Great Barrington — Cody Lucido honed his most fundamental fitness routines on the playground at Egremont Elementary School in Pittsfield. Growing up a scant two blocks away from the school he once attended afforded Lucido a distinct advantage: unlimited access to a platform for fine-tuning his calisthenics, quite possibly the most basic form of exercise. Derived from the ancient Greek words “kallos” (beautiful) and “sthenos” (strength), calisthenics is the art of using one’s body weight as resistance in order to develop physique, a practice that dates back to the armies of Alexander the Great and the Spartans. For Lucido, now 24, it was a logical segue from watching YouTube videos of Hannibal For King perform mad street workouts on New York City playgrounds. As Lucido observed others exhibiting near super-human upper-body strength in manipulating nothing save for their own body weight, his own affinity for the sport grew. What ensued—a wellness journey with myriad peaks and valleys—has resulted in Lucido’s current venture: biweekly group training classes on a brand new outdoor gym, thanks to his certification in Functional Movement Application via the Alston Method.
“I am a thinker,” Lucido explained. “I am way more introverted than extroverted—naturally,” he added, which, when struggling with anxiety, can be particularly problematic. “You can’t think your way through it—that’s the issue,” explained Lucido, who tried everything he could to ease his anxiety, something he has struggled with since high school, until he stumbled upon a life-changing realization: “It got to the point that I had to make my body move.” It was a decade ago, Lucido was transitioning to high school, and his father had gotten into the Beachbody business. “He inspired me,” said Lucido, of watching his dad get into shape, and he quickly followed suit. Lucido, who had been overweight for much of his childhood, was drawn to simple body weight exercise—-in particular pull-ups and dips—and became so obsessed, his father installed a pull-up bar outside of his bedroom door. This, in conjunction with hours spent watching videos of inner-city street workouts, pushed Lucido to the next level: He began dieting, lost “quite a bit of weight,” and continued to pursue his passion for calisthenics.
For a young person who had put tons of pressure on himself to get good grades, Lucido also began to struggle with depression. As 10th grade dawned, he joined the cross-country team and spent much of his free time at the playground. “Everything I’d see, I tried to emulate,” he explained of the hours he’d spend at the park doing pull-ups, push-ups and dips. “[These guys] were in the best shape you could be in, doing unbelievable stuff [with nothing but their own body weight as resistance].” The combination of increased movement and being part of a team proved instrumental in Lucido’s self image. He was focused on running, burning crazy calories and cultivating his career as a cross-country runner, ultimately being named captain his senior year and leading the team to the state championship for the first time in 16 years.
In the midst of running easily four miles each day, Lucido remained dedicated to his upper-body calisthenics and park workouts four to five days each week—he was not so keen on the “super skinny” bodies characteristic of most runners. Once cross-country ended, he started having really bad anxiety. “I had dealt with depression,” he recalled, “typical teenage angst, but what I began dealing with was not anything I had dealt with before—it was really bad,” he explained. Perhaps it was the abrupt stop to running after the fall season ended; perhaps it was the largely uncomfortable psychology class in which he was enrolled; perhaps it was the fact that college was looming on the horizon. Regardless of the root cause, Lucido was certain of one thing: A perfect storm was brewing, one that threatened to destroy him.
Lucido ultimately enrolled in college with the intention of pursuing math or fitness, but he didn’t know which to choose. As a result, he did not finish his degree. “I felt lost the whole time,” he remembered, adding that despite making good friends, he was overwhelmingly unsure of what he wanted to do. He stayed in shape the first year and then let things slide. He was 80 pounds heavier than when he had graduated from high school, and he continued to struggle with anxiety and panic attacks that prevented him from doing much of what he wanted to do. “[Meds] only half worked,” he says, “I still wasn’t really functioning.”
Today, Lucido has his finger on the pulse of these crazy, chaotic times in which young people are growing up. He took the past year, all of 2018, to reassess: He moved home, he worked odd jobs and then he connected with a mentor. In January, he and his father met Joseph Antoine Alston, whose career in functional fitness was a natural fit for Lucido, and the two began an intense four-month collaboration that was part internship, part fitness training. “[Antoine] was helping me with my anxiety and training me at the same time,” Lucido explained. “I learned the Alston Method—a series of eight essential movements designed to identify an individual’s asymmetries while simultaneously building strength and mobility—[and] he cleared my anxiety after 1.5 months.” Today, not only is Lucido a CPT in the Alston Method, the very philosophy he credits as helping him to become well, but he is also sharing the story of his journey. His father, Bob, a Beachbody Live instructor, recently invested in a 12- by 12-foot outdoor gym located on the Alston Center grounds where he and his son are poised to begin group classes on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. Classes will focus on body weight movements, calisthenics and utilization of the Alston Method to optimize participants’ personal health and fitness.
“It’s a dream come true,” said Lucido, who is back to working out and doing what he loves, the antithesis of his experience following high school. “It’s like I was dead for five years and now I’m reborn. It really does feel like I’m starting again, but I have a lot of experience. It’s cool,” he said with modest pride. In short, his is an inspirational story of a young man who began doing basic calisthenics again, and it “created a huge spark.” When asked what he might say to the adolescent he once was—struggling with depression, anxiety and finding where he fit in the world—Lucido is incredibly insightful: “I’d say two things: One, stick with fitness. Sometimes the only way out [of the darkness] is to physically move. The other thing I’d say is a hobby can be your true calling. You might see it as a side passion, but that might be your real purpose.”
