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| Ray Herbert
Copied with permission from HeavySports.com
1999 2003 Weight Lost -- 110 Lbs !!! Currently training for Canadian Firefighter Combat Challenge. Heavy Sports wishes Ray the best of luck!! Click here to read local media coverage regarding Ray. Heavy Sports President's Note:
When I was around 12 years old I remember one guy about I got to know Ray quite well in '96 when he started working in the paper mill in the paper test lab with me. At this point Ray hadn't worked out for years and weighed in at around 250 lbs but still had shoulders like a linebacker and huge arms. At the time I remember asking him if he ever thought about getting back into shape like he used to be and his good natured laid-back response was "now, why would I want to do that?". He was quite happy the way he was and who was I to argue, after all even though he was getting a fair sized belly his arms must have been 20". I recognized a lot of potential though. In the winter of 1997 Ray's wife and I were putting on a local armwrestling tournament and Ray was on a "cabbage diet" and was around 265lb when he started the diet. He figured he lost about 10lbs and hopped on the scale only to find out that he weighed in at 273lbs!! He gained 8lbs after eating only cabbage soup for two weeks (yuck)!! As a side note, Ray is one true tough guy. He showed up at the tournament after falling off his grandma's roof while shoveling snow off it. Unfortunately, his shoulder landed on the freshly shoveled cement sidewalk, but after a few beers, Ray armwrestled anyway. (It wasn't his first roof as he fell off a higher roof a few years earlier) He's also had molars pulled with no freezing (he cant' be anesthetized). In June of 2000 I hadn't seen Ray in about four or five months and saw his wife Heather at the library and asked her if it was true that Ray had lost around fifty pounds. Not true. It was over eighty pounds!! I couldn't believe it when I first saw Ray as he weighed in at around 220lbs and looked fantastic. Three years later and Ray has kept the weight off and is about to compete in the Canadian Firefighter Combat Challenge next month. I worked hard to stay in shape and even made it to the junior level. Realizing I was good at sports but definitely not pro-material, I reluctantly (after trying many mini-careers) landed a job in construction, which was interesting and kept me in relatively good shape. After a few years of hammering nails, partying and womanizing, a young lady appeared in my life. I knew I had to have her for my own, and eventually made her my wife. We spent many nights watching movies, and ordering out, having the odd bag of chips, drinking beer, and wine, in addition to the many other snacks that made their way to the sofa with us. I started to notice after awhile that my pants were getting a tad bit tighter (that damned dryer is shrinking my clothes again). But gaining a few is just a fact of life right? Soon my lovely bride and I were fixing up the house and expecting our first child. On my construction worker’s salary we surely weren’t going to be able to make ends meet, so I found a well paying job with a local manufacturing plant. The job was a little less strenuous then construction and I found myself eating a little more from boredom.
After showing my now old football pictures to my lovely 4½ year old daughter and she didn’t even recognize the handsome young man in the photos to be me. I realized then that I had to do something, anything, I had finally had enough. Enough of the fat jokes, enough of sitting on the park bench watching the kids play, when really I wanted to be on the jungle gym with them. I decided that I was going to do it this time and stick with it. I remember my first time waddling into the gym, I felt like all the others were secretly laughing and talking about the big fat guy that probably wouldn’t be around long. I was going to prove them wrong this time! I hopped on the treadmill and started walking, I felt really good. The walk turned into a jog and I made it a whole mile; Man, was I proud! I tried again the next night and made it again. In fact, I ran a mile a night for that whole first week. Now it was weigh in time. Yahoo, 5 ½ pounds!! That’s right baby!! 5 ½ big, rotten pounds!! The wheels were turning now. If I could do two miles a night, after a week that would be 11 pounds. And maybe I could go a little faster too, start getting my cardio going. And that, my friends, is exactly how it goes. It is a beautiful thing to see some results. In the weeks and months that followed the weight was falling off.
The energy came, which made better results that made me feel great, which made my family happier. One big chain reaction. A grand total of 110 pounds and maintaining. I now have two children. My daughter is eight years old and my son is about to turn five. My wife has since taken measures to lose weight and get into the gym. We are both more active now with more energy, we can even keep up with the kids. So I guess I wrote this just to let anyone who might have a weight problem or someone who may be at a plateau, to just get to the gym, go for a walk and keep at it. It has to be like brushing your teeth, something you do every day and I promise you, eventually (it will seem like forever) you will look and feel much better and the chain reaction just keeps going. As a member of our local fire department, I am currently training for a major fire fighting competition that involves strength, speed, endurance and flexibility. My training is unorthodox to say the least. It ranges from running on the treadmill to donning my fire fighting gear and trampling through the thick brush with my 65 lb. son in a duffle bag on my back. While wind sprints, the stair climber and treadmill are my favourite exercises; I have to adjust my workouts to fit not only my lifestyle but also the schedules of my family and my two jobs. This June, I have two competitions and they will be my first. I am 36 years old and there is a lot of wondering about how I will do. I have trained hard so far and it is getting harder as the competitions get closer. I feel I have a lot to prove; I have a need to win. My promise to you is I will qualify for the world championships. Wait and see the results of my competitions on Heavysports.com but until then, this is my story. Email Ray at axeman@jam21.net to wish him luck or ask him a question. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
four or five years older than me who obviously spent a great deal of time in the weight room and was a great local high school athlete in football and hockey. His name was Raymond Herbert and he was "built like a brick shit house". Looking back, he was inspirational in my quest to get bigger and stronger. 
People who have children know how tough it can be to find time to hit the gym. So, my suggestion to you is to involve your kids in your workout! Put your kids on their bikes and job with them around the block or around the city. Put them on a sleigh or in a wagon and drag them everywhere. Throw them over your shoulder and run up and down the stairs. All of these are great workouts, trust me.