Members of Strong Tower Fitness participated in the inaugural “I Don’t Have Much Quit In Me” fundraiser to benefit ALS patients Saturday. (Photo by Douglass Huxley)

PARKERSBURG — Members of Strong Tower Fitness participated in the inaugural “I Don’t Have Much Quit In Me” fundraiser to benefit ALS patients Saturday.

The fundraiser is part of the S.E.T.H Project set up by West Virginia native Seth Polling, who is seven years into an ALS diagnosis.

“There’s been a lot of people in our local community that’s been impacted by this (ALS) and I think everybody here today is honored to support Seth and what his foundation is standing for,” Strong Tower Fitness Owner Greg Brewster said. “Hopefully, there can be a cure found one day.”

Program Director, and coach, Sonny Zickefoose said the gym became involved when a friend, and gym owner, from Morgantown, who attended college with Polling, approached him about the fundraiser.

“When he reached out I was like, absolutely,” Zickefoose said. “Especially when you’re talking about someone from West Virginia, from your home state, you always like to rally behind those kinds of people… ALS is a horrible condition, so any chance we get to help out people, or do anything that can benefit the community, we try to jump on that.”

Members of Strong Tower Fitness began their work out for the inaugural “I Don’t Have Much Quit In Me” fundraiser to benefit ALS patients by doing 144 double unders, jump rope with two rotations of the rope in a single jump, representing the 144 people in W.Va. diagnosed with ALS. (Photo by Douglass Huxley)

Zickefoose said the workout begins by doing 144 double unders, jump rope with two rotations of the rope in a single jump, representing the 144 people in W.Va. diagnosed with ALS. He said the workout then moves to ten box jumps, ten cleans (where you use a bar bell and pull the weight off the floor and heave it up to your shoulders, and, in the same motion, lower into a full front squat and then stand back up), eight burpees, and then six toes to bars (hanging from a pull-up bar and bringing your legs up so your toes touch your hands).

“So, you do that ten times,” Zickefoose said. “And then once you get that done with ten rounds, you cash out with another 144 double unders.”

Zickefoose said there wasn’t a time limit to complete the workout but people could log in their score to the S.E.T.H. Project website to enter into a prize drawing the foundation was having. He said Strong Tower Fitness had 17 people either sign up to do the workout, to make a monetary donation or to buy a shirt, with all of the proceeds going to the S.E.T.H. Project or ALS research.

“This is kind of what this community was built for,” Brewster said. “For helping people and being a light in the community.”

For more information about Strong Tower Fitness individuals can visit their website at strongtowerfitness.com, or visit their Facebook page.

Douglass Huxley can be reached at dhuxley@newsandsentinel.com

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What is ALS?

* Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, is a progressive nervous system disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, causing loss of muscle control.

* ALS is often called Lou Gehrig’s disease, after the baseball player who was diagnosed with it. Doctors usually don’t know why ALS occurs. Some cases are inherited.

* ALS often begins with muscle twitching and weakness in a limb, or slurred speech. Eventually, ALS affects control of the muscles needed to move, speak, eat and breathe. There is no cure for this fatal disease.

Source: www.mayoclinic.org