Three local residents are testing the lengths of their own strength and endurance.
For much of the past year, Stephen Drake, Johnny Lee and Dr. Rocky Battaglino have met twice a week at Franklin Health and Fitness, pumping out thousands of pushups and flys [repetitive dumbbell movements] at a clip. After gradually increasing the length of their workouts each month, the trio has reached a seemingly impossible milestone.
“Today we’ll do 1,600 pushups and 1,600 flys, so actually it’s 3,200 movements,” said Battaglino, demonstrating the group’s unique process. “I turn over a card to start – 7 – so we do seven pushups and seven flys. Then I turn over the next card – ace, and this is 10 – so we’ll do 10 pushups and 10 flys, until we get done.”
“If we flip over a four, three and a two, we’ll add them together and do nine, so it’s never less than seven,” said Lee.
After starting off flipping through two decks of cards – which equates to about 800 movements – the group has added 100 more to their routine each month, and plans to complete nearly 30,000 this month alone. The process stems from a regimen Battaglino learned more than 20 years ago.
“It orginiated back in South Florida. I had a trainer at the time – actually the trainer that trained Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – trained four of us for about four months, and he taught us quite a bit,” he said. “Dwayne used to come into the gym, and you got to know people in the gym, and his [trainer’s] name was Billy Beck. We were just talking and he said, ‘Would you like to be trained?’”
Ever since his brief stint with Beck, Battaglino has adhered to his rigorous routine, and at 75 doesn’t look a day over 60. Roughly two years ago he and Lee struck up a conversation, and laid the foundation for the trio’s unique pastime.
“I just admired ... somebody at his age that is in that good of shape and consistently works out, so we just started talking,” said Lee. “He was doing planks [a core workout involving holding one’s torso off the ground], and you know it looks like you’re just sitting there, but planks are tough. I was working out and in between sets I’d see him over here, and I’d run over here and jump down on the floor and do some planks with him. ... So then we started talking, and he said, ‘I used to do a pushup routine.’ He started telling me about it and I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll give it a try,’ and it about killed me.”
Nearly a year into their routine, the trio have certainly reaped the fruits of their labor, sporting oversized muscles throughout their arms, shoulders and chests. In planning to reach 4,000 movements per session by year’s end, Battaglino says he plans to continue his regimen as long as possible.
“For me to be the best me, my mind, my body and my spirit all have to be in alignment,” he explained. “If I’m not healthy my spirit is off, my body is off, my mind is off – they all have to work together. You can’t be healthy spiritually if you’re not healthy physically. I feel they all have to connect, and when they all connect, it works. There was a time when it didn’t, and I didn’t understand that, and then I learned you have to have that to be the best you want to be.”
To see the work the trio puts in each session, it’s easy for onlookers to feel they should up their own routines. To that end, the group hopes to help encourage others to follow suit.
“He inspires a lot of people,” said Lee of Battaglino. “People that are not working out with us but are just in here every day, they expect to see him – when they come to the gym he’s gonna be here, every day. ... We leave, and he does another 30 minutes on the bike. He’s got a screw loose, but we keep coming back to follow him, so what does that say about us?”
“You can encourage somebody else. You can help people. That’s what we’re here for – to help one another,” said Battaglino.”