Dave Talbot: Audio Analysis

SCHMOE

“I’m in the gym 5 o’clock every morning, training for 2 anarf hours, home, breakfast, little boy to school, back to the gym, and again the same again, another 2 anarf hours, I consume 7 8 9 10 thousand calories a day, for breakfast I’ll have like sorta like 200 grams of oats, twenny scrambled eggs, 2 hours later 2 chicken breasts and rice, then I’ll have another protein shake, then I’ll train, another protein shake, then I’ll have some steak an potatoes, then I’ll have another tuna pasta, then I’ll have another 15 eggs before I wenna bed, early to bed every night, religious dieting, 24/7, seven days a week.” Dave Talbot

So let me get this right...you train for 2 and a half hours? What the hell's bells are you doing in there Dave, arms and legs? Your whole friggin body? Does that include shower time as well? Surely it does. Surely it has to. I imagine it’s a hardcore metal den, so there’ll be no sauna or Jacuzzi to eat into what many would consider enough time for 3 training sessions. And I presume you're not standing around texting between sets.

Home, brekkie, little boy to school...but then YOU GO BACK TO THE GYM FOR ANOTHER TWO AND A HALF HOURS. What!? Are you having a laff!? 5 hours training before noon!? That’s not over-training, Dave, that’s overKILL! But I guess you are always mixing it up right, to keep things fresh and interesting, eh? What, you do the same again?...and again the same again... Wow, you even sound bored saying it, so I can't imagine how long and downright monotonous the physical graft is! 5 hours! And again the same again...

Dave, you consume between 7, 8, 9 and 10 thousand calories a day, but the way you reel off these numbers, it sounds like a single word, like SEVENEIGHTNINETEN thousand calories a day. Then you say you have TWENNY EGGS for breakfast like it’s the most normal thing in the world, like it’s a couple of pop tarts. Ha. Awesome.

2 hours later you have 2 chicken breasts and rice, which is fair enough, but then you say you have ANOTHER protein shake, without mentioning protein shakes up until this point, as if you have failed to mention a prior protein shake you had earlier. Or maybe 2 prior protein shakes you had earlier, because is it unreasonable for me to assume that a phenomenon like yourself who trains for 5 hours before noon and eats twenny eggs for brekkie forgets the odd protein shake? I don’t think it is.

~

Here’s the kicker though. Because then YOU TRAIN AGAIN (or maybe I misunderstand?). Maybe you train so many times a day that you forget your training sessions as well as your protein shakes. Yet ANOTHER protein shake follows (shake-train-shake), then some steak and potatoes, and then ANOTHER tuna pasta. Again you fail to mention any earlier tuna pastas you may have consumed, but I am logical in deducting, because you say ANOTHER, that there was at least one.

Finally you have another 15 eggs before going to bed. That’s 35 eggs a day.

Dave Talbot, BodyBuilder. R.I.P

From the documentary “The Man Whose Arms Exploded.”

Gregg Valentino: The Rambling Freak

I started with FLEX. It was something to look forward to in the month. At times, I would walk out of the shop with 2 issues to catch up on. I wonder who it is the kids look up to today. Kai Green is pretty lumpy.

For me, several years back, Dennis James, Nasser El Sonbatty, Markus Ruhl and Orville Burke spring to mind. Orville Burke had the highest & widest lats known to man. Get ready for his nickname – The Walking Eclipse. I think I heard that he passed away (or, as Clive Barker would put it, turned a corner up ahead of us to be out of sight for a while) but a quick Google search has failed to conclude this avenue of presumption.

No matter. Past or present tense, he was, or is, a FREAKAZOID. In the bodybuilding community, this is a term of endearment. Which leads me to my next point – MD magazine.

If FLEX is a comic, MD magazine is a scientific journal. I flicked through it for years before deciding to buy it. I thought only FLEX existed. I was wrong. Once I went MD, I never went back. MD stands for muscular development. It’s a monthly bible for serious iron shifters. They don’t brush stuff under the carpet. Other magazines won’t even mention the word steroids. In MD, Dave Jumbo Palumbo gave you cycle advice.

It was there where I encountered GREGG VALENTINO, aka THE RAMBLING FREAK. Aw man, this guy. I gotta tell ya. He’s like an explosion of personality and mind. He says what he thinks and he thinks what he says. There’s no messing about with him. He’s blunt. He’s honest. He’s improperly jocular. He’s that guy at the party making everyone laugh. That guy who doesn’t take life too seriously. That guy with the biggest arms in the world.

You’ll never see a column like his. HE WRITES IN COLOURFUL BOLD CAPS AND ITALICS. You can all too easily imagine a stereotypical meathead banging his keyboard with his too-big forefinger, but like Stephen King, the best-selling author of modern times says, writing is emotional, not technical.

I cherished Gregg’s column. I incorporated it into my own writing style whenever I could, and like the old dogs say, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Then, when his documentary aired over here, THE MAN WHOSE ARMS EXPLODED, everyone was raving about him but I was like wow, I’ve already adored this dude for years, get with the program already...

Ba-Bam!