The gym is their classroom
From left: Jacob Immanuel Alava, Gab Carreon, Kevin Yuri Chan, Dharminder Singh, Carl Tabora
We can only wish to prepare our children for everything that life throws their way. However, the reality is that we can’t always protect them from everything.
These young men learned lessons from the gym that they could not have picked up in any classroom. Fitness has instilled in them wisdom and values beyond their years.
Hard work, discipline and placing great value on health are just among the incredible things that these boys have incorporated into their lives. Let’s hear their stories.
Gabriel Angelo Carreon claims that fitness saved his life. “Growing up, I was very thin and insecure. I had low self-esteem and I would always compare myself to others. It got into a point where I would avoid social activities at all costs because I didn’t want to be seen,” he recalls.
He began his fitness journey when his brother enrolled him at the gym. With the help of a personal trainer, he grew in size and strength but he had another battle to face: depression.
Gab stopped going to the gym and even to school. “I locked myself out, barely ate and lost so much weight. I felt like I lost a huge part of myself.”
He overcame this by going to the gym almost every day. “That was the only place where I felt that I was safe, that I had nothing to fear. It felt like home. Fitness doesn’t only make you stronger physically, but also emotionally and mentally. I went back to school after a long break. I’ve found people in the gym who became my strength.”
For Carl Tabora, fitness helped him reach his full potential. Growing up really fat, even being compared to crispy pata, he was laid off his basketball team because of his weight.
Carl was inspired to change his life. He started weightlifting and joined the powerlifting and rowing teams while he was in school. “Not only did I increase in strength, I also started to notice that my body was changing, and I felt good about myself. I’m happy since I’m able to do any activity and excel in it,” he shares. “Being fit is being able to do any kind of activity, be functional, and most important of all, being able to eat whatever you want to eat.”
Dharminder Singh was a fit soccer player in high school, but as his studies piled up, he put his active lifestyle on hold. When he moved to the Philippines in 2014, he had difficulty keeping up with his father when they went jogging. It didn’t help that he fell in love with Filipino food.
This encouraged him to enroll in a gym and work with a personal trainer. He saw great results, which encouraged his friends and family to begin working on their fitness, too.
“Having a healthy and fit lifestyle definitely changes you,” he says. “It changes you physically and mentally, too. The more people asked me about my ‘fitspiration’ story, the more I became motivated to keep on this new lifestyle.”
In his teens, short and lanky Jacob Immanuel Alava was teased and bullied for having a “different” body type. “I found myself having a body image issue. I only saw the flaws in my body, and this led to my always comparing myself to others,” he shares. “It was this body image issue that motivated me to start my fitness journey, which paved the way for accepting myself as God created me. I started going to the gym when I was 18 and immediately found a second home. It became my comfort zone. I loved every moment of being in the gym. I went to the gym to train, think and de-stress.”
Jacob has seen great results, but he has also learned to accept his body. “We can’t completely change what we have, but we certainly can improve ourselves through hard work and discipline,” he concludes.
Kevin Yuri Chan was a clumsy and chunky kid. “At first it did not bother me, but growing up I started to hate being so limited by my own body,” he shares. In high school, he had grown overweight at 210 pounds with no muscle tone.
With regular exercise, he managed to drop from 210 to 155 pounds in his last year of high school. “When I felt the respect it earned from people, I knew I was hooked on exercise. Today, six years after my first and greatest transformation, I am 180 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal. Bodybuilding has taught me that the human body may be weak, but our minds are infinite. Working extra-hard for any goal makes us cherish it more and fight harder not to give it up. It is only after we experience what it is like to be weak that we can decide to one day be strong,” he concludes.
