SPRINGFIELD — Ethan Schneider inspires others just by wearing a sleeveless shirt. He’s always been strong, even before he started lifting with the Northeastern High School powerlifting team when he was 16.
“I was good at it. It was easy,” said Schneider, a 2001 Northeastern graduate. “I was lightweight, and I was really strong. I could lift more than the kids who were already on the team.”
The only path to Schneider’s physique is through years of hard work in the gym. He has put in those hours — many in recent years at his home away from home, FitWorks in Beavercreek — as a competitive bodybuilder who recently turned pro. He also swears by a healthy lifestyle — no smoking, no drinking, not ever.
The muscles tell only part of Schneider’s story, however. The truly inspiring part of his tale, the story he recently shared in a bodybuilding magazine called “Reps!” under the headline “Defying the Odds,” the story he wants to share with others in hopes it motivates them and maybe even changes their lives, began Nov. 15, 2003.
That was the day Schneider fell off the roof of a house he was renting as a student at Ohio State. He suffered a traumatic brain injury, severed his spinal cord in two places, broke his neck in two places and was paralyzed from the diaphragm down.
“He was an amazing kid before the accident,” said his mom DeeDee Schneider, the longtime treasurer at Northeastern. “He helped take care of his grandparents and didn’t go out for baseball when his grandpa was dying of cancer his senior year in high school. He was the third-ranked freshman in the college of natural resources at Ohio State at the beginning of his junior year when he had his accident.”
Ethan can’t remember the accident or even the house, where he lived for two years, or the hospital stay that lasted 2½ months. The brain injury robbed him of those memories.
His mom, of course, remembers the day well and pieced together what happened from the people who witnessed it. DeeDee was at the Ohio State-Purdue football game that day, not far away at Ohio Stadium.
“He was at his house with his roommates,” she said. “They were setting things up for game day. He had taken one of his roommate’s girlfriends home. When he came back, he parked my Jeep Cherokee in front of the house because that was the only place left to park because it was a game day. He and one of his friends went out of the room.
“For some reason, somebody threw him a football, and he just didn’t think about the fact that he was on a roof. He dove to catch the football, and he fell off the roof. His back hit the luggage rack, and that’s how he severed his spinal cord. He fell to the ground in a sitting position, slammed back and fell forward.”
At that point, Ethan’s luck turned. One of his roommates was a lifeguard, his mom said, and immobilized him, holding his head straight. An ambulance arrived in four minutes and got an airway down his throat because he wasn’t breathing.
“There were circumstances that allowed him to survive,” DeeDee said. “When they got him to the hospital, they called me over the loudspeaker to go to the nearest policemen. They were trying to get me there before he died. They didn’t expect him to make it out of surgery. They thought he was brain dead.”
Not until Ethan moved his fingers did they realize he was paralyzed, not brain dead. Schneider had part of his skull removed and spent 2½ weeks in a coma on a ventilator. Doctors told his mom he might never be able to breathe or eat on his own. They warned her he could die of pneumonia because of the high infection risk.
Yet Ethan battled back, his mom said. He returned home in January 2004. DeeDee described him as lethargic in those early days after the accident. Eventually, a new Ethan emerged, one changed by the brain injury.
“Before my accident, I was very shy,” he said. “After the accident, I’m the most outgoing person you’ve ever met.”
Schneider’s new life in a wheelchair began. He lost all of his muscle mass after the accident, falling from 195 pounds to 125. But as soon as he could, he started lifting competitively again. In 2006, he set a state bench press record by lifting 274 pounds with a body weight of 153 pounds.
Schneider stopped lifting for several years because additional surgeries kept him out of the gym. He stayed around the sport as a certified judge in the Natural Athlete Strength Association, and he also returned to Ohio State, graduating in 2007 with a 3.0 grade-point average and a degree in human nutrition.
In 2011, Schneider returned to competition at the Natural Buckeye Classic, placing third in his division, the Drug Free Wheelchair National Championships. Last September, he won his division at the Youngstown Cardinal Classic. He placed third in March at another event and is now preparing for a Drug Free Athletes Coalition event in Columbus on Aug. 18.
While Schneider is healthy in most ways, he battles daily bowel problems and muscle spasms. He can drive a car, but depends on weekly visits from his mom to his apartment in Dayton for some of the little things he can’t do.
“It’s amazing what he’s able to accomplish,” said Kevin Staab, a friend of Schneider who has watched him compete and also owns a nutrition retailer, SuperHealthCenter.com. “Competing is so hard, and he goes through things on a daily basis that we take for granted. It’s inspiring to watch what he does.”
Staab has sponsored Schneider by providing him with nutrition supplements, a big part of competitive bodybuilding. About Time, another protein supplement company, also sends its product to Schneider.
Schneider said everything he takes is all-natural. Many bodybuilding competitions test the athletes for steroids and make them take lie-detector tests. Schneider is adamant about doing it the right way.
“When you’ve had a life like mine, you cannot help but believe that you’re here for a purpose,” Schneider explained in a short autobiography on Wheelchair-Bodybuilding.com. “The sport of bodybuilding not only helps me keep my strength up, but more importantly helps me inspire and motivate people to follow their dreams and to never let anything stand in their way. It also enables me to show what the Lord in heaven can do if you have a firm belief in Him. Nothing feels better than changing people’s lives and it’s great that I can do it just by doing what I love to do.”