Warrington’s Finest training with The Dragon Slayer - article and photos courtesy of Neil and Rich
Neil Ashley trains with IFBB legend Rich Gaspari
I was lucky enough to be invited to this year’s FIBO in Germany in May to help out on the Gaspari stand and get the chance to hang out with Rich Gaspari, Flex Lewis, Mark Alvisi and Ava Cowen. I was really looking forward to it for months but it was all up in the air (pardon the pun) when the Volcano erupted in Iceland, sending an ash cloud over the UK and parts of Europe, shutting down airports everywhere! The date for the UK airports re-opening was put back day after day, so in the end a car was hired and we drove over to Germany on the Wednesday morning to ensure that we got there in plenty of time and give us chance to make sure the stand was set up correctly. Three of us took the trip, with Andy Cartwright of Body Temple (my sponsor), and his training partner Dean Jameson travelling with me. It took us 9 ½ hours with a few stops for food but mainly for loo breaks for Dean, he was drinking too much coffee and water, not a good combination for a long road trip!! All in all the drive wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, we went over to France on the channel tunnel train then on through Belgium, the Netherlands, then to Essen in Germany, and the only traffic jam we hit was in France for 15 minutes due to some road works. During the drive over we found out Rich’s flight to Germany had been cancelled just as he arrived at the airport in America and it wasn’t looking too good for the other Gaspari athletes! I was a bit gutted to be honest but it was going to be a great experience anyway.
When we got to the hotel we dropped our bags in our rooms then headed to the exhibition centre and finished off setting up the Gaspari stand. Andy then got word from Rich saying he was on his way via France, would be there first thing in the morning and Flex would arrive Saturday morning! Unfortunately Mark and Ava wouldn’t be able to make the trip over this time.
After a poor night’s sleep (thanks to Dean’s snoring!) and some breakfast we headed over to the FIBO to open the stand and meet Rich, it was good to see him again and he looked like he’d put a bit of size on since I’d last met him at last years Body Power expo. He told me he’d put about 12lbs on since last year, then asked if I was training while I was out here? I told him I’d brought some training gear with me just in case we had time to go to the gym but I wasn’t optimistic; Rich then asked if I fancied a workout with him? Maybe delts and triceps or a leg session? Geee…let me think…Hell yeah!! So I played it cool and said “Yeah, I’ll put you through your paces if you want?” while grinning like an idiot!! I said I’d find a gym for us that opened early in the morning so we could go before the FIBO started, this suited us both as I train at 6am at Body FX in Runcorn, and Rich trains around 6.30am at his local Gold’s Gym in New Jersey.
I then text messaged my girlfriend Jo back home immediately and told her Rich had asked if I wanted to go training with him, she phoned me straight away and asked if I was going?! Of course I was!! I mean, how many times will an IFBB legend, 3 time Mr. Olympia runner-up, first ever Arnold Classic winner and winner of countless Pro shows ask if you want to go training with him??!! What Jo really meant to say was would I have chance to go? Well, I was determined to find a suitable gym to make this happen, it was an opportunity too good to miss! Then, 5 minutes after I’d finish talking to Jo, one of my training partners phoned me up in a bit of a panic wanting to know what the hell was going on! Jo had only texted him and said I was dumping him as I’d got a new training partner!! I assured him it was just a one-off session and that we’d be training as normal next week!
With a bit of help from our hotel receptionist, a local fitness centre was located not too far away which opened at 7am and had a good range of machines and dumbbells up to 45kg - perfect. That evening we all went for a meal and I told Rich about the gym and suggested we did delts and triceps in the morning, and then we could see what equipment they had for leg training for the next workout. It sounded good for him so the plan was, I’d get a taxi from my hotel at 6.30am, and pick up The Dragon Slayer en route to the gym; with that sorted I could then concentrate on getting some decent carbs in me! My eating hadn’t been too bad so far, I was having a Myofusion shake, scrambled eggs and oats for my breakfast, then mid-morning and mid-afternoon I was having a couple of Myofusion sachets and fruit, while dinner was chilli con-carne with plenty of rice. I’d have another Myofusion sachet around 6.30pm to keep going till the evening meal which was steak, baked potato and spinach. That night I went to bed as soon as we got back to the hotel to make sure I’d get plenty of rest for my training session, and to go to sleep before Dean came in and started snoring; he suggested I put some toilet paper in my ears to act as earplugs, so that’s what I did! It didn’t work though and I looked like some strange firework with the blue touch paper sticking out of my ears. Dean’s a lovely fella, but my God can that boy snore!! I’ve never heard anything like it, every morning anything that had been left on the sideboard between the beds was on the floor due to the room shaking from his snoring!!
I got up at 6am and had a Myofusion sachet and a coffee, before I left for the taxi at 6.30am. I had a sachet of ‘Super-pump’, that’s one of the perks of the job working on the Gaspari stand, there’s always some free samples knocking about! The taxi arrived at Rich’s hotel a little early and he was a bit late, but that was understandable seeing as he’d flown over from the States the previous day and was suffering a little bit from jet lag, but we made it to the gym for just gone 7am.
After mixing our ‘Size-on’ drinks we hit the weights room and started warming up, first exercise was the seated shoulder press machine. We did 4 sets of 10 reps to warm up our delts, triceps and joints, nice and light to get the blood flowing, the first 2 sets were at 30kg and the last 2 at 40kgs. Then we did 5 working sets increasing the weight with every set, 50kg, 60kg, 70kg, 80kg and 90kg (1 plate off the full stack) - Rich did 10 reps with all his sets and only needed a slight spot on his last 2 reps with 90kg. I kept up with him until we reached 80kg with which I did 2 sets of 8, I was quite pleased with myself as I wasn’t too far behind him, although I needed a spot on my last 2 sets.
Next up was the seated dumbbell side raises; now I’d been warned that Rich could still use some serious weight with this exercise. I had already decided that I wasn’t going to try to keep up with him on these, the last thing I wanted was to get injured using poor form trying to impress him so I stuck to my usual weight keeping my form nice and tight. Rich did 5 sets of 10 reps again, 15kg, 17.5kg, 20kg, 25kg then 30kg dumbbells all with good form and no swinging; I did just the 4 sets (I think I got away with it as he never said anything!) -10 reps with 12.5kg then 3 sets of 8 reps with the 15kg dumbbells. It’s not that heavy but it feels spot on, Rich said that he doesn’t really focus on the number of reps and sets but goes more by feel of the muscle being worked, and as I was finding out, he prefers volume training. We finished off the seated dumbbell side raises with a triple drop set using 8 reps per set; Rich led the way with 35kg dumbbells, then 25kg then 17.5kg. I managed 8 reps with 15kg, 10 reps with 12.5kg then 12 reps with 10kg.
Standing cable side raises was the last delt exercise doing one shoulder at a time; these were done in a non stop fashion for 3 sets. Rich did 2 sets of 10 reps with 20kg then finished with 12 reps for 25kg whereas I did 1 set of 10 with 15kg and finished with 2 sets of 10 with 20kg. By this time my shoulders were pumped to the max and burning like mad!
We then moved onto triceps, first up was pushdowns using the rope attachment, again we started off light and increased using the weight with each set doing 12 reps. Rich kicked off with 25kg then did 40, 50, 65, and 75 - I was a plate or two behind him with 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60.
Next tricep exercise was overhead EZ bar extensions, we did these sitting on the preacher bench with our backs against the pad to give us some support but not getting in the way when we came to the bottom of the movement. The first set was for 10 reps with 20kg, followed by two sets of 8 reps, Rich using 30 then 40kg, I did 25kg then 30. Rich was very kind and made sure I was using a full range of motion by pushing the bar all the way down at the bottom of the movement so the backs of my hands were touching my shoulder blades!
With those done we did lying skull-crushers with an EZ bar on one of the tricep pushdown/bicep curl cable machines using the bottom pulley set up. First set Rich did 12 reps with 40kgs and I used 35kg for 12, then we both did 45kg and 50kg for 10 reps and 8 reps with 55kg.
Lastly we moved on to the pushdown machine which braced your upper arms in place and using a hammer/parallel grip, we both did 2 sets of 12 reps with 35kg then 45kgs and finished off with a drop set. Rich did 10 reps at 55kg then 10 with 30kg and I finished with 10 reps at 50kg and 12 reps with 30kgs.
We managed to complete our workout in 75 minutes, there was little talking between sets and no rest, working at a nice steady pace, luckily there were very few people in the gym at that time and nobody realised who Rich was so we could crack on. There was a good selection of leg machines including a squat rack and leg press so we could do legs on the following day which was a Saturday. But the gym didn’t open till 10am at the weekend and we needed to be on the stand for 9am when the doors were opened to the public. Unfortunately, we were 10 minutes late for our taxi and he hadn’t waited for us so we had to go wandering trying to find one, we did manage to flag one down not too far away though.
Back at the hotel I had my usual breakfast of Myofusion, scrambled eggs and oats, then showered and got to the FIBO for 10am, an hour late but it wasn’t as if I’d had a lie in! The Boss had wanted to go training so we went training!! Later that morning when it quietened down a little after the initial opening rush, Rich said “Neil you gotta find us a gym so we can train legs! We’re gonna hammer legs! I’m gonna make you spew!!” Nice one, thanks mate. After a third day of being on my feet for ten hours with low carbs talking to people about the Gaspari range and mixing samples (its surprising how tiring it is!), I thought to myself ‘I ain’t gonna try too hard to find us a gym!’. Its not as if my legs are lagging behind my physique, I should actually cut right back on my quad training to let my upper body catch up. Anyway, I couldn’t find a gym that opened early enough, so that was that, the leg session was off. I told Rich at the evening meal that I couldn’t find a gym, he was a bit gutted and I was a bit relieved!
It was a fantastic experience training with Rich Gaspari, one I’ll never forget, he was one of the first bodybuilders I knew about when I first started training nearly 20 years ago. One of the first copies of Flex magazine I bought had a tricep training article with lots of hardcore workout photos of Rich battering triceps with Eddie Robinson (I think), I remember the last exercise he was doing was overhead tricep extensions using a 200lb dumbbell! Never in a million years did I think that one day I’d be doing a tricep workout with him!
Next year I’ll find a gym in Essen that opens early at the weekend before we set off for Germany and I’ll take plenty of oats with me to keep my carb levels up! Hopefully, one of these days I’ll be able to blag my way into a couple of training sessions with Rich and Flex Lewis when we’re all together again. Now that’d make a nice article! To finish this article on a personal note, I'd like to thank Andy, Shaun, Gemma and the rest of the team at Gaspari UK for all their help, support and sponsorship, also to Mark Rigby at Body FX Gym in Runcorn, who got the ball rolling and introduced me to Gaspari UK. I'm very proud and pleased to be member of the Gaspari UK team - please check out the UK Gaspari Nutrition website at www.gasparinutrition.co.uk , for all the latest product news as well as the blogs from all the UK Gaspari athletes. Until my next article... NEIL ASHLEY
NPA Mike Williams Classic Overall Champion 2008
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