NORFOLK, Neb. - In the Early morning hours at the start of the week, a group of people led by former United States Army squad leader, Rob Barrows, put thought into action on their road to recovery.

Barrows created the Resilience Power and Purpose Program. Designed to put action into the addiction recovery process through lifting weights.

But before the early mornings group sessions, Barrows' recovery journey started when he was inspired to get back into lifting weights from a World's Strongest Man competitor.

 “Over the course of time, he became my trainer, my mentor through it all, so that’s really where it started. So I started competing in song, man,” said Barrows. “I did my first strong man in 2021, complete novice got beat by everybody, and so in the last four and a half years, over time, I’ve competed in 20 different times at various levels  of it, and that’s kinda the thing that keeps me going.”

Barrows wanted to share his knowledge with others suffering from addiction. Travis Webb is in long-term recovery. He says the program inspires him.

“ We’re on a level now that we’re really good friends because of all the work,” said Webb. “We lean into hard things we don’t lay back and just say a day clean is a day won anymore, just because there’s so many more hours in a day to do just stay clean and sober. So we fill that time up doing positive energy things.”

Barrows hopes individuals leave the program feeling inspired and putting what they learned into action.

“ So it’s about the doing part of recovery, it’s taking all these different things that we talk about and applying it to our life and getting to the doing part of it,” said Barrows.