Vince Gironda has always favored the lighter, more slender type build, tho for a time he did try his hand at the bulky type, but returned to the lighter bodyweight as being best for him. Later in the article we show a photo displaying his marvelous back development. In a photo (later still) we see a fine seated pose that shows the grace and symmetry of his physique, while above are two photos, the one on the left at his usual normal bodyweight and condition, while on the right we see him after an intense session of dieting and high repetition work to develop the maximum of definition (1959 and clean). He certainly has about the minimum of fat on his body in this photo.
Two interviews:
Vince Gironda first saw the light of day in the Bronx on November 9, 1917. Early in life he moved to Southern California and attended the Burbank Public School were he participated in track, cross country and football.
From early life Vince has been interested in all types of athletics, and has worked diligently in developing his body. The most noteworthy accomplishments performed by Vince while going to school were the erasing of a junior high pole vault record and the breaking of a high school shot put record. The old record was 44 feet, his new record made in 1937 was 47'1" and has been surpassed by very few inches.
As weight training was becoming very popular on the West Coast, Vince turned to this medium of training in 1938 [five years after the above photo was captured]. Though he was 23 years of age his development progressed very rapidly, and he was pleasantly surprised to find that this medium did such great wonders after he had worked so diligently at swimming, baseball, football, track and other sports with a minimum of success.
His first training was done at the Hollywood YMCA [on yer right] where he trained for eight months. He then heard of the Easton Brothers who operated a gym on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles. Vince trained here at general body building for a period of some three years.
On yer left, inside the Easton's Gym some time ago. It's worth noting that Gironda first saw a "preacher curl" bench that was "invented" by the Easton brothers here and brought the idea with him when he set up his own gym. He also worked for a year as a trainer at Easton's.
Seeing the value of weight training, he opened his own gym at 11262 Ventura Boulevard in North Hollywood on April 1st, 1946, and has been at the same location since.
His studio is operated in a very unique manner; each member has key and the gym is available for training twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Vince lives in an apartment over the gym and usually puts in 12 to 14 hours per day helping his members and finding time to train most every day. He has no employees, cares nothing for more gyms, is very well satisfied with his work and feels that he is doing the area a great service in helping others. And I am sure that we all agree.
Living so near the gym does have its problems though; members often awaken him in the wee hours of the morning with their training problems. He usually gives them good advice, such as, "Train the body with all diligence, it's later than you think," or, "Burn up the gab," and goes back to sleep, unless he becomes so wide awake that he can't sleep and then he leads the advice-seeker through such a workout that bothering him is forgotten for some time to come.
The gym is a conventional type and really looks like a gym as it is filled with many beautiful pictures of the greats in the field of weights. It consists of 1800 square feet of floor space and just about every known piece of equipment. Two pieces of equipment that I observed being used very extensively were the Yoga rainbow bench and the decline bench.
Some of the greats of the barbell game that have trained under the watchful eye of Vince are Monty Wolford, Dom Julianao and national champ Bert Elliott. Bert pulled a terrific clean & jerk out of the air to upset Dick Gillers in the 1955 Nationals championships and became the 165 pound division winner.
Many of the movie people train at Vince's gym, namely, Larry Parks of the Al Jolson Story, who has been training here for ten years. He is really a barbell devotee and trains very religiously three days per week and also participates in a modern dance class three days per week. He is 43 of age, has a nice build and is quite a credit to the barbell game, Gordon "Tarzan" Scott and Clint Walker of the television serial "Cheyenne" train with Vince also.
While visiting with Vince I observed a man in his late fifties with a very good physique going thru quite a thorough training routine. I inquired as to who he was and found out that he was a movie script writer, George Washington Yates, a graduate of Oxford University and had been training some ten years at the gym. His body showed that a barbell-trained body stays with one.
Vince is truly an apostle of what he preaches and lives it daily. He is no faddist, but a very sensible liver, avoiding sweets (other than natural), starches, tobacco, alcohol and so many of the refined and overprocessed foods of the day, supplementing with vitamins to make up for the deficiencies of today's food.
He usually trains from five to six days per week, alternating days on upper and lower body. His favorite exercises are: full lateral raises with dumbbells; parallel dip with bodyweight; one arm rowing with 100 pounds; incline press with 90's and one arm concentrated curls.
His last upper body exercise is one that he borrowed from Jack Delinger; he lies on the floor with a towel through the pulley handle and from hands in a position behind the neck the arms are forced straight.
Occasionally some leg raises are included in the workout; when they are used a set of 50 is done. His lower body program includes: a multiple set of compound sissy squats, done with the heels elevated on an object and weight on the chest, body leaning back going down as far as possible with the hips and back held rigid; next the body is lowered into a parallel squat; while in this position the shoulders are leaned well back and the pelvic girdle is thrust forward so as to resemble a rainbow standing on end. The final part of this program is the parallel squat with the heels elevated. The donkey calf raise is the last exercise Vince performs. This is done with heels placed on a board and a person must sit across the hips, somewhat of an all-four position is taken, legs are kept straight and the heels are raised and lowered from complete extension to complete contraction.
When in earnest training Vince does 8 sets of 8 on upper body and 8 sets of 20 on the lower body. If he trains merely for health he does only half of the preceding amounts.
Vince's father was quite an expert horseman, using this ability in his job as a movie stunt man. Vince, being reared in such an atmosphere became quite an adept on horseback and followed in his father's footsteps. As Vince is an accomplished horseman and also the possessor of a nice physique and alert mind, he has been prepared for various movie parts. He appears from time to time in the Maverick, Gunsmoke, and Cheyenne television series. He is very popular with the movie crowd and this is why so many of them have become a part of his gym clientele.
Vince enjoys reading immensely and spends much time reading various materials, always trying to improve his mind. His favorite types of literature are biographies and autobiographies, Greek and Roman history, and nutritional items. When talking with Vince one gets the Thomas Jefferson idea of him. When discussing law he impresses one as an attorney; medicine, a doctor; nutrition, a dietician or biochemist; philosophy a philosopher and psychology a psychologist. He is a very well rounded man and is good proof that all weight lifters are NOT shallow-minded, self-centered men.
Vince is a ready challenger of any athlete, no matter what field he represents, as he believes that weight trained men are superior athletes and he is ready to back up the challenge at any time. One of the members of his gym, a certain Mr. Brag, is quite well versed in caber tossing, a Scottish Highlander game. The caber is a sixteen-foot long log weighs approximately 100 pounds. The contestant stands astride the log, takes a short run and tosses the caber end over end; naturally the one who makes the longest toss is the winner. Mr. Brag seems to speak constantly of his efficiency at this sport, and after listening to his comments for many weeks, Vince decided to challenge Mr. Brag. The net results -- Vince won. The national caber tossing championships were to be held in Burbank, California, so Vince entered and was the runner up in a sport that he had never attempted before his 43rd year.
That was quite an accomplishment and I must borrow an old phrase in saying that WEIGHTLIFTERS ARE LIKE CHEESE, THEY GET BETTER WITH AGE, and truly, barbell trained muscle functions more efficiently at any sport!
Enjoy Your Lifting!
1981. 176 pages.
