Today I have the transcript of a radio interview Dave did after the release of Brother Iron, Sister Steel. I missed the first part of the interview (never was very good at operating a radio), so this starts a few questions in.
Here's Dave on KUSP, sometime during 2001.
Dave: When you don’t start the day with a workout, you follow all day and hurry and push and stumble often and come to the end of the day without really completing the loose ends and having established any order in our lives.
Interviewer: Or the day runs us instead of the other way around.
Dave: If you set yourself in exercise, you’re just responsible to that and if you do that, it requires discipline. It develops discipline at the same time and that’s reflected in your output through the day in your energy, in your creative view, in your high spirits, in your leveling of emotions and a little bit more mental acuity.
Interviewer: I like how you say in your book that you treat or you treasure discipline as if it were a loving family member. I’ve never quite heard it described as that before.
Dave: I got a little carried away in the book, but I love to phrase things in a way that may trigger in someone the importance of these things.
Interviewer: Discipline obviously means a great deal to you. I mean, you’ve been leading a very disciplined life forever.
Dave: Discipline is truly one of the top characteristics in life. We need to embrace it and care for it. It will develop us and pull us along as we develop it.
Interviewer: ‘Train with a steady pace’ you say. This was interesting, ‘Get involved with the flow of your movements.’
I’ve talked with a number of practitioners of martial arts and this sentence of yours sounds very akin to that. I don’t know if you had it in mind, but this idea of getting involved with the flow of your movements as part of whatever one does to exercise and be healthy, I was intrigued by that.
Dave: That would be very close to discipline also. That’s focus. That’s concentration. With those, you’ll progress much more enjoyably and much more quickly.
You’ll remain with the activity longer, maybe forever, if you pay close attention, if you don’t try to just get it over with, if you’re not standing outside of it and trying to get it out of the way, but instead, grabbing hold of it and befriending it.
Interviewer: You spend time around people at your gym. You hear and talk with people who probably say things like, “You know, it’s just so hard to keep it going. I really want to but…but, but, but.”
Dave: Yes, that’s the failure I see. Many people know the importance of exercise. It’s obvious to us. The media shows us the deconditioned state of the population across this country and across the globe.
Interviewer: In fact, aren’t we more obese now than perhaps we’ve ever been? I don’t mean everyone obviously, but a higher percentage of us are.
Dave: Yes, we are. That should be frightening to the people who stand in their shoes. We’ve become obese and less comfortable with ourselves. It’s reflected in who we are and it has to be addressed.
We’re told of it often. We all know it, but everyone kind of procrastinates or doesn’t face it, denies it and puts it away because it either frightens them or it looks like an awful lot of work. Sometimes they’re uneducated as to what to do.
Interviewer: Have you found that there are things you can say to people—encouraging things or affirmation kinds of things—that have helped people over the years get through that kind of significant obstacle?
Dave: This is my objective and this has been my objective in the book. I wanted to bring before the people certain trigger points that might propel them to take it a little bit more serious than they have in the past so they’ll get to the gym.
It’s because they get the half-dozen words that say ‘You must do this,’ but to really strike home, ring a bell within them, to encourage them and point out the vast dimension to this far beyond just the muscles and good appearance, but how many things it brings to us in the way of benefits and that it can be delightful.
It’s really a terrific diversion. People just have the wrong impression of it. It sounds like hard work and it sounds….
Interviewer: Well, you do say it’s important that exercise not be boring, that it not be dull, that it should be sweet and desirable. Again, that’s a nice turn of phrase because you hear people say, “Yeah, I tried it but gosh, it was boring.”
Dave: Many people I’ve talked to over these past 10 years as an owner of a gym that are in their 40s and 50s and said, “If I had only known this sooner, if I’d only come here sooner and found out. It’s really so important to me. It’s delightful that it just makes my day. It has meant so much more to me than I ever expected.”
Interviewer: I’m one of those people. I totally feel that way. I feel a little like the famous Mickey Mantle phrase, “You know, if I had known I was going to live this long, I would’ve taken better care of myself.”
And as you get older, it’s more important that you do it, I think.
Dave: Yes, it is. Literally grab it now, no matter what your age.
Interviewer: So again, “Find some kind of exercise routine that’s sweet and desirable” in the words of Dave Draper.
One thing about your working out, you say that your mid-section has become stronger and more muscular in recent years. I look at the pictures of you when you won the major awards in the 60s. How the heck could your mid-section be stronger and more muscular now?
Dave: Well, it’s true. It has. It’s from the continued hard work.
From maturing in my training, I’ve found the importance of doing more of the exercises that work the trunk muscles. I’ve always participated in them and after all these years, it’s just become a little bit tighter. It has more muscularity that comes only from time.
That’s a key area to maintaining health, that lower back, that support position of the torso that keeps us walking forward and walking tall and protects our innards.
Interviewer: You have a section in the book on injuries. I think that’s important too because probably everyone is going to get injured at some point, not as a result so much of working out, but what happens to the exercise commitment through injury and rehabilitation is important as well.
Dave: Injuries are something we all live with through our lives whether we train or not.
In fact, you’ll have a number of specific injuries as a result of training if you train too excessively, but there are so many injuries that come and weaknesses that become evident because we don’t train, especially with the lower back and with knees and with sloping shoulders and just atrophying muscles.
I have to be careful with that word. It’s kind of a made-up word, atrophy, but it’s muscles that diminish because they’re not in use over the years. We just become a weaker and a fatter being.
Interviewer: Just a word on steroids. The implication is that you didn’t use them.
Dave: No. I used steroids. This would be back in the 60s and 70s. In those days, there was a mild use of them. They were new on the market and we didn’t know much about them—especially not the downside…but they weren’t used excessively and were under a doctor’s care. It was as a current buddy referred to my usage of steroids. He said, “That’s like eating pablum” when I told him what I’d done in the past. He kind of snickered.
Now we have a bodybuilding participant—those who are of the competitive level who are very large users and of multiple drugs, and it seems commonly acceptable. But you have to recognize that this is a level of participants that’s not normal, not the average gym-goer. You’d put these people in a special category, as you would the professional football player or hockey player who’s extreme.
Interviewer: You did say you used them sparingly under a doctor’s supervision. You also said that drug use within the healthy gym environment that you and your wife operate is destructive and that if you had to offer any advice about steroids, it’s to be careful or they’ll eat away at whatever foundation you want to create in terms of a healthy lifestyle.
Dave: With steroids, you are enhancing your abilities unnaturally. It’s a temporary enhancement and when you step off of them, everything you’ve put together under them diminishes. It’s artificial.
Interviewer: And you’ve got to pay somewhere.
Dave: You miss the whole wonderful experience of training hard and making gains on your own by healthy training.
Interviewer: I’ll tell you, Brother Iron Sister Steel was just… it’s a sweet book because the lightness, the humility and the full passion you bring to the lifestyle you’ve created comes out very clearly.
You have these nutrition rules—11 of them that are just great and very sensible. Then, your 12th one is making all of the rules a lifelong priority to lighten the journey day-by-day for good. It’s a great way to try to live—to lighten the journey—and clearly you’ve done that.
Dave:
