I Went to a ShaunTervention™ and Now I Need a RehabilitaShaun

This article originally appeared on VICE Canada.

Physical fitness is a strange game, but it's one that—we're told—is vitally important to being alive and healthy. For mid-20-somethings aware that they need to start making an effort to be healthy rather than coasting on genes and teenage metabolism, fitness is a daunting world to begin navigating. There are home workout tapes, gym memberships, group classes, one-on-one trainers, and more, and the only thing that's always true is that no one thing is true for everyone. Where to begin?!

Enter Shaun T, a fitness god who's invented several renowned workout routines: from Hip Hop Abs to INSANITY and its follow-up INSANITYMAX:30, Shaun T is a workout powerhouse. He brought his unique blend of MotivaShaun and fitness PerfecShaun to Toronto last weekend, via ShaunTervention™. And while skeptical of the entire enterprise, I had to see for myself what it's like to work out in a convention center at 9 AM with a few hundred fitness devotees.

I managed to drag myself to the Toronto Metro Convention Centre by 8:30 AM to register, not quite hungover but definitely tired from drinking too much the night before, and starving. I'd already broken two cardinal fitness rules, by not getting enough sleep and not eating properly. I had a lot to learn from Shaun T.

I was on the lookout for signs that this whole thing was a hoax or a scam in some way. I had no real reason to be suspicious, but Shaun T seems to mix his fitness with life advice that approaches motivational speaking, and I firmly believe that motivational speaking is almost entirely a crock of shit. ShaunTervention™ passed the first test, which was that the couple hundred people who showed up didn't waste their money on nothing. Some sort of event was clearly about to take place. However, I didn't like what I saw on the schedule: the first segment of the event would be "NutriShaun with Darren Natoni," not "NutriShaun with Shaun T," as one might expect.

Who the hell is Darren Natoni, and why do I care what he has to say about NutriShaun?

Turns out Darren Natoni is a fitness android created in a lab to look like the scariest iteration of the Fit White Dude. If we hadn't been separated by dozens of feet and a few hundred people, I would have been terrified for my safety. He told us to do an elimination diet in order to figure out what kinds of foods fuck up our bodies. (He did not mention that you should probably not do an elimination diet—which involves cutting out several food groups for an entire month—without consulting a physician or nutritionist personally.) And he said things like "you can still treat yourself" before claiming that one way he "treats himself" is by eating raw grass-fed cheddar (presumably the cow is grass-fed, not the cheddar). A "treat" to me would be a large pile of nachos, not a tiny amount of the healthiest, least-cheese form of real cheese, but I guess that's why I was in the audience and Darren Natoni was wearing a Shaun T-branded muscle shirt and very energetically giving us all NutriShaun tips.

Another hot NutriShaun tip for all you would-be fitness freaks: eat NO CARBS until dinner. Your breakfast and lunch should only be protein and a bit of fat. If you eat a banana for breakfast you're going to give your body a glycemic index spike that will shock your system, so never, ever do it. And don't eat fruit before you work out! These NutriShaun tips paint a bleak picture of Darren Natoni's day-to-day life, don't they? Even fruit is for special occasions? Live a little, buddy.

Darren Natoni also claimed that NutriShaun is all about eating what you like but finding healthy foods that fit that description, saying, "If you don't like kale, don't eat kale!" But within moments he was explaining that kale has an Aggregate Nutrient Density Index of 1,000, so you should definitely always be eating kale if you want to appease NutriShaun expert and demigod Darren Natoni. I guess if you really cared about your body, you'd love kale already, wouldn't you?

After all that NutriShaun talk, I was hungry, and not for kale. I needed to eat if I was going to make it through the Live Workout with Shaun T, which I was starting to realize would probably be very involved. I crept up one floor and found an unguarded vending machine (the registration tables had been placed directly in front of the ones on our floor, which in my hunger-fever state I was certain had been deliberate). While I ate my tiny bag of ketchup chips, I could hear the pulsating music start up again. I was missing the beginning of my Live Workout with Shaun T, and worse, I was filling my body with horrible, fried carbs.

The music, which Shaun T reminded us several times was curated by none other than Darren Natoni, was a terrifying blend of dance pop hits, jock jams, and so much trap horn there might not be any left in the world. Shaun T's workout is constant movement, and an hour is a long time to spend moving at all, let alone trying to keep up with Darren and Danielle Natoni and Shaun T. This is where the motivaShaun comes in: Shaun T constantly assured us there was "just one more move," and I'm pretty sure he said "this is the last song" about five times. Other people might enjoy that kind of optimistic encouragement, but I have another word for it, and that's lying. Stop the lies, Shaun T.

After about 40 minutes the workout was—mercifully—over, and Shaun T called us all toward the stage so he could deliver a sermon. Shaun T spoke over a quieter playlist about being the best we can be, pushing ourselves, and not being afraid (he was also wearing knee socks with "FEARLESS" knit into them). When Sia's "Chandelier" came on, Shaun T embarked on a confusing, overwrought metaphor tied to the song. When you're down, sometimes you just want to drink, like in the song, Shaun T told us. He knows what it's like to struggle. And sometimes you just want to swing from the chandelier! But you need to believe in yourself, and not… swing from the chandelier. The metaphor was very confusing, and it really fell apart toward the end. The basic thrust of it, though, was that you should never be afraid of who you are, and you should know you're strong enough to face your challenges. All in all, pretty milquetoast stuff. I certainly wasn't feeling any more Shaunfident after that.

You'd think a discussion about NutriShaun and a Live Workout with Shaun T (followed by some very important motivaShaun) would be enough for the roughly $100-$200 we each spent to be here, but there was more! Following our emoShaunal catharsis, Darren's wife Danielle Natoni took the stage to give us a workshop on Form PerfecShaun, or, perfecting the form of our workouts.

Form is very important!!!!! as Danielle Natoni will be the first to tell you. She didn't sculpt her body into an awe-inspiring and terrifying work of art by being all loosey-goosey with her push-ups, and neither did her husband Darren. (Side note: Darren and Danielle Natoni, a husband-and-wife team who also work together and kind of look like identical lab experiments? This seems a little too convenient.) So Danielle Natoni had us all practice our push-ups and squats, and then had Darren Natoni show us the proper way to do each. Seems like that might have been more useful before we spent an hour working out, but then, I'm no Form PerfecShaun expert.

I didn't really get much out of Danielle Natoni's Form PerfecShaun talk, because I'm not a Shaun T workout acolyte (yet) and I also had acceptable form to begin with. Most of what I took from her talk was that Danielle Natoni used to be a fifth-grade teacher, which came through when she repeatedly asked things like, "Did we do a push-up today? Now, which moves have push-ups in them?" and waited expectantly for us all to answer. She also loves to razz her husband Darren Natoni in a very "girl power" way. She peppered her talk with throw-away comments like, "I get to boss my husband around all day! Isn't that great, laaaaaaadies?" after telling Darren Natoni to demonstrate an incorrect push-up.

I slunk out during the Live Taping of Shaun T's podcast "Define Your Life," having concluded that I'd absorbed everything I could out of the day. It was only 1 PM on a Saturday and I'd already exercised, learned, and furrowed my brows at a public speaker; all in all, I felt pretty accomplished. Rather than reflecting on my new NutriShaunal knowledge or the workout moves I'd acquired, I immediately fell asleep watching a mid-2000s rerun of The Simpsons.

After getting some rest and having a few days to think about it, my concluShaun is that no one should ever pay hundreds of dollars to work out in a convention center. You can buy Shaun T's tapes and do them at home if you want to, and the NutriShaun talk was just an amalgamation of every semi-correct fitness nutrition blog on the internet. If you really like being told what to do by a couple who must spend 18 hours working out and drinking cold-pressed kale juice each day, just watch some YouTube videos about fitness and diet! Maybe it's just because my ShaunTervention didn't take, and I need to go to rehabilitaShaun to get the full experience, but this seems like a wholly unnecessary way to get fit and fabulous.

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