Love Local · Featured in love, Beaumont, Issue 1
Richard has been training my son and me for a while now, and before you read a single one of his credentials, I want you to know this: he is one of the kindest, funniest people I have ever met in a gym. The commentary is subtle, perfectly timed, and we are usually in tears laughing at something he said mid-set. That is a gift. So is everything else he brings to this community.
Richard James III is Beaumont-raised, world-class, and quietly doing extraordinary things right here in Southeast Texas. He is a world powerlifting champion and an Olympic Torch bearer, and he holds state records in USPA powerlifting. Not long ago he stepped back onto the platform at Texas Strength Systems in San Antonio, just months after completely tearing his pectoral muscle. He walked away with four first-place medals and a world ranking of second in his division, with only one lifter ahead of him, a competitor in Turkey. That performance also earned him a qualifying total for the Mr. Olympia stage in Las Vegas this September.
Here is how Richard put it afterward:
"Beyond the accolades, records, world ranking, and gold medals is the miraculous ability of the human body to heal and to grow stronger for a better quality of life. Strength is your super power. Embrace it and LiveYoung."
That message is the backbone of everything he does. His latest book, LiveYoung, takes on what he calls the real health crisis in our community. Not obesity, but the slow loss of muscle as we age. It is called sarcopenia, and most people have never heard of it. The decline starts earlier than you would think, often in our late thirties, and it speeds up from there. The mistake most of us make is waiting. We let our strength, and with it our quality of life, quietly slip before we ever decide to do something about it, and then we have to work twice as hard to win it back.
Richard's argument is simple, and his Biomedical Engineering degree from Louisiana Tech backs it up: resistance training is medicine. Muscle holds disease at bay. Strength is something every person, at every age, can build, and building it changes how you live.
He does that work through Fit Lab Foundation, his nonprofit based in Nederland, where he coaches Southeast Texans from youth athletes to masters lifters. He is also the creator of Adventures of the Elements, a STEM fantasy series where element characters travel through science and history. The Gates Foundation praised it as cutting-edge for getting kids excited about math and science, and there is a film adaptation in the works.
He is kind, he is funny, and he is one of ours. You can find him and the LiveYoung mission at FitLabFoundation.org.