the latest photos you guys have posted, those appear to be from the mid to later 60's. I started training at Zuver's in late '73 or early '74 through its demise. However, the guys were much bigger overall by then than in those photos. Terry McCormick had the world record in squats in the 275 lb class, but trained much heavier. Ed Ravenscroft had the 198 lb bench record at 530 for years. I think we counted 5 separate world record holders in powerlifting at the time.
Especially after the move to 19th Street in around '77, we also had a number of world class bodybuilders including Robinson, Ferrigno and others. Bill Howard, who had the America, was a regular. Many others were regularly competing for Mr. California and local titles.
You have to remember that there were very few 'serious' gyms back in the early 70's. This was before Pumping Iron. Beside Zuver's, there was Gold's and Vince's along with a few others. The rest were Holiday Spas or Jack LaLanne. Zuver's was one of those very few with the "magic" feel of guys hitting it seriously 6 days a week.
Bill
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Bill Luttrell
Total Posts: 7
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Hey, here's a post from Bill Luttrell that Henrik dug up over at IronAge:
<< Bill do you have any idea what happened to all that great equipment ? thanks. >>
Thanks for helping me out Laree and Henrik! (PS Henrik: there was another fairly long one on ironage. You still have it?)
Bill
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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Here's four more pics of Zuver's that I dug up!
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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Must have been an apesolutely fantastic place to train!
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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I know, I know, when will this madness end?
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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Last one!
For now....I never know what I'll turn up.
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Tim Mendelsohn
Total Posts: 1557
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>You have to remember that there were very few 'serious' >gyms back in the early 70's. This was before Pumping Iron. >Beside Zuver's, there was Gold's and Vince's along with a >few others. The rest were Holiday Spas or Jack LaLanne. >Zuver's was one of those very few with the "magic" feel of >guys hitting it seriously 6 days a week.
>Bill
Dont forget Bill Pearl's Pasadena Health Club in Pasadena, Ca. A very serious Gym in the '70s.
No pictures unfortunately.
Tim
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Andy Mitchell
Total Posts: 5269
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Great photos! In the second last photo I noticed an EZ curl bar. I thought that was a recent development...say mid 80's. You learn something every day :) (and you still die stupid.)
Nice legs-shame about the face
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Dr.Ken
Total Posts: 127
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Andy-the so called ez curl bar made its debut through the advertising pages of York's magazines in the mid 1964 or 65 period of time. You were led to believe that the great John Grimek built his arms with it as he was featured in the ads. Zuver's had pre set ez curl bars loaded from 20 to 200 pounds on racks that ran right up the middle of the gym floor. When I asked, "who the heck is going to use a 200 pound ez curl bar?" Bob casually stated, "Oh, Paul Anderson did some curls with it when he visited." Duh, that shut me up quickly. Zuver's was the first place that I was in that also had fixed dumbbells up to 200 pounds. He also had them on angled racks so they were easier to take off and control. Now of course, that is the standard design but his was the first I had ever seen that were made like that. He had portable "dumbbell caddies" for lack of a better term, a short, stand-alone dumbbell rack that held one pair of DBs. You would place the adjustable utility bench in front of it, lean into the rack, grab the DBs, and roll back with them. This saved you the trouble of cleaning them to the shoulders (hazardous with 150+ pounders) or needing a pair of spotters to give them to you (equally as hazardous). You would roll back, do your DB bench press or DB inclines, and then your spotter would merely take you by the back of the shoulders or upper back and "throw" you back up towards the rack as you rolled up with the DBs, being careful to hold them tight to the body. There was literally no stress on the shoulders this way and it was the safest way to utilize the very large DBs. Rich Sorin is the only one to come up with anything similar that I have seen to this day. Back to the ez curl bars (sorry for the DB digression): one of the program Bob would use would have one start, no matter how strong they were, at the 20 pound bar, do a single, and then go right up the rack, doing one rep with each bar, continuously, until a single rep was impossible to complete. One would then walk down to the end of the rack, and again begin with the 20 pound ez curl bar and work up again in singles, usually failing before reaching the bar used in the previous "set". We would do four or five of these and you would not be able to move your arms for two days afterwards, especially if after the final single, you went half way back on the rack and did an all out set of 8-12 reps to "backoff" or finish up the arm work. At Iron Island Gym, Kathy and I in an attempt to emulate Zuver's, provided fixed Ivanko thick handled ez curl bars from 20 to 200 in ten pound jumps, fixed straight bars from 20 to 120 in 10 pound jumps, and DBs in 2.5 pound jumps from 5 to 55 and then in five pound jumps to 200, with two other complete sets of DBs to 150 in five pound increments. As a closing comment, York's bookkeeping was so poor, that for about fifteen to twenty years, they lost over $2.00 on every ez curl bar they sold as they were not charging enough on them!!!!!
Dr. Ken
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Buck
Total Posts: 2
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Great story, Dr. Ken! Thanks!
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Andy Mitchell
Total Posts: 5269
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Thanks Dr Ken. Sounded and looked a great place.
Nice legs-shame about the face
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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Believe it or not....I unearthed yet another Zuver's pic!
This thread has become the definitive place on the web for finding insight and pictures of Zuver's gym!
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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Laree
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Here's a post of Bill Luttrell's I lifted from the IOL archive for those who missed it, and to get all the Zuver's material collected in one place... Laree
Here's another old (and long) story that may be of some interest. The Chet Yorton discussion, as well as Bill K's description of the Kenya gym brought this to mind. Sweet memories ... to the tune of Frank Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year."
The original Zuver's Gym was a large (maybe 30' X 100') rectangular building that Bob Zuver had built in the large backyard of his home on Hamilton Street in Costa Mesa. The area was zoned "commercial" only because it was with a hundred yards or so of Harbor Boulevard, a major North/South artery in Orange County that leads to Newport Beach, a couple of miles away. Everything in it was hand built by Bob: the dumbbells, the chin area, the odd but wild looking (and sometimes frighteningly dangerous - but thankfully few in number) machines, and the benches.
The front door was a foot-thick steel and stone contraption. Must have weighed at least a ton or so. A 30' gorilla stood out front on what had been the driveway. The benches were adorned underneath with cut-out and painted steel rhinos that had been welded on. Large movie-prop rocks sat in the corners. On the open-beam wood ceiling hung some of those coconut "heads" that have faces on them that make them look like pirate's heads. Right in the line of sight when you were laying on the benches. Very strange. My training partner Dave made jokes about them constantly - and usually in the middle of my toughest sets. We still laugh about that.
Little active maintenance was done by Bob or his employees, so the place was, to be kind, filthy. For example, on the floor where for years massive guys did pullovers and banged huge weights on the floor at the bottom of the reps, the carpet (?) was long gone and the concrete floor was depressed by three or four inches - exposing the aggregate rock in the concrete mixture. A jackhammer couldn't have done a better job. Concrete dust sprayed out to the sides for a foot or so around these craters. Same thing around the benches, where plates were thrown on the floor. Before being ground in with the rest of the dirt and dust, white lifter's chalk lay heavily strewn about on the floor around the benches, squat rack, and deadlift platform, as well as on all of the oly bars and larger dumbbells.
As with Dave's Dungeon at Gold's, the place had one purpose only: training to get huge. Cardio was unheard of - a foreign word. It was very much a "guy's" place. All function leading to but one end. Who cared about a little dirt? It worked, as I've never seen so many big guys in one place. As Gold's became the Mecca for bodybuilding on the west coast in the 70's, Zuver's was to powerlifting. When I first joined, five members held world records. Bill Kazmaier and other heavyweights visited. Lots of very large, very thick guys dressed in everything from cutoffs and tees or tanktops to overalls. In fact, shirts and shoes were kind of "optional." Definitely no fancy gym clothes. No lycra within miles. As with Bill's African gym, guys sometimes brought their dogs along. Quite amazing when compared to today's commercialized gyms.
However, by the late 70's the winds of change were upon us. Arnold had brought bodybuilding to the world. There was money to be made in bodybuilding. Possibly even big money. So, around late 1978, Bob closed the backyard gym and opened up a shiny new one a couple of miles closer to the beach on 19th Street in Costa Mesa. The place was to have been a "showcase" for further expansion. A "model" for future investors. Only this gym was geared to bodybuilding, not powerlifting. Gone was the deadlift platform. All the equipment was new or freshly painted. Mirrors lined all the walls. Women (gasp!) joined and trained hard after seeing what Rachel McLish had done and Cory Everson was doing. No more throwing stuff on the floor, and no chalk allowed. ;-( Real workout clothes and shoes required. A similar gleaming facility (with a separate "aerobics" area!) was opened in the affluent and fast-growing south OC location of El Toro. Bob began to gear up to make equipment in a nearby manufacturing facility.
Ostensibly, the whole thing from there was supposed to be a springboard for a proposed expansion with Joe Weider to be called "Weider/Zuver's Gyms." Always on the lookout for a buck to be made in the bodybuilding world, Joe was of course quick to notice the success of Gold's and World as they franchised their names around the world. At one point, World Gym tee shirts were the number two selling tee shirt in the world, behind only the Hard Rock Cafe megasellers. BIG bucks were being made. Joe apparently wanted some of this action, and wanted a gym with a track record and name (along with the gorilla and rhino stuff to market) to go with it. Bob saw an opportunity in terms of financial clout he otherwise lacked. The marriage seemed to have potential.
Although perhaps the thought or dream of owning a gym crosses every Musclehead's mind at some point in time, the actual reality of the business of operating a gym (much less a string of gyms) can be either lucrative or very cruel. It's no accident that most don't make it. Not surprisingly, in a year or so, and before really getting much past the starting gate, the whole merger/expansion/franchising thing fizzled and stalled. Something about a disagreement between the two main players.
By 1981, strapped by the expansion of the two showcase gyms, Bob sold all his equipment and closed the doors. The gym on 19th Street became a dry cleaner, then some kind of a graphic arts company. The one in El Toro became a real estate office. Sometimes, the best investments are those you don't make.
And, I still miss the old gym on Hamilton Street ... As Bill K. said, "it was all so simple then ..."
Bill (Luttrell)
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Riaz
Total Posts: 87
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WOWOWOWOWOWOWWOWOWOWOWWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWW!!! :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D AWWWW MAAANN!!! THIS IS THE GYM I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR ALL MY LIFE( ok, mebbe half of it;) )!!! AWWWEESSOOMM MAN!!! TOOO GOOD! (sigh! If only Heaven had a gym like THAT!) :o) ;) heheh Thanx a bunch! Peace
| Pain is caused by Pleasure... |
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orangedog
Total Posts: 15
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That place looked like such a great gym to train in! I know that training should be blood and sweat, but a gym that knows when not to take itself seriously is equally important. I bet some laughs were had in there!
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DanMartin
Total Posts: 20705
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Bob Zuver was a real friend to California powerlifting.
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jkinnan
Total Posts: 944
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The more I see those pictures . . . the more that looks like DISNEYWORLD OF WEIGHTLIFTING!!! It's with a heavy heart and a heavy sigh that I go back to my poopy old pump 'n' tone gym . . . :)
| God's strength and blessings.
Jason |
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Jeff Preston
Total Posts: 170
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WHAT? Another Zuver pic!
You got it!
| "It's not the destination but the journey" |
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