Man improves health with strongman competitions
It’s mid-afternoon in late May and Kyle Riggs is and Kyle Riggs is standing in a Paradise parking lot strapped to a dump truck.
It is the final event for the Bay de Verde man’s class at the 2021 NL’S Strongest strongman and strongwoman competition, and pulling this 29,000-pound piece of heavy equipment is the task.
After fiddling with the straps around his shoulders, Riggs grips the thick rope in front of him and starts the painstaking task of trying to pull the truck 50 feet.
Putting one foot after the other, he willed the truck 25 feet.
“As long as it moved, I was happy,” said Riggs.
For Riggs, the dump truck is a symbol of how far he has come since starting his fitness activities a little more than a year ago.
It’s a journey that started with the simple desire to get into better shape.
When he started, the 28-year-old Riggs weighed 440 pounds and knew he needed to make some changes for both his physical and mental well-being.
Riggs had been in gyms before, but he and that process just never seemed to click. He was turned off by some of the looks he received while he went about his business.
Then, he found True Strength Inc. Perhaps, more importantly, Riggs found the people that he now calls friends.
“Everyone is always supportive of you,” Riggs said of the group at the gym. “I feel that every person wants the other person to succeed.”
His entry into the sport of strongman might be best looked at as fulfilling a childhood desire.
As a youngster, Riggs often watched strongman competitions on television. He marvelled at the weights they carried and the strength they displayed while doing it.
Amongst the competitors, he loved watching four-time world’s strongest man Magnus ver Magnussen hurl large amounts of weight around.
“It’s testing the limits of human capability,” Riggs said of why he loves strongman competitions.
That love for the sport shines through in the gym, says his coach, Kyle Mahoney.
Riggs entered his Strong Like Caveman program shortly after he first got to True Strength, and Mahoney had a first-person look at his slow and steady progress.
Earlier this week, Riggs successfully performed a 710pound deadlift in the gym, a personal best for him.
Each time he steps into the gym, Riggs wants to get better and, to accomplish that, he is intent on doing what his coaches tell him.
It’s a coach’s dream. “(Riggs) motivates the class and he never misses the program,” said Mahoney. “He has a very positive energy.”
The strongperson community in St. John’s is a small one, but, as Riggs has found, it is welcoming.
While each member of that community is out to hit their personal bests, they spend just as much time building up others in the gym and hope to see them do well.
“It is the most supportive community I’ve ever come across,” said Mahoney.
Since he started, Riggs has dropped more than 30 pounds, but that doesn’t begin to describe how far he has come from a health standpoint.
He says his body feels better, and walking around isn’t as much of a chore as it used to be.
“I feel way healthier,” said Riggs. “I feel more physically fit. Every day my mobility has improved, and I can feel the difference.
“It’s been great for my mental health.”