"I might want to be somewhere else, but I grip the weights and there I am." ~ Dave Draper
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Dave DePew is a powerlifter, strongman (also a strong man) competitor and a grip guy who owns the Grinder Gym in San Diego. He did an interview series for a while and brought Dave into the mix in January of 2005. I think you'll enjoy his questions. The picture is from our first photo session, 1987, that sort of started all of this. Let's go:
Q) Dave, what motivated you to pick up your first dumbbell?
A) Actually, it was an assortment of plates bearing the name “Weider,” clustered on one 16-inch bar and secured with a red collar on each end -- my first set of weights, secondhand, dusted with rust and costing my life savings of $5.00 at 10 years old. I was already an old hand at musclebuilding (though I didn’t know it), having done chins and dips and pushups since I could count the reps.
Why did I do this? I liked the resistance, I guess. The movement and balance, the play and physical challenge were fun. Come to think of it, they no doubt gave me an endorphin high, a feeling of wellbeing and the sense of accomplishment that please everyone, young and old, should they stumble upon them.
I wanted to be strong like a man, and as I grew older and more aware, I wanted to look like a man, rugged and ready. I saw those features in Chuck, the guy who worked on construction projects for the small town of Secaucus where I grew up. He wore t-shirts with the sleeves cut off, and his arms and shoulders bulged like melons. Chuck worked hard and lifted weights and nobody messed with him. He was a nice guy.
Q) As a young kid, did you ever think you would have accomplished all you did?
A) I look back at my life and it looks like a minefield. I’m amazed I have fingers and toes where they belong. When I was a kid, I never thought about the future, each day containing enough for me to consider and shoulder.
I love life and my family with all my might, and thank God for anything good I did or do, and I take sole responsibility for all the bad. Lifting weights and winning Mr. America and surviving two-thirds of a century are pretty cool.
Q) Are you a fan of supersetting?
A) Superset and multi-set training have been popular with me since my early training days in the Muscle Beach Dungeon, 1963 through 1966. I apply and enjoy the rewards of single-set training and find them invaluable, but 75 percent of my routine is composed of supersets. I find them more involving, exciting, conditioning and muscle-building; there’s less downtime and I maintain tighter focus. I build a valuable training momentum, condense the workout time and generally achieve greater training intensity and muscle overload.
My supersets can be same-muscle or opposing-muscle combinations, and, as I do with most exercises, I complete five sets of each multi-set combination.
Examples might be:
Same muscle – Standing barbell curl supersetted with reverse curls
Opposing muscle – Bench press and wide-grip pulldown
Q) What do you think of implements like kettlebells and clubbells?
A) These are examples of original strength and conditioning devices recently re-popularized for building muscle and might, but I haven’t personally used them in my training. I’d seek their benefits if I was younger, more flexible and attending fewer injuries, and if my basic weight training wasn’t so fully satisfying.
There are other gadgets to satisfy the fickle and bored consumer in the exercise world, but few are needed and most are a distraction. We’ve got bulging exercise balls and wobbly wobble boards and super inclinable benches that look like individualized spacecraft; and then there’s the electronic aerobic equipment, new models every year, like autos off Detroit assembly lines... only with more features.
Call me old-fashioned, but give me barbells and dumbbells, a simple pulley system, a cage and some benches and I’m a happy musclehead.
Q) How do you train today?
A) Not much different than I did in the ‘60s when training for major competitions. I achieved the muscle mass long ago and do what I can to maintain it into my older years. I’ll be 63 in April (2005). I actually train harder per workout than I did 40 years ago, with more appreciation and enjoyment. Go figure.
I’ve accumulated injuries and their pain and limitations. My strength in pressing is half what it was, and daily I stare age in the face like a troublesome houseguest. Nevertheless, my workouts are geared around persistent attitudes and motives of improving and gaining, as well as surviving. It works... more or less.
In the ‘60s, I trained six days a week without fail, and until only a few years ago, five days a week was my plan -- recovery the element determining my cutback. Today, I train four days a week for two hours each workout. Perfect. I have a scheme whereby I work every muscle group twice a week, midsection each session and include some 35 to 40 total sets of barbell, dumbbell and cable work – or 7 to 8 exercises, five sets each. The reps range from 15 to 20 on certain exercises and 6 to 12 on most.
Every three weeks or so, I practice heavy deadlifts or squats. I stick to the basics, often performed with some weird improvised groove to accommodate an injury, and I avoid heavy bench presses because they’re notoriously tough on the shoulders. Dumbbells are superior in my opinion (clue).
I am what’s called a “volume trainer,” if you’re into naming techniques. I’ve gone down a lot of roads looking for a better way to build muscle… and keep coming back home where I started, where I like it.
There’s something about the weights and a continuing interest in them: They keep you from growing up entirely. They’re like neat yet tedious toys that we’ve refused to surrender. Kids never let go.
Q) Who gave you the nickname the “Blond Bomber”?
A) 42 years ago (1963) I moved from Jersey to California to represent Joe Weider at his newly opened Santa Monica office. There I worked side by side with a redheaded guy with big arms and a big heart and a left hand that could write smart prose and fun stories. His name was Dick Tyler and he wrote prolifically about the popular west coast bodybuilding champs, their training and their daily lives. His material appeared in Joe’s various muscle magazines for seven years as the column called “West Coast Bodybuilding Scene.” The entire golden era was recorded by Dick with his insight, wit and brightness -- how lucky we are today for this unique preservation of history. He told tall tales about everyone from Grimek, Pearl and Parks to Don Howorth, Larry Scott and me to Arnold, Franco and Zane.
Dick named me "the Blond Bomber" and Arnold "the Oak."
Read about it all in Dick’s recent and very cool book, West Coast Bodybuilding Scene, packed with rare pictures, inspiration, history and fun. It’s a blast from the past.
Q) I understand it, back in the day you helped bring Arnold to the US and show him around the scene. What type of friendship did the two of you have? Did you work out together or was that mostly for the magazines?
A) Weider bought Arnold to the USA. A handful of bodybuilders from Vince’s and, especially, Joe Gold’s gym made Arnold welcome. That’s the way it was in those days. Arnold stepped off the plane and into a home and family when he arrived on the west coast. Arnold, with his open nature -- observant and insightful yet naïve and young -- became a companion of everyone. Remember, the bodybuilding scene was less crowded then. In fact, there was no crowd at all.
Arnold and I hit it off well, though my quiet, private manner (neuroses) and being a family man kept us from hanging out regularly. It wasn’t long after Arnold’s arrival that we shared odd and demanding experiences in training and travel, the kind that bind two people, and our mutual respect hammered the bond home.
We met on and off at Joe Gold’s gym in Venice and worked out as our schedules allowed and our training demands required. Our training philosophies were identical -- hard work, voluminous and heavy -- and we complemented and boosted each other without submitting to schoolboy competition.
Artie Zeller the Great caught us -- all of us -- in real action at Joe Gold’s gym during our competition training during the summer of 1970. The place was alive and buzzing: all work, no play, no music, no gadgets, no wimps.
Today, the Governor gets my vote and he works for me day after day.
Q) How did your training styles vary from other bodybuilders and what similarities did you have in your approach to building your physique compared to your friends?
A) Training was straightforward in the early days of bodybuilding -- 40, 50 and 60 years ago -- with the basic movements commanding the lifter’s attention. I observed the advanced trainers around me at the Muscle Beach Dungeon -- Zabo, Eifferman, several reigning Mr. Cal and Southern Cal winners, shared ideas with Vince’s Gironda’s adherents -- Scott, Howorth, Mackey and Vince himself -- extracted information from Bill Pearl on his training approach, and put the various methodologies to the test. From there, I distilled a training style that has altered little over the years. Those modifications have been simple and based only on time and injury.
We all trained hard and heavy, yet the gang from the Valley didn’t squat, spent less time in the gym and complemented their workouts with more finesse training -- cables, angles, partial movements and isolation. (They used their brains.)
Pearl and his training partners were brutes who trained seriously first thing in the morning for two hours, six days a week with six-week rotations. Heavy benches, dumbbell work, deadlifts, rows, curls and weighted dips comprised the substance of their workouts. They were street smart and used their muscles. The Muscle Beach boys trained as one would for functioning well in the jungle or Hollywood or on the beach. They buried themselves in the basics for hours when the sun and moon were right and the milk and meat sandwiches in their brown bags held out. They were animals.
I leaned toward the Pearl School of Musclebuilding: early morning, six days a week, two hours of madness each day, with six weeks before varying routines.
The more, the better is the theory of the obsessed and self-doubting. (Moi)
By the time Arnold, Franco and Zane arrived in town, I’d proven to myself the worth of my sluggo training and allowed instinct to move me more easily about the gym floor. Arnold, Zane, Franco and I could and would train together when it was convenient, wise or we got the urge. Our training techniques were similar and evolving and, by then, loose enough. We seriously blasted it.
In the late ‘60s and ‘70s, we saw the machines move onto the gym floor like creaking metal-armed invaders from another planet, plus more personalities (invaders from remote earth) and increased innovation (harebrained schemes). Training principles I could never buy into started mocking tradition and appealing to the trainer looking for faster, less-committed methods of lifting. Here I’m talking about training once or twice a week with a few sets to some sort of indefinable failure, workouts boasting incredible mass and muscularity accomplished on a cambered pulley machine for a total of eight sets of six reps once in a while.
The less, the better is the theory of the crafty and mad.
Q) To whom do you attribute your success in bodybuilding? Is there one person who stands out the most?
A) You must mean someone other than Joe Weider, to whom most bodybuilders, like it or not, must attribute their exposure and eventual worldwide prominence and popularity. He’s the guy with the mags. I say this not to slight John Balik or Bob Kennedy and a few others who solidly contribute to the bodybuilding publication world, but Joe was the first on the block.
Let’s see: There’s Leroy Colbert and his big arms, big smile and great friendship; George Eifferman for welcoming me warmly to Muscle Beach; Russ Warner and Artie Zeller for their friendship, counsel and cameras; Ray Raridon (NSP) for convincing me I could win Mr. America; Dick Sweet (Mr. California, 1962) for teaching me how to train in the Dungeon years; Zabo for being cool; Carlin Venice for helping me lick my wounds, and my loyal dog, Rufus.
You know how it is. Where there’s a life, there are numerous lives supporting it. Each stands out at one time or another. Chuck and his jackhammer and tight t-shirt, Steve Reeves pictured on a movie poster racing a chariot, my high school coach who called me “Arms,” the bully in junior high, my mom...
Q) If I wanted to spend a few days training with you what would I need to do?
A) Ask yourself, “Why? This guy is losing his hair; he’s stubborn, impolite, silent and hasn’t a clue how to share. He hasn’t trained with anybody for 15 years (no one dares to or cares ), thus, his social skills have seriously deteriorated and his communication has been reduced to grunts and nods.”
Maybe you should visit the gym one day as an out-of-towner and secretly observe me and my antics for an hour before further considering the absurd idea. Life’s short.
Q) What are you most proud of in your life?
A) Proud of? Hmmm... Other than my personal charm and boyish good looks, I would have to say that having retained a position of reasonable respect and prominence in the world of bodybuilding, muscle and might after all these years is pretty okay. I guess it’s called history, and sharing the gilded stage (when the world was still thought to be flat) with Grimek and Reeves, Bill Pearl, Zabo and Reg Parks, Scott and Howorth, Arnold and Franco, Zane and Katz is extraordinary.
The past gives way to the future present, which is now.
The internet has afforded us the grand opportunity of communicating and sharing and learning and growing and inspiring. I’m proud of Laree, my amazing wife, who’s embraced the muscle and power world since Rachael and Cory stole the stage. She singlehandedly created the davedraper.com website composed of 2,800 pages of musclebuilding information, health news, nutritional guidelines, facts, updates and menus, fascinating pictures, motivation, inspiration and philosophy. But wait, there’s more. The IronOnline discussion board pops up on the website and is more fun, endearing, informative and downright enriching to scads of iron aficionados who might otherwise be silent and alone. Laree, with her friendly online support group, heads up the micro extravaganza, and a large family of living and loving muscleheads has emerged.
They’re called bombers who love to fly, soar and glide, depending on visibility, fuel, mood and atmospheric pressure.
Q) What are you most appreciative of in your life?
A) Besides family and friends, Christ and his salvation, I appreciate that I’ve endured. I’m still ready, willing and able to train with eagerness and gusto after half a century of pounding, clanging, counting, gasping, burning, pumping, ripping, tearing, lifting, extending, contracting, pain, boredom and disappointment.
I should get a gold-plated watch for faithful service.
Or maybe get my head examined.
