Urban Athlete Fitness Studio - Calgary

In each and every single one of us there is an ego. An ego telling you to do good or bad things based on your ambitions in life. Some of us even fight against our ego, telling ourselves not to fall to these petty narcissistic views we may have. Not knowing that even fighting against the ego is egotistical. I’m here to tell you to use this to your advantage. Allow positive thoughts to enter the mind and drive us to become the most powerful version of ourselves given the circumstances. I was born with Erb’s Palsy, a nerve injury most common in birth that affects brain signals being sent to the muscle, it causes my left arm to be shorter, weaker, less mobile, and smaller in size. It can also affect the left side of my face, causing my left eye to droop and twitch. It affects any overhead activity like a pull-up. When I was younger I would go to doctors to help because I never knew what this injury even was, I had no name for it and people just thought I didn’t use my arm enough. I had doctors tell me to stick to office jobs and to never go into a career that involves heavy lifting. But this was a problem for me, I had something gnawing at me everyday telling me to do the exact opposite of what these doctors told me, that was my ego telling me to drop anyone that didn’t push me to be better and to focus all my energy into doing the exact opposite. I was 15 at the time and from that day forward I started exercising. The first day I stepped into the gym I picked up the heaviest dumbbell i could hold onto and started doing shrugs. It wasn’t the most useful exercise for my arm but that wasn’t the point, the point was that I was doing what I wanted to do, and at the time it was showing the doctors they were wrong and what I believed was right and no one could tell me otherwise. After high school I started work on the oilfield, while these doctors were giving terrible advice I was working gruelling 14 hour days lifting heavy and there wasn’t an office building in sight. After 2 years going from maintenance to rigs I had a near miss and was brought back to reality. After almost dying from a swinging pipe on a service rig I decided to move far from home and pursue my passion of helping others accomplish any goal they set for themselves and that’s exactly what I did. Now I am a powerlifter and personal trainer who teaches others how to be stronger versions of themselves no matter what holds them back. I would be nowhere without my ego, pushing me everyday to achieve a fraction of what my ancestors would accomplish in their harsh lives they had to live.