“Last year I hit my weight-loss goal of 50lbs that took me 18 months to complete,” Vincent said. “My goal was to lose the weight but remain strong while still training. Powerlifting was always my first love since I was 14 and my uncle showed me how to lift in our homemade basement gym.”

Before his weight-loss, Vincent’s bench press 1RPM was 355, deadlift of 450 and squat of 405.

“Not bad for a 48-year-old,” Vincent laughed. 

“PTSD does not only affect the individual, it effects the entire family,” Paul said. “In 2017, my ex-wife passed away unexpectedly. My youngest son, Michael, came to live with me full-time. Just a year later, he lost his grandmother. The adjustment to both of our lives was huge. In late 2017, he started watching the World’s Strongest Man and became a huge fan of Brian Shaw and many others. It was something I was very excited about because it gave him an outlet to channel his energy.”

Ironically, what was an outlet for his son would also become a life-saver for Paul himself. 

Like many of us, Ethan Hall is all too familiar with the “wrong” path. 

Not everyone, however, is able to make it right. 

“I served two years in prison because I took a terrible path,” he said. “I was a fighter, drinker and substance abuser. All of those things make it easy for someone to lose sight of what is important in life, and that’s what happened to me.”

Shortly after his birth, Nathan was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy (CP), a congenital disorder of movement, muscle tone, and posture, and was deemed once again, to have little chance of having a “normal” life. 

“I was told that walking would be highly unlikely for a person with his form of CP, but I was never satisfied with the prognosis,” he said. “Throughout my childhood, and into my adolescent and teen years, I went through a grueling amount of examinations, surgeries, and physical and occupational therapy. I bounced back and forth between medical devices such as carts, wheelchairs, crutches, and leg braces; learning and relearning how to walk countless times.”

“My life has seemed like a continual struggle,” Kyle said. “In 2008, I was 22-years-old, weighed nearly 400 pounds and worked a job I had no real interest in. I basically had no idea what I wanted to do in life, but I knew I wasn’t doing it.”

“My story begins after my last deployment to Iraq in November of 2006,” APEMAN Juan Cervantes said. “My struggles with dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and multiple attempts and thoughts of suicide, and how my wife has been by my side the entire time even before she was my wife.”