100 in 100: Day 58- Heather & Chris Lacasse

A note before you dive in

This is the first two-part story in the 100 in 100 series. Part 1 is Chris and Heather's journey to Prototype and to each other's corner of the gym. Part 2 is harder to watch, and more important to share — Chris's stroke earlier this year, and what it taught both of them about why they train. We'd encourage you to watch both.

Chris and Heather Lacasse walked into Prototype through two completely different doors, three years apart, for two completely different reasons. Today they're one of the families you'll see at the gym almost every morning — and their story turned out to need two videos instead of one, because there's the story of how they got here, and then there's the story of what almost took it all away.

Chris found Prototype first, back in 2018. He'd watched the CrossFit Games on TV the year before and thought it looked like a lot of fun — and more than a little intimidating. He'd been doing regular gym workouts and some group training, but nothing like what he saw on screen. He looked up Prototype, signed up, and showed up not really knowing what he was in for.

Consistency didn't come easy at first. Chris was in and out through 2018, then COVID scattered everyone's routines further. It wasn't until around 2021 and 2022, as he was approaching 40, that something clicked. He didn't want to keep putting it off. He committed to showing up as much as he could, and working remotely afterward made the gym something bigger than exercise — it became his social life, his mental health outlet, and the one place he could make progress even on a bad day at work.

Heather came to Prototype in 2021, but not through the front door of a class. She started in personal training, too intimidated to jump straight into a group workout. It took her the better part of a year to work up the courage to try a CrossFit class for the first time.

She'd been doing HIIT workouts on her own during COVID, and Chris had been telling her for a while that she'd like it — that strength training is good for women. True to form, she needed to hear the same thing from a few outside sources before she trusted it. "That's a wife thing," she laughs. As she got closer to 40 and read more about it, her curiosity got the better of her. What she found surprised her.

Cherry-Picking vs. Showing Up

Both of them describe the same turning point, in their own way: the moment they stopped cherry-picking workouts and started just showing up. For Heather, that meant committing to five days a week no matter what — and either figuring out a modification or confronting the thing she couldn't do yet, instead of skipping it. For Chris, it meant realizing the program is built to be sustainable across a full week, not just the days that felt good.

The numbers back up what that consistency built. Between them, Chris and Heather have logged over 2,200 tracked workout results and more than 330 personal records — PRs that include a 350-pound deadlift and a 285-pound back squat for Chris, and a 245-pound deadlift and 185-pound back squat for Heather. Heather will still tell you she thinks cleans are stupid, and Coaches Brian and Jon are still working on that with her after all this time — Jon especially, since he's the one who deals with most of her complaining at the gym.

Never Peaked Yet

If there's one thing Heather wants other women to hear, it's this: don't be afraid to pick up something heavy. She'd done HIIT classes for years, but nothing that challenged her the way a barbell does. Now in her 40s, she says she feels like she hasn't peaked — she knows she can lift heavier than she's even lifting today. There's something powerful about looking around the gym and seeing women of every age putting up real numbers and cheering each other through the last rep. It's a sense of pride and accomplishment she says she hasn't had for a lot of things in her life, and a version of the weight room she never had access to before — she's not taking it for granted.

Chris's version of that same lesson is simpler, and he'd tell his younger self the same thing every time: it's all about consistency. Two days a week isn't enough. Three isn't enough. Come five times, even on weekends — you're resting the other 23 hours of the day anyway. Some days you show up and just go through the motions, and that's fine too. The showing up is the whole thing.

You Never Know What's Coming

Earlier this year, Chris had a stroke. It's the kind of sentence that stops a family's world, and it stopped theirs. Chris and Heather talked about it on camera because they both felt it was something worth other people hearing, not because it was easy to say.

When Chris woke up with intense vertigo, ringing in his ears, nausea, and balance problems, they didn't immediately think stroke. Like most people, they had the classic warning signs in their heads — facial drooping, numbness down one side — and this didn't look like that. His primary care doctor initially thought it was an inner-ear issue. It was Coach Gill, at the gym, who told him plainly: don't mess around, go to the ER.

What happened next is where the gym comes back into the story. Chris believes, without hesitation, that the fitness he'd built in the years leading up to the stroke — and the community that showed up around him after — changed how quickly he recovered. He was back in the gym a week after the stroke, moving carefully, slowly ramping his training back up. A later surgery meant starting that ramp over again, and he was back in the gym again less than a week after that. His training log tells the same story in numbers: a roughly seven-week gap that spring, then a careful rebuild — lighter lifts at first, adding weight back gradually week by week through the summer. He didn't stop. He adjusted.

For Heather, the gym meant something different during that stretch — a place that kept her own footing steady while everything else felt uncertain. Being able to walk in and have people already know what was going on, offer support without making a production of it, or just crack the same jokes and give Chris the same hard time they always had, mattered more than either of them expected it to.

For a lot of people, the gym is their social lifeline. For Chris and Heather, this year, it was closer to a literal one.

Neither of them came to Prototype looking for this. Chris came for a challenge he'd seen on TV. Heather came because her husband told her she'd like it. What they found was a community that showed up for each other on the ordinary days and the very worst one — and a family that's stronger, in every sense, for having walked through this together.

"Movement and exercise accelerate healing. It's a literal lifeline — for both of us."

I love how Chris and Heather both got here. I think Heather's journey is a bit more conventional to others who start at Prototype, but Chris's is one of the first I've heard where the CrossFit Games inspired him to start. The part I love is how their own self-drive and awareness changed, at different points, to invest further in themselves.

While I haven't coached the two of them personally, I've worked out alongside both of them many times. They're amazing people — the type of people you want in the community here at Prototype. They're humble, coachable, and fun to be around. I'm so glad they both found their way here, and I'm incredibly proud of both of them for sticking through the hard parts of their journey.

In terms of Chris and his stroke, I remember Jon telling me what happened and I couldn't believe it. My immediate reaction was to reach out and see what we could do. It's unbelievable to me that Chris was back in the gym not long after — I think many people would've thrown in the towel or taken a lot more time off, but Chris is living proof of the consistency he's built. What I observed talking to the two of them during the interview was the support Chris has with Heather as he's navigated this. I followed up with both of them several times about sharing this part of the story, and they told me they wanted people to hear how important this is. That takes courage, and I appreciate the vulnerability Chris showed during the interview.

I just spoke with Chris this week, and he had further stress testing done to check whether the surgery was successful. The good news is that it was, and he's on his way to getting himself back. It'll take time, but I'm so happy for him and his family. To that end, I want to thank Chris and Heather for sharing their story and for being an inspiration to the community here at Prototype.

This story was developed through recorded video interviews and shaped with the help of AI writing tools. The facts, quotes, and experiences are Chris and Heather's own — AI helped organize and present them in a format worthy of the story they've lived.