I recently visited your gym in Ventura Boulevard, North Hollywood, for the first time in more than 20 years.

I was surprised to see that virtually nothing had changed.

I appreciate your enthusiasm in helping bodybuilders because you were actually training a fellow when I walked in last month, and if I remember correctly when I left your gym after my first visit (1960 or 61) you were coaching on the gym floor in the same enthusiastic style.

But my point is…Why don’t you now move with the times and go with some of the new exercise machines like Nautilus and some others I have seen?

I am only interested in giving my gym members the best. When you visited me in the sixties, I had apparatus such as pulley thigh extensions, moon benches, preacher benches with steep and shallow angles, special lat and pulley units and so on…that no other gym on Earth had.

Now that everyone has caught on to my ways, you want me to change. I will only change when I find something better…I will not change for the sake of changing.

My gym is one of the bastions of genuine bodybuilding advice. My staff and I actually coach and train with our members.

If you walk into some of these bodybuilding factories built in huge warehouse space, chances are you will be told: "that is a lat machine…this one is for shoulders…Over there is the Biceps unit".

In most cases you will be expected to fend for yourself. In my gym I show you how to work a particular muscle. I give out information and I have been doing this for 40 years.

When a guy comes into my gym and asks how to work his chest I do not say: "The chest machine is over there!" I check out the guy’s individual requirements and make corrective suggestions.

Thank you for reminding me that my gym has hardly changed over the years. It shows a stability seldom seen in our modern world.