Survival of the Fitness Girl
When Jodi Cornish arrived in New York City seven years ago she was a recent Bard graduate--and a fitness neophyte. This would change. The gym where it all started was vintage Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn: A refurbished brownstone with an image of a huge flexing pec rising out beneath the second-story windows practically smashing the windows on the next floor. Her instructor, "David Fitness," an egomaniacal---yet extraordinarily gifted, middle-aged Trinidadian step instructor---commented to her briefly about body fat percentages and the fact that hers was a little on the high side. Although hurt, she chose not to disappear. Instead, she embraced the challenge of attaining her fitness goals. She even went as far as to create an entire lifestyle based on fitness and nutrition---protein bars, shakes, vegetable diets---and to imagine herself as a successful, Manhattan-based fitness professional. She knew that breaking in would be tough, and from that day early in 1995 until 2001 she put in her sweat equity.
Jodi's ascension on the New York fitness scene has been exhausting. Most mornings she's up by 4:00 am engaged in her own or someone else's physical fitness. Her physical persona is that of a high-energy disciplined young woman, part Prada and part new-school Adidas. Her uniform runs the gamut. Many days it's sleek leggings made of space-age materials in shades like eggplant or cornflower blue paired with a well-fitted black Equinox training shirt. At 6:00 am she walks into the Equinox on Wall Street. Fourteen Wall Street is a tall classical building anchored with authoritative colonnades. The interior is lush and cool dominated by rich browns, forest green and deep mahogany. State-of-the-art equipment coexists with traditional marble floors and high ceilings offset by dark oak-paneled walls. After working out, members can relax in a hot tub or steam room and convene to the lounge, which has computer terminals and plush leather couches. The clientele is mainly from the financial services industry. They are professional and driven individuals. This is a tough crowd to woo, and Jodi knew that coming in.
It was in this building nine months ago that Jodi stood in the cardio-theater watching the World Trade Center towers fall on television, feeling the building shaking around her and watching as bloodied members and nonmembers came in crying and disoriented. For more than 10 hours, she handed out towels and flip-flops and gave out bottles of water. She took people into the showers to wash the debris off. This day,as it turned out was the turning point in her career. Many of those clients now populate Jodi's signature class---Tread and Trim, an interval training, boot camp, on-and- off-the- treadmill gauntlet with squats, push-ups, lunges and flexibility exercises thrown in for good measure---or say hello to her as she manages the floor. Many people in the fitness community recognize her heroism based on the story that ran about her and her colleagues in Idea Health and Fitness chronicling the role that the fitness community in New York City played during the WTC crisis.
"The fitness scene in New York City is tough," says Jodi. "It's stratified and hierarchical with a lot of competition for a career that must solidify by a certain point and then evolve from teaching classes and training to developing one's own program," she explains. At 29, Jodi has done these things. In 1995 after many step classes in Brooklyn, Jodi went to Hardcore Muscle in lower Manhattan and got herself into competing shape with non-stop drills of pull-ups, dips and time on the hack/squat machine. She became lean and muscular. Her next move was to a studio on 14th Street--Revolution Studio---that became a training ground for New York's most impressive fitness talent. In this raw studio space, Jodi first taught her classes, and clients started pouring in for doses of her a la carte discipline. Her classes she explains are characterized by "increasing velocity, intensity and duration." For $15, participants endured a circuit of 12 stations with alternating strength and cardio routines starting for 1 minute and gradually building up to 2 minutes---nonstop. Meanwhile, each weekend was devoted to seminars---East Coast Alliance, anatomy and physiology classes, courses about various types of equipment and how to develop rapport with clients, program design and fitness evaluation, nutrition, blood-pressure monitoring. It was nonstop. A perfect combination for Jodi who "thrives on the intersection of the cerebral and the physical." After several months of this, Jodi moved on to New York Sports Club and became a personal trainer. Finally early in 2001, she decided to try--- and she finally broke into Equinox, a high profile club.
While all of this was happening, Jodi's alternate reality was working fulltime as a corporate finance associate. "The recession was my real break," Jodi says. "I had to fully commit myself to my dream and stop moonlighting." Now Jodi is a force to reckon with. One Wednesday a month you might run into her on Wall Street on the ground doing push-ups with new potential clients. It's guerilla warfare as Jodi sees it. "It can be difficult. You live fitness and you go outside to work out to show people how to be fit and they're eating hotdogs. You want to say, you need to get on a spin bike," she says. Strangely enough this statement comes off earnestly--no facetiousness or cruelty in her even, measured voice. She exudes energy that she then uses to push her clients. When asked how she does it Jodi says bluntly, "I don't allow any negative speech in my presence, because it shuts everything down on a cellular level. I tell them, 'you can do that, and you will do that, because you can.'" And Jodi knows better than anyone the power a fitness instructor has when someone is really listening.