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How Exercising at Rogue & Saint Made My Life Way Better

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This post was made possible by the fine people at Rogue & Saint. Wanna sponsor a post or advertise? Email Alex@BrokeAssStuart.com

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This is what people look like while doing Bottcamp class at Rogue & Saint

I’ve never been much for exercise. Ok, that’s an understatement. I’ve pretty much always loathed it. That never really mattered too much when I was younger because I had a high metabolism. I could eat pretty much anything and drink nothing but beer, and barely gain any weight. But I’m 35 now and my metabolism has pretty much gone home. It’s not answering the phone and I have a feeling its not coming back. So I decided to do something that I should’ve started a long time ago: exercise!

I’m gonna level with you: when I finally started to exercise, I was not in a very good place. I had just come out of a long term relationship and I was feeling pretty low. Plus on top of that I’d gained a lot of weight in the preceding months. When you run for office as I did in 2015, you end up taking cabs everywhere since you’re so busy. So all the walking I’d been doing previously that had been keeping me semi in shape was thrown out the window.

So here I was newly single, unhappy with the way I looked, and ready to make a change. And that’s when I found the folks at Rogue & Saint. As I live not too far from the gym, I’d been walking by all the time. One day I finally decided I’d try them out (You too can try them out! Get your first 2 classes for $25 here).

Rogue & Saint does both high intensity interval training Bootcamps and Pilates classes. I was doing the Bootcamp ones. I wanted to do one of those before and after photo things but just as I started to look pretty good (and feel even better) I slacked off. One week I was too busy, the next I got sick, then I went to China, and now…well, I’ve been a lazy fuck. But, I’m about to go back and start at it again because honestly, I love it and I never thought I’d ever say that about exercise.

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This is what people look like when doing Pilates at Rogue & Saint

The truth is that the first time I went was fucking horrible. My body was like “what the fuck are you doing to me??” The entire walk home I felt like I was gonna puke. But I decided to go again two days later. And then two days after that. And then I kept going. At my peak I was doing three one-hour classes as week.

After the first couple weeks I start looking forward to working out and actually craving it. I’ve done a lot of different drugs in my life and none of them have felt as good as I do after a hard work out. Hot damn that’s a good high.

And the staff at Rogue & Saint is awesome. The front desk people are always super friendly and the trainers get you motived without screaming at you like you’re an asshole. I was taking classes with Anca Rugescu for awhile and since she’s also a nutritionist she even offered to help me with my diet…which of course I stuck to for about two weeks. Will power against things that are beautiful and delicious has never been one of my strong suits. That said, if I had stayed on the food plan and kept working out 2-3 times a week I’d be a seriously hot piece of ass right now.

Just writing this has gotten me excited to start working out a Rogue & Saint again. Hopefully you’ll start working out there too. Just don’t judge me for the awful noises I make when I exercise and I won’t judge you for the weird faces you make.

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Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart, is a travel writer, poet, TV host, activist, and general shit-stirrer. His website BrokeAssStuart.com is one of the most influential arts & culture sites in the San Francisco Bay Area and his freelance writing has been featured in Lonely Planet, Conde Nast Traveler, The Bold Italic, Geek.com and too many other outlets to remember. His weekly column, Broke-Ass City, appears every other Thursday in the San Francisco Examiner. Stuart’s writing has been translated into four languages. In 2011 Stuart created and hosted the travel show Young, Broke, and Beautiful on IFC and in 2015 he ran for Mayor of San Francisco and got nearly 20k votes.

He's been called "an Underground legend": SF Chronicle, "an SF cult hero":SF Bay Guardian, and "the chief of cheap": Time Out New York.