A Fitness MIRACLE

Hard core runner, inspirational trainer, loyal friend, daring surf rider, community ambassador, gritty writer, retired professional boxer, exceptional speaker, devoted father, and … former convicted felon!

What you say? Yes you read that correctly. Pete Estabrooks aka the Fitness Guy, did his time in the clink. Time that molded who he is today, and why he is forever striving to not only be the best he can be, but to bring out the best in others.

At 66-years-old Estabrooks has a lifetime of memories with many more to come. But he has decided now is the time to document his life in a frank and revealing memoir to be published by the end of the year. Titled Happily NEver After: a Fitness Miracle, it is written in a style that is ‘just Pete’ – writing as he talks and as many know him.

From his first robbery at 18-years-old and his time in jail where the gym became his escape hatch—although not without its challenges—to his boxing career and beyond, the book is an exposé of his life—warts and all.

Estabrooks in his preface to his book says: “The goal of the book is to entertain, perhaps inspire you. My recollections of these events are
exactly that, recollections. I am an optimist.”

Optimist and a fighter—no pun intended— as he has been all his life.

His early life he says was: “hectic yet eventful,” with an independent dad, a funny mom and six “off the wall siblings.” Boxing was his passion—from an eight-year-old sparring at the Renfrew Boys Club in Calgary and tackling some punch bags in the prison gym, to turning pro and developing the TKO Sport Conditioning Program at his gym, The Fitness Guy.

“Boxing presented me my first taste of acceptance. It brought me the attention and admiration of my father. Further to that I connected with my true self in the ring. I loved to fight, I loved the emotional maelstrom that overtook me whenever I stepped through the ropes, that feeling was to me as good as drugs. It was the fear and the ferocity of pitting myself against another in the ring that brought me an immediate and overwhelming excitement I had never experienced before or since.”

And he took it seriously.

“The year after getting out of jail I won the provincial boxing title in my weight-class and went to the Canadian National Boxing Championships. I lost at the nationals but came home with a completely new and highly regarded social status. I was a positive role model.”

His path to being a fitness trainer wasn’t linear. While he worked out, he believes that he was on a path, one that was chosen for him.
“I pursued a physical education degree because I thought it would make me a better boxer.”

Estabrooks graduated from the University of Calgary in 1989. “I used that degree and started teaching aerobics, honestly because it paid money and exposed me to a lot of women! I didn’t consider it work. Personal training was an extension of that, not work, but because I was fascinated by the many ways that we could physically improve the human experience.”

Running has also always been part of his life. He ran five miles daily while boxing and after retiring from the ring, it became a life habit: “I realized that running was key to my sanity my vanity and my health.” A self-confessed slow runner, his passion is long distances: “longer distances give me a greater sense of accomplishment and provides me a calm background in which to order my thoughts.”

He proudly completed his first 100-kilometre race this past summer—an achievement made very special as it was in memory of his ‘running brother’ Gord Hobbins who passed away earlier this year. “What started as a tribute to Gord ended being a celebration of friendship, resilience, tenacity and joy,” he shared on Instagram.

His other passion is being on the water. “I have two happy places: waves or trails. Waves, surfing, is intensely in the moment, there is no time to think or strategize only to be, to react and to enjoy. It’s magic. Trails are the opposite in that there is nothing but time, each footstep is just a piece of an intricate mosaic.”

Estabrooks lives his life with positivity. The mistakes he has made are still in his psyche, but the impact he has made on others, and will continue to make, outweighs those regrets.

What does he want to achieve moving forward?

“Being a better father, friend and person. I plan through example inspiring others to movement. I am going to laugh a lot, love a lot, find some magic and live happily ever after.

IMPACT was granted exclusive excerpts from chapters in Pete Estabrooks’s new memoir. Warning: Contains adult material.

CHAPTER ONE:

Give Me All Your **** Money!

“No **** . . . pull the drawer out of the till and throw in everything including the big bills. You keep $50, the rest in the bag and I’m the **** out of here. For real! Hurry because I can just shoot you and keep the $50.

I’m yelling of course as much to convince myself as the youngster behind the till. It’s not a movie but it works like one. I am an 18-year-old in 1977 pre-internet, pre-support group, pre-young offenders act on a Wednesday night. I am wired to the point of near spontaneous combustion during this: my first ever attempt at armed robbery. It is seemingly an adventure of a lifetime. This spur of the moment event began three hours ago when Michael S stopped to grab a quarter ounce of cocaine with no cash in his hand. My line was, “Mike, I can’t front your ****. You are still $800 in the hole from last week.” So, Michael left. Oddly, he leaves, only to return 20 minutes later with a paper bag full of cash.

“What is up with that?” He spun a story of walking down the street to a gas station, pulling out a gun (air pistol) and walking away with money enough to settle his debts and get a couple of lines ahead. This tale of an easy and, more importantly, lucrative armed robbery lit up the room. That five-minute conversation sent a house full of middle-class kids out on a whim, a dare, from a coffee table in a shoddy house northwest-side Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Ten of us, kids, singly, doubled up, or in groups of three, split from our homebase to rob stores and gas stations with knives, guns, and bats, only to return home unscathed with paper lunch bags full of cash and stories. This is the definition of awesome.

That night was my first robbery, ever.

I hadn’t as much as heisted a gun prior to this. No criminal activity. Well, I sold drugs but that wasn’t a crime, it was my mode of supporting myself, my rent, my groceries, my life. My enrolment into what was my definition of crime was as easy as walking five blocks from home to a gas station, long hair stuffed into a ball cap, sawed off 22 casually tucked into my down jacket. Lesson one? Armed robbery is totally as much fun and easily as spine tingling as cocaine.

The next night because I was on a roll and, I was on mescaline. I thought the obvious route was to go two for two. I brought a friend along. Marc was cooler than I, yet somewhat hesitant. Through the layered state of reality this hallucinogen provided, this was a far more colourful adventure than the night before. I watched things unfold in patterns, lines, and in mesmerizing film noir fashion. We were undersized Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid imposters. I really am a tiny human being, Marc not much bigger. We were aiming for a cash score while enjoying a buzz.

I devised a simple plan for Marc and me:

amble into a convenience store, grab an Oh Henry (chocolate bar), hand over a 20-dollar bill, and wait for the proprietor to open the till. Once the till was open, I’d instructed Marc to pull out his impressive looking hand-tooled BB gun, point it directly at the proprietor, look crazy and scream.

This had worked for me before. From there it was a matter of collecting a bag full of cash and running. We were four for five before the game went sideways.

Push-ups, sit-ups, and squats daily were my first fitness program. Its offshoot and its consequences would shape the rest of my life in the long run.

It took me a moment of just standing there, grinning, watching, thinking that maybe I should do something about the tug of war occurring in front of me. Marc was clutching the gun’s butt end, while the infuriated proprietor was pulling on the barrel. This was his store, and he was having none of our ****. Shaken out of my reverie, I leaned solidly over the counter and launched the straight right hand that Art Pollit taught me years earlier at the Renfrew Boy’s Boxing Club. Art’s advice was to start with your feet planted, pivot your hips, and then snap your shoulders into line. Like a bystander, I watched while the body I was occupying threw a punch that connected with a surprisingly solid thud.

The owner/proprietor pin-wheeled in a slow-motion arc of colour behind the counter only to emerge a year, a month, or a second later holding the gun confidently in his right hand.

The next moment, or thought I had, was a befuddled, “what the ****?” I am standing holding a door handle in my hand, just a door handle, the curved part with the thumb release. In my mescaline-induced, endorphin fuelled attempt at a quick exit of the premises, I had gripped the handle of the door and without engaging the release, I’d merely torn the handle out of its mounting. There was a closed door, there was an inoperable handle, and there was me. Trying to formulate a next step with my heart rate hovering around 200 beats per minute, I dug my fingers into a minuscule gap between the door and its frame and attempted to pry the door open. He punctuated each of the chants with pops of what, thank God, was only a serious looking BB pistol. He was emptying each round into Marc’s back and head.

I am in slow motion while Marc, and the shooter, more respectfully, the proprietor of the business, are moving so fast, there are traces of colour trailing their heads, shoulders, arms, and legs. Somehow, my slow trumps their speed as I peel back deftly and duck out of the way, Marc skids past me and dives, headlong through the pane of glass that makes up most of the door. I watch in awe while the screaming loud crescendos turn red, blue, yellow, and green. I remember smiling and feeling lighter than light. I jump through the huge hole Marc created, and I gleefully run off into the night, making a conscious mental note to thank Marc later for the opportunity.

---

CHAPTER TWO:
Two Years Less a Day

I’m in oversized clothing sitting on a steel frame bed staring at the toilet across from me wishing that this was how I could spend the next two years less a day. I’m not tired, I’m exhausted. I’m not scared, I am paralyzed.

I was not sure, at that age, how I would deal with life’s crossroads. I now know that I look at the absolutely most horrible thing that can happen in any given situation and start there.

I assume that’s it. It is over. From that point, anything better than the absolute horror that I imagine is a total score,
a win. I am an optimistic pessimist. I’m pretty sure I’m going to die, but confident it won’t hurt that much.

By day three, boredom overtook fear. The exercise breaks, the half hour walks in the open-air cement compound revealed that perhaps there were hardened criminals in here, but most of my compatriots were like me, less than laser focused guys just getting by. I did not talk to anyone, avoided eye contact and was succinct when spoken to. I decided from day one, these were not my people.

To kill time, I took advantage of the library cart and read voraciously. I read a smorgasbord of what was available. I read Papillon, ironically, the greatest prison escape book ever and that inspired me to become fit in my cell, as if there were some correlation between a French penal colony and a suburban North American provincial jail. Push-ups, sit-ups, and squats daily were my first fitness program. Its offshoot and its consequences would shape the rest of my life in the long run, but its immediate effect set my next eighteen months in motion.

Day fourteen of incarceration was big, I’d seen the councillors, done the tests, and was marked as fit for the south wing: kitchen duty. I was out of cell block and onto the floor. South wing, like all wings, was dormitory style living. Beds, desks, and metal lockers for rows and rows. A guard walked me down, showed me to my area, my bed, and gave me the drill about what’s allowed not allowed, cleanliness, noise, cleanliness expectations and cleanliness. There was a theme, “you may be a criminal, but you’ll be a neat one while you are here.” The guard escorted me to the councillor who covers behaviour expectation, work hours and recreation hours, TV, library, gym. No work was assigned on the first day, so I lounge, I read, and around 4:30 I go to the gym. Fitness is my goal, but wouldn’t you know it, trouble follows me like a lonely puppy.

There is a guy doing bench press on the incline bench to my left, so I pick up a straight bar loaded with maybe all of twenty pound and begin to crank off a set of biceps curls.

“Pssst, hey cutie!” I pretended not to hear.

“Hey, cutie!” I heard that. I heard it and ignored it.

“Cutie talk to me. I know you must be in south wing; I’ll see you later.

”The word “later” had barely cleared his lips as I turned. I watched him **** himself knowing what was coming and not having time to get out from under his own bar. I lifted my bar overhead and it sounded like a sledgehammer cleanly striking a spike as it clashed and both bars formed an iron cross and crashed into his chest.

His legs were still astraddle the bench he was sitting on while his torso draped to the floor pinned by bars. Bending over him, I dug right in with both hands. Bam, bam, bam, pop bang, boom. Leveraging all 125 pounds of me with each punch. The BOOM coincided with a strange anti-gravity moment. It dawned on me my feet were lifting off the ground because my ragtag haircut was now entangled in the clenched fist of a previously unnoticed guard.

He lifted me deftly with one hand the other delivering an open-handed splat to the side of my face and dropped me ungraciously off the stage to the gym floor. I had just enough time to put two and two together, taste the rusty trace of blood in my mouth before being frog marched out of the gym, out of the wing, down a hall and dropped into a windowless cement cube.

This is solitary confinement. It is a room full of nothing. A cement room with a metal bed frame hanging from one wall a toilet sitting on another. Room service, no books, no conversation. 6:00 am breakfast. 12:00 noon lunch. 6:00 pm dinner. 9:00 pm a thin mattress and blanket delivered. 11:00 pm the lone light bulb turns off. 5:00 am lights on. 6:00 am mattress and blanket removed. Two weeks on my own.

My push-ups, sit-ups, and squats cranked up to twenty sets of ten each. That, and lots of curled up sleeping in a corner on the floor. Papillon, the amazing French prison escapee, I was not. 

Happily NEver After: a Fitness Miracle by Pete Estabrooks, will be
self-published and available by Christmas from www.thefitnessguy.me.

---

Photography: Brian Bookstrucker

Clothing: Less 17

You may also like: Cover Stories

---