Akhen­aton "Ken" Sim­mons has been a pop­u­lar voice on the ra­dio air­waves for years. Now, in the time of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, he is not on­ly pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty en­ter­tain­ment but al­so lead­ing the charge for healthy lifestyles.

Sim­mons and his wife, Dar­cell, do a fit­ness pro­gramme on CNC3 Tele­vi­sion called Quran­tine Grit Pump–the jour­ney has been long and tough but, most of all, grat­i­fy­ing.

Ear­ly Life

Sim­mons grew up in the hills of Pris­gar lands in Laven­tille. His fa­ther, Phil "The Thrill" Sim­mons, was a well-known ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty in those days.

But al­though it was a bless­ing, it be­came a curse in dis­guise.

"As much as there are good in Laven­tille, there are al­so neg­a­tives. Be­ing the son of a me­dia pro­fes­sion­al back then, peo­ple had the idea or the con­cept that I had mon­ey be­cause my fa­ther was on the ra­dio, so I was picked on and I was not re­spect­ed as some of the fel­las on the cor­ner."

Sim­mons said he al­ways had to prove him­self to fit in and by do­ing that, he fell in­to the wrong crowd and start­ed do­ing wrong things.

"So I start to rebel against my par­ents."

When he was 14 his par­ents took the de­ci­sion to leave the area and the fam­i­ly moved to Arou­ca, but even in that com­mu­ni­ty he found him­self sur­round­ed by neg­a­tive peo­ple.

He said one guy taught him how to make weapons.

"I was car­ried on sev­er­al rob­beries, did a lot of fool­ish­ness. In 1998 I was charged with ma­li­cious wound­ing."

Be­cause of who his fa­ther was, it made the news.

Sim­mons ex­plained that he was head­ing down a path of de­struc­tion be­cause he felt that was the way to get at­ten­tion.

His par­ents still showed up at court and he no­ticed his dad with patch­es on his head which looked stress-re­lat­ed.

"When I saw my mom looked like she hadn't slept, un­der her eyes had a lot of bags, I felt it. Even though I was in­to the bad boy/rude boy...I had a good re­la­tion­ship with mom so that pro­pelled me and caused me to check my­self."

His girl­friend at the time en­cour­aged him to go to the church that her mom at­tend­ed, which he did.

"And when I went to the church the min­is­ter was speak­ing ex­act­ly what I was feel­ing in­side not what I was por­tray­ing on the out­side. I was moved with com­pas­sion and a bit of tears, and at that point in time, I made the de­ci­sion to give my life to Christ."

That in­ter­ven­tion, he said, "caused me to still be alive to­day."

Sim­mons on the ra­dio

Sim­mons grew clos­er to God but was still look­ing for his true pur­pose in life.

"Peo­ple were telling me 'you have the gift of your fa­ther, you have that voice, don't let it go to waste'."

In 2006 Jamie Thomas al­lowed him to be a part of a gospel pro­gramme on i95.5 called the Per­fect 10.

"Even though I had the voice and every­thing, I was ner­vous."

His ca­reer start­ed to take shape and soon he be­gan do­ing a gospel pro­gramme on Syn­er­gy TV called Gospel Sun­days as well.

As time pro­gressed, how­ev­er, "I felt that I was be­ing treat­ed un­fair­ly and my tal­ent was be­ing sti­fled and I thought I need­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence more."

So he de­cid­ed to ex­pand out­side the gospel are­na.

Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly he was draft­ed to do the morn­ing show on ur­ban fre­quen­cy 94.1 FM and af­ter a year moved to Ebony 104.1 FM.

He spent sev­er­al years there be­fore land­ing a job at Vibe CT 105.1 FM where he re­mains.

His shift vary in na­ture from retro to reg­gae to slows and so­ca.

"You can't box me in­to one thing...I just love ra­dio and I think I am adapt­able to what is re­quired be­cause I put a lot of thought and em­pha­sis be­fore I go be­hind the mi­cro­phone."

Sim­mons said he thinks about what his lis­ten­ers want.

"I think they feel the en­er­gy and the pos­i­tiv­i­ty that comes out in what I do re­gard­less of the for­mat. There is con­nec­tiv­i­ty so that they feel the pas­sion that I am pre­pared and I am not just wing­ing it."

Most re­cent­ly, there is a vi­ral clip of him win­ing in stu­dio.

"I was do­ing that long be­fore I ac­tu­al­ly put it out on so­cial me­dia...my wife knows, so some­times I would be in pri­vate, but it's a mat­ter of feel­ing good."

Not to men­tion, he said, "it is al­so healthy."

The fit­ness jour­ney be­gins

In late 2012 Sim­mons was prepar­ing to get in shape for Car­ni­val 2013 and the then own­er of CLX gym told him he could do well in a new cat­e­go­ry in body­build­ing called men's physique.

"Some­body saw po­ten­tial in me and I be­lieved it and I de­cid­ed to work on it. From that time up un­til June of 2013 I worked on get­ting my body in a par­tic­u­lar way and I com­pet­ed the first time at the Na­tion­al Ju­nior Body­build­ing Cham­pi­onships and I came sec­ond in the coun­try."

He said it was an in­ter­est­ing jour­ney, both phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly.

"It took a lot of dis­ci­pline and what mo­ti­vat­ed me was the idea of get­ting a prize or be­ing recog­nised na­tion­al­ly."

Two months lat­er he com­pet­ed at the Se­nior Cham­pi­onships and came sec­ond as well. He was then giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to rep­re­sent his coun­try in the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Body­build­ing and Fit­ness Cham­pi­onships in San­to Domin­go.

"It was a great feel­ing putting on that red, white and black track­suit."

It made him rem­i­nisce on how far he had come.

He con­tin­ued body­build­ing for a few years, but in 2015 when he no­ticed some of the prac­tices of the body­build­ing in­dus­try, with the use of il­le­gal sub­stances, he opt­ed out and reg­is­tered his fit­ness busi­ness.

Grit Fit is born

In 2017 Sim­mons start­ed record­ing videos of him­self get­ting back in shape.

Soon clients start­ed to reg­is­ter, so much so that at the end of that year he and his wife of­fi­cial­ly launched the brand.

"The goal, the vi­sion and the fo­cus of Grit Fit are to make qual­i­ty fit­ness pro­grammes more ac­ces­si­ble and af­ford­able for peo­ple liv­ing in com­mu­ni­ties."

A ma­jor­i­ty of their clients are women.

He ex­plained that be­fore they start with a client a con­sul­ta­tion would be done and mea­sure­ments are tak­en.

He said even though most of the train­ing is grouped, they try to give as much in­di­vid­ual at­ten­tion as well.

The com­pa­ny al­so pro­vides nu­tri­tion plans through his wife, who is a cer­ti­fied chef.

Quar­an­tine Grit Pump

The busi­ness be­gan to boom but hit a ma­jor stum­bling block when the coro­n­avirus ar­rived on our shores.

"Im­me­di­ate­ly all of my in­come stopped," Sim­mons said.

Ini­tial­ly, notwith­stand­ing this, they start­ed do­ing free train­ing for their clients on­line via Zoom.

But then he told his wife, "ba­by, we have to find an av­enue to give. In this time where there is a drought, let's find some way to give be­cause the prin­ci­ple of giv­ing, the law of com­pen­sa­tion is that it must come back."

The cou­ple then took their free work­outs to Face­book live.

They did it from Mon­day to Wednes­day.

He said it got a lot of at­ten­tion and peo­ple ap­pre­ci­at­ed it.

Soon he got a call from CNC3 in­di­cat­ing that they want­ed the pro­gramme.

"I couldn't be­lieve the ex­cite­ment and joy know­ing that we did some­thing in faith with a good heart to help peo­ple and it came back, and we got an op­por­tu­ni­ty to take it to an­oth­er lev­el."

He said so far the feed­back has been pos­i­tive.

"Out of this, we show peo­ple the ex­cuse that we had all the time, it's not valid be­cause we are bring­ing qual­i­ty work­outs right in the com­fort of your own home."

He said the work­outs are tai­lored for new­com­ers as well as ad­vanced lev­el fit­ness and al­so has a lo­cal feel to it.

Sim­mons is con­vinced that this prod­uct has the po­ten­tial to be long-last­ing and to be one of the most viewed pro­grammes on tele­vi­sion.

Sim­mons' Health Ad­vice

His is al­so ad­vis­ing peo­ple to pay close at­ten­tion to their health and don't wait for doc­tors to paint gloomy pic­tures be­fore get­ting se­ri­ous.

"We don't want to be mo­ti­vat­ed by fear, we want to be mo­ti­vat­ed with the un­der­stand­ing that a strong and healthy body is a tem­ple of the mind. So you want to be able to func­tion, to have the en­er­gy in life to do what­ev­er your heart de­sires but you need a healthy body to do so.

"I know this sounds cliche, but your health is your true wealth, self-care and self-love are nev­er self­ish."

Quar­an­tine Grit Pump airs on CNC3 on Mon­days, Wednes­days and Fri­days at 5:30 am and 4:30 pm. It is al­so broad­cast live on Face­book.