Total Physique Online

Dave, our prayers are with you for a speedy recovery!! You are looking terrific!
Reprinted with kind permission from Laree and Dave Draper (thanks guys!)
From Dave Draper’s Post Column

Staying The Course

My very first job working for a gym was as the weekend manager for Vic Tanny’s on Journal Square in Jersey City, circa 1961. Friday they gave me a key and told me I started Saturday at 9am. Imagine, 19 years old and I’m already a gym manager… I’m on my way, I’m a cool guy. As I finished my workout that Friday evening I felt my lats and triceps assume a permanent flexed position — it sort of hurt, but it was the price one had to pay. Saturday morning I witnessed a miracle. I unlocked the prominent glass gym door at the top of the broad staircase and the gym was gone. Overnight. Where did it go? I did a series of 360’s with my mouth open and it still didn’t appear. Gone to the next county, no doubt. I didn’t need no stinkin’ gym job anyway.
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Dave, our prayers are with you for a speedy recovery!! God Bless You and Laree
Reprinted with kind permission from Laree and Dave Draper (thanks guys!)
From Dave Draper’s Post Column

What’s the purpose of the newsletter, anyway?

Certainly, Laree presents links to entertaining and informative articles relative to your interests, and offers cogent commentaries. Very stimulating! I, on the other hand, in search of something qualified to say, pluck at my keyboard like a hungry rooster. I finally give up and head for the gym. This is done, of course, with a grand invitation amid my chicken-scratching for you to join me.

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Dave, our prayers are with you for a speedy recovery!! God Bless You and Laree
Reprinted with kind permission from Laree and Dave Draper (thanks guys!)
From Dave Draper’s Post Column

A gym is any place an athlete and his training apparatus meet: chinning and dipping bars in the basement, the track and field at a local high school, stairs and hills in the neighborhood, a punching bag hanging in the garage or a bar and a heap of dinged plates in the corner of a bedroom.
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Dave, our prayers are with you for a speedy recovery!! God Bless You and Laree
Reprinted with kind permission from Laree and Dave Draper (thanks guys!)
From Dave Draper’s Post Column

I park a block from the gym and can hear the clanking of plates echoing down the street. Come to think of it, I hear the clanking of plates in my dreams, under anesthesia and under water.
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Dave, our prayers are with you for a speedy recovery!! God Bless You and Laree
Reprinted with kind permission from Laree and Dave Draper (thanks guys!)
From Dave Draper’s Post Column

There comes a time in the physical development and training savvy of a dedicated lifter when he or she can enter the gym and proceed unencumbered by routine or forethought. Disciplined and ordered, practiced and attuned, he’s able to move from exercise to exercise and muscle to muscle according to urge, need and desire. What a rewarding and satisfying manner of training!
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Dave, our prayers are with you for a speedy recovery!! God Bless You and Laree
Reprinted with kind permission from Laree and Dave Draper (thanks guys!)
From Dave Draper’s Post Column

Yipes, Stripes! Another Draper newsletter in my email. Hmmm…do I have time to read it?… do I wanna read it?… should I? Maybe I’ll come back to it later. What will the subject matter be this time? Another monthly split routine, achieving winter muscle mass, losing bodyfat in preparation for the spring, overcoming yet another growth plateau… gag. Why can’t I just take a pill… have a treatment… hire somebody… or fugitabodit?
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Dave, our prayers are with you for a speedy recovery!! God Bless You and Laree
Reprinted with kind permission from Laree and Dave Draper (thanks guys!)
From Dave Draper’s Post Column

Today I am reminded why I don’t take voluntary layoffs. They are forced upon me like poison when I least expect them.

As the year rolled to an end, I promised — threatened — I’d take a week from my training to allow the body’s systems to rest and repair. I had the telltale signs. The joints were glowing, the central nervous system was shorting out, the heart was racing, the digestive system was rebelling, the muscles were aching, the spirits were sinking and the mind was numb. No pump, no burn, no drive.
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Dr. Mauro G. Di Pasquale: Weight and Fat Loss - Effects of Calcium, Magnesium, Vitamin D
Reprinted with kind permission from Dr. Mauro G. Di Pasquale
From MetabolicDiet.com

Calcium, while generally considered a key element for maintaining bone density and strength, also has other health benefits including reducing blood pressure,[1] and more importantly for both men and women losing weight, the prevention of any adverse effects of dieting on bone mass and a preventative effect on osteoporosis.[2]
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Dave, our prayers are with you for a speedy recovery!! God Bless You and Laree
Reprinted with kind permission from Laree and Dave Draper (thanks guys!)
From Dave Draper’s Post Column

January is not exactly hanging around gathering dust. No cobwebs in the 31-day stretch, as we note we?re already past the halfway mark and the days are getting longer. Reluctant to welcome another year, many of us poked cautiously at its edges — will it be better, will it be bitter, shall we commit, what?s our strategy? And, then, oh, no, here we go again. The days, like cars of a freight train, are rumbling by.

Big plans or no plans, we cannot ignore the first month of the year, as if it were a pause for contemplation or a moment to reflect. Jump right in; be strong and courageous, hopeful and alert. Hesitation is behind us, bombers. Hesitation is doubt; doubt is absence of trust, and where no trust exists there is fear. Fear paralyzes.
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Back to the Rock Pile: Don’t Mess with the Formula
By Dalen Randa
For www.EliteFTS.com

In a sense, back to the rock pile is the basics - the fundamental parts of a training program that make it work. I had been a periodization style single ply lifter for about ten years. I thought this was the basics for me, and I stuck to the fundamentals of this for all that time. I made small gains over the years until I was a medium level lifter with best lifts of a 551 lb squat, a 501 lb bench, and a 589 lb deadlift.

I was resistant to change because this was all I knew. I kept reading about Westside Barbell and the conjugate method of training. However, I also kept hearing from other lifters that those training methods were meant for lifters supplementing with anabolics. They told me that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with recovery and that I would fail at it. I knew that there was a gym 30 miles away from where I lived where they trained using those styles, but I just knew that it wasn’t for me. But then circumstances changed.
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