A few years ago, he was still sitting as the leader of the biggest drug rings in Manhattan in the prison, now he is a Fitness Guru. This is the story of Coss Marte. Anne Schwedt has met him in New York.
U.S. fitness concept, Conbody: Trainer Sultan Malik (l) and founder of Coss Marte
In a T-Shirt and short sport pants Coss Marte is on the corner of Broome and Eldridge Street in the Lower East Side in Manhattan. From the façade wall is a thick steel projecting tube, a shield with the inscription “Conbody – Do the time”. The 31-Year-old looks proud of, a brief Smile flitting about the corners of his mouth. He seems to have arrived.
In the next Moment, his view of the big sign turns away, he looks into the distance. Thoughtful. “This is the corner where I used drugs I sold,” he says. Here he spent his Childhood and youth. “Everywhere there was drugs, Heroin needles there, and at night heard the shots.” Everything was like a movie.
Already as a child, Marte of the boys was fascinated on the street corners. “I always wanted to be rich,” he says. “When I saw the Dealer, with all the money, I thought: I want to.”
At the age of 12 years, Marte began to sell drugs. With 19 of his drug ring was so great that he earned in the good times, up to three million dollars per year. He could afford a lavish lifestyle, bought cars and other status symbols. Of the children on the street, he was admired.
A Conbody Studio looks like a prison: fence, grid bars and concrete floor.Is trained without devices
“I didn’t want to die in prison”
In front of the police, he had no fear, he frequently was arrested, sat in between up to a year in prison. This could not deter him, however, his drug business to further expand. Only at the age of 23, when his entire Business was blown and he was sentenced to seven years in prison, should change his life.
“In the prison have told the Doctors that I could die from my health problems,” says Marte. He weighed over 100 kilos at a size of 1.72 meters. “I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and said to myself, I don’t want to die in prison.”
After initial attempts to drive in his cell at the Sport, he started soon on the prison grounds, Jogging and gymnastics. He took off in six months, thirty pounds. Of his success and his fitness exercises to other inmates had quickly inspire. The idea to Conbody was born.
The Hashtag “dothetime” means metaphorically, the time in prison, is transferred to the hard-hitting Training
“I decided to make something of my life,” says Marte. Because of good behavior he was released after four years in prison. Easily it was for him. Over the months, he tried unsuccessfully to find a Job. No one wanted to give him a second Chance.
“Criminals are good entrepreneurs”
Soon Marte made his in prison developed fitness exercises in a public Park and spoke to people. The help he got from Defy Ventures, a program that supports former prisoners and Criminals to develop your ideas into a legitimate business. The organization saw Potential in Martes Fitness concept, and provided him with start-up capital available.
In the USA, statistically 80 percent of the former prisoners seen at the latest after five years of criminal be due. At Defy Ventures participants, the rate is only three percent. “Ex-convicts can be super-entrepreneur. If you can drug business, bring the right properties to start a legal business,” says Defy Ventures founder, Catherine Hoke. “Investors and employers, they are rejected mostly because of their criminal past.”
Fitness in the prison-Style
A year after his release, Coss Marte opened a Studio in the Lower East Side at the corner, he sold a former drug. It reminds with its stone walls, bars, and a fence is visually, to a prison, the sound rough. Head coach Sultan Malik, the participants, mostly women, jostle through the room.
Who has survived the Training successfully, as a convict photograph
The concept of Fitness focuses on Exercises that are performed only against the resistance of your own body weight. Devices would not be needed. Like all of the nearly 20 Trainer Malik is a former prisoner. After 14 years in prison for attempted murder, theft and drugs, wanted to hire him, no company. Conbody wants to give Ex-prisoners a second Chance.
A study of the city of New York, for job seekers with criminal backgrounds to find and twice as hard a Job as it is for “normal” applicants. “I have to get through Conbody, a new perspective,” says Malik. “There are no prejudices, I can start over here.”
Like in the movie…
Conbody in addition to the Studio in the Lower East Side since this month is also a branch of the luxury store Saks purchase on 5th Avenue. If it runs good there, want Saks to bring the concept in all of its nearly 50 locations. In addition, there is a Conbody App, with already more than 10,000 customers in 22 countries train in the world.
The new Conbody-Studio in a luxury Department store Saks on 5th Avenue – almost looks like the one in the Lower East Side
The founder of Coss Marte gives courses in prisons and holds lectures in schools and similar institutions across the country. Next year he wants to write a book about his life and the year after that, there should be a movie.
If Marte is running today on its street drug dealers on the way, to look to him, ask him even after Jobs. “It feels like in the movies, when everything was invented. But it really is true,” he says.