Coss Marte used to be one of the biggest drug kingpins on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, making upwards of $3,000 a day. He started selling drugs when he was just 13 and realized how easy it was to turn $100 into $300. He continued throughout high school and college, eventually getting kicked out.
After returning home, Marte picked up right where he left off, selling weed, coke, crack and ecstasy. After taking over the business from a fellow drug dealer, he was a millionaire. The perks of living like a high roller were numerous — cars, Jordans, clothes — but at the same time, Marte stopped moving. He sat in a car for most of the day with someone else handling drop-offs, and the number on the weight scale rose.
In 2009, a partner double-crossed him, and Marte was sentenced to 12 years. When he entered Ulster Correctional Facility, the doctors told him that in five years he’d likely die of a heart attack. He knew something had to change, so he started working out in his 9′ x 6′ cell, running every day and doing whatever moves he could in that space. “I built myself up to running around two hours a day basically seven days a week,” Marte says. “Sometimes I would be running in two to three feet of snow.” He lost 70 pounds in six months.
“It became a routine, an addiction, I just needed to get up and run,” Marte explains when asked if he ever got bored. Other men started running and working out with him in prison after they saw the changes he made. He was the group leader. Eventually, Marte received an early release from prison — walking out with everything he did to lose the weight.
“I put this whole 90-day workout plan together while I was in the system,” Marte says. He started training friends in the neighborhood, eventually expanding to classes in rented ballet studios, but he wanted to do more. “My whole idea was to build a facility to look like a prison, and I spoke it out into the existence,” he says. Marte’s Lower East Side studio is now complete with prison bars, 3-minute shower rules and no locks on any lockers. “We tell people to trust ex-cons with your shit,” he says.
The workouts have expanded from the 90-day plan Marte wrote in prison, and you can always expect a different bent depending on which trainer you have leading class. “The whole mission of the company is to hire formerly incarcerated individuals to teach fitness classes,” Marte explains.
Part of Marte’s 90-day program is excerpted below, but we also asked what he does now to stay in shape. Beyond training for the New York City marathon (The goal is to lose 15 pounds in the next two months,” he quips), he regularly teaches Monday through Thursday classes at his studio and then puts in the time. “Depending on the day, I’ll do up to 500 push-ups. I’ll do 200 bodybuilders (they’re burpees with a plank jack) and then I’ll do a lot of pull-ups. I do 24 sets and max them out, working from the widest position [on the bar] inwards.”
