I Know What It's Like
to Come Back.
I wasn't just a trainer who lost his motivation for a few months. I'd had a heart attack at some point and didn't even know it — my EKG quietly told the story my body never did. I went into a coma. I had my chest cracked open, my pancreas resected, my spleen removed, and my neck fractured at 35,000 feet. And every single time — I found my way back to the gym.
I had been training seriously for years. After my kids left the house I had more time, so I pushed harder — six workouts a week, three of them two-a-days, seriously considering stepping on stage for a bodybuilding competition. From the outside, I looked like the picture of health.
What was happening on the inside was a completely different story.
Seven Blockages. Emergency Open Heart Surgery.
I started noticing shortness of breath during workouts — the kind that didn't belong. I thought maybe an infection. Instead, after five days in the hospital trying to control blood pressure that had spiked above 220 over 120, they took me to the cath lab. Along the way, they also found an altered EKG pattern — evidence of a heart attack I'd apparently had at some point without ever knowing it. A few minutes into the cath lab, I stopped the cardiologist mid-sentence and asked him directly: how many blockages do I have?
"Mr. Gray, you have seven ninety-percent blockages. We are going to need to do emergency open heart surgery."
They sent me home that evening — but told me to be back at five o'clock Monday morning. I spent that weekend knowing what was waiting for me. Monday at 5 AM, they opened my chest.
I was training for a bodybuilding competition. I had seven blockages that should have killed me and a prior heart attack I never felt. That's the day I learned that the outside doesn't always tell the truth about what's happening inside — and that the body has a way of demanding your full attention. I recovered. I got back in the gym. I got stronger.
Blood on the Freeway. A Coma. Fighting to Come Back.
Ten months after open heart surgery, I was in Nashville with my daughter when a slight stomachache turned into something I can't fully describe. By the time we were heading back to Alabama, I knew I was in serious trouble. I stopped the vehicle on the freeway, threw up blood and bile, and had my daughter drive me to the emergency room. I lost consciousness not long after we arrived.
What followed was a nightmare. Pancreatitis had gone septic. All of my lower organs were infected. My body swelled to proportions I wouldn't recognize in photographs. Five days in, I slipped into a coma. I was transferred to another hospital. When I came back, I couldn't walk on my own. I couldn't eat without help. The muscle I had built was gone. I had to learn how to do everything again.
I recovered. I got back in the gym. I started thinking about another competition.
A Fractured Neck at 35,000 Feet.
I was still dealing with recurring pancreatic flares — hospitalizations every six days or so — but I wasn't stopping. I flew out to Colorado with my sons to climb mountains. On the flight home, we hit severe turbulence. I was thrown through the cabin.
My neck was fractured at C6 and C7.
Another recovery. Another starting over. And still — the pancreatic issues kept escalating.
Pancreas Resected. Spleen Removed. Still Here.
While still recovering from the neck fracture, my pancreatic issues became critical. My chest cavity filled with fluid that had to be drained. The diagnosis: my pancreas was actively leaking into my body, and it was going to kill me if they didn't act.
They resected my pancreas. They removed my spleen. And then — again — I started the long climb back.
I tell you all of this not for sympathy. I tell you because I am a personal trainer, and every single one of these events forced me to figure out how to come back from something that most people would have used as a reason to stop.
Open heart surgery. A coma. A fractured neck. A resected pancreas. And I've been back in the gym — more times than I can count — rebuilding from scratch, finding new ways to move, new ways to train, new ways to think about what the body is capable of.
That's not a backstory. That's the whole point of RYM. The phoenix on this logo isn't a metaphor. It's a documentary.