ruggedfitness

You may ask why I would delve into such a comprehensive and personal summary of my struggles with the unhealthy side of my life as an initial post to promote a health improving business.  Part of it is because every time I had to write a biography for one of my various gym and Recreation center jobs I felt like a hypocrite and an asshole trying to make it seem like I ate slept and breathed only that which was pure and healthy 24/7.  That wasn’t honest or even effective in trying to promote my ability to improve people’s lives.  It put me on a pedestal I had no right to be on.  I am not on a pedestal telling you how to live I am right down in the muck and mire trying to claw my way out with the rest of you.  I have taken some excellent first steps but I am by no means out of the filth yet nor will I ever really wash myself clean.  This is the way many of our lives are and it is an ongoing struggle for all of us.  I want you all to know this so that when we work together to live better lives you see me there beside you stumbling along the ragged path, not miles ahead in green fields wondering what the hold up is.  Start crawling with me.

December has always been an interesting month for me.  I love Christmas and all the celebrating that goes along with it.  After taking the very difficult CSCS exam at UBC on December 3rd, I was ready to release some tension and let loose after the sober November.  By the end of Christmas my body felt old and weak and painful.  The high calorie animal based foods left my stomach aching on top of the GI distress from the ethanol binge.  My head was foggy and my lungs hurt from Christmas cigars and Djarums on top of the usual deluge of holiday ganja. The breaking point had been reached and something in my head said that this really had to change this time.  Something felt different than the countless times before when I had said I would change my ways.  This time I was truly over the staleness and the routine of seeking worth and pleasure from substance fueled experiences.  The experiences were really the essence of the joy so why did I need to view them through a distorted lens to squeeze the most out of them?  So came 2012, the supposed last year of civilization as we know it.  It seems kind of ironic making this the year to cast away my bad habits when it is likely that a good portion of society will redouble their self destructive efforts before the end of the world.  However for me the decision has nothing to do with our calendar-correlated planetary position around the sun.  It has nothing to do with the number associated with this particular trip around the sun and its cultural or historical significance.  This is not a goddamn New Year’s resolution.  This is a new direction for my entire life that could have happened at any positional coordinates relative to our sun.  And the momentum and motivation I feel at this moment is like nothing I have ever felt before.  Will I remain squeaky clean from now on and charge into a life of sobriety and sainthood? That is neither realistic nor healthy.  However never again will I put my self in situations where I relinquish careful attention and conscious planning for the enjoyment of friends and social events.  I am sorry Mr. Lahey but I will not let the liquor do the thinking.

The summer passed with plenty of fun and indulgence as well as a lot more hours behind a bar than I would have liked.  The money helped me pay off my debts and support myself completely on my own which was a great step in the right direction, despite the means.  Bartending can be a great complement to being a personal trainer in many ways as it forces you to connect with people quickly and meaningfully.  Yet the discrepancies in lifestyle and hours can also make it feel like you are being torn in two different directions. The seasonal bustle of Sidney by the sea had settled down drastically by mid October and even though I had done some serious work on my business plan, I still was being stifled by the workload and lifestyle placed on me by serving the establishment.  I decided to get serious in November to study for my Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist exam which I had signed up for at the beginning of October.  This meant a “Just say NO-vember” in which I would try my best to eschew any social distractions and spend my days at the only place I had historically been able to study effectively: the UVic library.  Then I got a better bartending offer from a lounge downtown and quickly jumped at the opportunity to leave the now seasonally quiet pub which I had served above my station.  The new job came fraught with its own challenges as with the bigger bar and large circle of new people came bigger temptations.  Despite the precarious situations and significant new directions for my life, November turned out to be a productive month for both business and personal growth.

I rekindled my passion for personal training in the fall of 2010 when I started working for a private gym. As my love of the workout design and client interaction was blossoming once again an awful weed was growing and ever threatened to choke the life out of the flower that was blooming. The weed was the reality of what I like to call “industrialized fitness” where the focus of the organization is selling sterile, mechanized workouts with artificial light and re-circulated air. To top it off we were required to sell these workouts to the point of harassment to the general public. My soul was crushed to the point of creative drought and I once again escaped via unhealthy habits. Then 2011 was born and the mind bogglingly simple idea of creating my own brand of fitness free from the constraints of sales quotas and top of the line equipment came into my head like a penetrating light. There was hope! There was another way! I worked fervently at building the initial philosophy for the business in my head and redoubled my own exercise efforts as well. A friend found me a job bartending so I could pay the bills while I worked on creating my own company. While freeing me from the legal constraints of the private gym, this proved to be another test for my will power as I was once again thrust into the ethanol way of life. I also moved out into a house with my most trusted friends which sparked me to utilize my nutritional independence to live a vegetarian lifestyle once again.  Life was looking up but there were still unseen challenges to face ahead.

Part 1

My name is Stuart Kidson and I am in the business of helping people live healthier lives.  When I started lifting weights at my local Recreation Center at the wee age of 13 I became addicted to everything bodybuilding and strength training.  Not really knowing any better, my initial nutrition and exercise information came from Muscle and Fitness magazines which highlighted Mr. Olympia behemoths giving tips on how to maximize hypertrophy and become as hard as bronze statue.  Some of the exercises I learned from those magazines I still use today but when I look back on the nutrition aspect I was being led down a harmful road of high protein diets, mostly coming from animal sources.  I eventually learned more accurate information through school, books, and fellow colleagues.  Of course once I was in the intellectual position to eat properly and train effectively new distractions took the place of the previous misinformation.  Most notably I became distracted by the steadily greater availability of ethanol based beverages and several wide circles of friends to discover them with.  Even as the wild graduation year of high school took me into my most furious years of partying during my time at University, I still maintained a healthy level of physical activity and, for the most party, ate a fairly balanced diet.  I would see myself becoming heavier or notice less muscle mass in my legs and arms every now and then and nip it in the butt with increased exercise and better eating.  This maintenance kept me in decent shape but at the same time never really allowed me to discover my full physical potential.  Even after University ended, and my better conscious told me to get serious about living up to my degree and title, temptations were hard to shake.