Remembering the Guru: Vince Gironda
The Greatest Trainer That Ever Lived
By Ron Kosloff N/C of NSP Research Nutrition
(This article was originally published in MuscleMag -- Ron Kosloff was generous
enough to allow us to publish it here.)Part 1
Close family members apart, when was the last time you
witnessed grown men weeping at the loss of a comrade? Sure it happens, of course, but when
the late, great Vince Gironda died, the outpouring of emotion was felt from coast to coast
and beyond.
Ill never forget the day of October 20th, 1997. I was
at my desk when Ray Raridon, owner of NSP West in Los Angeles, called me at three p.m. and
asked if I was sitting down. After I said yes, he conveyed to me the sad news that Vince
Gironda had passed away. We spoke for a short time, both extremely sad and extremely
stunned. After I hung up the phone I was in sort of a mental daze as my 25-year
association with Vince literally flashed before my eyes. I remembered all the good times
and the bad times. As I sat there for about a half-hour I began crying profusely. Im
a grown man, but this news did affect me very, very much. I called my friend Chris
Aragona. Chris is a personal trainer and former owner of a health-food store in the Long
Island section of New York. Weve been friends and business associates for about 20
years.
Chris teaches Vinces methods as I do. We talked
at length about Vince, and he too reminisced. I mentioned that I had seen Vince about a
month before he closed his gym, and to my way of thinking just a personal opinion
Vince Gironda probably died of a broken heart simply because his gym was his whole
life. To my knowledge, he never did anything else. From the time he was a young man until
he really got into the gym business I think it was 1946 he had worked or
been in the fitness business most of his life. So you can see what a dramatic effect the
gym closing must have had on him. Bodybuilding meant more to him than anything. When he
would train someone who became successful, this was his personal reward. Chris agreed with
me that there was a lot of heart and honesty in Vince. As long as I can remember, Chris
has advocated Vinces methods. He is a personal trainer. I believe he has done that
exclusively since he got out of the health-food business. On many occasions Chris and I
have shared stories about our personal training experiences and one point we always agree
on is that anyone who follows Vinces methods is sure to have great results. I
personally have never failed if my student follows Vinces principles. (Vince
actually wrote a book on his training principles. It is titled, The Wild Physique.)
After Chris and I spoke, I put the office recorder on and reminisced for about two hours.
I recalled our first meeting. I had a consultation with
Vince, and while we were talking, he excused himself, got up, took some money out of the
register, gave it to a member, and promptly threw him out of the gym for doing sit-ups and
leg raises. I was shocked, of course, but when I found out Vinces reasoning I
understood. Sit-ups and leg raises dont reduce the size of your stomach, as Vince
discovered about 40 years ago, so the student was just wasting his time. He really
wasnt listening. Vince had previously told the student not to do them because he was
personally training the guy. Along with everything Vince taught me, I realized then that
he was probably far ahead of his time. In retrospect, I believe most people didnt
even know what he was talking about. I learned that 95% of what Vince told me simply
worked. Chris made the same discovery. When I train people, they quickly realize just how
great his simple, intelligent methods are.
Dr. Clifford Ameduri called Vince a gifted person and a
genius. When I spoke with the doctor years ago, we both marveled at the fact that Vince
was the only man we had ever seen who could point to every muscle in the human body, name
it, plus tell you how it functions. Now thats brilliant! We were also awed by
Vinces knowledge of nutrition. After 25 years, people are discovering the truth
about this "complex carbohydrate b.s." as I call it. Vince would yell in the
gym, "But theyre inferior proteins, just lots of sugar, you jerks!" He was
always outspoken and controversial, the type of man who built this country. True
individuals like him are now a dying breed.
As a kid I would go to all the contests. Vince would turn
out champions the way a baker turns out cookies. The MC would always say,
"representing Vinces Gym, from North Hollywood, California"
introducing Larry Scott, Don Howorth, Bill McArdle and a host of others. I seriously doubt
that Larry would have been a success if Vince hadnt taken him under his wing, since
Larry wasnt that genetically blessed. To me a truly beautiful physique combines
shape, symmetry and cuts. I knew Gironda was onto something because he assessed his type
of physique. I also knew that eventually I would go to him. But first I ordered all his
courses. When I read them, I said, "This man is brilliant!"
The first time he trained me, he told me I was the only guy
who ever did the precise movements the correct way. That acknowledgement really, really
felt good. When Vince trained me, I stayed in California for six weeks, renting a motel
room just down the block from the gym. I trained very hard and made more progress in that
six weeks than I had in an entire two-year training period prior to that time. When I came
back from California to the YMCA gym where I regularly worked out, people were in
disbelief at how good I looked after such a short time. I was stunned myself that I was
looking 90% better doing 90% less. But I trained with great intensity! Vince first applied
that word in bodybuilding, not Mike Mentzer as many believe.
I continued the rest of the evening thinking back fondly on
the times that I was fortunate enough to have spent with Vince. I finally realized all the
lessons I had learned from him, how he had a tremendous effect in turning my life around
and pointing me in the right direction. I am now a nutritional consultant. Because of him
I got my degree. I work at the Grosse Pointe Alternative Health Care Clinic outside of
Detroit. I also own NSP East and Research Nutrition. Im on staff and I do all their
diet consultations.
I use the principles Vince taught me regarding liver
tablets, glandulars and amino acids to keep your endocrine system strong and your immune
level high. He told me to eat a high-protein meal after training as the muscles need the
amino acids to grow and, most important, to recuperate. I see that some college just
proved him right again. As soon as youre done with strenuous, physical exercise, eat
a good protein meal because the branched-chain amino acids will quickly repair, nourish
and return the muscle cell to its former strength and more, and it will get bigger. They
just proved that. Just goes to show you how brilliant the guy was.
He taught me about hydrochloric acid and that the amount of
food you digest is the critical factor, not how much you eat. He would always stress these
concepts to me. Now Im helping other people and I realize it was Vince who taught me
all this. Take liver tablets for example. Right now in bodybuilding, theyre out of
style because bodybulding is like America, a fad country where things are in style, out of
style, in style, out of style. Whether we like to admit it or not, we are all controlled
by Madison Avenue and big advertising from what we eat to what we drink and what we smoke.
The whey-protein powders and MET-Rx are in fashion today. Amino acids, glandulars,
hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes are out.
I am a severe hypoglycemic, and Vince taught me that I had
to control my hypoglycemia. Every three hours I eat, and I keep my diet low in
carbohydrates. I use liver tablets because there is no finer blood builder than liver. Its
B12 and amino-acid content nourish the liver. It contains a substance called P450, which
he taught me detoxifies the liver of all poisons, toxins, drugs and alcohol. Every time I
have a physical, my doctor marvels at the function of my liver. So, of course, every three
hours I take my liver tablets.
Vince taught me the importance of chromium picolinate and
minerals to regulate my pancreatic functions and insulin secretions. I guess what Im
doing here is paying homage to him. Maybe I never realized before what a controlling
factor this man was in my life. He taught me the importance of eggs, and what a powerful,
powerful substance eggs are. He showed me how important eggs are to bodybuilding and the
very best hormone precursors.
My routine for the last 25 years has not varied. When I get
up, my high-fat jump-starter is four or five eggs, depending on how hungry I am. Eggs
dont cause heart attacks. Some people take the yolk from the egg and eat just the
egg white, but thats wrong. Eggs are whole food, the greatest food you can eat. It
closely matches the human anatomy. Eggs are the finest protein, along with liver and raw
milk. Thats been proven over and over. They have the highest PER (protein efficiency
ratio) rating.
Sugars and starches cause heart attacks. The average
American diet includes pancakes, ice cream, cookies, pies, cakes, candies, pretzels,
doughnuts, pizzas, slurpies, Pop Tarts, Sugar Frosted Flakes, bologna sandwiches, bagels
and pastas. White-flour bagels and pastas are garbage! Then you have all the useless fast
foods! But the egg is a perfect food. You see, God is the greatest chemist in the world.
He created the egg. A drug company created the medical doctor, and all medical doctors do
is write prescriptions. Nothing more, nothing less. They tell you what is wrong with you
and then write a prescription for a dangerous synthetic drug!
If you separate the white and yolk of the egg, you get an
isolated protein. Any time you separate the white and the yolk of an egg, you get an
isolated protein. Any time you separate protein from fat youre left with an
incomplete food. The manufacturers of protein powders tell you to mix them with juice or
water. Well, let me tell you, folks you cant digest protein without fat.
Vince taught me that and he was right. When you swallow an egg white, it goes into your
stomach and your stomach says, "Hey, wheres the fat?" The white, which is
protein, has no vehicle for conversion, so its converted to sugar.
The same thing happens when you use protein powder. They
say to mix with juice or water because theyre made of ionized whey protein, which is
the skim of cottage cheese. Its not biologically superior to eggs, liver and milk.
These powders make you feel good because theyre carbohydrated sugar. Sure
youre going to put on weight, but its not going to be muscle weight.
You cannot digest protein without fat, and it must be
digested to be converted to amino acids. Once its digested it goes through the liver
and is converted to amino acids. If its not digested the liver cant do its
job. If eggs or fat cause heart attacks, I want someone to tell me how my grandmother and
grandfather, who were both muscular people with beautiful skin, lived on a farm, consumed
raw milk, natural eggs, pork sausage and butter (my grandfather died two months shy of his
98th birthday, and my grandmother died when she was 101).
An Indian who worked for my grandfather for food and
shelter would eat only meat. We kids on the farm used to give pears, peaches and apples,
and hed say, "Oh, you kids crazy!" He wanted meat. Grandma and Grandma
would butcher a hog or a steer and put it in the cellar (the cellar was like a fridge back
then), and he would go down into the cellar and eat meat. Meat was all he would eat, and I
mean the whole animal. So how did this man live to be 113 on a high-fat, high-protein
diet? Id like a medical doctor or so-called dietician to explain that. Vince was
right again!
I am now realizing how I carried these ideas of
Vinces through my life and taught them to other people. They have been a blessing
for me. When I do consultations I put people on glandulars. I know some say glandulars and
liver are not good food, but I tell you folks, thats where the energy is. The first
thing a carnivore eats when it kills another animal is its glands and intestines.
I remember one time while I was working at General Motors,
they took a blood test and the color of my blood was far superior to their color chart.
The nurse asked me, "How do you do that?" and I said, "I take a lot of
liver tablets." Being a medical nurse, she said, "Sure, sure, sure," and
looked at me as if I was crazy. Unfortunately, we are putting our lives in the hands of
these people. I recommend two good books about the medical profession: Silent
Violence-Silent Death and The Drug Lords. Theyll scare the hell out of
you!
Vince taught me about nutrition, hydrochloric acid and
eggs, and folks, they just plain work. The man was so far ahead of his time it was almost
a joke. Speaking of jokes, he was a real comedian and his jokes in the gym kept everyone
loose.
Bob Kennedy of MuscleMag International was a good
friend of Vince, and Vince used to write a regular column for his magazine. After Vince
died, I called Bob and said, Bob, Ive known Vince for 25 years, and Id like to
continue his column because I know his methods backward and frontward." Bob replied,
"Ron I would love to have you continue his column, but you know what? I was getting
complaints that Vince was too old. People complained, 'Who wants to listen to what he has
to say?'" Well, that struck a nerve, and I would like to address those folks who felt
that way.
In America, today, we have one horrible agenda that we
practice. Madison Avenue has created the youth culture. It wants to sell things to young
people with money. It wants to ignore older people, and, of course, this is our
culture
money. If youre over 50, even sometimes over 40, no one wants to
listen to you anymore. Its really a crime. Look at how the American Plains Indians
treated their elders. They treated them with dignity and respect. Nobody wanted to listen
to Vince because he was old, but nobody stopped to think that what Vince had was wisdom,
knowledge and experience. If you go to any other country in the world and you are over 50,
by God, youre put up on a pedestal. People come to you for advice and knowledge, and
youre revered. But not in America. Vince was a tragic example of this shameful
phenomenon. He went out of style.
Whenever an older, wise, intelligent person offers advice,
you should listen to his wisdom. Hes only trying to save you a lot of heartache and
grief. Certainly Vince Gironda did this for me. Take Heed. What happened to Vince should
not have happened to him. He was a victim pure and simple of our culture. I was
disappointed, Chris Aragona was disappointed, but thats the way it is. For years,
Ive been saying that in the future, Vincent Van Gogh will have nothing on Vince
Gironda because one day Vince Gironda will be the Vincent Van Gogh of bodybuilding.
In another 15 years, youll be reading what Vince had
to say. Everything he said 50 years ago is now coming true. Dont overtrain. Work out
like a sprinter, not a long-distance runner. Bodybuilding is 85% nutrition. Always use
muscle confusion. Dont do sit-ups and leg raises because they make your stomach
bigger, not smaller, and they curtail lean muscle gains because your hormone level drops.
He said all this years ago after going through trial and error. He discovered it was true.
Slowly but surely his methods have been proven, and they have stood the test of time.
Unfortunately, some authority has begun to take credit, and you see a lot of copycats who
are stealing from Vince, and thats a fact. You know who you are and you should be
ashamed of yourselves.
Two or three years ago some idiot wrote to a magazine and
asked, If Vince Gironda was so great, how come he never won a major contest?"
Well, the simple fact is that back in his day there was a different style to bodybuilding.
Either you looked like John Grimek bulky and smooth or you werent a
bodybuilder. Now, the authorities might not want to recognize this fact, but Vince Gironda
is the father of modern bodybuilding. He created definition. Hell, in the 40s he was
ripped to shreds. He never placed higher than second or third in a contest. They looked at
him and said: "What is this? Who is this? What kind of physique is this?" Some
winced at his incredible muscularity.
Nowadays, if youre not defined and shapely, you might
as well just go on home. Again we should all pay homage to Vince. He invented definition.
He invented the beautiful physique, the shapely physique. Do you see what Im saying?
The guy who asked that stupid question really doesnt know much about history.
Hes probably a drug user anyway.
Of course, most of the physiques now are drug physiques,
and they dont have any real relation to natural bodybuilding. Vince used to call
bodybuilding contests "pharmaceutical conventions" whenever someone would ask
why he didnt attend them anymore. He was right. You could never create that kind of
physique naturally. Some of these guys I see onstage look to me like Gorgo. Vince used to
call a lot of Mr. Olympia competitors Gorgos and freaks, and thats what they are.
They are sacrificing their health. Vince was the first one to state that some bodybuilder
was going to die on stage, and its happened more than once.
Vince created the anti-drug movement in bodybuilding. He
hated drugs with a passion. Drugs came into the picture in 1963, and they completely
defeated natural bodybuilding. All you had to do was pump some Deca-Durabolin in and you
got a physique. Ive seen guys at the local hard-core gym use drugs and in 30 days,
my God, you couldnt believe what they turned into, gaining 10 to 15 pounds
overnight.
For 10 years, I owned the Powerhouse Gym in Center Line,
Michigan with my partner Paul Dudgeon. We had a member who was a top area bodybuilder and
a drug user, and he used to belittle Vinces methods. He said that on Vinces
system you didnt do enough and you didnt do weightlifting exercises. I told
him one time that if they ever took his steroids away from him, he would just be an
ordinary Joe, and his so-called wonder method that he got out of the magazines
wouldnt work any more.
As events came to pass, being on drugs for so long began to
affect his marriage. His wife said, "Look, its the drugs or me." He quit
the steroids because he didnt want to lose his family. Everyone around the gym
started to notice he was shrinking like a prune. One day to my surprise he came to me and
said, "I use to think you were a real screwball and your methods were really goofy,
but now I realize what you said was true. My methods dont work anymore. I was
overtraining just like you said." This guy today is a natural bodybuilder, hes
still married, and hes got a heck of a physique. When I see him at the gym we talk a
lot. I still do my training at Powerhouse in Center Line, so if you want to get a hold of
me, you can call there. The number is 810-755-5330. Later, Ill give you my office
number.
Im training a young fellow at the gym whos been
working out for a couple of years now. He wasnt getting anywhere because he was
overtraining and he didnt have any knowledge of nutrition. He was eating a
high-carbohydrate diet, which is ridiculous because carbohydrates are just sugar. I tell
people not to believe all this crap about carbohydrates building muscle tissue. Muscle
tissue is not made of sugar. Its made of protein. I told the lad I would improve his
physique in about three months 15 to 20%.
I stress very clearly that Vince was a bodybuilder and a
bodybuilding trainer, not a weightlifter or weightlifting trainer. He taught isolation
exercises for the muscles, not group exercises for the muscles. For example, you do a
strict bicep curl, no cheating, with a 25-pound dumbbell and isolate the muscle, so that
only the bicep does the work. Dont use 60 pounds and jerk, tug, pull and swing the
weight. You ultimately must decide if you want to be a bodybuilder or a weightlifter.
I love to intimidate big cheaters by asking them if they
can do 8 sets of 8 reps with a 25-pound dumbbell for the biceps Vinces way. First
they laugh at me. Then they proceed to make big fools of themselves when they cant
even do two sets and I yell at them, "Youve got six more sets to go!"
There is a winner of many titles at Powerhouse Gym who calls Vinces methods too
hard. I want somebody to hand me a violin so that I can play him a tune. He would be 10 to
15% smaller using Vinces methods, but you have to sacrifice something to get
something. Ultimately, he will look a thousand times better in shape, definition and
symmetry, and thats what we really want, isnt it?
Look at the way Frank Zane looked and he wasnt
a big man. He just happened to have a beautiful, beautiful physique. When it comes to
strength there are two types: group strength and individual muscle strength. A bodybuilder
cannot work out like a weightlifter and a weightlifter cannot work out like a bodybuilder.
Vince would stress that to people. While training in Vinces Gym over the years, I
saw him make fools of many people because they couldnt work out the way a
bodybuilder should. They couldnt do it. Ultimately that failure was a blow to their
egos. People are always asking me and my students, "How much can you lift?" We
glare at them and shoot back, as Vince did: "We are not weightlifters. We are
bodybuilders."
My young friend started on Vinces routine and a
superb nutrition program that I laid out for him. Three months later he is happy as a
lark. His buddies all tell him how good he looks. Hes done learning now. Ive
taught him everything that Vince taught me. Hes on his own and hes only going
to get better. He came to me in the first place because someone told him I trained Ron
Love for the 1988 Junior America. He was trying to get cut and I put him on Vinces
meat-and-egg diet with cream and protein and, or course, all the supplements. Ron won
hands down. Bodybuilders all over America were calling to ask how he did it. Ron said he
would like to give me a kiss, but he couldnt because I was a guy!
So this young man came to me for help. He had weak upper
biceps, and he asked me how to develop them not the middle biceps, but the upper
biceps, by the deltoid. Ive asked probably 50 people, including Mr. Americas, Mr.
Universes, and many other supposedly knowledgeable people, but they couldnt help. I
always tell people that the worst person to ask for advice is the biggest guy in the gym
with the best physique. All he can tell you is how to overtrain, and he wont tell
you he is taking steroids. To help the young man increase his upper biceps I showed him
Vinces drag curl, and in about six weeks he was showing fullness in his upper
biceps. Most of your Mr. Americas and Mr. Olympias dont have the
slightest clue how to bring that muscle out. When I ask them about it, they only give me
stupid answers. Vince was the only guy who knew how to isolate and work that muscle.
When I told this young guy about liver tablets and fats and
proteins, he said, "My doctor told me I should eat carbohydrates and remove fats from
my diet." I asked him, "Young man, do you know what substance manufactures every
hormone in the human body? Its called cholesterol, and if you have a low natural fat
intake youll have low cholesterol thats HDL and you wont
be able to gain size. Thats why Im going to get you on glandulars and liver
tablets, amino acids, and mik-and-egg protein." The guy has since done fabulously.
Medical doctors dont know anything about nutrition. As I told you, theyre
prescription-writers.
Lets look at the book, Protein Power. The
guy who wrote that book copied from Vince. They all do. In his book he lists five tribes
that exist on a high-fat, high-protein diet. These people are perfectly healthy. If they
dont starve, they lead long lives. Number one is the Eskimo. He eats fat, blubber,
protein, fish, heart, liver, kidney and spleen. Eskimos never eat any vegetables, and lo
and behold, they are slim people. Number two are the Rocky Mountain men. They ate what
they killed there are no fruits and vegetables in the Rocky Mountains. Third is the
Plains Indian. His whole life was the buffalo. It was his food, his weapon, his clothing,
his shelter. Thats why the white man killed the buffalo to starve the Indian.
Indians didnt eat corn until we put them on reservations. Indians were very muscular
warriors. The Union shoulders called them the finest light cavalry in the world. Then
consider the Bolare of South America and the Masai of Africa. For the Masai, cattle were a
prized possession. They were basically meat eaters and protein eaters. The people of all
these tribes were highly sexed because they had high natural hormone levels. Moreover,
they all had cholesterol levels of three to five hundred with no arterial sclerosis or
heart attacks whatsoever.
The medical profession tells you what it wants to tell you.
It creates a drug after your bad diet has caused a problem. All you have to do is go to
the library and get a medical dictionary Tabors 16th edition, page 1909. Ill
tell you in essence what it says. When you ingest an excess amount of carbohydrates
(sugar), it is converted by the liver to triglycerides and diglycerides, which are a
sticky form of fat that the liver pushes into the bloodstream. Your LDL level goes up.
Your VDL level goes up. Your triglyceride and diglyceride levels go up. You have a heart
attack. What you want to do is keep your HDL level very high, and you do that by eating
fats and proteins like the American Plains Indian. So you see, medical doctors are wrong
again. They usually are. They dont know how to prevent diseases. They just write
prescriptions for the ones you have.
If you want to read a good book, get Not By Bread Alone.
Its out of print, so youll have to look in the public library. It was one of
Vinces bibles. The author was a man named Stephenson, who in the middle to late
1800s lived with the Eskimos for 20 years and ate exactly what the Eskimos ate. When he
returned to Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, they couldnt find
anything wrong with him. He was normal and he was healthy. See what Im saying? The
real culprit in disease is processed and refined foods. The reason Americans are getting
so sick is that theyre eating so many carbohydrates.
In your body, carbohydrates create a condition called
alkalosis. All protein foods are digested in an acid base, all non-protein foods are
digested in an alkaline based. The balance of the human body should be an acid base, so if
you create an alkaline state, you cannot digest your food. If you stuck your finger down
your throat into your stomach you should burn the end of it because the stomach should be
full of hydrochloric acid. Once you eat a high-carbohydrate diet, your body says,
"Hey, why should I bother to manufacture hydrochloric acid?" The word protein
means "most important." Hippoctates named it 2500 years ago. So how to you
create an acid state? As you get older youre going to have to use a little apple
cider vinegar, lemon juice or hydrochloric-acid tablets. When youre younger, just
eat good protein food, take a B-Complex vitamin and zinc because they work with your
stomach and create hydrochloric acid. You always want to keep those levels high.
Vince taught me the importance of hydrochloric acid because
it digests protein. Regardless of how much food you eat, the important factor is what you
digest, assimilate and absorb. Thats the key. Vince said that 85% of bodybuilding is
nutrition.
Hippocrates laid down 10 rules 2500 years ago that the
medical profession has ignored because what he said doesnt make money and, as we
know, the medical profession is all about making money and lots of it. In the USA, 1.4
trillion dollars a year is spent on health care. Health care, folks, is taking care of
sick people, and as I said, there is no such thing as diseases. Nutritional deficiencies
cause most medical problems. Americans are very sick people the sickest in the
world and 45% of our people are obese, all from eating refined carbohydrates!
Here are the 10 rules of Hippocrates:
- The natural way is the only way
- Treat the cause of an illness, not the symptoms
- Throw away your drugs and heal the people with food
- Look to the spine for illnesses (Hippocrates was a
chiropractor, by the way)
- Natural food can prevent diseases
- Do no harm to your patients
- The word protein means most important
- Do not perform unnecessary surgery for money
- A healthy colon is essential
- Do not administer dangerous and harmful drugs
These rules are very, very important. Most doctors take the
Hippocratic Oath. Thats where it came from.
Vince taught me all these truths. Now Im teaching
people, and theyre getting results, just as I did.
When I started to train the young man, he asked me who
Vince Gironda had trained. I told him, "Only practically every top bodybuilder in the
world." They would come to him, but unfortunately none of them ever gave him any
credit. Most people dont know that Frank Zane was a key-club member at Vinces
Gym. He had a key to the gym and would go in at night anytime to train. Arnold
Schwarzenegger was sent to Vince Gironda for two years. Heres an interesting story
you might get a chuckle out of concerning Arnold.
Everybody assumes that when he came to America he trained
under the trainer of champions, Joe Weider. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Weider just promoted Arnold and made a lot of money. Actually they both promoted each
other and made a lot of money. Arnolds German industrial sponsor sent him to Vince.
Of course, Arnold had a pretty big ego, although he was not that good when he started,
being rather on the fat, fleshy side. He walked into Vinces Gym (John Balik, the
editor of IRONMAN can substantiate this story as he was standing right there) and
said, "Im Arnold Schwarzenegger from Austria and Im Mr. So and So."
Vince looked up at him through his granny glasses and responded, "Youre nothing
but a fat you-know-what." For two years, Arnold spent time at Vinces Gym. Then,
after Joe Weider signed him, he went on to become a movie star and multi-millionaire.
Years later, Arnold told Balik that was the best thing that ever happened to him because
he thought he was king of the world and Vince brought him right down, shattered his ego.
That about sums up Vince and says a lot for Arnold.
In Part 2,
Ill tell you more tales of the man who was perhaps the most knowledgeable and
colorful of the muscle gurus. Stay tuned.
Note: Vince passed away in 1997. If you want to learn
more about Vince and his unique training methods, I recommend all of his training courses
and his full-length book, Unleashing the Wild Physique. You can purchase these
hard-to-find collector's items at very reasonable prices from Ron Kosloff, a long-time
friend and student of Vince's. Ron has the exclusive rights to Vince's courses and you can
reach him in Michigan at (313) 372-1807.
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