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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Bushman taking fitness beyond Carnival

by

Chester Sambrano
2003 days ago
20200120

It’s the peak of the 2020 Car­ni­val sea­son and scores of peo­ple are flock­ing to gyms around the coun­try to get ready for the road.

At Bush Moun­tain, it is no dif­fer­ent in this re­gard, but ac­cord­ing to the Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Courte­nay Rooks, they want to set them­selves apart.

First­ly, Rooks said, while his fa­cil­i­ty is cater­ing for the so-called Car­ni­val crowd, he wants peo­ple to take it one step fur­ther.

“But gen­er­al­ly, what we are try­ing to con­vince peo­ple of is yes come here and work out for Car­ni­val but look at your life af­ter­wards. Don’t put on 30 pounds be­tween March and De­cem­ber and then try to lose that 30 pounds be­tween De­cem­ber and next Car­ni­val.”

For Rooks it’s per­son­al. “I am di­a­bet­ic. I am type two di­a­betes and I know it 7 years now.”

He said the aim of the Bush Moun­tain is to fos­ter health­i­er lifestyles and friend­ships, not just pro­vide a space for ex­er­cise.

“We have seemed to come un­der the im­pres­sion that fat is okay. Hell no would I ever want to body shame, any­one, be­cause I have been there; I know it, but we have to ac­cept the re­al­i­ty that we are amongst the worst in the world when it comes to obe­si­ty. We are among the worst in the world for di­a­betes.”

He said cit­i­zens in this coun­try had got­ten ac­cus­tomed to eat­ing the wrong things and be­ing seden­tary.

Rooks, al­so known as Bush­man, ex­plained this is one of the main rea­sons for the con­cept of his busi­ness.

“We con­sid­er our­selves not a gym but a health and well­ness fa­cil­i­ty.”

Bush Moun­tain is main­ly lo­cat­ed out­doors in St Anns.

One of the main ar­eas is called ‘the cage’ and is out­fit­ted like a boot camp where mem­bers can un­der­take mil­i­tary-style ex­er­cis­es, for ex­am­ple, flip­ping trac­tor tires and bat­tle ropes. It is all out­doors.

“You are breath­ing this won­der­ful air, this is not the sa­van­nah where you’re suck­ing in the fumes of every car and truck and maxi that pass­es, this is good healthy air in a healthy at­mos­phere.”

An­oth­er el­e­ment to Bush Moun­tain is a 3-kilo­me­tre trail which Rooks said took 4 months to build.

Along the trail they have set up ab ma­chines, mon­key bars, pull up bars and there is al­so a yo­ga cen­tre.

The fa­cil­i­ty opened its doors in Ju­ly 2018 and Rooks said it has shown slow growth, but the fo­cus has al­ways been and will re­main to get peo­ple healthy.

He said it is not about “look­ing hot in an out­fit,” al­though if you get that it’s fine, but adapt­ing prop­er habits in your dai­ly lives.

Rooks got the idea for Bush Moutain from spend­ing 28 years as an eco-tour guide, in ad­di­tion to do­ing many out­door ac­tiv­i­ties like hik­ing, moun­tain bik­ing, bird watch­ing etc.

He said in the fu­ture Bush Moun­tain plans to im­ple­ment new ac­tiv­i­ties such as rock climb­ing, re­pelling and zip lin­ing.

On a vis­it to the fa­cil­i­ty, a group of about two dozen peo­ple were get­ting their work­out in, among them was Kellee Spicer.

She joined since May af­ter work­ing out alone at home for some time.

She used to be an ath­lete and de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue a work-life bal­ance. She said health is al­so very im­por­tant to her.

“I ac­tu­al­ly feel the dif­fer­ence in my day to day life when I am con­sis­tent­ly gyming as op­posed to when I stop.”

She said she loves the out­door con­cept and the mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tor with the group.


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