IMPACT’s Fitness Editor tunes in to great ways to tune up your body and soul

By Pete Estabrooks

As the fitness Guy, I’m about the fun in functional fitness. I’ll eat, breathe and live fitness until I get it right and my definition of physically right means movement that improves me physically and brings with it moments of fun or peace, and at the best of times, both.

I need constant short-term physical gratification to feed my long-term goals of ageless aging – older, wiser, stronger.

I know this is achievable only by using my machine, my body, in the way it was designed and any less than a couple of hours of activity a day is a waste of my machine. Seeing as you and I have a similar machine and through the mechanics of my day job as a personal trainer — TKO fitness instructor —  I have access to the tools to fine tune us all into lean, mean, fitness machines. That’s my goal. But I am not your conscience, so don’t come up to me in the coffee shop and tell me why you don’t exercise, what your injuries are or your excuse du jour. I don’t care. I like people and chances are I’ll like you the same regardless of your level of fitness (being fit doesn’t absolve poor manners, pushy people or halitosis).

Fitness is not a statement of character, it’s an exploitation of your character. IMPACT can help you carve out the inner beast lurking inside your writer, engineer, lawyer, stylist, plumber or whatever exterior.

So I kind of lied about the caring part. I don’t care if you don’t care. But if you care, I care and I am looking to find the things that will make an impact on your lives. If you are not living your life to the fullest —  fit enough to know who you really are and vital enough to live the life of your expectations —  then you are missing out. What I know for sure is the more you do the more you can do and the less you do the more you can’t do.

Every time you say “I can’t run, throw, sit up, jump” —  whatever —  you paint yourself into a smaller corner. Some call it aging. I call it dying early. IMPACT is not about dying early. I’ve been contributing to IMPACT Magazine for 19 years and if you have read me you know me. If you know me you get me.

In my new role as Fitness Editor, my contribution here at IMPACT is not directed at world class and hard core athletes who read these pages, nor the brilliant coaching and teaching minds whose great programs and advice fill these pages.

My role is for every person like me planning on peaking physically at 65 and then holding that standard for another 15 or 20 years. I’ll cut through the crap and rhetoric that layers every fitness person who knows better than you about you. I will entertain, inform and motivate you on how fitness should, can and will be a bigger part of your reality.

I have been inspired over the years by people, exercises, equipment and techniques. I plan on sharing all that and more with you in future issues. Until then, turn up the music and go do some pushups. This is going to be fun.

Peter Estabrooks is Calgary’s trainer extraordinaire and the Fitness Editor at Impact Magazine.