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Three minutes of training footage of the man in that video.
Though strength sports rarely have child stars, those youthful stars are certainly not immune to this issue either -- that's why when Phil Grippaldi, former protege to a lifelong criminal, bouncer, and bouncer to supermodel Twiggy got arrested as the world's oldest crack dealer at 61, no one was surprised.
Born in 1946 in New Jersey, Phillip Salvatore Grippaldi started training at age 14 under the watchful eye of a massive 6'4", 250-pound amateur, non-competitive bodybuilder, bodyguard, possessor of 23" pre-Synthol arms, and low-level gangster . . .
. . . Mike Guiblio. [a.k.a. "Guns" Guiblio, but not the loaded kind, Larry. No matter, Scottie. Beam me on up to that Vince's Gym in heaven anyhow. Should I take the cannoli? Leave the kelp?]
Mike had little Grippaldi trashing his arms for three hours a day in the company of likeminded spaghetti-gobbling bench-bros, and by age 16 all of his hard work paid off. No, the kid didn't end up in a cemetery from doing hours of curls and close-grip benches every single day. He ended up a 16 year old kid with 19" arms weighing 190, and likely more sopping wet vag thrown at him on the street on a daily basis than most of us will see in the span of our lives. [The first one I saw. In a small parking lot. I'm six or so, walking through. Some guy leans out the window of a big-fin car I'm wandering by and yells, "Hey, kid . . . ever seen one-a these?" And there it was, wide open. Okay. Quite the deal, and I knew right away I wanted hair just like that when I grew up. Not the pussy, the greazy ducktail on the guy.]
Shortly thereafter, Grippaldi met the coach of the legendary Keasby Eagles weightlifting team, which churned out badass American Oly lifters throughout the 1960s and '70s. In his weightlifting debut, Grippaldi smashed the Junior World record at 90 kg. by 35 pounds, then entered the Senior Nationals for his second meet and placed second to world record holder Bill March with another Junior World record in the press with a 348 lb. attempt. The following year he switched coaches and broke his own record again with a 352 press. At this point the dude with arms so big that he was studied by Soviet scientists was on the verge of bending over the Eastern Bloc and making it his punk bitch all by his lonesome.
That, however, was not exactly how things would play out.
The grimly serious Grippaldi's arms were so hyperter, hyperto, jacked from bodybuilding done in his teens that the Russian weightlifting experts at the Soviet Academy of Sport, in an article translated for American magazines, diagnosed those prodigious arms as the cause of a technique problem that inhibited his ultimate success. Phil may have been okay with that. He didn't get Olympic gold, but a silver medal and a band of worshippers is not too bad.
In 1968, Grippaldi beat lifting legend Bill March at the Nationals like he was a 20 year old Mike Tyson going up against an aging Joe Frazier with half the heart of Marvis, clocking a sick 1,055 three-lift total.
Grippaldi went on to be a sensation on the international circuit, racking up some incredibly impressive finishes for an American whose nation had turned its collective back on weightlifting 20 years prior.
Working as a teacher by day and putting in 20-30 hours of training a week, Grippaldi continued to log massive numbers, even after his pet exercise, the Press, was discarded like a used condom coated in peanut butter to cut down on the duration of weightlifting meets. In spite of his nearly legendary success, however, an elbow injury sustained in competition in 1980 destroyed his Olympic gold aspirations, although he attempted an Olympic comeback utilizing nothing but thousands of 1,000-pound-plus leg presses,
and that attempt predictably went nowhere.
One would assume that's where the slide toward crack dealing started, but given the fact that his pre-Frenn mentor was a low-level mobster and lifelong criminal, it was probably unlikely that this washed up strength phenom could have ended his life any other way. No one's quite sure how a teacher consumed with lifting could only have an ending crazier than the beginning, it seems, but it seems only fitting looking at the way he lived. [On a related note: people who simply can't understand the attraction of top shelf dope may want to try a few 500 buck Saturday night into Sunday morning solo runs. There ya go!]
Phil Grippaldi's Stats
Height : 5'5", six three when high.
Weight: 195 pounds.
Arms, sources vary, 20-22"
Clean & Press: 396
Clean & Jerk: 451
Snatch: 341
Okay, the good stuff now,
plain brown wrapper, all clean-cut lads,
very discrete . . .
PHIL GRIPPALDI'S BASIC WORKOUT ROUTINE
Mon/Wed/Fri
Front Squats
Back Squats
Snatch
Power Clean
Tues/Thurs
Press
Snatch
C & J
Bench
Power Rack: four 10-second holds in full extended position (no innuendo)
Sat
Total on all three lifts.
Unlike most Oly lifters of the time, Grippaldi absolutely refused to quit curling and benching, and for that reason often had trouble making weight at meets.
Though most Ozempic lifters thought benching would impede their shoulders' flexibility, Phil just knocked out shoulder dislocates before, during, and after benching to maintain a full range of motion.
For fuck sake, there's one in every bunch . . .
Additionally, Grippaldi was famous at his gym for breaking down lifts into their component parts and training his weak points doing that. This is how he built his Press to such prodigious poundages. He'd identify component parts and use unrelated lifts to strengthen different parts of each lift, rotating the assistance work on a weekly basis. Calling Culver City. Hello?
To make his sick overhead press so disgusting it caused nubile women to spontaneously ovulate in his direction, Grippaldi did the following three things:
1) Blast his body with a wide array of non-shoulder specific assistance exercises.
2) Focus on, hang on, what was that about making women spontaneously combust, FOCUS on press-related assistance exercises.
3) Refine his technique like a hipster refines his palette for wine tastings. Note: Find out if there's wing tastings like that and remember to bring a bucket.
In regards to the first point, Grippaldi identified his abs and intercostals as incredibly important factors in his press. Just as it'd be idiotic to build a house on a stinkhole [now ya tell me], it'd be stupid to attempt an overhead press with a weak midsection. According to the man himself:
A lifter must have excellent abdominal and intercostal strength and to that end it is imperative that the lifter employ some of the following abdominal exercises in his routine. Ab work aids in creating the "giant spring." During the Olympic press the abs and hips must be coordinated to create the initial thrust. On a related note: remember to drive the hips forward as the weight is being pressed. A lifter must isolate and work on his thrust (again, no innuendo).
Everyone's heard about the exercise du jour in that era for abs. Guys like Nubret and Zane were famous for building their shredded midsections with thousands of unweighted Roman chair situps. While Grippaldi gave no shits about stepping on a bodybuilding stage [ah, the AAU. 2 a.m., following the weightlifting meet a fetid, threadbare blanket gets tossed over a basketball hoop in the main gym and a 100-watt lightbulb flickers on an off as it hangs from a rope overhead], HE DID take a page out of the bodybuilders' book and started doing Roman chair situps holding a 20-kg. plate behind his head or on his chest. Unlike Zane, who did sets of over 50 reps, Phil held his shenanigans to 20 reps or less.
The old-style Roman Column was quite a deal. It fits in well with the mid-19th Century "Muscular Christianity" movement, especially if one nails his feet to the column crucifixion-fiction style. Three blind guys walk into a cathouse and the Madam says, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they screw."
After he knocked out abs, Grippaldi would Phil-ip over and do weighted hypers to build thick spinal erectors. This was the exercise of the Russians and powered some of their most famous lifters to greatness just on the strength of their spine. Though some Russians did these with a 220-lb. barbell behind their neck, Grippaldi stuck a plate behind the neck or held it to the chest and kept his reps between 5-15.
His direct shoulder assistance work was pretty conventional:
70-degree incline barbell press
6x5
Seated overhead DB press
6x5
Push press
5x3
Isotonic/Isometric rack pressing,
a.k.a. Isometronic.
This bears some explanation, as it was incredibly popular in the '70s but has almost completely fallen out of use, likely because racks only come with a single set of pins. Should you have access to two sets for a single rack, here's how these are done:
Break the lift into thirds.
Set on set of pins at the bottom third of the rep and the other set at the top.
Press the bar from one set of pins to the other, holding the 3rd rep against the top pins for 3-5 seconds.
Unsurprisingly, it's with the world's oldest crack dealer that we see the first echoes of modern Ohio Westside, as Grippaldi shared their pretending that lifting was more important than living life, and I'll point out that this was not shared at all by the other Westside guys (recall that the original Westside guys were mostly real athletes from real sports).
From the McKee link above:
"There was something wrong with us. We chose a sport with no pot of gold and no rainbow. Weightlifters didn't get appearance fees or product endorsements, do commercials or interviews, and most spent their entire income on their training and travel to competitions. Some lifters got fed up, and turned pro wrestler, or switched to the new sport of professional strongman competition; the strong legs and backs of Olympic lifters made it a natural transition.
"And we usually passed on fun. Fun was tied to spontaneity outside of the weight room. Skiing for the weekend? Might get injured. Trip to the Outer Banks? Where should I train? 'You're going to the gym on Christmas day?' my wife demanded, incredulous.
"'It's Wednesday. Wednesday is Jerk day. I'll just be a couple of hours,' I said.
"'It is Jerk day, isn't it?' She turned away. Why the turn wasn't permanent, I'm not sure.
"All that for the possible reward of respect from a few thousand or so Olympic lifters in the country, of being a Grippaldi. We few, we slap-happy few."
So, he might not have ended up a world champion . . . and he might have ended up a piece of shit slinging crack on the corner, but for a decade, Phil, "The Man With Four Legs" Grippaldi was the baddest man under 200 pounds the world had ever seen, and was regarded as a god. He represented everything awesome about an entire generation of lifters to that generation. For ten years, no one looked back to the past for inspiration -- they just looked across a dimly lit shithole of a gym to a dude with sides of beef for arms and an abject hatred of being a mere human.
Enjoy Your Lifting!
Zach Even-Esh mentioned he was trying to track down Phil to try and get the story out of him on what happened post-70's. I tried to steer him towards Bruce Klemens since Bruce trained with Phil at Belleville Barbell Club in the 70's and Bruce is still in New Jersey (and he's always been a nice guy in my interactions with him.) I don't think it went anywhere, but man Grippaldi was damn impressive!
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