How an Angry Young Man Became an Ultimate Men's Health Guy

Omari Grey doesn't quite grasp the concept of downtime.

On any given day, you'll find him teaching calculus at a charter school in Washington, D.C.; coaching youth basketball; owning and operating a fitness center in Virginia; converting his 50 acres of land to a non-profit retreat serving at-risk youth; and co-parenting his eight children, ages 18 months to 8 ½ years old.

If that sounds like a schedule befitting a certain Man of Steel, it's intentional.

"When I was a kid, I was always looking for a role model, trying to get some idea of what an ‘ultimate guy' is--and for me, it had to be Superman," says Grey, a semifinalist in the 2015 Search for the Ultimate Men's Health Guy.

"Here was this low-key, kindhearted guy just doing his job well and humbly, and taking care of business," says the 37-year-old. "And then he was also this fierce and noble warrior completely committed to helping other people."

But Grey didn't don his red cape right away. "I was a failure in life," he says. "Ego, pride, and a terrible sense of entitlement" led him to squander the many opportunities he received as a gifted teenage basketball player.

Grey was granted full rides to several Division I schools, but opted instead for mid-major Towson University, figuring coaches would quickly see his superlative skills and play him every minute of every game.

"I didn't want to watch--I wanted to play," Grey says. "I wasn't interested in becoming a better player. I was a horrible teammate, I was impossible to coach, and I was a dumb, dumb kid."

After 2 years of sketchy behavior, Grey was axed from the team. His roster slot filled and locker reassigned, he and his soon-to-be wife decided to move to the Middle East, where they didn't know anyone.

"We just knew that we had to do something quite new," says Grey. He hoped that what came next would provide lessons in self-improvement.

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In Yemen and Jordan, Grey taught math at private schools and in Palestinian refugee camps, witnessing the ravages of third-world poverty. But when one of his employer's organized crime connections identified Grey's passport as a lucrative piece in a convoluted extortion plot against the American, Grey and his wife were essentially held hostage in a foreign land, until sympathetic friends facilitated their escape to Kuwait.

"Living overseas shifted my paradigm dramatically and reaffirmed my belief in family and community," says Grey. "If you think you have it hard in America--and a lot of Americans really do--then you probably have no idea how hard billions of people have it in other parts of the world."

After nearly a decade abroad, Grey and his family returned to the States and set up camp in Northern Virginia. Grey and his wife now raise their children to live self-sufficiently off the Virginia acreage he was deeded as part of reparations for his ancestors' enslavement in the 1800s.

Grey hopes to transform the property into a place for personal growth and development for underprivileged kids. He plans on offering no-cost workshops on physical fitness, mindfulness meditation, agriculture, woodworking, community engagement, and humility and compassion.

Those are the kinds of traits that transformed Grey from a teen with an attitude into an Ultimate Men's Health Guy.

"In fitness, there are often challenges and sometimes there is pain as you're growing and getting stronger, but you push through and you cross new thresholds," Grey says. "It's about constantly redefining your personal best. I want to keep getting better and I truly believe that it's in serving other people that we become our best."