When Danny Gropper first rolled in and asked me (Ralph Raiola) to train him because he wanted to lose weight, I said to myself, “…how in the hell is he going to do that?”  You see, Danny lost his hands and feet in a fire some 20 odd years ago, and conventional methods seemed out of the question. So Danny went ahead and proved me wrong.

He worked harder than most people with all the standard parts and proceeded to lose the weight and win his little bet with his friend Gary. When he came to me to tell me about a video he had seen on You Tube about a young man who had a similar situation as his, benching 400 lbs., he asked he could possibly do that.

I explained to him he would have to have prosthetics designed, which would be heavy-duty, with a locking device that would not allow the bar to roll off.  He took the idea to the people who make his prosthetics and about four weeks later came in with new “benching hands”.  After twenty minutes we finally figured how to put the device on and started to bench.

Now, those of you have benched any significant amount of weight realize how important the lower body is, so Danny was already two strikes down.  No big deal!  We strapped his lower body to the bench and attached the device to the bar. By the end of the workout, he had bench pressed 205 lbs., with room for improvement. I told Danny that by September he will be bench pressing between 250 and 285 pounds.

So for those of us who feel that your workout is too tough or you can’t stay on your diet one more day, just remember Danny.