Before he ever took to the stage, Baena’s early life was filled with challenges, including feelings of insecurity and being bullied.
Reflecting on his past, Baena revealed, according to OK Magazine, “People sometimes forget that I used to be chubby in high school. I got cut from my basketball and soccer team because I couldn’t keep up with the other kids.”
He expressed gratitude for swimming, which didn’t require tryouts. “Swim didn’t have tryouts, thankfully, and completely changed my life forever,” he stated. “That was my introduction to fitness and training.”
Baena also discussed the emotional impact of those formative years.
In an interview with People in 2022, he said, “I was bullied when I was a kid, elementary, middle school, and not really in high school, but I just felt like an outsider in high school at the beginning. I was really overweight from the end of elementary school into the beginning of high school.”
He further revealed, “It was my closest friends that were the ones that bullied me the most and made fun of me for being overweight and all these kind of things. So, that was really a big struggle for me in finding myself and figuring out and creating that ambition to change my weight and my physique.”
