If you opened up the leading bodybuilding magazines of the 1970’s you would have thought that the most desirable place in the world to be was Southern California. The sun was always shinning, painting the otherwise blue ocean and white sand beaches with a cascade of colors. You could almost feel the ocean breeze as your imagination transported you there. But it wasn’t the sound of the ocean that you longed to hear. It was the clanking of iron due to the efforts of the superhero-looking men that captured your imagination. Joe Weider had used words and images to mesmerize you into believing that the very best and most important thing to be was a bodybuilder training at Gold’s Gym in Venice, Ca.
Among those seemingly larger-than-life characters was a gentleman who truly lived up to the imagery. If they were making reality TV show’s in the ’70s and ’80s, Ric Drasin would have been more popular than anyone named Kardashian has ever been. In fact, his real-life would have probably been thought to be scripted and too perfect to be believed. Beyond gracing the pages of the top bodybuilding magazines as part of the Gold’s Venice crew, Ric was a professional wrestler with regular TV spots, a rock musician, actor, stuntman, artist, and an all-around great guy who people loved being around. Ric came to understand that if you combined hard work and creativity with opportunity and vision, you could create an incredible journey through life.
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“I was born in Bakersfield and went to high school there,” says Ric. “I had joined the Army and when I got out, my father had passed away and I decided I needed to get out of there and do something with my life. My mom said, ‘Why don’t you move to Los Angeles?’ and I thought that was a great idea. I was playing guitar in a rock band and had a deal with Capitol Records for a while. I played Vegas and the Hollywood Bowl, and I thought music would be my thing.”
Ric discovered he had a passion for fitness and exercise at a relatively early age. “I had a girlfriend in high school whose cousins were into working out so I started with them,” he says. “Eventually I joined the YMCA and started teaching myself what I needed to know. She went away to college and I just continued to train and just got bigger and bigger and better and better, and in great shape. I got my bench up to 400, then over 440. It just seemed to work in my favor. You start seeing results and you just keep going with it. You carry around your results. It was a lifestyle, I couldn’t give it up.”
“When I moved to LA in 1969 I went to work for Kellogg’s Cereal for a year, but I didn’t like it. I was training at Bill Pearl’s Gym in Inglewood and someone said, ‘Why don’t you go down to Gold’s in Venice?’ Ric recalls. “I’d never heard of it. I didn’t even know it existed. I went down there one day and ran into Arnold Schwarzenegger and some of the guys and became friends with them. I moved from Torrance to Santa Monica and felt it would change my life if I did. From that point, everything started to take off.”
Ric soon discovered that the opportunities available to him, once he got to LA, went well beyond typical gym success and even music.
“I went into wrestling and that’s where I showed my body off as opposed to bodybuilding. We were on Channel 5 and it started to take off. I went to Gold’s just for somewhere to work out, I didn’t know much about it and I had no idea it was this iconic place, I had been training at the YMCA. The next thing I know I was reading about it in all of the magazines and I become one of the guys in the magazines! Arnold introduced me to Rheo Blair and Joe Weider. Joe Weider came down to train with us and at that time he was putting Dave Draper all over the magazines. The gym was a tiny little hole in the wall but it was a good gym as Joe Gold had built all the equipment. There was nothing elaborate about it, but I had great workouts there and the energy was good. What made it famous was Joe Weider.”
It was a very romanticized time in terms of how bodybuilding and its stars were portrayed on the pages of Joe Weider’s magazines. Ric experienced the reality of living and training there first hand. “When I got there I saw the equipment as was impressed with just the way things were, but I didn’t think that much about it. I started getting some movie work and it all just fell into place. I’ve always been self-motivated, it has to be within you.”
Ric had developed an interest in professional wrestling as a kid. His newfound love for the gym had allowed him to build a physique that led to some great opportunities in the ring. “My father had a store and used to get free passes through the Chamber of Commerce and he used to take me on Thursday nights,” Ric says. “I started to develop an interest and thought it was fun. Years later when I was training at the YMCA, when they had those Thursday shows a couple of wrestlers would come up to the gym and work out. My father had passed away by then, and I was talking to the wrestlers and said, “You know, I wouldn’t mind getting into the business.”
This almost casual inquiry lead to many open doors for Ric. “Johnnie Mae Young (Women’s Pro Wrestling Champion) has a training school,” he was told, “and you could go down and talk to her.” Ric followed the advice and sought out the future Hall of Fame wrestler.
“She looked at me thought I was in good shape,” says Ric.
“You want to start training, I’ll charge you $25 a lesson,” Mae Young told him.
“That was in 1965 and that was a lot of money back then!” Ric recalls. “I went 5 times a week, driving back and forth 100 miles every day, trained with her 5 days a week then came home I did another hour.”
“After 6 months she got me booked on Channel 5. I watched a recording of the TV show that my friend had made and thought, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool!’ and it just took off from there. So I went all over the place and learned a lot and I really liked it. That’s when I decided to move down to Santa Monica and I got a place on Strand and Ocean, 2 bedrooms – 2 bathrooms for $165 a month – right on the beach! Every time I’d go on a tour I’d still keep my apartment and when I’d get back, I’d be right down at Gold’s and back to training. My life was really good. It was a lot of work but I didn’t look at it as a job, I looked at it as a passion. Wrestling in the ring I got hurt, I got bruised, I pulled muscles, I lost teeth, but it was part of the business. Then you come home and workout after that and you were sore, but you’d do it and still follow your diet.”
Ric enjoyed long-running success in the wrestling industry, first as a wrestler and then as a promoter. “I started promoting wrestling in the 1980s. I had the American Wrestling Federation. In 2001 I tore both my quads and that was about the time I decided not to do it anymore, it was too hard on me. But I don’t regret it, I really enjoyed it. If I had to do it all over again I would. It’s opened a lot of doors for me. Today I teach pro wrestling out here and I have a lot of WWE guys come through. It’s $50 a class.”
Ric’s notoriety through wrestling and the magazines led to even more doors opening in his favor. “It got me a lot of TV opportunities and I got a lot of commercial and TV work because I was here in Hollywood,” says Ric. “I got in TV shows and movies because people would know me and see me. And then Arnold would open a lot of doors for me, he was really good about that. I used to go on auditions with him. We did a Chevy commercial together. He asked me if I thought he could do anything in acting and I said no, that’s not your thing! Of course, I was wrong! 🙂 He actually made it happen. He always says something nice about me, like telling people I am a great artist and a good guy. He’s always been really supportive.”
Even though at the time he never saw himself as being overly significant, Ric has a great appreciation today for the special time he was a part of and the special people he was around. “If it hadn’t been for Joe Gold and a handful of us bodybuilders neither Gold’s Gym or bodybuilding would be what it is today.”
Ric left a big mark on the sport in another way, as being the artist who created both the Gold’s Gym and the World Gym logos! “Ken Waller (former Mr. America and Mr. Universe) asked me to draw a logo like the Mr. Clean for a T-shirt, and so we were at Zucky’s Deli and I drew it up. We printed about 100 shirts and they sold out on the first day. It became a huge seller and one of the most iconic logos in the world.”
“In 1976 Joe Gold opened up World Gym because he couldn’t use his own name. He said, ‘Can you draw me a logo?’ I said, well what do you want and he said, ‘I think I’d like a Gorilla.’ I drew the gorilla on the World front and back. So I’m basically married to both gyms because of the logos. Later I came out with my own designs for Muscle and Fitness magazine like ‘Bodybuilders Stay Hard Longer’ and ‘Dianabol – Breakfast of Champions’ and had them on key chains and licenses plate frames and I did really well.”
Ric has seen quite an evolution in the fitness industry from the time he first started out until now. Weight training was not the most widely popular or accepted physical activity back then. Myths were still prevalent like the beliefs that working out with weights would make you muscle-bound, and the popular “all that muscle will just turn to fat!” As ridiculous as those statements may seem today, Ric had to push through them and was part of the generation and one of the people who proved those myths to be untrue. Now, fitness with many forms of weight and resistance training has exploded in popularity from the most elite professional athletes down to the everyday person who just wants to look better, feel better, and live longer. But for everything you get there is something that is lost and the once close-knit, somewhat exclusive group of hardcore lifters have become somewhat lost in the crowd of progress.
“You don’t have the gym camaraderie now that you used to have,” says Ric. “People don’t have the same respect anymore. At my gym, Gold’s Gym North Hollywood, everyone is pretty cool but at some of the other gyms, it’s not that way. I also don’t like when people have their phones in the gym. You’re there to work out not to take selfies and calls. Workout first, then do all that. No one really cares what you look like.”
Ric also notices a difference in the shift of many gyms to cardio-based equipment. “There were no cardio machines back in the day, we dieted really hard; tuna fish and water, burger patties, cottage cheese, eggs, chicken, and a small salad, and no carbs. I got my abs down to an 8-pack doing that. I didn’t want to do cardio. My cardio was a night in the ring wrestling.”
But some things that others may not understand, Ric has the ability to appreciate. “I think people who do Crossfit are in incredible shape, it’s admirable. It’s not bodybuilding but it’s a lot of hard work.”
For Ric what started off as a passion and led to a profession has certainly been continued with the thought of overall health and fitness in mind.
“Well you have to look at the big picture, how long do you want to live and how well do you want to live?” Ric ask. “Do you want quality of life or not? You can go out and eat anything you want and drink all the alcohol you want and possibly live a shorter life, or feel lousy all the time. Or you can go within reason. You don’t have to be a bodybuilder per se but at least exercises and follow a decent diet and try to stay healthy.”
Now in his 70’s Ric knows that his fitness is just as important as ever. “I watch my diet and I always have. When someone asks me what’s going to happen when I quit watching my diet I respond, why would I quit? This is my lifestyle, this is how I eat. Do I always like it, not particularly, but it gets the job done. And I have my share of junk days if I want. But can you imagine if I ate like they did and I didn’t go to the gym at all? I don’t want to be that person. At my age I’d rather be lean and hard than big and bulky, I want to stay healthy.”
Ric hasn’t been so busy living his amazing life that he’s taken it for granted. He has a great appreciation for all that he’s done and for the people who have been in his corner along the way.
“I’m really thankful for the loyalty I’ve had from my fellow bodybuilders throughout the years, and guys I’ve trained with,” says Ric. “And for the fans who have supported my show and write me really nice, beautiful comments and emails, who’ve really touched my heart. It really gets me emotionally that there are nice people out there who think the world of me like that because I didn’t know that was ever going to happen to me. It’s more gratifying than any amount of money you could ever have. I’m really thankful for that,” says Ric.
And despite a few injuries, Ric is still pushing forward in fitness and in life. “I’m still hanging in there to do what I can do. I have beautiful kids and grandkids who I love. My daughter’s always there for me, she’s 28 and a very successful photographer, and is always there to go out and have lunch with me, and my sons as well, but they’re raising families so it’s harder for them. And my friends are very special. You get back what you put out.”
Ric Drasin has accomplished more in his life than most people ever will. He’s achieved many things that can be looked upon with admiration. But instead of looking at himself as anything special, he simply uses his platform to share his journey with others, allowing them to be a part of his journey in retrospect through his memories and stories. Ric elevates the lives of others by sharing the best of who he is and allowing them to connect with experiences beyond their own. If that’s not special then there is no such thing.
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Photo’s courtesy of Ric Drasin and www.RicDrasin.com, all rights reserved)
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