My Fitness Journey, Thus Far

Other than the trailer for this podcast, this is the seventh episode that I've recorded. And I haven't really talked about myself that much—my background, my qualifications, and why you should even be listening to me. So that's what we're going to talk about today.

Hey there. It's me, Kore. You're listening to Exercising Self-Control: From Fitness to Flourishing.

So, yeah, I haven't talked about myself. I actually don't want this to be about me exactly. I want this to be about the ideas that I’m sharing with you. But you probably want to know a little bit about what makes me qualified to even talk about this stuff.

So, I've been a certified fitness trainer since 2013. I've been helping people realize their health and fitness goals even before that. I would help my friends, family, and co-workers; I talked about fitness all the time. I should have done this, become a trainer that is, right out of high school.

My brother, who is 12 years older than I am, was already working out when I was a kid. He took me to the gym one day, and I vividly remember it was an inclined bench press. When I was lowering that bar, I wasn't in control of the bar. It's not that it was too heavy, but anyone who's ever lifted weights for the first time knows there's a lot of stability required. And it's a skill. And I didn't have that skill as a…I would have to imagine…how old was I? Maybe 12 or 13 years old, maybe even younger. But anyway, I almost brought the bar down on my teeth. It was in a little basement gym of the local racquetball court in town. A little town called Cranbrook in BC.

I thought it was pretty cool. I really looked up to my brother and how strong he was compared to me. Remember, 12 years older than I am. He was way ahead strength-wise. He was a man and I was a child. You can imagine the disparity there.

I didn't get into the weights immediately because I was too young to go on my own and I didn't have the money for it. But I played soccer, I did all the sports through school, through high school.

There was an incident with some of my peers when I think I was in grade nine. There was an activity day in which one of the options was to shoot arrows at a target with a bow. Whoever it was that brought the bows and the arrows in, as an example of a variety of bow, he brought a compound bow in. That is quite hard to draw the string back, but once it’s back, the pulleys, the system itself makes it quite easy to hold. So it starts off difficult and ends up easy so you can hold it nice and long and sight something if you're using it for hunting, for example.

Anyway, all my peers, my best friend at the time, our good friends, and some of the other boys who weren’t really friends but were acquaintances in the same grade. And I thought, “Yeah, we’re all equal here.” Except, the thing was, they could actually pull this bow and I couldn’t. I was quite embarrassed by this. I vowed then and there to get stronger. Because I thought I was strong, but, turns out, not as strong as I thought.

When I got into grade 10 and 11, I actually did start to lift weights at the school gym. And then eventually, I joined a gym that was outside of the school, and that’s when things really started to take off. I got bigger; I got more muscular. And fitness just became my life. I enjoyed it.

At one point, I did some martial arts as well. I did four years I did Wing Chun Kung Fu. Oh, I forgot to mention I was a gymnast for about three years, I think…somewhere around there, when I was in junior and in high school. I competed provincially.

What I'm getting at is that I've been exercising fairly seriously for a long time. Now it’s been over 40 years. I'm 56 now. It’s progressed over that time. At first, it was to bolster my self-esteem as a teenager. Then it became more a psychological practice. It got me through dark times and kept me grounded when things were going really well and I was getting, maybe, a little bit too full of myself. The weights will keep you humble that way. At least that’s what it did for me.

I had other interests, as well. I was into philosophy, psychology. I actually trained and became a certified hypnotist. And I did that for a while. And that ties into why I became a coach eventually, instead of thinking of myself as just a trainer, a fitness trainer. I consider myself a fitness coach.

A big part of that is when I was a hypnotist and I was helping people stop smoking or helping them with their poor eating habits; it was still very health and fitness oriented, that’s how I approached my hypnosis. But what I found was that people were coming in thinking I would just fix them. Like it was some magic power that I would have. And I would always have to explain, “No, this is actually you doing this. Your thinking, your imagination, driven by your own intention to be the person you want to be.”

And I thought, “I don’t want to do t