People with congenital dwarfism often have great mobility problems. They have weak, disproportionate or twisted joints, making it often difficult for them to even walk, let alone run or play sports.
But some pose real challenges to fate and health.
26-year-old Lee Liston from Utah, USA, is only 119 cm tall, and began to work hard at the gym only a year ago.
But this year, Lee has achieved incredible success, exercising 6 days a week and harmoniously pumping his whole body.
Lee's current dream is to take part in his first professional bodybuilding competition in April 2019, in which he will be the only dwarf among regular bodybuilders.
"Trolls" on social networks ridicule him, calling him short and other offensive words, but Lee does not pay attention to this. He is helped by the fact that outside the gym he leads a very bright and eventful social life, working as a comedian, showman and musician.
Elsewhere, he is seen as a dwarf in the first place, Liston says, but at the gym he is respected for the excellent performance he has achieved over a year of intense training.
Lee is not only intensely engaged with the barbell and other apparatus, but also completely switched to a special diet. To begin with, he ate 1,855 calories per day for 3 months, which was 300 more calories than he had eaten earlier. Including he began to consume more proteins.
Lee Liston was born with congenital achondroplasia, a common form of dwarfism. With this hereditary mutation, underdevelopment of long bones occurs.
As a child, Lee was very unhappy and upset about his anomaly. He often cried and asked, "Why am I so little ?!", and his parents could not console him. Other children pointed fingers at him and called him a gnome.
According to Lee, the hardest part about the gym for him was that he couldn't do the exercises with the same swing as regular bodybuilders, simply because of his short legs and arms. And at first he had to find it difficult to adjust to the desired pace. But a lot of support from friends and family did the trick.
In April 2019, Lee will take part in the Salt Lake City Showdown bodybuilding show and dreams of winning some prize, as well as seeing his idol there - bodybuilder Steve Cook, with whom he met once in his life and will forever remember this moment.