Your most memorable jaw dropping moment in bbing

[chadstallion]

meeting one of the muscle gods from my gym in the steam room.
and how friendly he was. in so many ways.

[Disco187]

the shorts on branch

[funk51]

Another pic etched in my mind.   Robby Robinson on the cover of Muscle Builder and Power doing a double Bi with the caption "Monster".
       

[stuntmovie]

PELLIUS, I just got as far as your first post of this subject on the first page and have a correction to offer on your behalf.

ONCE UPON A TIME ....

The gym that you mentioned that was Tommy Kono's was actually owned by my good friend TIMMY LEONG and most likely at that time was across the street from Mits'.

I knew Timmy and Tommy most of my life and have to stat that each of them were among the finest individuals I've had the opportunity to meet.

The same with John Kaiser.

Tommy worked for the Department of Parks and Recreation and trained at the NUUANU YMCA. Timmy's Gym was in two locations over the years and Rex Ravelle had a small 'gym' in the basement of some store in the mall downtown. The name of that mall I have forgotten.

And Donald and Cathy Chang had a small but well equipped place just mauka of the Ala Moana Center.

I've been involved within the business part of the bodybuilding game since long before Arnold (SHIT! Even before Reeves became a household name with a bodybuilder's  kitchen) and have met, trained with, or worked with the majority (over 90%) of the individuals who have been named above (plus the major photographers and magazine owners since the days of Perry and Mabel) and have to state that the 'game' was a hell of a lot different way back then.

Back in them good old days it was more of a small, family type atmosphere with minor squabbles between the very few gyms that existed and did heir best to stay in business when lifting heavy things and sweating lots was for the very few.

No such thing as gym chains nor Personal Trainers! You just had to ask for any help you felt you needed and someone would pop up and offer the advise you were looking for.

Or simply jump in and 'spot' for any of the pros dong heavy benches and then do your own while he rested between sets.

I've personally witnessed some bad shit and have personally heard of even 'badder'.....  but I honestly doubt that the bodybuilding game/world has been as bad as some GetBiggers seem to wish it was.

And when someone says " ..... they are good for the finishing touch." .... you can be assured that that individual is or was an old-timer who used a substance intelligently and never over did it.

And got that 'finishing touch' which 99% of the worldwide population never knew existed.

I could spend all day long writing this historical bodybuilding stuff (some bad shit but mostly very good shit) .... but other less important stuff/shit requires my attention.

Pellius ... Do you know Allison Brundage? (Kahuku Nurse). Or Paula Suzuki. And numerous others who started this lifting heavy stuff on a remote island in the Pacific way back when.

Peter George, Harold Sakada, Mike Scott, Gary Watanabe, Judy Miller,  yada, yada, yada.....?

The memories that I would like to forget but that are somehow  still stuck in my mind are the bad occurrences within the bodybuilding world lithe I have personally witnessed or have been remotely associated with.

But they have been few and far between and all is well in Muscle-Town,

But I can't HONESTLY  end this with a .. "Happily ever After"

[Kwon_2]

the shorts on branch

[stuntmovie]

RONNIEREP! Did you know or ever compete against Richard Rippetoe?

[Ronnie Rep]

Stunt, I never competed against him but saw him compete at the Mr. Florida in the eighties. He was a very good bodybuilder and always placed high. I also remember his brother Greg who was also had an excellent physique.

[stuntmovie]

RONNIE! Thanks for that swift reply.

Ernie Santiago and I used to train with Rich when his dad was CG at Hickam AFB and we used to drag GREG to the base gym with us.

I think he required babysitting as he was pretty damn young and we tried to get him interested in lifting but he wanted nothing to do with it, but years later I heard that he was doing well within the bodybuilding game.

RICH was another "hell of a great person" that I've had the opportunity to meet within the bodybuilding world.

I have lost contact with him but I believe he was or still is a Teacher of some sort.

Let me know if you know how to contact either one of them

[Ronnie Rep]

Stunt, I really didn't know him, just from going to shows and watching him compete. He seemed like a good guy. I haven't heard anything about him since those days.

[NelsonMuntz]

Interestingly enough, the mayor of bodybuilding's most memorable moments in bodybuilding involve dropping his jaw and taking loads from musclemen in hotel rooms when he goes to the Arnold every year

[stuntmovie]

Thanks, REP.

[Disco187]

ahahahahahahahahhahaahha hahahha

[pellius]

Stunt, what an absolute treasure you are to this board! It is no exaggeration to say that we are all truly blessed having you here. Not only have you been around, you've been around EVERYWHERE.

You are, of course, right about Timmy and Tommy. I vaguely remember Timmy Leongs ad in the phone book showing, which I assumed was him, holding a barbell. It looked like he was just about to "clean it" in preparation to do the "military" press. Long gone are the days when you'd have to pick up the barbell off the floor to shoulder level so you could do overhead presses -- standing up (I don't know why everyone has to sit down for everything now: laterals, presses, dumb curls, rear laterals, overhead tricep extensions....).

I only trained at Mit's one summer between my sophomore and junior year. I had a part time job and I saved up all year so that I could go to his gym and train (in secret) and come back during my junior year huge and impress all my friends. LOL! Epic fail!

So I would catch bus from Hawaii Kai all the way to Fort Street Mall (that's the mall I think you are thinking of). It was an hour and a half each way on the bus.

I did not know Allison or Paula but I would like to know if we are thinking of the same John Kaiser. John would be about 57 years old now and back then in high school he was what one would term today as a permabulker. He was white as snow with freckles on his face. He always wore either long sleeves and short sleeves cut long so that it extended past the elbow. Still, it didn't hide his massive arms which was his favorite bodypart. He was a dedicated bodybuilder and a devote Christian. As graduation was nearing (he was one grade ahead of me but two years older. I think he started school late) he said he would devote his life to weight lifting and God.

Can you tell me a bit about the "John" you know? How did you come to know him? What high school he went to (my "John" went to Kaiser High)? Is he married with children? What did he end up doing career wise? He was part of the "gang" I hung around with during my high school years. I lived at the time virtually right next to Kaiser High and he live in Kuliouou which was around 4 miles from where I lived.

[pellius]

RONNIE! Thanks for that swift reply.

Ernie Santiago and I used to train with Rich when his dad was CG at Hickam AFB and we used to drag GREG to the base gym with us.

I think he required babysitting as he was pretty damn young and we tried to get him interested in lifting but he wanted nothing to do with it, but years later I heard that he was doing well within the bodybuilding game.

RICH was another "hell of a great person" that I've had the opportunity to meet within the bodybuilding world.

I have lost contact with him but I believe he was or still is a Teacher of some sort.

Let me know if you know how to contact either one of them

Ernie was the most popular and well known bodybuilder competing at the time in Hawaii (1970s). I only saw him once in person and he was very dry and vascular. It was at a gym above a bank. It was a Nautilus gym which was quite a novelty at the time. I had just graduated from high school and was working as a security guard in a condo, "The Esplanade", where the owner of that Nautilus gym lived. His name was Hank Grundman and we got to talking about training and such and he was the one who introduced me to Arthur Jones. Hank gave me a book, which I still have (tattered and barely holding together), with a series of articles written by Jones. It included the Colorado Experiment and that book changed my life. It completely changed my whole perspective on resistance training. Though some of the applications are obsolete the principles I believe still hold true.

Soon after I read the book, Casey Viator, gave a seminar at the Nautilus gym and I was hooked. Casey was the first world class bodybuilder that I had ever seen. He just wore a polo shirt but his forearms were the biggest I had ever seen.

[stuntmovie]

PRLLIUS, Thanks for the nice comment and the kick in my head to get my memory banks up and active.

Regarding JOHN KAISER. I'm 90% sure that we both know the same John Kaiser as the John I knew would be close to 60 today and was very active within the weight lifting scene on Oahu.

A great and very humble individual.

And if my memory is still in tact, he was once married to Paula Suzuki who was once considered to be one of the strongest ladies in the world.

And Paula was another great and humble lady.

I have not seen either of them in the past 20 years.

I guess that you already know that Mits and Dot both passed away a few years ago. And the same for my good friend Timmy Leong.

I have been a good friend of Ernie's and his family for many years now and see him and his wife once a year. I worked with Ernie closely when he was winning his national contests ... the USA and the JR USA.

The gym above the bank which used to the Civic Auditorium where the local wrestling events took place (maybe before your time) was Hank and Vallerie Grundman's  Nautilus Gym, but it was not the first nautilus gym in Hawaii.

(That's a long story in itself which I hope to tell on this board someday!)

Gotta take a break here to do some interesting research.

[Iceman1981]

My jaw dropped when this creature somehow won 2 Arnold Classics back to back

LOL

[stuntmovie]

PELLIUS, I do recall reading a sheet of paper on the Nautilus Gym wall that 8 individuals were signed up to partake in an IronMan Contest. The first of its kind, I believe.

To the best of my knowledge Hank and Val started that event which was originally held on Oahu and later moved to a neighbor island (Maui?) due to traffic problems

And without knowing all the details involved, I believe that  Val took over the responsibilities of running the IronMan after her divorce from Hank while Hank ran the Nautilus Gym.

Back in those good old days, it was somewhat rare to meet a bodybuilder who had 100% confidence in using the Nautilus equipment exclusively but various claims were made by non-professional athletes that better results were possible by using Nautilus equipment only.

The validity of the COLORADO EXPERIMENT has been questionable since Day #1 by many of the pro-bodybuilders who chose to  discuss it back then. And a lot of discussions were involved which were mostly con.

For some forgotten reason I thought you were a local who lived on the North Shore and I assumed you may have known Reverend Saul (KAHUNA SAUL) who visited us on a few occasions with Hawaiian blessings.

I might be wrong here but wasn't John Kaiser a guard at the  Honolulu Prison? And I think Paula was also.

Photo is Paula Suzuki .... another great lady within the lifting world

[stuntmovie]

Capping this off with Timmy Leong photos

[stuntmovie]

SORRY, we're getting off-topic here but I gotta add a Ernie shot.

[pellius]

PELLIUS, I do recall reading a sheet of paper on the Nautilus Gym wall that 8 individuals were signed up to partake in an IronMan Contest. The first of its kind, I believe.

To the best of my knowledge Hank and Val started that event which was originally held on Oahu and later moved to a neighbor island (Maui?) due to traffic problems

And without knowing all the details involved, I believe that  Val took over the responsibilities of running the IronMan after her divorce from Hank while Hank ran the Nautilus Gym.

Back in those good old days, it was somewhat rare to meet a bodybuilder who had 100% confidence in using the Nautilus equipment exclusively but various claims were made by non-professional athletes that better results were possible by using Nautilus equipment only.

The validity of the COLORADO EXPERIMENT has been questionable since Day #1 by many of the pro-bodybuilders who chose to  discuss it back then. And a lot of discussions were involved which were mostly con.

For some forgotten reason I thought you were a local who lived on the North Shore and I assumed you may have known Reverend Saul (KAHUNA SAUL) who visited us on a few occasions with Hawaiian blessings.

I might be wrong here but wasn't John Kaiser a guard at the  Honolulu Prison? And I think Paula was also.

Photo is Paula Suzuki .... another great lady within the lifting world





[/quote

Holy shit, Paula! I'm going to try and look up John Kaiser on google and see what I can find.

I was born and raise in Hawaii but move to So Ca (Torrance/Redondo Beach) to go to UCLA when I was 19 and lived there for over twenty years. That's how I met Keith. He was working as a bouncer at one of the clubs there during my alley catting days. I think it was Tequila Willies. Anyway, I moved back to Hawaii in 2006 and live in Kahaluu which is still considered part of Kaneohe. Kahaluu is maybe about five miles from the Kualoa ranch. I can see China Man's hat from my yard (or maybe I should call it "Asian American Hat".

How are you so familiar with Hawaii. Did you use to live here. If so, what time period? I think when I move back here Keith had just move to Vegas. It's going to be, what?, five years now this Sunday. Hard to believe it's been five years.

[The Ugly]

For me, it was in Pumping Iron. In those days we didn't really know much about bbers, at least for me being a young teen, and I never heard of any of those guys and didn't really know what it was all about. I actually thought that they just pumped some air or something and didn't think they really work out hard. That scene with Corney and Arnold changed everything. Also, from the few pics I saw of bbers they all had small flat waist lines but I didn't really know what abs looked liked.

When they first featured Serge Nubret in that film my jaw just dropped. It was just unreal. How each muscle just stood out with clear separation. They did a close up on his abs alternately contracting and relaxing as he breathe. I asked my friend, "What the hell are those cubes on his stomach?" Seems like an odd question today but in those days it was all new.

Upper body wise, as far as just standing relax, which is my favorite "pose", this is as good as it gets.

Anybody have that scene where they first introduce Serge in PI? I don't know how to isolate a particular scene in a movie.

"An unexpected entry in the tall class of the Olympia contest. Serge Nubret, 40 years old. Six feet, 200 pounds.

Same. Specifically, Arnold squeezing out the extra reps on those flyes, and then standing up with his tits just gorged and hanging. Then when he performed concentration curls and flexed his arms after without the dumbbells. His biceps were ridiculous, and the physique simply inhuman, especially to a young kid. Entire experience was surreal.

Second was seeing Dorian on the cover of Flex in '93, six weeks before the O. Those famous black & whites, totally blew me away. Freakiest size I'd ever seen. As did the sneak peek a month before, I think, small color shot of his rear lat spread (maybe eight weeks out?). Couldn't believe the pic was legit.

[The Ugly]

When I first saw this book at the local bookstore.

This, too.

Also, saw the Barbarians at a club my brother was bouncing in Pasadena. First time I'd seen pro size in the flesh. Mostly remember how insanely thick their delts were from the side. They were wider front-to-back than my jacked bouncer brother was side-to-side. Just incredible.

[pellius]

BTW, it was only recently, maybe a year ago when I was talking to one of the old timers about that gym above the bank that he told me it was Hank that brought the Iron Man to Hawaii. That's something. The Hawaii Iron Man is a big, big deal. So you knew Hank personally as well? What was your impression of him? I was very grateful that he always took the time to both introduce me to and clarify the principles of Arthur Jones. I remember him at the time (1979) training this big Haole kid in his early twenties. He reminded me of Big Moose from the Archie Comics. He worked at the gym and was a very intelligent guy.

[Radical Plato]

the shorts on branch

They're not shorts, their children's pants.

[pellius]

When I think of Ernie, this is the pose I always think of. Not because I ever saw him do it in person but because back in the early 1980s a crazy, intense, out of this world, bodybuilder  named Benny Podda started to training at the gym I worked at (Barlow's gym in Torrance, CA). For some reason he left Ray Mentzer's gym (Muscle Mill) in Redondo beach. He really liven things up at Barlows to say the least and I was just in awe of him. Anyway, when he knew I was from Hawaii he asked me if I've heard of Ernie Santiago. Benny said that in one of his early contest when he saw Ernie he appeared so small and even skinny. Then Benny said, "When he put his hands on his hips and flexed he just lit up. Absolutely shredded." He then said despite being a bit shorter and twenty five pounds heavier he knew he didn't have a chance.