A Yorkshire man who suffers from a genetic disease which leads to muscle weakness and numbness has defied the odds to become a successful bodybuilder.
John Nixon, 44, suffers from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT), a condition that causes nerve damage. Despite the challenges the disease brings, John has become a bodybuilder and even came second in the PCA bodybuilding world finals in Malaga, Spain.
John, of Barnsley, said: "I joined the gym to feel stronger and to stop falling and tripping as much and I've never looked back. I've always been pretty good in myself but around this time I was getting quite thin and weak.
"Because my condition can be degenerative, I really think I would be in a wheelchair if I didn't find bodybuilding 17 years ago."
John was officially diagnosed with the condition when he was 12. At the time, doctors told him that he must never lift weights and be very cautious when doing exercise. John has many of the key symptoms that are characteristic to CMT.
John Nixon, 44, suffers from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT), a condition that causes nerve damage. Despite the challenges the disease brings, John has become a bodybuilder and even came second in the PCA bodybuilding world finals in Malaga, Spain.
John, of Barnsley, said: "I joined the gym to feel stronger and to stop falling and tripping as much and I've never looked back. I've always been pretty good in myself but around this time I was getting quite thin and weak.
"Because my condition can be degenerative, I really think I would be in a wheelchair if I didn't find bodybuilding 17 years ago."
John was officially diagnosed with the condition when he was 12. At the time, doctors told him that he must never lift weights and be very cautious when doing exercise. John has many of the key symptoms that are characteristic to CMT.
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MusicTranscript
00:00orthotic boots are my lifesaver. A lot of people who've got CMT or muscle wastage conditions
00:07wear something called AFOS, but I wear these boots. I was given these three years ago,
00:14I think it was like late 2020, and what these boots do, the sole is moulded to the shape of my feet,
00:20so my feet are very arched, my toes curl in and my foot pushes to the outside, so the sole inside
00:27is moulded to that, and then around the boot, to stop my foot from rolling, it is reinforced with
00:34like a metal sheet down there. The boot itself is roughly about a size five and a half, because my
00:40feet pull back, where they would be around a size seven or eight, they pull back, they pull into a
00:46size five. It's got this heel on, it's hard to see, but this heel comes out, it's a wider wedge,
00:53which also stops the foot from rolling, and it also makes me about an inch and a half taller,
01:00which is always a bonus. From being young, we knew there was something very different about me,
01:06because I was falling over, couldn't fit into normal shoes, I was much weaker than the rest
01:11of the boys at school, couldn't run, I loved to play football but I just couldn't play it,
01:17you know, we knew that something wasn't right. It took quite a few years for me to get diagnosed,
01:22but at 12 years old, finally went to see a neurologist, who diagnosed me with this thing
01:28called CMT, Charcot-Marie-Tooth, and back in 1992, when I was 12 years old, there was no such thing
01:34as Google, and we were still dinosaurs walking around, so we couldn't go and, you know, have a
01:39look and investigate what Charcot-Marie-Tooth was, we just took the information from the doctor.
01:45Struggled through school quite badly, got bullied by, you know, people that were able, and they knew
01:50that I was different, I was walking very different, I remember getting called slug feet in an assembly,
01:56because we used to have to take our shoes off, and you'd walk on this hard floor, on the gym floor,
02:00to collect awards. I was very academic at school, so I was always winning awards, and I hated having
02:06to get up in front of the other children and walk. So then I left school, and I got my first job,
02:12and the world around me has somewhat changed, but I then quickly began to realise that the CMT
02:18was deteriorating, so I turned to drink and smoking, which I guess a lot of people do when
02:24they're 17, 18, and in their early 20s, but I think the drink and the smoking affecting me,
02:30and my peripheral nerves. Three years ago, I was given orthotic boots, which I will talk about on
02:35another video. I wouldn't have wore them in my younger years, but I wish I had, I wish I'd been
02:41told about them when I was in my teens, because the boots have helped me do so much more in life,
02:47that get me walking as near as normal as I possibly can. So here I am, I've always been
02:53embarrassed about having CMT, always tried to hide it, it's always been a conversation that
02:59I've always struggled with, but for the last three or four years, I've gone public with it,
03:04and I'm raising awareness, because people need to know, you know, these could be your friends
03:08and your family, but there are still people out there who have got CMT, who feel isolated,
03:14and nobody should ever feel like that. When I first started coming to the gym,
03:21I used to try and squat using a three-way bar, and it never went well, because I couldn't balance,
03:26I didn't have the orthotic boots at the time, and people would pass comment on to me saying,
03:31you're not getting deep enough, you're not getting low enough, you're damn right I wasn't
03:34getting deep and low enough, because I've got like really deformed feet and really weak ankles,
03:40and if the smith machine still isn't right for you, you can always use a leg press as an
03:46alternative, and if you still feel unsafe using a smith machine, you could put a bench underneath,
03:55so if anything was to happen, that will break your fall. So for me to use a smith machine,
04:03I like to keep my feet fairly narrow, just a little bit more narrow than shoulder width apart,
04:11slightly in front, putting more dominance onto the quads, keep your head facing forwards,
04:19lift the bar, and when you go down, nice and slow,
04:23legs parallel with the floor, and back up, keeping a nice velocity of movement.