Against All Odds; Houma Amputee Ranks Top in the World at Weight Lifting Competition

Your life can change in an instant which happened to Houma native Nick Boudreaux in 2017. Despite the challenges that come with being an amputee, he has ranked top four in the world in competitive lifting and has proven himself to be one of the strongest.

Boudreaux is a husband, a father, a community baseball coach, an athlete, and as of 2017, an amputee. On September 20, 2017, Boudreaux was involved in an accident while riding his motorcycle in Chauvin, “I pretty much lost my leg right there, but I didn’t want to believe it,” he said. He was then rushed to University Medical Center in New Orleans where medical professionals tried to save his leg, however, nothing worked in the two months he was in the hospital. He went through 23 back-to-back surgeries and surgeons were beginning to graft muscles from his other leg, “Nothing was working,” he reminisced, “I decided just to go ahead and amputate it because they were taking other parts of my body, and that wasn’t working.” The transition wasn’t easy for him, he lost 60 pounds in a couple of months while he was in the hospital, and his mental health wasn’t strong either.

Boudreaux said it took him around six months to be able to walk again due to skin grafts hindering him from being able to put weight on his limbs. Another obstacle was having two broken arms from the accident as well. He knew he had to get stronger.

Boudreaux is an aluminum fabricator at Cenac Towing where he described his job as being physical, “That’s a big part of my success because they don’t cut me any slack,” he said while laughing. He also said it took him a while to walk as well as get back to work because he was weak from being down so long, “I just said one day that I wanted to be strong again and that’s when I started lifting weights and I never stopped,” he shared.

It was a friend who was competing at the time who was on the border of becoming a pro in The World’s Strongest Man competitions. He introduced Boudreaux to the competition world after seeing his videos on Facebook, “I did well, so we went again and again…I just started competing,” he said. Boudreaux went on to rank in the world at the 2019 Static Monsters, a globally ranked strongman competition, however, the COVID pandemic shut down the remainder of the competitions. He couldn’t compete last year due to neck issues leading to surgery, however, he hopped right back into the lifting world. He went on to get his strength back and has so far competed in three competitions this year, “I knew I was going to rank, and I did,” he said. He went on to rank in the top four in the world in his class which is “Standing Adaptive.”

The competition, Static Monsters, had 61 competitions spread out globally, in 19 countries, and Boudreaux competed in Houston, Texas. The top ten in each class move on to the final competition which is in London from June 28 through 30, 2023.

Boudreaux didn’t think he would get to where he is, at least not at first, “I just keep moving forward. When I started, I was more focused on running,” he said. Running was his first passion, but he explained that the prosthetic limb was tearing him up when he tried running, “I just got mad and started lifting weights,” he said. He said he just kept trying, “I didn’t realize just how strong I became. I never really pushed myself as I do now before the accident…I was more of an alcoholic and never done these kinds of things,” he proudly said.

Boudreaux is pulling 530-pound axle deadlifts, “I’m doing this, with one leg, and I’m under 200 pounds,” he said. This remarkable success may be inspiring, however, he said it wasn’t always easy. Boudreaux said his number one motivation to get up in the morning was his family. 

“I was drowning in depression. I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror anymore. I worried that I wasn’t going to be enough as a coach, and as a dad, and I wouldn’t be enough for my wife,” he said, “They always had my back, but it was for my own comfort. When I started all of this, it was like wow, I’m actually good at something!”

He has a twelve-year-old son who he recognizes looks to him when it comes to life lessons, “I couldn’t show him I’ve given up…Don’t think I just jumped off of the sofa. It didn’t happen overnight,” he said, ”I realized I have a son, and every single thing I taught this child to do, he was good at it. So if I lay here, and give up, he’s going to be good at it…If I just chose to give up, he would be good at it. So I’m just trying to be my absolute best so maybe one day if my child is ever in a bind, he would think ‘this wouldn’t have been nothing for my dad.’”

What’s next for Boudreaux? He’s starting to coach and has recently enrolled with NASM to become a certified nutritionist and physical fitness coordinator where he said he wants to help people especially borderline diabetics who are on the way to losing limbs, “I just want to help them out before they end up like me,” he said. The fact that 80 percent of amputees are diabetic drives him to want to help. He is also looking to eventually change careers in building prosthetics. 

When it comes to goals, he has plenty of them! He is now running competitively and dreams of competing in Mega Spartan or Iron Man, “I want to compete in the world and rank the top three in strongman and get an invite to World’s Strongest Disabled Man,” he said. In reality, Boudreaux said he doesn’t like the terms because he doesn’t see himself as disabled, “I’m adaptive because I adapt. I figured a way out that makes it easy for me to do things throughout my life just because I adapted to it, not because I’m disabled,” he explained.

His ultimate goal? “I just want to be the strongest and best version of myself and help others, also, if I can do it and get up out of that wheelchair as I did, there are no excuses,” he said, “I had no picture painted for me I had no vision I was lost. So my goal is to paint a picture for other amputees and show them a light!”

We’ll see him next in the Mill Monster Classic on January 28 in Mississippi which is a national U.S.S. qualifier in the Strongman competitions. Good luck Nick!!