Strength. It’s a word that means a lot to Ryan Lapadat.
It’s something he thinks about when he’s strapped into a harness, ready to single-handedly pull an 11,000-kilogram school bus down the street.
And it helps to have a little muscle when you’re a national powerlifting champion competing with the world’s best.
But the 29-year-old Guelph resident and Conestoga College graduate known as “6 Pack” doesn’t haul buses and lift 225-kilogram weights just to prove how tough he is. There’s a different kind of strength that inspires him.
He sees it when he visits cancer-stricken kids at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Those are the kids he tows and lifts for. So far, he’s raised $10,000 for the Sick Kids Foundation.
“Some of these kids are fighting for their lives,” he says, “and they’re not even into double digits yet. They’re like eight, nine, seven, and they don’t feel sorry for themselves. They’re still in good spirits. And they’re strong, maybe not physically, but mentally they’re so strong. Kids are so much stronger than you give them credit for.”
Early last year, Lapadat, who’s been lifting weights since he was in Grade 6, decided he would do whatever he could to help. So he set himself a few modest goals. Win the Canadian Drug-Free Powerlifting Association Middleweight Championship in June. Lift a total of over 1,100 kilograms to qualify for the world championships in August. Start a marketing campaign to have corporate sponsors donate money for every pound he lifts. Tow school buses and speak at public schools to raise even more money. Check, check, check and check.
Around the time he made his decision, someone close to him passed away from cancer. It was his nephew’s 25-year-old father. Once again, Lapadat found himself gaining a new perspective on strength. On what it means to be tough.
“I seen my one buddy when he was dying of cancer, his sister was kind of like – he was dying, he couldn’t see at the time and he couldn’t really hear too well and he was really, really skinny. And she’s holding his hand, rubbing his hand, saying ‘whatever you need, just let me know,’ and just stayed with him at the bedside. That’s tough, you know what I mean? That’s tough.”
Lapadat says he told his nephew that he was going to tow buses to help kids who have the same kind of sickness as his dad.
“I was like, ‘So, do you think I could tow a school bus?’ and he goes, ‘Yeah, you could tow a school bus!’” I was like, really? And this is coming from a six-year-old. He was the first person who said I could.”
The first time Lapadat practiced towing a school bus, he was in an empty high school parking lot and, he says, “scared to death.” He strapped himself in, got into position and heard his helpers yell “pull!” Getting the bus to budge that first inch is the hardest part, he says.
“You feel it pull you back because it’s so big. You just keep pushing, pushing through, and all of a sudden the wheels start turning a little, and I was like, ‘Holy crap, this can happen.’ Then that’s when the adrenaline starts going and you realize, ‘This is possible.’”
Lapadat’s message to kids is just that simple: “Anything’s possible.”
Talking to him outside a training room at the Guelph Athletic Club, it’s hard not to get caught up in his belief in the power of positive thinking. He’s talkative, funny, upbeat. Away from the gym, he’s also a hip-hop artist and an actor. Listening to him, it’s easy to believe that, well, anything’s possible.
“If your mind can conceive it, you can achieve it,” he says.
That kind of thinking has helped Lapadat become the reigning world arm curl record holder, as well as a national drug-free powerlifting champ (he eventually finished fourth at the worlds). It’s the “drug-free” part that’s most important when he’s talking to kids, he says.
“If I started taking a steroid or something like that, that would mean that you don’t believe in yourself, there is a doubt in your mind. As soon as you allow that into your head, where does it end?”
Lapadat is a graduate of the marketing program at Conestoga, and says the skills he gained at school have played a huge part in his public speaking and fundraising efforts.
“Right now, I’m using everything I learned from Conestoga, and I’m actually making a difference in people’s lives.”
Even though he’s completed every task he originally set out for himself, Lapadat says he’s not finished yet. He has plans to expand his motivational speaking to schools across the country. And he’ll be towing more buses, of course.
“All of this is just surreal to me, I had no idea I could tow a school bus, this is nuts,” he says with a laugh. “It’s like a dream, I’m going to wake up tomorrow and be like, ‘that was a good dream.’ But, we’ll see. I’m not done dreaming yet.”
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