Dad Who Had His Spine Crushed Gets Super Hench

A man whose spine was crushed by almost 400kg of timber has packed on the muscle and fought his way back to full fitness.

Chris Arpino, from Cornwall, was crushed by a 380kg pile of wood at his furniture business back in 2009 - if he had been lying in a slightly different position at the time, the incident could have seen him severed in half.

He could barely walk following the accident, but now, a decade on, he has completed a 12-week fitness challenge and packed on the muscle.

Chris told Cornwall Live: "I had to teach myself to get in and out of a car again, to bend, to sit, to stand, to walk more than 100 yards unassisted. It was a very stressful time."

Facebook / Chris Arpino

He now wakes up at 3.30am every day for his early morning gym routine and says his motivation is to be as healthy as possible for his daughter.

"In the evening, I have a treadmill set up in a home gym to do a few steps, if I need to get my steps in while watching Netflix," says the dad-of-one.

"Getting up so early is my alone time when I can get stuff done - no emails and no phone calls. I can get my headphones on, get in the gym and it's empty. I can get my LiveUP workout done in 45 minutes. It's quick, hard and intense but I'm in and out.

"A big motivator for doing this LiveUP transformation was being healthy for my daughter."

Facebook / Chris Arpino

Chris' body was so fragile after the accident, paramedics had to call for a police escort to the hospital, in order to avoid potholes in the road.

Describing the moment his life changed, Chris said: "I had some 8ft x 4ft sheets leaning up against the wall. I went to pull one off and 17 of them fell on top of me. That's about 380kg of timber.

"Because I tried to hold it up, I was side on. When I landed on my back, it was kidney first. I landed on a wooden bench behind me which broke the fall. That's what did the damage as I got crushed between the bench behind me and the wood.

"Then fortunately the bench I landed on broke under the weight and I then fell to the floor and the metal section behind the bench held the wood off me.

"It probably would have sliced me in half, to be honest. I was very lucky. If I had landed square-on on my back and my spine snapped, I would have been paralysed."

He's come a long way since then, though. What a LAD.

Topics: UK News, Inspirational

Dominic Smithers

Dominic graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in French and History. Like you, Dom has often questioned how much use a second language has been. Well, after stints working at the Manchester Evening News, the Accrington Observer and the Macclesfield Express, along with never setting foot in France, he realised the answer is surprisingly little. But I guess, c'est la vie. Contact us at [email protected]

@SmithersDom