ARTICLES ON THE DUNCAN Y TRAINING EXPERIENCE


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THE ONCE AND FOREVER "PRINCE OF DUNCAN Y"- SERGIO OLIVA

INSIDE THE DUNCAN Y TRAINING EXPERIENCE

I am often asked by serious students of the Golden Age of Bodybuilding ( roughly 1948-1968 ), "what was it like to train at Duncan YMCA during the sixties when Bob Gajda was the program director, equipment builder, and the man who lured virtually all of the top bodybuilders, weight-lifters, and power-lifters to visit, teach, and / or train at what many dubbed the "Midwest Mecca of Muscle?" They wonder if there was some sort of "insider magic" conjured by the "Wizard of 1515 W. Monroe" ( *Bob Gajda ) that made the facilities there so productive, unusual, and conducive to drawing a large number of really intelligent iron men? Well, to tell the truth, outside of the obvious lure of Sergio Oliva calling Duncan Y "one" of his several training bases in town, Bob Gajda did indeed "conjure" a magical, mystery, training facility out of his imagination and vision that was totally unlike anything before or after in the world of progressive weight training.

When you arrived at 1515 W. Monroe, you had to climb up a very steep stairway to show your YMCA membership card to gain admittance to the small door behind and to the right of the front desk attendent. Then it was an equally sttp walk down a stairway in order to reach the locker-room area. Once there, you had to show your YMCA ID again before getting a locker, changing clothes, and then climbing another step set of stairs to reach the main floor, which was essentially a basketball court that was just beyond Bob's small Director's Office room on your right. In the Directors Office you could sometimes find Bob working hard with his plans to A) Create a world class training facility beyond compare at Duncan YMCA, B) Win the AAU Mr. America title, and the Mr. Universe title,  Help his good friend Sergio Oliva become the absolute best bodybuilder on the face of the earth, And finally, but no less important, he wanted to create a setting where ANYONE could come in and have all of the equipment, knowledge, and "space" needed to reach whatever physical improvement goals they were seeking ( within the limits of their individual, god given potential of course.... back in those days most weight trainees understood the meaning of the word "limitations" ). Bob was always ready and willing to drop what he was doing to have a chat or longer discussion with a Duncan Y trainee regarding workout formulation, exercise variations, and improvisations, and matters dealing with the addition of food supplementation to training programs. Bob was a reallly "cool dude" who got along with virtually everybody who trained there during the mid-sixties when I not only trained there, but I was also, for a couple of years, one of Bob's assistants ( one of his little "muscle elves" as one member jokingly told me back then.

Ah, but I have digressed. When you passed Bob's office on the right, and found yourself at the entrance to the basketball court, you would then turn to the left and take a few steps up ( on a spiral staircase that, if you followed it upward, led you to the running track that encircled the basketball court from above ... and was the primary training area for my training to gain two inches on each calf in two weeks ( without steroid drugs, i.e. Dianabol - the so-called "breakfast of champions" in that era ) by following to the letter a workout that Bob devised for me as I trained for my second attempt at winning the Mr. Illinois physique title in 1967 ). But if you jut went up a couple of steps and went through the doorway, you could just turn to the right and see that you were in a huge room that had a lot of exercise machines along the east wall in front of windows, a weight-lifting platform area on the south end, and a unusual, but not all pressed together like today's gyms have their equipment, assortment of dipping bars, gymnastics horses ( modified for "Preacher" bench biceps curling ), and a few experimental pulley devices that Bob designed, devised, and hand built, that were usually the equal of anything you can find in a so-called "high-tech" weight training facility todayl In short, you had everything you needed to develop any desired physical improvement in that room. And Bob kept updating the equipment and the floor layout from time to time in order to make the training experience all the more conducive to continual improvement without becoming bored by either the setting, the equipment, or the way one "felt psychologically" while in the facility. It was in total contrast to the west coast style of putting a lot of equipment in a room with the effect being what eventually led to what we see today as gyms, fitness centers, and health clubs filling floor space with what can only be called a "factory warehouse" style where you have rows and rows of equipment that looked like they are all being readied to be crated up and shipped off to parts unknown. Bob somehow understood how the floor plan of a gym served to keep the mind fertile and evolving if incorporated into the overall gym layout intelligently. I never got the feeling of being in a "cramped" training space at Duncan Y, and that served to make every single workout there like a breath of fresh air mentally. When you train in a space that has actual "space" to move around in without bumping into, or colliding with equipment, weight plates, or other trainees was like nowhere else I have trained in before or since...with the exception of the training facilities Bob designed in the seventies, eighties, and nineties - Sports Fitness in Hillside, Illinois, Sports Performance and Rehabilitation Institute in Carol Stream, Illinois, and the Gajda Sports Fitness facility in Hillside, Illinois.

Near the south end of the room where the weight-lifting area was located, there was a door on the east wall that opened to lead into a dark staircase that spiraled downward into what I jokingly always referred to as the "Duncan Y Dungeon." At the bottom of that staircase could be found a small room where Bob often set up new pieces of equipment that he dreamed up and built. It also had a good number of dumbbell pairs for upper-body and arm development training specifically. And there was a special little overhead lighting setup on the west wall of the "Dungeon" that was used by those who trained for bodybuilding competition to develop and refine posing routines under the watchful eye of Bob Gajda, Sergio Oliva, and other experienced competitors who might be around at the time. The mini-posing platform and overhead light were seldom used except during the last week or so before a bodybuilding competition. The setting was serious, and the comments shared were quite often just what the competitor needed to hone their posing routine to a razor sharp edge.

Because of the way everything was spaced on each "level" of the facility, there was a real sense of individual freedom to train without impeding others or "claustrophobia." Today's trainees seldom find themselves blessed with such "freedom." And when they do find the facility's with adequate "space" for comfortable training, they are confronted with equipment that is seemingly designed for use by people the size of plow horses or elephants. I have noted over the decades that the equipment designers have ( since the seventies ) tended to build massive sized equipment that is not at all built for use by normal human beings. The equipment manufacturers have often told me point blank that they design their equipment to "inspire the little guys and gals to GET BIG...as BIG as the equipment. Ha, as if getting BIG is the be all, and end all, of progressive resistance training. That is one of the more idiotic conclusions that the abuse of steroids and assorted other growth drugs have had on the design and development of the equipment that fills the modern training facility. The truth is that humongous sized equipment is NOT necessary in order to attain even HUMONGOUS sized muscular development...if that is you goal in training. At Duncan Y, Bob Gajda designed equipment that,even massive men such as Sergio Oliva, Bob Walters  Phil Lowe, Bill Seno, and others of note for their muscular size back then wer able to use effectively and safely. In fact, one of Bob Gajda's inventions in the eighties, a frictionless pulley system that was, in my opinion a greater iron game invention than even Arthur Jones fantastic Nautilus training machines ( which I absolutely LOVE...along with the HAMMER training machines that Jones son, Gary, developed in the eighties ). Anyone who used Bob's frictionless pulley machine immediately wanted to have one. It did not look imposing enough, or like a Rube Goldberg homage to visual and mental bafflement enough to interest major fitness facility operators around the country. Therfore it never gained the popularity needed to get it placed in a meaningful number of gyms and training centers. It was a great, great training tool.

The equipment and the way it was fitted appropriately around the facility was one of the prime reasons why so many people enjoyed visiting and training at Duncan YMCA during Bob Gajda's tenure there. Add to that the always cool and calm way that Bob greeted and treated each and every person that used the facility, and you have a setting that I have not seen anywhere else in all my years of involvement in the iron game. There was no factionalism, no grandiose displays of egotism, no racial discrimination, and no distractions whatsoever to the training experience at Duncan Y back then. I have to mention that there were no women trainees at Duncan YMCA primarily because it was a male-only service operation and physical training facility( YMCA stands for Young Men's Christian Association ). there were a number of YWCA ( Young Women's Christian Association ) facilities in the Chicago area at the time, though I must admit that I cannot for the life of me recall a female in the sixties or seventies who wanted info on using weights for exercise programs, except some of the female track and field athletes who trained with the AAU track and field teams that trained at the University of Chicago.

Regarding the training methodologies used at Duncan YMCA back then; No, there were not a lot of people at Duncan Y who used Bob Gajda's PHA concepts or philosophy. the vast majority of trainees trained the way they wanted to train, and they all gained to a greater or lesser degree. Those who sought out Bob and some of the iron game greats who frequented or visited the facility usually were the ones who made the most physical improvement. That said, all was life, liberty, and the pursuit of personal training happiness at 1515 W. Monroe. If you wanted the best training and nutritional advice in the world, you could get it at Duncan YMCA. If you wanted to just "create your own path to physical improvement, you could do so at Duncan YMCA. If you wanted to be in a place where you could "do your own thing" and mix in all of the myriad of training methods, techniques, and styles of training that could be observed on any given day at Duncan Y, you knew you had found the ULTIMATE physical culture facility.

More on training at Duncan YMCA in the sixties, coming soon. And, believe it or not, my book on my personal training concepts, principles, and theories, will be available for purchase before Thanksgiving.