Maryland trainer adds spiritual workouts to mental health, physical exercise classes

WASHINGTON (7News) — Spiritual workouts paired with mental and physical training create the "Relentless" recipe.

A DMV personal trainer is shaping more than muscles in Maryland after he turned life-altering events into a path for a new future.

7News Health and Wellness Reporter Victoria Sanchez stopped by a Hyattsville, Maryland, warehouse where a different type of work is happening.

Personal trainer Jacardi Brooks begins his day with quiet prayer.

“I’m so thankful for your unconditional love and your mercy, always," he said as he bowed his head and sat on a gray cinder block. “I thank you for protecting me, from the top of my head to the soles of my feet.”

The bookends of Brooks' day look and sound much different compared to his energetic and inspirational personality that shines when his Relentless Training gym is filled with men and women looking for more than a workout.

“Go! Go! Go!” Brooks yelled in an Instagram video showing a packed warehouse room.

The 26-year-old from Washington, D.C. pushes his classes to be physically powerful, mentally tough, and spiritually strong. He leads one step at a time, one person at a time.

The fuel behind Brooks comes from what he calls God-given obstacles.

“It just made me become relentless," Brooks told Sanchez.

When he was 15, an accidental shooting changed his life.

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“The bullet that went through my best friend’s head is now currently inside of me," Brooks said.

A few years later, he got a scholarship to Gannon University as a wide receiver but wasn't able to graduate.

“I got sick really, really bad and I came home to the doctor and they told me I couldn’t play football anymore, at all. It was over for me," he said.

Brooks was diagnosed with a rare kidney malformation and lost his scholarship.

“You can come back from anything. What I’ve been through, you know, seasons of my life, it was tests. It was obstacles that God gave me, and overcoming them was his plan," Brooks said.

That plan led him to the Hyattsville warehouse and community that continues to grow.

After heart-pumping music using cinder blocks with dozens of whom he calls his "brick family", Brooks' day ends the same way it began.

“God, thank you for keeping my heart and my mind as I was going through those dark times and the light at the end of that tunnel," Brooks said in prayer.

He's thankful for the obstacles he uses as bricks to pave his journey ahead.