No Days Off
The pandemic pushed them outdoors, so Quwan Jones and Mark Bergen pushed — and pulled, and pressed — back.
Quwan Jones demonstrates form to Mark Bergen during a workout session in mid-April.
On a Friday in April, Mark Bergen and Quwan “Q” Jones met for a workout on the beach. It was a grey afternoon in Asbury Park, New Jersey. The air was cool but not cold, especially if you kept it moving. Both men wore layers to insulate against the ocean’s windchill. Jones, a 38-year-old fitness professional, carried the essentials: light free-weights, resistance bands, a bluetooth-enabled Magnavox system. Bergen had only met Jones two weeks earlier, but he was on a mission. “I wanna look back and say, Hey, I not only maintained, I took a different course and did really well with it,” he told me. On the sand, he and Jones wasted no time getting to work, with Jones guiding Bergen through an hour-long series of body-weight and rubber-resistance exercises. Dance-pop, the kind you might already associate with clubs at the Jersey Shore, emanated 130 BPMs from the boombox.
Jones, a fitness professional, grabbed his first weights during high school. He still remembers the feeling a day later. “I was just like, Oh my god, I can’t move. It hurt to move,” he said. Pain turned to motivation. “It was over after that. The next day I was right back.”
Under normal circumstances, Bergen and Jones would be indoors, going through their weight-assisted motions at distant local gyms where the equipment is bountiful and the collective testosterone elevated. These were not normal circumstances. A month earlier, exercise facilities were told to close due to the global spread of the coronavirus, so gym rats found themselves forced outside to get a pump. Some weeks later, sharing a set of public exercise equipment in Asbury, I encountered Bergen and Jones. I learned one is an educator in Bergen County, the other a local trainer. Both were trying to make the most of an unprecedented situation. I asked if I could photograph a future session — my own way of trying to best the pandemic.
“The elements are definitely something to work with,” said Bergen. “It adds this rugged element that makes you want to be a little bit more competitive with yourself.”
Jones became a National Academy of Sports Medicine-certified trainer six years ago. Now, he and a partner manage a multi-functional wellness space in Asbury Park.
“Up until you got here, I thought I was really doing something. I’m not doing shit! So, what do I gotta do?”
The day the two first met, Bergen and a friend were already using the beach’s public equipment — a set of weathered pull-up and parallel bars — near the boardwalk’s 4th Avenue entrance. Then Jones arrived, alone but not empty-handed. He carried his light-weights, bands and stereo. Everyone worked out around each other. Bergen quickly took notice as Jones pushed through his repetitions. Impressed, he knew he needed to say something. “I walked right up to him,” said Bergen. “I was like, Hey, can you offer me any tips?” Jones recalled the interaction more colorfully. “I dropped my radio and hang my bag and he sees me,” he told me later. “And him and his boy are just kinda, like, in awe. He’s like, ‘Up until you got here, I thought I was really doing something. I’m not doing shit. So, what do I gotta do?’” Bergen hoped for pointers. What he received, instead, was an opportunity. Jones agreed to train him.
In high school, Bergen trained to excel as a two-sport athlete. In college, his emphasis shifted to size. “Now,” he explained, “it’s about building a groundwork for the rest of my life rather than short-term things.”
A spring push delivered summer gains. By Memorial Day, the primitive setup where Bergen and Jones tested their endurance in the sand months earlier had been removed. Now Bergen was traveling three days a week to Cryolete, a multi-functional wellness space in Asbury where Jones resumed training clients. In addition to their regular workouts, Bergen continued to incorporate yoga, while also adding daily runs or high-intensity interval training for two-a-days. He is now 20 lbs. lighter since quarantine. The transformation stretched into other areas of Bergen’s life as well. “Since we last spoke,” he wrote me in June, ”I have laid the groundwork to begin my journey in the Air Force National Guard.” In September, Bergen will turn 30, which he wants to embrace — not mourn as the passing of his 20s. “For quite some time, I have been feeling like I’m ‘half-living’,” he elaborated. “I want to be in a field that demands accountability both physically and mentally, [and] will force me to be a part of something that is bigger than I am.”
Bergen’s goals were typical for a guy: heavy weights, pronounced chest, broad back. Jones knew what needed to be done. He explained that part of his approach is the ability to see the client’s potential, or “enhancement,” and target weaknesses lurking in their lifestyle. “For Mark, he completely opened up to the ideas and I think we’re going in the right direction so far,” said Jones.
“It still boils down to that one moment where you have the red pill and the blue — like [The] Matrix. Which one are you gonna take?”
This could not have been possible without the drive of Jones who applies an almost compulsive-meets-philosophical approach to wellness. In his frequent Instagram stories, mostly shot inside Cryolete while working with clients, he stamps posts with “No Days Off” stickers. In an interview over FaceTime in May, he talked to me about focusing on clients’ underlying challenges, the lifestyle choices made every day which prevent us from achieving our optimal selves. “That’s where I pinpoint,” said Jones, “then I work it down from there, because those are usually the more uncomfortable areas.” He would know about discomfort. Jones admitted to an adulthood rife with poor judgments, odd jobs and unhealthy distractions. But today he understands that on any given day he can make up to 35,000 conscious decisions, as estimated by Cornell University researchers in 2018. It’s with this in mind that he encourages his trainees to realize the power of choosing between right and wrong. “Make the most of every opportunity that you have, and know that at the end of the day everything is a choice,” he said. “Because excuses, I’ve heard them all. And the end of the day I tell them: It still boils down to that one moment where you have the red pill and the blue — like [The] Matrix. Which one are you gonna take?” ■
Jones goes by @ruhzilyent on Instagram — “resilient” rendered phonetically.
If the Bible tells us the body is a temple, for Jones it is also a billboard. For years his commitment to wellness has brought him the attention of others seeking to transform their lives.
Quwan Jones and Mark Bergen were photographed April 17, 2020 in Asbury Park, NJ.
THE COMMITTED is an on-going series developed, photographed, written and published by Adrian Bacolo. To submit ideas for future entries, please email bacolos.photos@gmail.com.