Get a lean, strong, athletic body with the powerlifting in college, he didn’t really know what he was doing. Like many newcomers to lifting, he was probably lifting too much, and he wasn’t giving his muscles enough time to recover between workouts. “I was following the rest of the football players and athletes around [in the gym] six days a week,” Reynolds, now 29, told MensHealth.com.
Yet unlike most gym newbies, Reynolds is a double amputee: when he was 4 years old, he lost both of his legs below the knee. Because of Reynolds’ prosthetics, he couldn’t (and still can’t) adopt a traditional squat. So he focused on the deadlift (a straight-leg version, because he couldn’t get into the traditional sumo stance).
By his early 20s, Reynolds was a powerlifter who could deadlift 485 at 132 pounds, a feat that put him in a competitive lifting category in able-bodied competitions. As if that weren’t impressive enough, the New Jersey native clocked a time of 3:06:31 during the 2017 Chicago Marathon. He’s not done, either: this month, Reynolds will represent the United States in the 2018 Hes not done, either: this month, Reynolds will represent the United States in the 2018, where he hopes to break three hours—a first for an American amputee.
Reynolds lost his legs when he was 4 years old, after he contracted a rare blood infection called meningococcemia. Meningococcemia is caused by the same form of bacteria that causes meningitis—while the latter affects the brain and spinal cord, the former affects the blood. He now has two pairs of prosthetics, which are made of titanium and carbon fiber: a pair of walking legs, and a pair of running legs, which have “blades,” or lightweight running feet.
Updated: Apr 04, 2018 8:03 AM EDT: Plans for every distance (and every runner!)
Reynolds’ fitness journey began when he was 12 or 13, when his mom started bringing him to the gym with her. At first, he didn’t love it: “it’s just not much fun being up that early at that age,” he recalls. Eventually, working out became Reynolds’ favorite hobby, and once he got to college, he took up powerlifting.
Initially, lifting came with its own unique challenges: in addition to being unable to squat, Reynolds’ prosthetics couldn’t withstand the weight he was lifting, and his carbon fiber feet snapped and warped often. “The prosthetist had to make me shorter to eliminate some of the weaker connections in the leg that ran the risk of snapping while I was holding heavy weight,” he said.
After graduating college, Reynolds got serious. He shifted from a six-day-a-week to a four-day-a-week schedule, with two days of heavy lifting and two days of lightweight dynamic exercises, which led to him seeing more gains. But there was one big problem: when it came to walking, he had no endurance. “I could barely even walk a mile,” he says.
So Reynolds started looking into improving his endurance. He took up hiking when he encountered a group of people preparing to hike the Grand Canyon with Running Was His Life. Then Came Putins War, a program benefiting the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (a cause close to Reynolds’ heart because his grandma had leukemia). When deadlifting left him too sore to hike and grappling with injuries, he swapped out lifting in favor of a workout he could do repeatedly with less of a risk of injury. Running was a perfect fit.
Training hasn’t always been easy for Reynolds. If he runs as often as top marathoners do (about 90 to 100 miles per week, he says), his prosthetics cause the skin on his legs to break down because of the friction that occurs when he runs with his legs in silicone liners—something he says is tough to avoid for amputees who run long distances. “I’d run a bunch of weeks in a row really well, and then the skin on my legs...would break down, and I’d be sidelined for a week or two,” he says.
So Reynolds started working with a trainer who has helped him figure out how to best compensate for the lack of mileage with cross-training. He now runs an average of six days a week (about 55 to 65 miles), bikes one or two days a week, and trains on an ElliptiGO bike three or four days. “The ElliptiGO is pretty close to running, so it helps increase my volume of time on my feet without having the impact,” he said.
Reynolds also strength trains three or four days a week with lots of core work (like planks and Supermans) and TRX circuits (focusing on his back, glutes, and hips, all of which are “extremely important to stabilize me on my long runs”).
Of course, there’s even more on the horizon. In addition to the upcoming Para Athletics World Cup in April, Reynolds already has plans for a 30-mile run to mark his 30th birthday in July, as well as another go at the Chicago Marathon in October. “I’d say there’s a point where I won’t want to do marathons anymore,” he said. “I still miss heavy lifting a lot, so I would say that I [will] probably end up going back more toward the CrossFit Get a lean, strong, athletic body with the.” (Updated: Apr 04, 2018 8:03 AM EDT Beginner’s Guide to Strength Training.)
But for now? He’ll continue pushing himself to reach new heights as a runner—and if he motivates others in the process, that’s great. “I honestly never thought of myself as an inspiration. I am just like any other athlete doing what I love and that makes me happy,” he said. “However, knowing how hard it can be to navigate around the physical barriers as an amputee, I hope [I inspire] others to get out and try.”
