A fitness guru creates a gathering place for the city's Hispanic community.
Peter Watts helps a client work out at Watts Fitness Studio. The gym has become a community gathering place in the Centro de Oro.
Anyone who doubts that people can turn their lives around quickly should meet Jose Colon.
Over the past 10 weeks, the 33-year-old Colon, of Sixth Street near Indiana Avenue in North Philly’s Fairhill neighborhood, has morphed from a crepehanger whose depression and irritability threatened to cost him his family into an optimist with an infectious love of life.
“My self-esteem was so low,” Colon recalls of the days preceding his transformation, “that I just wanted to be by myself in a dark room. I didn’t want to deal with people. Now nothing bothers me. People can scream at me and I let it go. I’m like, ‘It’s okay. I’m doing right.’”
Colon began “doing right” on Jan. 13 when he followed a flock of his neighbors who—over the past five years—have endeavored to improve their bodies and overall health by joining the Watts Fitness Studio at Fifth and Lehigh in the overwhelmingly Hispanic community’s Centro de Oro.
Peter Watts, a wellness guru and former professional dancer who was born in Puerto Rico and arrived in Philadelphia 19 years ago. He opened the gym in late 2003, partly because he sensed the community needed a fitness and nutrition center to counterbalance its innumerable cafes offering delicious but greasy fare as alcapurrias (deep-fried squash fritters), rellenos (fried potato balls), pastelillos (fried meat-filled turnovers) and fried plantains.
But Watts was also sure that many Latinos—people like Jose Colon—would feel more at ease sweating in a gym that invoked their culture than they would, say, at Bally’s. Hence the salsa aerobics classes, the gleeful meringue music, the hanging tropical plants (okay, they’re artificial) and a Caribbean-style gold, maroon and blue decor that surrounding the standard weightlifting and cardio machinery.
Colon, who worked as a chef before clinical depression forced him to go on disability five years ago, has become a mainstay on that machinery. He arrives early six mornings a week and often returns in the afternoon for a second heat.
“As far as coming a long way in a short time, he’s the best I’ve seen,” Watts says.
Seated beside his wife Jhoselyn on a couch in the gym’s cardio studio on a Saturday evening, Colon proudly announces that he now carries 185 pounds on his 5-foot-7-inch frame. When he first showed up, he weighed 240 pounds.
“My waist was size 44,” he says. “My stomach was hanging down. I looked like a clown in my clothes.” He adds that he believed Jhoselyn, a pretty 32-year-old with a model’s angularity, was ashamed to been in public with him.
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1. Eric said... on Apr 1, 2009 at 11:06AM
“Watts is one of the friendliest people on that block. When I worked at Taller PR (across the street) they partnered with us during our Friday art series. So not only was it a gym, but it was also a gallery!
”