Louisville grandfather won't let cancer stop him from muscling up
It was a little after 10 a.m. on Friday and Robert Durbin was more than two hours into his second workout when a member of his gym barely one-third his age goaded him into a competition.
"He challenged me on one-arm pushups," Durbin told FOX Sports shortly after the exchange. "I asked him, 'Are you sure you want to do that?' and he said 'yeah.' He got four and I did 10. He's 21 and I'm 66. So he's going to have a rough time living that one down."
That's just another day at the office for Durbin, the Louisville, Ky., grandfather who has risen to prominence in recent years for his ripped physique and his impressive workout videos. But while it's not unusual for Durbin to make quick work of the opposition on the gym floor, many don't realize that Durbin has also been fighting a much tougher battle against cancer for the last several months.
Fortunately for the so-called "Rock Hard Papaw," working out -- and doing so often -- is all part of the treatment plan.
"It gets tough at times, but I'm taking it in stride," Durbin said. "I know what's coming, but I'm not just going to sit around and let it happen to me."
Robert Durbin
Though he looks like someone who was born with a barbell in his hands, Durbin's inspiring fitness journey started nine years ago, at age 57. At the time, Durbin weighed 222 pounds, wore braces on his ankles and struggled simply getting around, sometimes needing a cane to walk. He'd never so much as stepped foot in a gym.
But Durbin's grandkids were getting older, and he wanted to play a more active role in their lives than he did in the lives of his own children, so he made a resolution to get healthy, with the long-term goal of participating in fitness competitions. Inspired in part by the popular Hannibal For King workout videos, Durbin joined the local YMCA, but the early results were disheartening.
"I almost quit right off the bat," Durbin said. "I was here talking to a couple trainers, and they were giving me stuff to do, and my first three months I gained nine pounds, and I came in one morning and told them, 'That's it.' I said, 'I can gain weight at the house.'"
Concerned, Durbin's trainers sat him down and tried to talk him into staying. Durbin had been building muscle, they explained, and he should have felt inspired, not disappointed by what he perceived as a lack of progress. So Durbin kept at it, also following a strict diet, and soon enough he began to see results. In a year's time, he'd lost 60 pounds. By the end of Year Two he had six-pack abs.
Nearly a decade in, Durbin is something of an internet celebrity, with more than 12,000 followers on his Instagram account.
There, he shares photos and videos of his regimen and his chiseled frame -- his six-pack has since morphed into eight -- while devotees marvel at his workouts, most of which would be impressive for a man half Durbin's age. He's also become something of a local celebrity, with fans and friends often approaching him at the gym for everything from selfies to fitness advice.
"It's amazing, really," Durbin said of his rise to fame. "Everybody will walk up to me and introduce themselves, wanting me to help them. And I tell them, 'Well, you can work out with me, but I'm not a personal trainer.'"
However, in recent months, Durbin has encountered the most intimidating challenge yet.
In 2014, Durbin was diagnosed with colon cancer and underwent emergency surgery, where they removed six inches of his colon. He'd been seemingly in the clear since, until January, when Durbin's doctor became alarmed by the results of a routine blood test. After CT and PET scans, Durbin was diagnosed with cancer of the lymph nodes near his colon, rectum and spleen.
"I was devastated, but I told him, 'Well, can we do surgery on it?'" Durbin said. "I was kind of hoping we could do surgery again and get it over with. But I had it in too many places to do surgery, so they started me on chemo. That Friday they put the port in my chest, and the following week I had my first chemo treatment, on the third of February."
Originally, doctors told him they'd caught the cancer early enough that he'd likely only require four treatments. Scans later showed that the tumors were responding, but ultimately doctors recommended another round. Recently, after Durbin's sixth session, a nurse told him he likely had at least six more to go.
He'll be tested again soon, at which point doctors will determine the best course of action, but one part of Durbin's recovery process that is non-negotiable is his daily workout routine.
"I still do all my moves, but I can't do them for long periods of time," said Durbin, who has seen his weight drop from 158 to 141 pounds as a result of the chemo. "I have to take a little bit longer rest period, where I was just going continuously. Now I have to take a couple minute break between each set, sit down for a while, and then I'll get up and start it again after I rest up a little bit. But as far as strength, I still do just about everything I was doing, just not as many reps at a time."
Even as he undergoes rigorous cancer treatment, Durbin wakes up every day around 3:30 a.m. He starts his morning with 15 minutes on his Gazelle glider, then does 45 minutes of ab work -- crunches, planks and the like -- followed by four sets of 25 pushups. If that was all Durbin did, many would be impressed, but it's only the beginning.
Once he wraps up his morning warm-up at home, Durbin has breakfast -- the first of six meals he eats each day -- then heads to the gym, where he works out for two and a half to three hours every morning. He eats a snack while he's there and stops at Wal-Mart on the way home to do flag work, pull-ups and other exercises on the cart racks in the parking lot.
After he gets back to the house, Durbin has lunch and relaxes for the afternoon, but on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, he returns to the Y for another workout, with yoga on Mondays and kettlebell work the other days. At night, Durbin wraps up with another 100 pushups -- he does between 200 and 500 a day total -- and 15 or 20 more minutes of ab work before bed, leaving himself four to five hours of sleep before he gets up at 3:30 and does it all again the next day.
"I've got the right mindset, I'm staying active, and I think that's the main thing," Durbin said. "That's what motivates me right now. I know I've got to get up and get out of that bed and get going.
"I've got a friend who's got a little bit different type cancer than I do, but he does his chemo and that's it, he's sick for a week and can't really do anything," Durbin continued. "And I've determined that I'm not going to let it get me in that shape. I might not be able to do as much as I was doing, but I will be doing something."
The only exceptions to Durbin's routine are the days when he has a full chemo session -- those take six and a half to seven hours at the hospital -- and holidays when the gym is closed, dedication that isn't lost by the many friends he's come to know at the gym.
"I get people saying, 'Well the only reason we're here is we don't have an excuse if you're making it in here,'" Durbin said. "I've got I don't know how many people who are coming in here every day because I'm here. They're amazed at it.
"It helps me and gives me a big boost to keep going," Durbin added of the encouragement he receives from others. "I don't want to go back to the way I was, and in the same process, I check with the doctors to do everything that I do. But this is my life. This is what I do, and I've got more goals I want to make. So I'm not going to give up -- no time soon, anyway."
Especially not when you consider how much he's enjoying life as one of the world's most ripped grandpas.
In the early days, Durbin's wife, Frances, joined him on his daily workouts, but her own health issues have kept her out of the gym in recent years. Instead, for the last two, Durbin has been working out regularly with his daughter, Tiffany Villier, and together they've become stars, even within their own family.
"I sit there and I can hear my son talking, saying, 'Hey have you seen my dad's last trick?' and brag about me, and that means the world to me," Durbin said. "And my grandson, who actually I work out with quite a bit too, he's seven years old -- he calls me Papaw Muscles and that just goes right through me.
"That really motivates you when you know your family is behind you," added Durbin, whose family includes five kids, five grandkids and two great-grandchildren. "And I really think I've made them all proud of me. To hear them saying all that about me, it really touches my heart."
Now the hope for Durbin is that he'll have plenty of years left to start turning them into fitness buffs as well, and hearing that he's once again cancer-free would be a great first step toward that goal. But even as he continues to battle the disease, Durbin will remain committed to not letting it define who he is or change how he lives his life -- one one-handed push-up at a time.
"That would be fantastic," Durbin said. "It would be the best words I've ever heard.
"I still want to compete, and I have a bunch more stuff that I want to do," he added. "The cancer is just a little bitty setback to me, the way I look at it, and I'll get through it. I've overcome a lot of other stuff, and this is just another challenge."
You can follow Sam Gardner on Twitter or email him at samgardnerfox@gmail.com.
