His path to recovery paved with kettlebells

Henri Engle and his dog Penny look over kettlebells at his gym in Newton Centre, where he teaches the exercise regimen that he says helped him rebound from cancer. (Globe Staff Photo / Justine Hunt)

Four rounds of chemotherapy, six weeks of high doses of radiation, and months of eating from a gastric feeding tube left only 135 pounds on Henri Engle's 6-foot frame.

To regain his strength after all of the cancerous cells in his throat were dead and his feeding tube was removed last April, Engle hit the gym. The kettlebell gym.

This unusual workout technique worked so well for him, the 24-year-old abandoned plans for a career in television production and opened his own gym this week in Newton Centre.

"It took cancer to get me in shape," said Engle, who weighed 220 pounds before he was diagnosed. "It broke me down to nothing. And I built myself back up with kettlebells."

A cast-iron kettlebell looks like cannon ball with a handle, and can weigh from 10 to 88 pounds. They originated in Russia, where kettlebell lifting became an official sport in the late 1940s. In about 2000, kettlebells made their way to the United States. Engle encountered them at a gym in Rhode Island, near the home of his parents, that was opened by personal trainer Anthony Diluglio five years ago. Diluglio calls it the country's first kettlebell gym, and says his clients include the strength trainers of professional sports teams such as the Boston Celtics and Tennessee Titans.

Diluglio and other proponents of exercising with kettlebells say it is a much more effective method of burning fat and calories than regular weight lifting and cardio training because it doesn't work with isolated muscles. Kettlebell routines use muscles in the entire body, and elevate the heart rate and burn calories at a higher rate than other forms of strength and cardio training, they say.

For Engle, it's more than a workout. It's a personal calling.

During Thanksgiving weekend in 2005, Engle's throat swelled up. He assumed it was a throat infection until two weeks later when, in the middle of watching the original "Manchurian Candidate" movie at his Beacon Hill apartment, he began coughing up blood. He finished watching the movie, he recalled with a grin during a recent interview, before walking to the emergency room at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Fifteen minutes later, he said, he was on a gurney being wheeled into surgery to remove a mass obstructing his airway. He woke up about five hours later in the hospital's oncology ward, staring into his mother's ashen face.

The doctors initially said they would have to take out his vocal cords to remove the cancer they found in his throat, but then a specialist told him of a procedure that might save his voice.

Engle, an Emerson College senior studying journalism at the time, said he cried once - the night doctors told him he had a 50-50 chance of surviving. Even if he did live, they said, the form of cancer he had was so rare that they couldn't tell him the rate of recurrence. About three cases of synovial sarcoma of the throat are diagnosed each year in the United States, Engle said.

Deciding that self-pity served little purpose, he didn't cry again.

"It had to happen to somebody," he said. "And you have to have your mind in a good place to get through the treatment. They're pumping you full of what amounts to rat poison."

Engle went through four doses of chemotherapy over five months, and six weeks of radiation treatment, twice a day for five days a week. His esophagus atrophied and closed during treatment, which forced him to eat through a gastric feeding tube. Doctors said he wouldn't be able to eat normally again.

Again, Engle didn't take the obstacle as a personal assault, but as a challenge. Eventually, to the amazement of doctors, he no longer needed the feeding tube.

His body, however, was extremely weak. He went to work with Diluglio, who said Engle's progress was so quick, there were noticeable differences day to day. A cancer survivor himself, Diluglio said he now works with patients while they are undergoing radiation.

"The worst part of treatment is that the radiation takes hold of your muscle fibers and creates fibrosis," Diluglio said, leaving the muscle tissue scarred and stiff. "Kettlebell training offsets what the radiation is doing to people."

Engle's progress - he's now cancer-free, and at 175 pounds, he says he's in the best shape of his life - prompted him to ask Diluglio for a license to open his own Punch Kettlebell Gym, based on Diluglio's facility in East Providence.

Now a Brookline resident, Engle opened his 1,800-square-foot workout space at 15 Cypress St. on Monday. The only traditional equipment in the gym is a dumbbell rack and some punching bags. Otherwise, it's an open space outfitted with kettlebells of varying sizes and long sections of thick rope that are used in the exercise routines.

Engle did obtain his journalism degree from Emerson, but he said that with the gym, "I get to help people doing something I enjoy - there's no better way to pay back the universe than that. Not everyone gets that kind of direction in life."

Like any longtime Red Sox fan, Engle says, he embodies the us-versus-the-universe mentality. And he's ready to pass it on.

Rachana Rathi can be reached at rrathi@globe.com.