Arm wrestlers, start your training

Dan Gallo, left, and Ben Skorepa lock up during an arm wrestling training session in Gallo’s basement Tuesday. Watching the bout were Darcy, left, Tyler and Angie Goodkey, Jacob Lea and Alex Marritsas. Allan WISHART/Free Press

It started off small.

“This was a family room,” Dan Gallo says, standing in a basement room in his house. “Then I started to get equipment to put in here.

“I was lucky to have a wife who would put up with that.”

Now, the room has one small couch, and is otherwise filled with training equipment, equipment with one purpose – arm wrestling.

“I first started putting the room together 10 or 11 years ago. It’s really nice now, having the second (arm wrestling) table in here.”

On this Tuesday evening, there are six or seven other wrestlers using the room.

“We train down here once a week now, on Tuesdays,” Gallo says. “A lot of times there will be 10 or 11 wrestlers here.”

Ben Skorepa is one of the wrestlers in the room Tuesday.

“I was into arm wrestling years ago,” he says. “Me and Vern Martel were big rivals. Then I got out of it for a long time.

“About three years ago, I arm-wrestled a guy at work and thought, ‘Maybe I should get back into it.’ Now, I’m going to my first Canadian championships since 1992.”

Those Canadian championships are in Vancouver on the May long weekend. Skorepa and Gallo have differing ideas on how to train for them.

“Some of us older guys,” Skorepa says, “take a little more recovery time after a meet before we start training again.”

That’s not Gallo’s style, though.

“I just keep going. I might ease up a bit in the last week before a meet, just so I don’t get injured.”

The veterans in the group know the importance as well of getting down to your fighting weight early.

“A lot of the meets,” Gallo says, “you weigh in on Friday and don’t fight until Saturday or sometimes Sunday, so you can put on some more weight after the weigh-in, and it doesn’t affect what class you’re in.”

Anyone interested in arm wrestling can give Gallo a call at 250-961-9725.