A TALE OF TWO GYMS : On Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, You Have a Choice: Work Out With the Iron Guru--or at a Place That Sells a ‘Strawberry Sensation Protein Pickup’

Mike Leifer has just finished arm-wrestling 150 pounds of iron in an exercise called the triceps push-down. He is in the basement of an always-open Nautilus Aerobics Plus, one of those high-tech glitter palaces commonly referred to as the singles bars of the ‘80s. A stereo pipes in Elton John’s “Act of War,” serenading Leifer and the other body builders who are sweating bullets all over the chrome equipment.

Nautilus Aerobics Plus is on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. It is right across the street from Vince’s Gym, but it might as well be on a different planet. While the Nautilus Aerobics Plus is to physical fitness what McDonald’s is to fast food, Vince’s Gym is a down-home, meat-and-potatoes operation. Somehow, it has managed to survive nearly 40 years without a juice bar. Vince Gironda, the owner, doesn’t have a boutique like his competitor, but he does sell T-shirts, one of which says:

“Vince’s Gym: no pool, no music, no chrome, just iron.”

Among body builders, Vince’s Gym has a reputation as a serious place to get into shape. Real serious. A sign warns potential social butterflies: “Do not talk during workout.” And Gironda is just the guy to back it up. He’s got a 49-inch chest, a 29-inch waist (on a good day), arms like Popeye and a bite that’s worse than his bark.

“Vince places a great number of demands on people,” said his assistant, Madeleine Tambellini. “In fact, if you don’t do the things he says, he can be downright insulting.”

Across the street, interaction seems to be the rule. The Nautilus club is a place to be and be seen. It seems to attract more than its share of soap stars, performers and models, and it is also the quintessential yuppie hangout. Yuppie women love the club because they can show off their latest striped Spandex leotard and whip the circulatory system into a frenzy before rushing home to the Cuisinart. Yuppie men love the club because it combines two of their favorite activities: perfecting the bod and picking up girls.

“It’s cheap, it’s open late and it’s got a lot of good-looking girls,” said Leifer.

But if a stranger walked in for the first time, he’d assume that anybody over the age of 35 was excluded from joining. The club doesn’t discriminate. It just intimidates. More than 1,000 good-looking young people use the facilities each day. Flabby middle-aged people do become members, but as soon as they check out the firm, beautiful bodies, they usually don’t show up again, presumably resigned to live a life of video-taped Jane Fonda workouts in the privacy of their own homes.

Vince Gironda is an old-fashioned, no-frills guy. And he doesn’t think much of Nautilus Aerobics Plus. About the only compliment he’ll give it: “Working out there beats sitting around a bar and drinking.”

Paul Filipow, a manager at Nautilus, puts the rivalry in perspective. “We appeal to a different kind of person (than Vince’s),” he said, “and we want to make this a fun place where you can come in and do your thing and split. We’re a little on the social side, which is positive. But it’s natural for people who meet on a regular basis and are doing something in common to get together. It’s not like meeting in a bar. The whole sleaziness is gone.”

This a tale of two gyms. If you’re the type of person who yearns for the good old days, Vince Gironda is your hero. But if you think progress is our most important product, then Nautilus Aerobics Plus is your kind of place.

Gironda was there at the beginning. It was a time when Mom and Pop owned grocery stores and the only gyms in town were upstairs at the YMCA. When Gironda opened his gym in 1946, most body builders worked out at the beach (and you always thought Muscle Beach was named for the bivalve mollusks that also hung around there). Women came to ogle, not participate. The ideal male body was big and bulky. Gironda was the exception. Just 5-foot-6, he developed a highly defined body in the early 1940s with muscles that looked as if a sculptor had whacked away at them with a chisel.

“Vince was always ahead of his time,” said Jan Kuljis, an instructor at the gym.

Sometimes, he was too far ahead. During World War II, most able-bodied men were in the Army and those who weren’t, like Gironda, were considered “weird,” he said. And able-bodied men who weren’t in the Army and worked out with weights were, well. . . . “Body builders just weren’t accepted back then,” Gironda said. “It was a secret thing to lift weights. We couldn’t tell people or they’d think we were gay.”

A versatile athlete at Burbank High, Gironda became interested in body building when he saw a photo of a Mr. America in a magazine. He said he built his own barbell by putting a couple of flywheels on a pole, but “I didn’t know what to do with it.” When he was 21, he joined the Hollywood Y, “the first real body-building gym in the area.”

In the mid-1940s, Gironda’s physique came to the attention of Hollywood studios. There weren’t many men around who were built like Greek gods, so Gironda began getting bit parts in movies as a spear carrier. Typically, he’d be the guy in a loincloth standing behind the king wearing an expression that said, “Mess with the king and I’ll rip your lungs out.” He was never a threat to Errol Flynn, but he did make a lot of friends in high places. His gym became a haven for actors, and studios began sending him their stars to have them whipped into shape.

One of the many books Gironda has authored is titled, “How I Train the Movie Stars.” Other books (“A Muscle Has Four Sides” and “Balanced Arms”) aren’t as glamorous, but the subtitle in each is guaranteed to catch your attention: “When Vince speaks, the stars listen.” As if they had a choice.

“I am a hard taskmaster,” Gironda said. “I have no patience for screw-ups.”

Vince’s Gym is located in a small cinder-block building that has been painted a traffic-stopping blue. The parking lot is tailor-made for four-wheel-drive vehicles. Cratered and dusty, it has never been paved. A sign warns interlopers that their cars will be towed, probably by Vince with one hand. It is a deterrent for Nautilus Plus customers who can’t find a parking space across the street, which is usually the case.

Welded onto Vince’s thick wooden door is a 20-pound barbell that doubles as a handle. Pull the door open and step into the past. The 1,500-square-foot interior is dark, almost gloomy. Worn red carpeting is on the floor. Almost all the equipment has been designed by Gironda. The benches are covered with real leather that still crackles to the touch. There are no fancy machines. On the back wall, barbells are lined up vertically in a rack like rifles. Overhead, an ancient ceiling fan sucks the stale air from the room. There’s no music. Instead, the sound of running showers mingles with the grunts coming from the three men who are working out.

Jan Kuljis is instructing one of them. Like all of Gironda’s instructors, she is a body builder who had to work out at the gym before Gironda would hire her. “We have to instruct his way,” she said. “This place is run the way Vince wants and allows.”

One of the things that sets Vince’s Gym apart is individual instruction in what Tambellini calls “cosmetic body shaping.” Non-supervised memberships cost $200 for nine months, although instructors are always available for advice. A nine-month, appointment-only course with your own personal trainer is $400. Gironda also sells “The total commitment competition preparation,” a nine-month course for $1,200. Iron benders like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno have studied under the man who’s called “the godfather of the gyms” as well as the “Iron Guru.”

Kuljis wants something to drink. Gironda doesn’t have a juice bar because juice, he said, “is mostly sugar.” So Kuljis has to send someone next door to get her a Coke at a Thai restaurant. Sending out for a drink may be primitive in these days of one-stop shopping, but Gironda’s clients evidently appreciate the Spartan approach.

“This is the real thing,” said Richard Schwartz of Sherman Oaks, referring to the gym, not the Coke. “It’s not social, it’s serious. If you’re not serious they don’t want you around. I’ve been at gyms like the one across the street. They’re only social clubs. I want to get in shape. They know what they’re doing here.”

There is little love between the rival gyms. Gironda considers the Nautilus a Johnny-come-lately in a long line of “health clubs” or “spas” that, he believes, sell pain but no gain, flash but no substance, that “sign up a lot of people and then go out of business when the grosses go down.” Lots of health clubs have gone belly up since Gironda opened his gym, but he still sounds a little bitter when he says, “I could have been a millionaire many times over if I’d have gone commercial.”

Gironda’s biggest complaint about the Nautilus club is that it doesn’t offer expert instruction and individual attention. Nautilus instructors get two weeks of training. A first-time member is taken through the Nautilus line and given a basic idea of how to adjust the seats, set the weights and do the exercises properly. From then on, the customer is on his own, and the Nautilus room is seldom supervised.

“They’re encapsulated in a machine, and if they’re not aware of the muscles they’re using, and if they don’t use the correct form, they’re not going to get the results they want,” said Tambellini. She did, however, add: “For some people, some activity is better than none.”

Members at both clubs have misconceptions about each other. Nautilus members think the people at Vince’s work out for five hours at a crack. Vince’s members think the people at Nautilus Plus tiptoe through a 20-minute workout. In reality, the average--and optimum--workout at each club is 45 minutes to an hour. Results, as in any endeavor, usually depend on the individual. And at Vince’s, there are people who pay their money to join and are never seen again.

But just what is going on across the street? When Nautilus Plus renovated an old Market Basket about a year and a half ago, traffic increased to such an extent in the Studio Village shopping center that parking spaces are at a premium. Some adjacent business have hired guards to make sure the 30-minute parking limit isn’t exceeded. Almost every day, a tow truck is called to haul away a violator. At peak hours, and especially on Mondays (when people make up for wild weekends), a person may have to park a few hundred yards away on Ventura Boulevard.

At the entrance to the club, where a dozen people in leotards and body suits are milling about, the current special of the month is advertised in bold block numerals on a plate-glass window: $7.50 a month plus a one-time fee of $49 will get you a lifetime membership. Or, if you’re a math whiz, you’ll realize it’s cheaper to take plan B, which is two years for $149.

Every self-respecting health club is required to have a boutique, and Nautilus Plus is no exception. In the lobby, a woman in a headband is staring into the glass display case and deciding whether to buy a $13.99 pastel hand weight (for color-coordinated jogging outfits). Also available are rhinestone earrings for chic workouts and designer overnight kits with toothbrush and razor just in case you make a meaningful relationship in the outdoor Jacuzzi.

At 6 p.m., the upstairs gym is buzzing. Loud, throbbing music. Banks of florescent lights. Sixteen whirring, computerized Lifecycles, all in use. Both 11-machine Nautilus lines are packed. But it is the aerobics class that grabs you. The room itself is about three times larger than Vince’s entire gym. The front wall is 90 feet of mirrors. At the moment, about 125 people are swaying and stretching in unison, lined up like a military drill team, watching themselves in the mirrors as they blow off the calories (about 450 an hour, according to an instructor). Aerobics classes run from 6 in the morning to 11 at night.

A man in shorts and tank top walks up to the juice bar and orders a “Strawberry Sensation Protein Pickup” for $2.50. He can also play the lottery at the juice bar. Very California.

Filipow, a recent transfer from Pasadena (there are 21 Nautilus Plus clubs in the Los Angeles area), thinks the club is the last word in total physical fitness. The tanning booths, the nutritionist, the parties, the saunas, the steam rooms and the overall ambiance, he said, are exactly what the modern person wants and needs. He disputes Gironda’s concern about the lack of instruction at the club, which has 40 staff members and 20 aerobics teachers.

“We train people to train themselves,” he said. “We do cut people loose after explaining everything, but our machines are safer (than free weights) and you don’t need as much instruction. And we have everything they have across the street, but we don’t swear by free weights the way Vince does. We offer alternatives.”

One of the alternatives is the social scene. But some of the women who work out there aren’t thrilled by all the attention they get from the men. In the aerobics class, the women appear to be looking in the mirror at themselves, but there’s little doubt that the men are watching pecs other than their own.

“I think it’s annoying,” said Jodi Ross of Sherman Oaks. “I’m here to work out. There’s one guy who comes here and picks up on every girl. Some girls feed off it. Even if I didn’t have a boyfriend, it wouldn’t interest me.”

Picking up girls in gyms is different than at bars. Opening lines, for instance, have to be tailored to the situation. But the men at Nautilus Plus seem up to the task.

“You hear some great lines,” Ross said. “One guy came over to me and said, ‘You don’t look like you even need to be working out.’ Guys try to tell you how to do an exercise or that you should use more weight. Anything to start a conversation.”

Irma Gonzales of Sun Valley was so leery of conversation with a stranger that she demanded to see a press ID. “This is not a social paradise,” she said after spending an hour on the Lifecycle. “I don’t talk to anybody. People say I’m snotty. But I come here everyday for only one reason: to work out.”

At Vince’s Gym, allowing women to even walk through the door is a relatively new phenomenon. It took Gironda more than 35 years to open his establishment to members of the weaker (as in lifting weights) sex. He even built a gym for them on the second floor, theorizing that they’d prefer being as far away as possible from those big perspiring brutes. He was wrong.

“The ladies wanted to work out with the fellas,” Tambellini said, “and Vince found out that they worked as hard and were just as sincere about it.”

So the women’s gym is almost always empty, and Gironda goes there when he wants to be alone or, in this instance, pay the bills. Sitting on the floor with his checkbook, his back straight and his limber legs crossed, he looks like a proud Indian chief. Vince, a widower, refuses to divulge his age, fearing it would turn off “the girls at L’Express. I did not go through the expense of dyeing my hair to tell you how old I am.”

There’s no doubt, however, that Gironda is in remarkably good health, with the mind and body of a young man. Aside from lifting weights, Gironda eats according to his “animal wisdom,” downs handfuls of Argentine liver pills and opposes all drugs, including steroids. Ask the girls at L’Express. He isn’t slowing down.

“The less you move, the closer to death you are,” he said, “and when you stop moving, you’re dead. People are always looking for the easy way out. But God help me, I hope I never find the easy way. I like a good struggle.”

Ever since he got into the sport of pumping iron, Gironda has been struggling. Acceptance and recognition haven’t come easily, but on Nov. 23 in Atlantic City, N.J., he will be inducted into the Body Builders Hall of Fame. And that’s what really makes him different from the crowd on the other side of Ventura.

“I’ve got knowledge,” he said. “I teach everything I’ve learned over the last 50 years. The barbell is a magic wand. It can do as many things as you can figure out for it to do. So you see, equipment doesn’t make a gym. My best facilities are between my ears, not out there.”