Hanging out with Gregg Valentino for a day

Yesterday, Strong & Shapely Gym in East Rutherford New Jersey, held a charity event to help out the Tomorrow’s Children Fund, the New York Blood Center, and the Salvation Army. The seminar was advertised on the Muscular Development message board, and I always like to go to this kind of seminar (I showed up to the last one too). It’s always interesting to compare what I see being said on message boards with how it actually plays out offline.

There were a ton of people there, and you can check out the flyer below to see some of the people who attended. Some local (’Jersey) bodybuilding talent was on hand, and a bunch of people from the nutritional industry. I had initially gone to donate blood and forgot my I.D. (why do they need my I.D. anyway?), but when I returned with it, they had already left. On my first trip there, I brought a case of ALR Industries Magazines with me, to donate as give-aways. I made a donation to the Children’s Fund, and on my way in to the gym (yes, for the second time), I saw Gregg standing outside, and we ended up talking for a bit (we recognized each other).

I’d always said I was a big fan of Gregg’s, so it was nice to get a chance to chill out with him for a bit. I ended up staying at the gym for about six hours, just b.s.-ing with Gregg and his other buddy (also named Greg) for most of the day. Greg, for the record, was the only person in attendance with more ink than me (I have 30 hours of tattoos), and is the guy seen in “Bigger Stronger Faster*” with Valentino and Bell in the Diner Scene.

There were numerous other writers and people involved with the industry in attendance (a guy from MuscleMag, etc…), and mostly we talked about the industry (you may be interested to know that people in the industry never really talk about training or diet or nutrition with each other, we just talk about the industry itself).

Gregg was scheduled to do a seminar which was being taped by the other Greg, so they had a video camera on them - so an on-the-spot decision was made by Gregg and Joe Pietaro to do an interview with me for MDTV. We grabbed some space in a cardio room, and did a pretty long interview. I don’t know when it’s coming out (or even if it’ll make it to MDTV), but it was a lot of fun and totally unexpected. Look for that (*unless it ends up on the editing room floor) some time in the near future.

Gregg’s seminar started at around 5pm, and there were some people who traveled pretty far to see him, so he really gave it his all….even when the tape (the second one) ran out on the video camera, he was answering people’s questions and giving 100% effort into his talk.

Originally, the seminar started out in the Cardio room, but he wanted to prove some points about different exercises, so we spilled out on to the gym floor, and he put some volunteers through some different movements. About half way through the seminar (which, once again, was being taped), some guy in a Hulk Hogan costume jumped in front of the camera with Gregg, and started some kind of speech about believing in yourself and what a great success story Valentino is. I have no idea who he was, and I think he might have been some homeless guy who wandered in off the street. Gregg was a really good sport about it (I wouldn’t have been), and let the guy talk for just long enough to convince everyone that he probably had escaped from a mental hospital; then Gregg went on with his seminar.