A former champion bodybuilder rediscovers physical fitness following diagnosis for MS.

By Lori A. Wood

“I started exercising and joined a gym when I was 13 years old,” says Paul O’Lone, Founder and Executive Director of Accessible Fitness, www.accessiblefitness.com, a fitness center for people with disabilities, located in Santa Clara, California. “In 1979 or ’80, somebody gave me a box of bodybuilding magazines and I saw these pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger and said, ‘I would like to look like that someday.’ I started exercising, did my first bodybuilding show when I was 15 and placed third in it. By the time I was 25, I had been in almost 70 amateur bodybuilding competitions.”

For O’Lone, this competitive drive paid off. In 1993, he won the Mr. North America and Mr. USA titles. “After that, I was getting ready to get my professional bodybuilder’s card. It was exciting for me; it had been my dream since I was 13 to be Mr. Olympia, the biggest show that there is.”

Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that his body was not up to the challenge.

New Challenges

“Around 1994 or ’95, I started having numbness, tingling, and balance problems,” he says. “I knew that something was going on, but I didn’t know what it was. Finally, in 1997, they diagnosed me with multiple sclerosis (MS). At first, I was doing okay. In 1998, I was even considering competing, because I was doing so well.”

In the next year, however, O’Lone’s physical and mental health had begun to deteriorate. “I fell into a depression and a lot of that was because the MS had caused me to go completely blind in my left eye, and partially in my right,” he explains. “I lost my vision in my left eye for almost a year. I think that, along with the fact that I had problems with balance, walking, and my bladder, contributed to my depression. I was also overmedicated, on anti-depressants, sleeping pills, and drugs for the nerve pain I was in. There was a whole list of things, and I was afraid to say ‘What next?’ because it kept getting worse. I think it was a combination of those things and being sedentary. It’s very easy to become inactive, especially when you’re drugged up. A lot of times, a lot of these drugs can make you more tired.”

O’Lone began having difficulty walking and soon after, he had to use a wheelchair. “I hated my MS,” he confesses. “I’d been living in Philadelphia at the time, and had just met my wife, Judy. She told me, ‘You have to accept your MS.’ I didn’t know what that meant. She said, ‘You have to accept that you have it, and have to keep doing exercises where the weaknesses are and begin strengthening those areas that have been affected by the MS.’ I finally went back to the gym.”

Starting Over

In Philadelphia, O’Lone had been running an entertainment company called A Class Act. “We had DJs, clowns, and so forth, for parties,” he says. “I wrapped that up in 2001 and came out to California.”

Immediately, O’Lone set about to find a gym that would accommodate someone in a wheelchair. “I started rating all of the gyms, based on their accessibility––everything from the bathrooms to the spaces between the gym equipment,” he remembers. “I started exercising again. With my relapse-remitting form of MS and the use of a home treadmill, my leg strength had started to come back. Stress sets off a lot of MS exacerbations. I was taking some MS drugs, but stopped taking those to focus on more holistic approaches to health, like exercise and a balanced diet. I think of MS as a tiredness disease. It can make you really tired sometimes, so you have to have the right nutrition and find that balance.”

O’Lone says he started to study the physical development of his then four-year-old son, Tyler, to see what he could learn about his own body’s coordination. “It’s amazing what I’ve learned from him,” he says. “In a child, the core muscles, those of the abdominals, hips and back are the last to develop, and when you have MS, they’re the first to go. In his first year, Tyler liked to do a lot of things on his knees on the floor, and I thought, ‘What a great way to exercise!’ If you put a pad down and get on your knees, you can do a lot of exercises, without much risk of falling. For me, being a bodybuilder was about seeing how big, toned, and ripped I could be. With MS, it’s more about quality of life, and continuing to move my legs through exercise so that I can walk.

“In a person who has MS,” O’Lone continues, “they get really weak, like a flower with a weak stem. If those muscles are weak, the wind blows and you might fall over, just like that flower. Whether you have a spinal cord injury (SCI), MS, or cerebral palsy, those muscles are always affected and usually cause a lot of problems.”

Access to Exercise

In 2004, Accessible Fitness opened its doors. “I wanted to open a gym that was completely wheelchair accessible, including the equipment itself,” O’Lone explains. “I use the Equalizer 1000™ as my gym station. You can work every body part, and the stools pull out, so that a wheelchair can lock into every station. We also have cardiovascular equipment, called an Active Passive Trainer (APT), which moves the legs passively. Some people who have a little bit of leg strength get stronger after using it. I gradually turn the machine down, until they can move it on their own.” Paul and Judy serve as personal trainers at the gym and both are certified in adaptive fitness.

Accessible Fitness serves people with a wide range of disabilities, including Guillain-Barré Syndrome, MS, and SCI. The facility operates on one philosophy: ability, not disability. “When it comes to exercise, no two people are the same,” O’Lone says. “We always make people feel like they can accomplish their exercises by not giving them things that they can’t do. If they can’t do it, I’ll adapt the exercise so that they can.”

The gym offers a variety of programs to its clients, including workshops. “We do those once a week,” Paul explains. “We focus on stretching and weight resistance and give people exercises that they can do when they’re not here. We also have one-onone personal training sessions, in-home training and a nutritional component, because a lot of people with MS aren’t taking care of their diet, so we help them with that. Once per month, we have speakers come in for Living Well events, to talk about things like myelin repair and employment for the disabled.”

Additionally, the O’Lones are frequent collaborators with the Silicon Valley chapter of the National MS Society. “We participate as speakers for the client programs, we do exercise demonstrations and routines and help get the word out about the fight for a cure.” For these efforts, Paul received the MS Achievement Award in 2002. “It was an honor. It’s mostly given to people who are living with MS, helping others who have it, and maintaining a high quality of life.”

Paul is currently training for the 2006 Mr. America competition. “I’m not as concerned about winning as I was before,” he says. “I’m representing those who are physically challenged, like myself.”

Win or lose, there’s no doubt that he will do it with grace. “No matter how difficult MS makes things, you have to remain positive and never give up. That’s what exercise does for me; it gives me a sense of control of my life.”

For more information on any of these programs, call 408-986-1419.

Lori A. Wood is a regular contributor to Action.