Athlete Spotlight: Meet Chris Alabastro!
Get to know the people who make our Community Strong. This month, we’re catching up with Chris Alabastro, who joined Defined in 2024.
By
July 8, 2025
Get to know the people who make our Community Strong. This month, we’re catching up with Chris Alabastro, who joined Defined in 2024.
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The year was 2019, and Chris Alabastro had a promising life path before him. After growing up in Southern California and attending medical school at UCLA, he’d embarked on his next big adventure — moving halfway across the country to Chicago, where he’d attend a three-year residency in surgical urology at Northwestern University.
As his residency stint was wrapping up, his passion for saving lives and helping others was nearly realized.
“However, life happened,” Chris says.
On March 18, 2022, while crossing a street in downtown Chicago with his partner, Chris was struck by a car and propelled more than 40 feet on the pavement. His partner sustained minor injuries to his hand, but Chris was left in critical condition.
Chris spent weeks in the hospital, still in critical condition as family and friends surrounded him with love and support (a fundraiser surpassed $170,000). While he ultimately still had his life, he wasn’t sure what kind of life it would be. A career path in surgery seemed near impossible at this point, with a slew of physical and neurological complications following the accident.
“As a surgical trainee, my physical injuries took precedence,” Chris says. “My torn ACL gave me apprehension about standing for hours during surgeries; internal bleeding nearly took my life, and my double-vision from a traumatic strabismus was any surgeon’s nightmare. I also held a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury.”
Professional aspirations aside, Chris had no idea what life would look like from here. Determined to regain some semblance of control over his physical condition, Chris joined a gym, where he met Coach Chandler.
Coach Chandler helped Chris identify his fitness goals, starting to put one foot in front of the other — no matter how difficult those steps might be.
“When I started, I couldn’t perform jump ropes, or even jog,” he says.
But over time, Chris got stronger — and life got better. When Coach Chandler moved to Defined Training in 2024, Chris followed, where he discovered a strength-first community who encourage and uplift one another, surrounded by a team of coaches who care.
“Physically, it brought me to where I am today,” Chris says. “Defined taught me perseverance. It goes beyond reaching these physical heights I never imagined — it gave me the courage and power to navigate my personal and professional lives.”
In 2025, life, once again, looks different for Chris. Inside the gym, Chris is focused on continuing to build back his physical and neurological strength through fitness. He recently achieved the 700 Pound Club at Defined, an incredible milestone he never thought possible. Outside the gym, Chris is reestablishing his career path with a renewed and newfound passion for medicine.
“I’m in the process of switching to physical medicine and rehabilitation — a specialty in medicine that brought my life back to a life worth living,” he says.
For Chris, #MoreThanAGym is a direct reflection of his journey at Defined.
“It reflects the unlimited capacity in which Defined Training can provide hope, promise, results, and belonging,” Chris says. “It gave me a new community and newfound mental discipline, relentless perseverance, proper form and technique, and a somewhat better physique, to boot.”
When asked what advice he would give to someone just starting out on their fitness journey, Chris says “stay dedicated.”
“You cannot even begin to imagine where you’ll be a year from now,” Chris says. “This was true for me when I started at this gym; it was true for me when I regained consciousness after my accident.”
While Chris doesn’t assume to know what life will look like a year, two years, or even a decade from now — he does know he has the strength and resilience to navigate it with hope and excitement for all that’s possible. And he has this community at Defined cheering him on every step of the way.
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“And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” – Audre Lorde
I was born in California, but English was my second language. I first spoke Tagalog, the language of the Philippines (and the language my parents spoke to me). I went to a school with Filipino teachers for Kindergarten and 1st grade, barely speaking English. They granted me the option to skip 2nd grade, which haunted my English class grades (high school and college) as well as the “reading comprehension/verbal/writing” sections of my college and medical school admissions exams.
Thanks for being a part of our community, Chris!
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It doesn’t have to look like the one you just read. How has Defined help transform your life? We want to hear from you — fill out this questionnaire if you’re willing to share.
