As a sophomore football player on the Hamilton West varsity squad, Frank Quartucci needed a little encouragement to get in the weight room. Ten years later, they’re naming implements after him in gyms.
Over the weekend of Feb. 27-28, the 2010 West graduate and current Rutgers assistant strength and conditioning coach won the Heavyweight Division of the Gotham Strongest Man Division at Global Strongman Gym in Brooklyn. That qualified Quartucci for the national competition in Louisville, Kentucky, on June 11. The overall winner in Kentucky qualifies for “Giants Live,” for the World’s Strongest Man.
One of the events in qualifying competition was the Atlas Stone, in which the competitor had to lift a stone, carry it and put it over a bar. No one had ever lifted Global Strongman’s 425-pound stone until Quartucci became the first during the qualifier. Owner Hans Pirman was so impressed with the performance, he has renamed the Atlas “The Big Frank Stone.”
It is just further proof that the Big Frank human has come a long way with his strength training. Hornet football coach Tom Hoglen needed to provide a littler persuasion, and Quartucci took it from there.
“I didn’t touch a weight until 10th grade,” the former standout lineman said. “I wasn’t always big, and (Hoglen) threatened a few times that ‘If you don’t get any bigger, you could have problems.’ Playing varsity as a sophomore was definitely an opportunity, but I was only 215 pounds. I always forced it. Me and (2011 grad) Mike Riehl, my best friend, always locked ourselves in the weight room. But I didn’t really get strong until I got to college.”
Quartucci was offered a scholarship from then-Rutgers coach Greg Schiano and was on the team for two years until he suffered a career-ending hip injury. By that point, he had gained a true passion for weight lifting under the tutelage of the Scarlet Knight weight coaches.
“You don’t get that strong without working hard,” Hoglen said. “He just exploded. The strength that he has now is just unbelievable.”
Quartucci learned the basic fundamentals of squats and bench press from his stepfather, John Ornosky. He also credits genetics, as his maternal grandfather, James Galbi, could lift an engine block with his hands, and his fraternal grandfather, Frank Quartucci, developed great strength as a manual laborer.
When his football career reached its sudden end, he got a position as a student strength and conditioning coach for the football team.
“That was an awesome experience,” Quartucci said. “I got to work in the weight room as an intern. The guys I worked under were phenomenal. They taught me great things; how to be a great strength coach. I can’t thank them enough.”
Upon graduation he volunteered to continue helping, and in July 2014, the head strength and conditioning coach, Jeremy Cole, hired Quartucci as a full-time assistant.
During his progression, Quartucci discovered a different way to display strength in a whole different classroom.
“Basically I wanted something to do,” he said. “I was getting bored just lifting. I still had a competitive heart.”
He met a PSE&G co-worker of Riehl’s father by the name of Mike Beyers. Quartucci admittedly was “feeling like a badass with all the lifting I was doing in high school and college,” before Riehl told him, “Well, this guy does Strongman competition.’”
Unlike regular weight lifting, Strongman competition involves lifting anything from a boulder to a ’57 Chevy. Different technique is utilized and, as the name indicates, a heck of a lot of strength is needed.
Quartucci was fascinated and immediately hooked up with Beyers through social media. He was invited to join the Linden Yard Crew, which originated on Linden Avenue off of South Broad Street. The Crew began in the ’90s and has moved around. The implements have somehow found their way into Quartucci’s garage in Hamilton.
Current members are Quartucci, Beyers, Hamilton West legend Buddy Schweder, “who I saw as a second father,” and James Ragazzo. Beyers is a welder and has been able to make a lot of the implements the club needs, and Ragazzo and Beyers will also be headed to Louisville for the nationals as the trio will drive down together.
“I’ve got a really good training crew with those guys,” Quartucci said. “They taught me how to do all the different events in Strong Man competition.”
Their student put on a heck of a show in Brooklyn. He started by doing seven reps with the 275-pound log clean-and-press. It was not actually a log, but a two-inch thick bar with tires on each end.
He performed the 800-pound yoke walk of 50-feet in 7.6 seconds. A yoke is a large metal frame with a crossbar that has weights on the bottom. The competitor must stand in between the vertical bars, grab them and walk the yoke a certain distance as quickly as possible.
In the car dead lift competition, Quartucci did seven reps. Because they could not get an automobile into the facility, however, contestants had to lift a frame that had an 800-pound tire and three women on it.
Quartucci also carried a 320-pound Hustafel Stone 200 feet, but the highlight was his record-setting effort in the Atlas Stone that has placed him among the legends of Global Strongman lore.
Lifting the 425-pound stone was almost child’s play for Quartucci, who had done it two and three times with a 430-pounder in Beyers’ garage.
“You’re literally picking it up, wrapping it and putting it over the bar,” he explained. “You only had to do it once with the heaviest stone you could do. I actually have a pretty cool video of it. I literally had never been in something like this before, there were hundreds of people around me. Everybody had their cell phones out. It was pretty nuts.”
Hoglen has attended some of the competitions and walked away impressed every time.
“Whenever I need to talk weight room stuff, I call Big Frank,” the coach said. “It’s just neat to watch a kid that worked so hard, and now seeing the things that he can do in the weight room. Picking up 450-pound boulders and throwing them and 300 pound kegs and throwing them over a bar and lifting a car up. It’s just crazy.”
What’s interesting is that Quartucci is not a happy man when he gets ready to hoist some bizarre object. In fact, he’s pretty outraged.
“Honestly, you just have to go to a dark place; you think of some messed up stuff,” he said. “You have to get a little angry. I’m not big on motivation. It’s different how everybody approaches a bar differently, and I always go to a dark place.”
Such as losing the Thanksgiving Day game as a junior?
“Oh yeah, you remember that, huh?” he said to a reporter with a laugh.
Quartucci not only competes for himself, but for an impressive cause as well.
“I like to compete for athletes who remain drug-free,” he said. “This sport is untested (for drugs) so a lot of people take alternate routes. So to me, bigger than just qualifying for nationals, is being successful as a drug-free athlete and not taking any shortcuts.”
Something he has seen in the past.
“I got into the sport after I got done playing football, and I noticed some of the choices people were making,” he said. “It would be hard having your family watching you compete and looking them in the eyes after you’re done if I wasn’t doing it the right way. That’s not how I was raised.”
This is not the first time Quartucci has qualified for Nationals, but it is the first time he can actually compete. During his first three years with Rutgers, he was working with the football team, which completely consumed his time.
When Chris Ash was hired as the new football coach, he brought in his own people for football strength training. Quartucci now works with Olympic sports and is doing men’s lacrosse and men’s soccer, the latter of which is coached by Steinert grad Dan Donigan.
“He’s fantastic to work with, an awesome guy,” Quartucci said. “He deserves all the success he had last year. I can’t wait for this upcoming season this fall. I don’t like that he’s a Steinert guy, but that’s something I just have to deal with.”
Quartucci’s immediate professional goal is to become a head strength and conditioning coach, and his long-term goal is to open his own gym.
As for the Strong Man Nationals, the aim is simple.
“I definitely want to turn some heads,” he said. “I would really like to be competitive down there, finish in the top three or the top five in my weight class. I would walk away very happy. I have some events that will favor me and put me in good spots.”
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