Guy Grundy's Bodybuilding DVD Series: Volume 1

Training Feature: 60 minutes in length

Bonus Features: Interviews, Posing Room, Previews, Sponsors, Extras (theme song, alternate commentary track)

Production and direction: Guy Grundy for Fitnet USA

DVD creator: Vance McDaniel for True Image Concepts

Filmed at Gold's Gym, Venice Beach, California, in fall 2004, released in 2005

Availability: www.GrundyDVD.com

Both an IFBB and NABBA pro, Guy Grundy has lately turned to video production and this film is the first of a planned series of four DVDs per year, each profiling promising bodybuilders. Later DVDs will feature women, but this one profiles and interviews four men, all top NPC competitors hungry for an IFBB pro card: Jerome "Hollywood" Ferguson, Abbas Khatami, Jason Bard, and Richard Farley.

This DVD is informative and exciting to watch. Grundy's wit and charisma lets each athlete relax and explain his philosophy of gym work and contest prep. Khatami and Bard are businesslike and stick to the weights, while Ferguson and Farley talk more about their lives. We hear from a personal trainer working for Charles Glass in the episode with Farley, as well as DVD creator Vance McDaniel, who joins Grundy on the alternate commentary track. The music includes a clever rap song about Grundy's life and career. The production is hip and smart; it draws you into its world.

The training starts with Ferguson, a monster with lats that must get stuck in doorways. As he trains arms, Ferguson talks about his diet, contest prep, stage experience, and family life. He poses between sets, doing a lot more of it in Gold's Posing Room in the bonus feature. He impressed me with his size and completeness of physique. Asked to critique his build, he says, "Just get better and bring it in." Ferguson was 2nd super-heavyweight at the USA show in 2005.

Abbas Khatami comes next, another man living large. Less talkative than Ferguson, he runs through a leg workout that has the sweat pouring off him. He does a leg routine -- extensions, walking lunges in the parking lot, squats -- that he's stayed with for five years. We get close-ups of his quads on leg extensions, and the lunges show off great calves. Khatami doesn't pose between sets. On workout days, he eats eight meals on a strict schedule; on rare off days, he has six. "Consistency is the key," he says. Khatami won the super-heavyweights at the North American in 2004, and he should go pro.

Jason Bard is third. Normally competing in the 240-pound range, he's a freaky 272 here. Despite his size, Bard is a modest man who doesn't bang his own drum. Starting out in a sweatshirt, he strips to a tank top for chest and delt exercises, posing between sets. Currently in Houston, he discusses the possibility of moving to LA. He too has sweat pouring off him by the end of the session. Bard's best record to date is 3rd super-heavyweight at the Junior Nationals in 2002. He's a big man with big potential.

Richard Farley, the last trainer, competed nationally in 2001-02, then took a break. Like Ferguson, Farley uses Tom Prince as a training guru, crediting Prince with simplifying his diet before shows. Training delts without a shirt, Farley talks quite a bit and poses between sets (and in Gold's posing facility, which he calls "an unforgiving room"). His trainer explains what Farley is doing with the weights. Farley has a strong sense of himself and is ready to do damage nationally. Getting exposure should help create the fan base he deserves.

This DVD is an auspicious start to Guy Grundy's new series. Long may it continue.

Mike Emery,
August 2005
www.bodybuildingreviews.net
E-Mail: hifrommike65@hotmail.com

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