As I began my work with Gray at the end of 2009, I knew of him as the guy who created the Functional Movement Screen, and a guy who commanded my attention whenever he popped up in an instructional video or podcast. He’s one of those brilliant instinctive guys, so much so that his seminar participants sit in amazement, and wish some of that vision would rub off on them just by watching.

I knew all this about him, but what I didn’t know was how hard working he’d be, or how attentive to my publishing needs. The six months we spent editing, rewriting and adding material to the new book Movement turned out to be his busiest travel season of the year. And yet each morning new material would show up in my email box, each day’s additions more interesting than the previous.

Anyone involved in the science and art of human movement will find something unexpected on every page of Gray’s new book, a one-liner that will leave you pondering for hours. Movement is at the printer now, and will be available in late July.

When we first put the davedraper.com website online with it’s few pages, we were astounded by the email response, both in quantity, which was remarkable to us, but even more in terms of quality. Scores of readers, mostly men, but even then a few women, wrote to tell their stories of how they began their decades-long training careers in their garages or basements, or out in the yard, inspired by a photo of Dave on the cover of Muscle Builder, or in a Weider ad in the back of a detective magazine, or even perhaps a comic book. Sure, Dave knew he’d had a following back in the late ’60s (I wasn’t around at the time, blissfully unaware of gyms entirely until 1980), but he never could have guessed any of the bodybuilding fans of the Golden Era would remember him today. It was quite something, and inspired us to pour our energies into developing the website to share that camaraderie.

Over the course of marketing our gyms during the ’90s, we discovered Dave could write. I’m sure that’s surprising to many of his readers to see it written like that, but that’s exactly how it happened. He isn’t a reader, and hadn’t written more than a letter since high school, but as it turns out, his pondering and internal musing really shines on paper. For a year straight — I think it was 1996 but I can’t remember for certain — Dave wrote an exercise column in a local entertainment weekly that we paid $286 a week for (haha, yes, we’re kind of idiots that way) to market the gym. It didn’t work particularly well as a gym advertising tool, but boy did people like that column. Even today we bump into people in town who comment about reading Dave’s columns in the Good Times.

Eventually Dave decided to write a book, and after doing research into getting it published, we decided rather than scramble around for a mainstream publisher, a process that often takes years and ends in failure, I’d school myself in typesetting and figure this thing out on my own. That book became the very popular Brother Iron, Sister Steel, and the typesetting evolved into editing and then to cover design and finally became On Target.

Click here for Dave’s bio sheet, and here for a few more links of Dave’s history.

What others are saying about Dave

Dave on NPR, 27-minute radio interview, mp3 file

Coach John is an accomplished lecturer of the weight training sports, and commands a large following among competitive athletes and fitness enthusiasts worldwide. Dan has a reputation for advocating adherence to basic weight training principles, such as focus on form and nutrition. His popularity is due in part to his simple and effective approach to “the basics” of weight training. He’s also a heck of a writer, weaving stories of life into his thoughts on training.

Currently, Dan is ranked as a Masters Highland Games athlete, holds the American Record in the Weight Pentathlon and holds numerous National Championships in weightlifting and throwing. His most recent competitions were the Pleasanton Highland Games, August, 2008, where he took first place in the Master’s Division (50+), and the US Master’s Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Spokane, Washington, last summer, where he placed first in the discus, second in the hammer throw and third in the shot put in the 50-55 age division. He rounds out his athletics with two Masters degrees (history and religious education); he’s married to Tiffini and has two daughters, Kelly and Lindsay.

After a couple years of email communication, I met Dan and Tiffini at the Pleasanton Games, where I watched him win his division and when we began a conversation about the publication of his first book, what you know now as Never Let Go. A few months later another conversation led to his headlining our 9th annual IronOnline camaraderie weekend, which we filmed for DVD, the popular four-part Never Let Go seminar series released in the fall of 2009.

His website is danjohn.net, where he updates a few times weekly. He’s regularly online answering questions in our forum here on his Q&A deck. You can also reach him via email at dan@danjohn.net for interview or article contribution requests.

He’s currently at work on his second book with On Target, and is co-authoring a book with Pavel Tsatsouline.

Prior his work at MBSC, Michael was the head strength and conditioning coach at Boston University, where he continues as the strength and conditioning coach for men’s ice hockey. The eight years prior, he was the strength and conditioning coach for the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League; he was also the strength and conditioning coach for the 1998 US Women’s Olympic Ice Hockey Team, the Gold Medalists in Nagano, and served as a consultant for the USA Hockey National Team Development Program.

Michael has produced more than a dozen instructional videos — the newest being the recently released Functional Strength Coach 3, a 10-DVD set. His first book, Functional Training for Sports was a huge seller, and his second book, Designing Strength Training Programs and Facilities, has helped thousands of trainers and coaches during the setup of their training facilities. These books and DVDs are available through Perform Better.

My introduction to Michael was through his Functional Training for Sports book, a gift in 2004 from my friend Byron Chandler, who knew chronic pain was starting to get the best of me. I read the book, but alas, I was not yet ready to understand what his training philosophy had to offer. I thought it was a good book with interesting ideas… for coaches and athletes, not for me.

Fast forward a couple of years when I began to get a clue; I re-read FTS, and went to work on the program. That training began a learning process that shaped my physical training and learning for the past several years. Fast forward again, as Michael and I began occasional email conversations, which led to our discussion earlier this summer to a project that became the new book, Advances in Functional Training.

It’s been an enormously busy summer and fall for him; I hope he’s taking a short break between projects, but I’d be willing to take a bet he’s got something simmering already. Michael lives with his wife and two children near Boston, and can be reached for article or lecture inquiries at his MBSC facility via his website, bodybyboyle.com.

Dr. Tyler has lectured around the country on subjects such as diversified diagnostic procedures, nutrition, homeopathy, herbal medicine and various alternative treatment modalities. He is currently a member of the California Chiropractic Association and serves on the California Chiropractic licensing board.

Dick was an actor for twenty-six years, during which time he starred on Broadway and later in a television series, winning numerous acting awards. Dave and I occasionally visit Dick and his wife, Penny, and on one such visit we spent a few hours in his chiropractic clinic, where Dick checked Dave over, and I snooped around the office. The halls are covered with old images of Dick, the young Dickie Tyler being awarded this or that, and one enlargement of a rave describing how Dick carried the show, a real beauty of a New Yorker review. There’s even a Norman Rockwell painting, the image of the youngster Dick very clearly the model.

His abiding love of strength and well-developed muscles led him to writing for Joe Weider in the magazine Muscle Builder, and those finances put him through chiropractic college. College during the day, haunting the local gyms at night, from Vince’s over to Joe Gold’s, and on the weekends out to the Weider office or Vasquez Rocks for article photo shoots with Artie Zeller, Russ Warner and the bodybuilding heroes who were their subjects. Those stories from 1965-71 became the book, West Coast Bodybuilding Scene, which in the maturing fans brought those long-ago memories to light, and introduced a new generation to the most agreeable Dick Tyler.

Just the writing of that sentence puts me in mind of what a pleasure it is to be around Dick, and what a joy it was to publish that book.

It all began so quietly. The men started to assemble in the cool of the evening. The sun set over the horizon of the Pacific and the soft blue of the evening was beginning to accept the blackness of night. An ocean breeze drifted across the sands of the beach and wound through the crooked little streets of the city. The lights in the homes and apartments flicked on as the windows of the hippies’ pads glowed with crazy hues of blue or red bulbs and the sounds of hard rock music fought those of Lawrence Welk. It was night in the city of Venice. Still they came. First there was Zane. He quietly nodded to Zabo, who was sitting behind the desk, and went upstairs to the dressing room. Soon Franco and the current Mr. Belgium, Serge Jacobs, arrived.

Draper was next, followed by Eddie Giuliani and Mike Katz. After a few minutes, Don Peters came in and within seconds, Arnold arrived. Gold’s Gym was now busting with championship lumps. Already at work was Ken Waller, who is one of the most massive bodybuilders of all time. The cannon was loaded and was ready to explode.

You see what I mean?

Click here to read the rest of that excerpt from West Coast Bodybuilding Scene.

You can read his thoughts about the current state of chiropractic medicine, and read an excerpt from Alternative Chiropractic by visiting alternativechiropracticbook.com.

Stella is a bodybuilding enthusiast whose fitness adventures began far from the dumbbell rack: She started walking in her early efforts to shed 50 pounds. Walking led to recreational running and eventually she completed a marathon, raising money for a leukemia patient in the Vancouver International, 2000. Along the way, she grabbed a barbell, learned how to squat, press and curl, and embarked on a lifelong love affair with muscle and iron.

At one point in her search for training answers she happened upon our IronOnline forum; it must have been 2001, because when we first met in person, at our Las Vegas IronOnline gathering in the fall of 2002, we were well on our way toward publication of her book, Stella’s Kitchen. I vividly remember sneaking her away from a crowd of friends to show her a few sample covers for her impression. Tears in her eyes answered my question: Yes, she was happy with it.

That book sold out its first print run and is well into its second. The readers like the healthy ingredients, they like the simplicity of the cooking, and they like the detailed macronutrient breakdown of the tasty results.

Stella continued to be a mainstay in the forum as my forum co-moderator, Bill Keyes, embarked on a coaching mission to teach her to squat big. What a success that was, all of the women and many of the guys watching her climb well past their top squat numbers on her way to a 330 PR. In fact, you can read the journal and even follow along on the six-week training program if you’d like; here’s the link to Stella’s Adventures in Squatting.

She contributes cooking and fitness material to various exercise and food magazines and websites, and she excels in teaching others the skills of healthy food preparation. Stella’s healthy cooking website can be found at stellaskitchen.com, where she also puts out a free monthly newsletter. She is available for interview by phone or email. Please contact her via email at stella@stellaskitchen.com to arrange an appointment.