194. Guest: Michael Kurkowski - The Strength Connection

Our latest podcast episode explores the vital connection between mindset and success in fitness. We discuss the journey of our guest, Michael Kirkowski, emphasizing the importance of understanding the 'why' behind fitness goals and overcoming misconceptions in strength training.

• Mindset shapes our approach to fitness and personal growth 
• Importance of self-accountability and connecting mental and physical strength 
• New Year's resolutions as an opportunity for self-improvement 
• The significance of understanding the deeper motivations behind fitness goals 
• Common misconceptions about linear progress in strength training 
• Emphasis on incremental improvements and celebrating small victories 
• Encouragement to engage deeply and learn from every experience

http://www.mystrengthconnection.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Mindset and Fitness Podcast Interview
• 7:36 The Power of Mindset and Goals
• 21:15 Gradual Progress in Strength Training
• 25:53 Myths of Fitness Progression
• 29:11 Journey Through Fitness and Mindset
• 40:17 Empowering Mindset Transformation Tips

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Yeah, it's Mindset Cafe. We all about that mindset. Gotta stay focused, never settle for less. It's all in your head how you think you manifest. So get ready to rise, cause we about to be the best. Gotta switch it up. Gotta break the old habits. Get your mind right. Turn your dreams into habits. No negative vibes, only positive vibes. What is up, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Mindset Cafe podcast. Today.

Speaker 1: 0:27

Not only do you have me, your boy devin, but I am welcomed and honored to have michael kirkowski on. I was lucky enough to be a guest on his podcast and you know we. I really wanted to run it back because he is just a wealth of knowledge. He's a strength coach, he's a and I mean, how much better of an alignment does that for the mindset cafe? Right Alongside of that, he is an entrepreneur. So I know for our audience, that is, entrepreneurs the stuff that we were talking about beforehand it's, it's, it's honestly you just need to break out your notebook, um, but his podcast is the strength connection podcast, so make sure you guys check that out. A ton of great content, ton of great guests and everything on that. But for the last 15 years he's been in the fitness industry. So him and I were both really in line with that. So, honestly, today I already know I'm excited and I'm thrilled to have him on. So, without further ado, thank you so much for coming on, michael.

Speaker 2: 1:17

Thanks brother Glad to run it back. It was a blast connecting with you before, so glad we could turn the tables and do this again, man.

Speaker 1: 1:24

So let's dive straight in. And actually, guys, before we dive into the questions and giving you guys all the knowledge, I do want to put this at the beginning of the episode Make sure you guys share this episode with a friend, right? Make sure you guys share the episode so that it does help not just yourself, but you're bringing up the people that you hold most dear to your heart, so that you can bring them up, because if you bring up everybody, then you're only going to want to progress even further. So, with that being said, let's dive in. So, michael, where did your journey start in fitness? Right? You've been in the fitness industry for a decade and a half. Where did it start for you?

Speaker 2: 1:58

Yeah. So to bring it all the way back, I think, like most coaches, loved athletics as a kid. My dad was a great athlete, a big basketball player, and growing up loved baseball, basketball, hockey, like you name it. Like if there was a ball around, like I was trying to figure out how to play. But I was never the like the great athlete, like I was good, like I had a good IQ for sports. But early on from that, since I wasn't the most athletic, I was also a chubby kid. So bring it all the way back.

Speaker 2: 2:30

I had leukemia when I was three years old, which was a big transition for my family. From a lot of chemo and prednisone I was more susceptible to being an overweight child, to being an overweight child. So during that time I really, if I wanted to compete, I had to really take practice and training seriously and from an early on point I realized that training and practice was the spot when you got better. Games were fun, but I really liked the process of practice and kind of learning different skills and techniques. So that part of like kind of getting into fitness was always something that I knew there was some value here and but then, around 14 years old, a lot of things changed for me. I had what's called a slipped epithesis, which is my growth plate slipped. My femur slipped out of the growth plate on my left side, which left me having to go in for emergency surgery. Because if I, you know, went any more time putting weight on that leg, my femur could have completely slipped out. And then I'm in a whole shitload of issues. So that took me off my feet for like a year and a half. So really interesting transition because all my friends when I was young was from sports and now they all went, you know, kept going and playing sports and now I was kind of left as a loner because I couldn't participate anymore. So kind of like a lone ranger for a while in high school.

Speaker 2: 3:56

But then had this idea when I was in 18, 19 years old of wanting to play professional baseball. Like I realized that I could still play and I like kind of wanted to make a run at it. So I really fell in love with getting back in shape. I got in great shape at that time. I had a trainer when I was living in Boston and when that didn't work out, you know, I moved down to Florida, tried, but when I moved back to New York, where I'm from my hometown, I was just working at a restaurant trying to figure out what I wanted to do and a good friend of mine who I worked with was also a personal trainer at this local space and I just asked him like hey, could I come in and see, maybe you can get me back in shape? I was in good shape before, kind of let myself go, and that's when he introduced me to FMS and the work from Gray Cook and Brett Jones and Lee Burton and put me through a functional movement assessment.

Speaker 2: 4:47

Now what was interesting is from that time, when I was 14, I didn't realize that I developed a lot of compensations and asymmetries in my movement from that time that I wasn't even aware of. So when he put me through a body assessment and showing me, oh, you're favoring this side more than the other, and then we started doing corrective exercises, he got me back into my body in balance and I felt amazing, devin, like I didn't realize I didn't feel good until we corrected it and I realized I felt amazing afterwards. So from that I was just really fascinated by the human body and what was capable of and hearing about other people develop issues and compensations and getting people out of pain that he, my friend, eventually became the manager of this club and was recruiting other trainers and was like, hey, do you ever think about being a personal trainer? I was like, well, what is like? How do you do it? Like, what is this? You know what is entailed with this? And that was in 2008.

Speaker 2: 5:48

And I was like, well, might as well give this a shot, and fell in love with it. Got a, you know, got a job. I was working the front desk and I built a business from just the front desk of this gym and built a full book, kind of worked myself out of my hours on the front desk because I was so busy. Got really good at it. Eventually, I managed that club for 10 years afterwards, which then led me to partnering with a friend where we opened up a studio till a lot of other changes happened. Covid changed a lot of what I do now, where I built an online business, which has got me to what I do now, which is I have my own online business as well as running two podcasts where I really focus on trying now to help people connect the physical side of strength with the mental side of strength because that's where I think most of us fall short of really reaching our full potential is connecting mindset as well as the physical body, and that's kind of the long journey of how this all happened.

Speaker 1: 6:47

No, I mean, that is so awesome, it is such an amazing journey, and I mean now that completely makes sense. The strength connection podcast, you know. But it is so true, right? You know there is a massive role between not just your strength or your workouts or your fitness level or whatever, but your mindset behind it, and so can you dive in a little bit about that mindset, or basically that mental and physical connection a little bit?

Speaker 2: 7:17

Sure, I'll take this from two angles. So one is when I realized how important mindset is and what is mindset to really define that it's the story that we tell ourselves. Ok, that's a clear and refined definition that I found. Shout out to Mark England from Enlifted who gave me that definition. But so it really came around the time of the pandemic and COVID.

Speaker 2: 7:40

So what was happening in my life at that time is me and my team. We had an amazing studio. We were in a thousand square feet and we had 150 members. So we were busting out of the seams and we were doing so well. We were actually moving into another space. It was triple our space, which is also triple our overhead, but we were at that spot when we were ready to advance. We signed that agreement to go into the new space a week before the COVID lockdown happened in March of 2020. So timing wasn't great, but I'm a believer in timing is everything. But during that time we transitioned very well. We built our entire system onto the online platform so all of our members could still continue with our workouts and our plans. It was like a group-based setting program and for a couple of weeks for like a month maybe people were doing really well.

Speaker 2: 8:35

But I slowly started to see people trickle away and they stopped coming to live classes. They were starting to kind of fall into low mood and, you know about, to depression. And during that time we were just trying to call up members and just stay connected with them and asking how are you doing? How's your spirits? I don't see you coming to class anymore, kind of what's going on. And one of the answers that I got from many people Devin kind of shocked me and they said I don't feel like I know what I'm doing if you're not there. Peculiar question, let me dive into that a little bit more. And what I realized was as much as as coaches we were trying to help people, we were unconsciously enabling people at the same time, where, when somebody was in front of me and I was telling you exactly what to do, how many reps, what weight to grab, like all that stuff I was taking all of the thought process out of it and you just had to go and follow along. Yeah, you could you, yeah, you can gain some success from that.

Speaker 2: 9:26

But as soon as I was removed out of the equation, people felt like they didn't know what they were doing so, we weren't actually building a system of success where people were autonomous in their own life, and that's when I started to realize how powerful mindset is, and the story that you tell yourself in building self-accountability and trusting your own word that you're going to do something is so powerful, and that's when I started really transitioning a lot of the work that I was doing with clients, and the second part of that is what I realized is that I think there's this stigma around our culture that we think that people can't stick with their goals or they don't succeed and stuff like 95% of people fail. The reality, though, is that a majority of people, six months to a year, do very well towards their goals. They get some successes, but it's that one to three year period afterwards where everybody seems to fall off and they go back into old habits, and I think this has more to do with the story that we tell ourselves versus anything else. So think of it like I like to think of it like a temperature scale. Right, If you set your temperature in your house at 70 degrees? Right, if it goes too below that, if it gets really cold, the heat's going to kick on and you're going to get back up to status quo. So this is where a lot of people we fall back or like I really need to do something.

Speaker 2: 10:48

We figure out how to get ourselves back into gaining some momentum but at the same time is if your house gets too hot and the air conditioning will kick on and it will go back down into status quo so you can see success and start to really feel good in the journey that you're working with. But if you don't change your story and what you believe in yourself, of what you're capable of, we naturally have this way of self-sabotaging ourselves to bring us back into who we think we are and what we think we deserve. And I think this is just across the stream of whether you're in a fitness journey or entrepreneurship, kind of building a business, like we have a very good way of getting ourselves back up when things get really bad, but we also have a really good way of cooling ourselves down when things get too good because we haven't changed our identity or felt like we deserve to get to that next step. So that's kind of the two-pronged approach that I really view, how mindset really impacts the goals that we have.

Speaker 1: 11:52

No, and I think that is so. I love the way you worded it, right? The way I try to tell people is almost like the first part would be like the imposter syndrome, right? You don't feel like you can achieve something and you tell yourself that you can't achieve it, and then, basically, everything begins and ends with your mindset. So if you stop believing, or if you start believing in it, then you're going to start looking for every opportunity to achieve it. If you, once you stop believing in it, then you're not going to achieve it. But it really goes into the fact that, like some people want to say, I'm a fitness enthusiast, but they're. They have this like body image of themselves that I don't look like an Instagram model, right, so I can't be a fitness enthusiast. It's like do you go to the gym every day?

Speaker 1: 12:35

Do you eat the right stuff? You're a fitness enthusiast, right? Or did you open LLC? Did you start trying to do your business? Well, guess what, you're an entrepreneur right now, right, like it's like sometimes, this imposter syndrome is this you're putting the title itself on this huge pedestal when in reality, you're doing everything and on paper you are that thing, and so you just got to, you know, re reshape your mindset and reshape your perspective on the world and of yourself more importantly, and kind of recenter that. But I think that is so awesome how you're able to really connect people. And I want to get your take on this right, because everything you're saying right now just reminded me of something I was talking to someone else about how do you feel, or what are your thoughts about New Year's resolutions?

Speaker 2: 13:31

I think one. I think they're great Because I think anybody that has an aspiration to improve themselves is a net positive for everybody else, and I think it's very easy for the fitness culture to put people down on this and I think you're only doing a disservice. It's like everybody started from someplace before and it actually really it annoys me when people who are on the journey see themselves as superior to these other people and like get mad that the gyms are crowded and stuff like that and New Year's time. It's like you know we need so little encouragement from other people around that if we have a supportive of community, strength is an abundance resource. If you get stronger, devin, or if your business gets more successful, it doesn't take anything away from the opportunity of myself. It only increases the opportunities that I have. So that's one point of it.

Speaker 2: 14:21

Where I think people go wrong with resolutions is they don't get to the meat of exactly why a goal is the goal, and I talk about this a lot with my community and anybody that comes in and is seeking advice or help from me is really getting to the root of why do you have a goal right? So if you have a fitness goal, you want, want to lose 30 pounds or you want to, you know, get stronger and stuff like that. Okay, well, why. It's a very trite, it's a very cliche thing of saying is like, well, why, you need to know your why and stuff like that. But there's a couple things that I like to ask people. Number one is if you achieve this goal, how is life different? Like, how do you approach the world? Like, how is like, are you entering into life? The world, like, how is like, are you entering into life, you know, different? If you achieve this goal, and I think if you don't get into understanding that, then everything just stays on the surface and our brain fights for what it knows. It doesn't fight for change. So if you don't actually have a really deep reason of why this is changing so if you want to lose 30 pounds, you want to rechange your body composition and stuff and you really get into the meat of that well, you start finding some really interesting answers from people. Right, it's like oh, just, I want to be more confident. Okay, well, why? Like, why don't you confident right now? Okay, well, my wife doesn't look at me the same as she did before and our sex life has gone, you know, down the drain it's like okay, that's starting to get to some deep shit, that we're going on here.

Speaker 2: 15:49

So I think I spend a lot of time with people, of trying to connect their reasons why they have a goal into reshaping their identity. And because if you don't, it's just it's too hard to make big changes and transformations in life If you don't really know why you're doing it. Right, life comes up. I talk about it with my clients. We call it scouting the defense. Right. Life plays a professional defense on us.

Speaker 2: 16:16

So if you think of this like a sport, everything that we do to make changes is like an offensive game plan. You're the quarterback. Whether it's a nutrition plan or it's a new workout program or a business blueprint, it's all. You have the ball in your hands and you're trying to take the ball down the field to score a touchdown. But when you're young, right, or you're making early changes, it's like you're playing Pop Warner or Little League, right. If you just have a good offensive game plan, that's fine. But once you get to college level or you get to professional level, the guys on the other side of the field are getting paid too. They're just as good as trying to prevent you from scoring as you are trying to move the ball down the field.

Speaker 2: 16:54

So it's not just enough to have an offensive game plan. You also need to know what are the things in your life that are trying to prevent you from doing this. It could be, I mean, you're a new dad. You know you've got a young kid right. That's a whole new obligation of things that you need to do right. If you don't know where those things are going to fall in, where you need to take care of your kid and stuff and have a plan for how you're going to navigate the things that you need to do in your business or your fitness around that, then you turn into reaction right Instead of proaction. So I think the more you connect these things together and know all these different spots, the more you're just you're getting a good strategy and you're getting a better game plan down so you can succeed for the long term.

Speaker 1: 17:37

No, I honestly I agree with everything that you said, and I want to rewind to something I think it is so important and you were talking about how you know the New Year's resolutions like they get a bad rep and, honestly, that's something we shouldn't be putting down for people down for and I completely agree with that Right, the Instagram influencer influencer, you know, joey swole. Like I love the work that he's doing. I love joey swole. Yeah, like the stuff that he's doing, like calling people out that are, you know putting up those I forget what they're called. Like you know, when you're recording someone and you know someone walks in front of your camera and then he's just calling that person out for even getting mad and and like all those things are people that are bullying other people in the gym, like all that stuff. Like I love the movement he's putting behind that. It's like dude, like everyone's here trying to get better.

Speaker 1: 18:22

Whether it's january 1st or december 31st, it doesn't matter. Like how can you judge someone for for wanting to get better, regardless of the date, right? But I do want to get your take, though, on something that I think people get get this twisted in terms of like personal journey, not like, you know, environment or anything In terms of New Year's resolution. Right, I'll tell you my take and then I want to get your an individual basis. Right, it's almost like glorified as in someone will wait all of December to start their journey because they're going to start with their New Year's resolution instead of.

Speaker 1: 19:06

Why not start now and almost have a forward leap to your starting position than you would if you waited that long? And now you're actually going to have a few steps back because you're going? You waited that that long and now you're actually going to have a few steps back because you're going to eat during the holidays and so forth. But even more so, it's my same view on like, because that's like what's the difference between december 31st and january 1st? They're both a date on the calendar. That's it right. When people mess up let's say they have an extra cheat meal or they fall off their nutrition plan on a Tuesday and they're like I'm going to get back on track on Monday it's like so you're going to wait six days to get back on track. Why not just start now? You messed up for breakfast. Why not just eat the rest of the day clean and then you learn from that mistake. What's your view on that?

Speaker 2: 19:52

Yeah, the best take that I have on this came from a friend of mine, alex Salkin, when he came on my podcast. We talked about the debate between optimal versus practical right and we live in an optimal like an optimization culture. Right, everybody's trying to have their take on the best way to do stuff and there's a lot of people out there that you know they eat this, not that, or like this is the best way to do it. No, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about and stuff and a lot of it is very clickbaity. It's very fear-mongering type stuff. So I think where this gets into most of our culture from that is we know that to really gain success it is an incremental process right, it is the entrepreneurial venture. It is a set of peaks and valleys right, many days are very consistently the exact same way. Some days there's very little reward. You can't really see the success that you have. But you need to go through those cycles and then you start to get that hockey stick and you can really build some success. But I think why people wait for like I'm going to start on this day or it's like this is one, is because when they're in that process of having a cheat meal, or you know it's during the holidays is they're not in a good, they're not in that good state of mind at that moment, right there.

Speaker 2: 21:15

But the second part is is I think so so many people are trying to figure out what is the most optimal way to do something, what's the best way to do stuff. The problem with that is that you can go into an endless search of what is the best way right, yours Devin, is the best way. And then I say something in mine is the best way. So people get so fucking confused about where to actually go with stuff that you keep jumping from one program to the next. And what I realized is that if you put together a plan, that's most practical for you. So if you're a brand new beginner into fitness, right, you're very sedentary, you haven't moved at all. Right, if you go one day a week to the gym, you actually just made 100% increase in what you were doing before, right, we don't think of that as much, right, but if that's the most practical thing that you can do getting to the gym or going for a walk one or two days out of the week right, it doesn't feel very good, it's not a romantic thing to do, but it still is progress. And if you do that and that is what you can actually commit to, the practical actually just became the optimal. So you actually just kind of brought yourself into that and then you keep building on top of that. You get to two days, then you work to three and then all of a sudden you start doing stuff every day.

Speaker 2: 22:34

But you know, you know, we want instant gratification. It's never going to go away. I want it as well. I've been doing this for 15 years, right, and I still want to see things succeed as fast as possible. I fortunately, I think built myself into a mindset of knowing that that's not the way. You need to do it incrementally from there. But I think that is where the majority of to you know to go to.

Speaker 2: 22:55

The question of that is where people go into. Is we always think that everything's going to be perfect on January one? Right, it's like everything's going to be perfect the next day. I tell my clients this all the time Everybody's perfect tomorrow, right, it's like you wake up in the morning and everything's fine, the baby slept perfectly, and you wake up energized, energized, and you get your workout in and then you hit every green light on the way to work, and then the coffee's piping hot and you just feel great all the time. Right, that's not reality. The first thing that you do when you wake up is you're tired because your nervous system has just been asleep for eight hours. Right, but if we think that there's this perfect time to start and it's it's focusing on these expectations of what we think is going to happen versus what are the standards that you're going to hold yourself to, and I think if you do that, then you have a much better chance of succeeding, not just tomorrow, but for the long run, and build a system of it.

Speaker 1: 23:47

No, definitely, and I I love that. Take on, it's incremental, right, if you never ran a marathon, you're not going to go out and run 26 miles today, like if you never ran a mile. Like it's like walk a mile, walk a half mile and then do a walk run and then you start to build up to it and it's that delayed gratification of achieving that goal is what makes the whole journey worth it. But you got to not only trust the process but learn to enjoy the process and not watch the clock the whole time. Cause then I mean I know we all been in grade school and watching the clock for it to hit, you know, 3 PM or 2 PM whenever we got out and it was like that last hour was dragging by and it's like because you're not just in it, you're not just absorbing it, right.

Speaker 1: 24:30

So I do want to ask you know, off of that and I know you kind of dove in a little bit off of the incremental stuff but what are some like miscontraceptions that people have about strength training in general, because I know you touched on you know what plan is the best, you know my plan is the best, your plan is the best, and people don't have a ton of real guidance on it. And that's a real issue in the fitness industry, especially because you know everyone and their mom is a trainer without really the knowledge behind it. And that's why I wanted to bring you on, because I know you have the knowledge behind it after us speaking and stuff, and I wanted you to kind of give your take and your advice on. You know those common mistakes or common misconceptions of just strength training.

Speaker 2: 25:12

Yeah, so you know, pavel Tatsulin has a great quote that he says there's a million and a half ways to get strong. Some are very good, some are very bad, and then there are a few that are extraordinary, right, so it's like the few I always think, like if we're really getting into the practical applications of it compound based movements, things that work the whole body all at once get the most bang for your buck, I think, is going to always be the way to go. All these other type things of jumping around like a million, I'm like I mean, I'm a, I'm a kettlebell, you know guy. Like you know kettlebell, barbell, you know body weight, like I mean we have all the tools right there that you need. But I think strength is a skill, just like anything. Devin, you know.

Speaker 2: 25:53

And I think what's weird about the fitness world, right, is we even say like fitness enthusiasts and Eric Degati said this when he came on my podcast right, he's like there's no such thing as an accounting enthusiast. Right, it's like you go to school for accounting and then you get a degree in accounting and then you're an accountant. Right, you take your advice from an accountant, somebody who has the skills of it. You, you take your advice from an accountant, somebody who has the skills of it. You don't take it from the guy down the street who's like, oh, I, just, I like math. Right, it's like, oh, and this is what I do. No, you go to a professional. So the first thing is is that everybody out there who is in good shape doesn't mean that you know what the hell you're doing or you can really coach somebody. So just be very wary of where you're getting your information from from there. Coach somebody, so just be very wary of where you're getting your information from from there.

Speaker 2: 26:41

But I think the misconceptions of strength training, just like anything, is that it's this linear progress that you get right. And the problem with that is that at the beginning steps of it we call it a phrase it's newbie gains, right. When you do anything at the beginning, you get all of the benefits at one time. Right, it's like you drop weight, because mostly it's inflammation. Right, you get stronger, your energy goes up. All the things that you're aiming to do when you're at the beginning steps of something all start to work. But once you start getting into it and you build some consistency up with it, then it's not a linear progression. That's when trusting the process and really just creating an identity around it versus you know, I've talked about this before of like, the words that you use for yourself matter so much. So it's the difference between saying, oh, I exercise three times this week before versus I train three days a week. Right, I mean, it's a small little shift there.

Speaker 2: 27:38

But Tony Robbins said this about like quitting smoking. It's like when somebody says like, oh, like you know, I haven't smoked a cigarette in 30 days, like I'm quitting smoking, he's like well, why are you counting days? Like, are you just counting down to the next time you have a cigarette, or is it? No, I'm not a smoker, right, it's small in the words, but it's a much different way that your brain possesses it. So I think that's the main thing of the is. We think that it's this linear progression of it.

Speaker 2: 28:04

But I know days where, you know, some days I just my strength just doesn't feel that it's there. Other days it feels somewhere in the middle. Other days, all of I felt like I got a you know dose of testosterone and b12 and I can just throw through the you know, through the roof. It's like it's the body's a crazy place to live, like. You just never know how you know it. Uh, it happens, but I see a lot of people. We attach a feeling that you get to a workout and that's the determinant of whether it was a good workout or not, right? So actually I just talked about this on my channel. Is we talk about being consistent, right? And what does consistency actually feel like?

Speaker 2: 28:45

And the analogy that I thought was best is you think of it like going on an airplane ride, right? If you think of an uh, if you go on a uh the last time that you flew, you're waiting there on the runway and it's you know, you're just, you know, sitting there and then all of a sudden, the jets kick on, you go back into your seat, you feel that acceleration happen, right, like you feel everything going on, like you can't move, and then you know the tires come up and then you start to take off and you feel that ascent. You start to feel it. I personally am not a great, you it. I personally am not a great, you know, flyer, so my stomach starts to churn a little bit, but you feel the change in the environment that's happening. But then what happens? You get to a cruising altitude and then it barely feels like anything. You don't even feel like you're moving at all. Right, all of a sudden, the feeling of what's happening in that travel changed a lot. But did you like what's going on? You're going faster at that cruising altitude than you were when you were accelerating, but the thought process and how you feel about it changed.

Speaker 2: 29:40

Imagine if we all got up out of our seat and started knocking on the cockpit door and it was like, hey, pilot, like what's wrong? Like we don't feel the acceleration anymore, like are we falling? Like, and you start to freak out from that. And that's where I think a lot of people we fall into. That habit of the feeling that you're getting from your workout starts to fade away a little bit from that initial honeymoon phase of starting a new venture. And this is where people jump to the next thing oh, now I'm going into Peloton, or now I'm going to go into HIIT, or no, now I'm going to take up powerlifting. Oh, now I'm going to go keto. Like whatever it is is we jump from one thing to another versus just keep staying on the same course. The foundations are always going to be the things that work. You know, if they're not sexy. They're not. You know, crazy, exciting all the time. But you know, the fortune is in the foundations and I don't think that's ever going to change.

Speaker 1: 30:36

No, I think that is that is so true. And it your workouts don't always feel the same. There is that honeymoon phase, as you said. You know you do lose weight in the beginning, faster than you know. All of a sudden you're down 50 pounds and then it's. I can't get the next pound off, like it's still going, just not going off. It's not going a pound a day, like it wasn't. You know, day one. Like breathe, relax, you know.

Speaker 1: 31:04

But it also goes into one of the things that people will say like you know, I'm just not as sore as I was in the beginning, right, and it's like one, that's, that's good. Like you don't need to be deathly sore where you can't move anything, you know, like you were in the beginning. But soreness doesn't isn't necessarily a telltale of the of the workout, depending on the given workout, because there's different workouts to do different things what was the target of the workout, what was the focus of the workout, and so forth, as well. As, like some people will question, you know, you know why don't I sweat when I want to get your take on this one, some people when they start working out there, why don't I sweat as much as you know? So-and-so. You know why? Why don't I sweat? You know what? What do you? What is your answer for those people?

Speaker 2: 31:42

It's uh, you know I half laugh, cause it's been so many times that I heard this. It's uh, I mean everybody's. You know, at a different everybody's at a different level. You know it's like it's uh, you know. I'll take this for example right, my girlfriend is a is a dance teacher. Right, she's been dancing her entire life. Right, she's an amazing ballet dancer and if we both did a ballet class right now, right, I would be sweating so profusely in 60 minutes of doing that class. Versus her is because she's used to those movements. She's been doing that forever. Right, it's like it's not a, it's not a informal type thing for her.

Speaker 2: 32:25

For me, I would have to concentrate so hard in all the mobility and flexibility work that I'm doing. It takes even more mental energy for me to even know what the hell that we're doing. So I'm going to expend probably a lot more energy from there and it's probably probably going to be embarrassed at the same time, which is going to bring some sweat down at the same marks. But I mean everything. You know everything changes at a different level for each person. So one of the one of the practical ways devin that I, you know, try and work with people on this is we just do a daily wins journal. It's like the wins that you get and the victories that you have, whether they're objective or subjective, they're going to change over time. So at the end of each day, if you just sit down and you just review your day and say, okay, what went well today, what did I do? Sometimes it's like, just, I felt like absolute garbage. I didn't sleep well, but I got to the gym and I followed my plan and my workout. Even though it didn't feel good, I got it done. That's a victory in itself. Okay, I actually woke up and I wrote down the things that I was grateful for, cause I said I was going to do that. Okay, uh, somebody really pissed me off and I didn't go like I normally did before, where I would lash out at them and actually kept my composure.

Speaker 2: 33:37

Whatever it is, there's a million more victories of things that you did throughout the day than we often give credit for, because it's so easy for us to always remember the negative things that happen in big, bold letters versus all the positive things that happen right, because our brain is a threat detection system. Our brain is only here for our survival, so you can see like a million good things that happen, but one bad thing. And what do we all do? We harp on that bad thing like that one little thing, even though there was a bunch of other things that were going on there. So you know, as challenging as it is to do, because it's just so innate in our culture is to avoid the comparison trap in so many different ways. And you know, I think we all do it in some sense. You know, and stuff I see it in, I mean, in my business.

Speaker 2: 34:28

I'll look at other people oh my God, what are they doing? Like they're doing so great? And what they're rolling oh my God, what are their podcast numbers? What are they doing from this? Or they're rolling oh my God, what are their podcast numbers, what are they doing from this? Or I see, oh, this guy's freaking strong as can be. It's very easy to do that and I don't think that's ever going to fully go away. But the best thing that we can do is find ways to pull ourselves back into the state of mind that we want to be in, right, it's like there's never going to be a perfect day where you feel great and you never have a negative thought again or compare yourself, but I think the skill that you can develop is to recognize it and then pull yourself back into the state that you want to be in. That is something that you can develop and the stronger you get on that, the more not just success that you're going to have, but, I think, just the more peace that you're going to have in your life.

Speaker 1: 35:17

Yeah, that is, that's on point. All it is. The comparison is a thief of all joy, right, If you're. If you're spending time comparing yourself to others and how fast their journey is moving, you're taking time away from you focusing on your journey and how fast you should be moving, Right? So Instagram scrolling and stuff like that, like you got to shape your perspective in terms of like, let's say, for for us in business, it's like we could look at other people in business like man, they're already doing this and, wow, they're growing again. You know what are they doing. You know, why am I not doing that? Instead of saying why aren't they doing it? Like, I'm going to look and see what they're doing. What can I start to implement? Right, Instead of looking at it negatively, Because then at the end of the day, you're just like, okay, this isn't for me.

Speaker 1: 35:58

You know, and then you're going to put yourself down and that's not a healthy spot to be for everyone. But the mind has such a crazy role on not just your emotional state or everything Like it will play tricks on you. Like, for example, if you load up 225 on the bar, it's 245 plates, right. The first time you go to do that, it feels crazy heavy, even though you just hit 220, right, five pounds difference, it's a two and a half on the side. Oh yeah, and it's like. But for some reason, once you unload all the small weights and another big plate comes on, it gets heavy and people can't do it. So it's the mindset and your emotional connection has such a huge role.

Speaker 1: 36:41

So everything you've said honestly, it resonates so well. So I hope you guys have been taking notes, because we've came to that final question, which is this is your legacy wall? Right, it is not a tombstone, so please don't give me a tombstone answer. It is your legacy wall On your legacy wall, on your legacy wall. It's one lasting message. It could be short, it could be long, but what is the last message that you would leave for the up and coming generations from the journey that you've learned?

Speaker 2: 37:11

You know I'll have to steal a quote that has really resonated me and has been a North Star for me. It's one of my favorite quotes ever and it's from Beethoven. It's do not just practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, For that and knowledge will raise men to the divine. So I'll just give a little context of that. I think that first part of that quote is so powerful to me Do not just practice your art, but force your way into its secrets. So replace art for life. Right, Don't just practice life, but go all in, Like whatever you want to do.

Speaker 2: 37:50

I don't care if it's fitness, if it's art, if it's accounting, if it's teaching, if it's raising your kids, go all in on it. Learn as much as you possibly can, Take as much information as you can from it, Refine it down into what works best for you. But when you do that, when you go all in and you really know exactly what you want to master in this life, the world becomes your library. Okay, Cause you can take from everything that comes your way. And the more you implement that into your practice, the more you refine it. So it gets more dense, it gets more strong, and then you find like I think that's what the definition of wisdom is. Wisdom is refinement. It's taking all this knowledge that you have and knowing how to condense that into the most powerful few words or so, If you ever really talk to somebody very wise who's older in their life. They say very little words usually, but everything that they say has so much punch, so much power to it. So that would be the message that I would say, whatever you're doing.

Speaker 1: 39:05

So that would be the message that I would say whatever you're doing, go all in, don't half-ass it, don't lollygag and tiptoe into it. Dive into the fucking deep end and just have a freaking blast with it. Knowledge dropped throughout the whole episode, but that alone is a mic drop legacy wall right there. So, michael, where can people connect with you and learn more about what you got going on?

Speaker 2: 39:24

Yeah. So social media you can go on my Instagram, which is Michael underscore, strength connection, you can also go. I mean, find me on Facebook is fine too, but check out. If you want to check out the podcast. It's the strength connection podcast. It's on all listening platforms. Um, it's on, uh, youtube as well. We're 275 episodes in now. Uh, on that and uh only rolling from there. Uh, I've made a passion and uh and a life by being the stupidest person in the room with people and just getting amazing people on the podcast to hear their stories and insights. So people way smarter than me share all of their experiences present company included right there. So go check out Devin's episode. And yeah, if you want to dive even deeper into really the connecting mental and physical performance, you can go to my website, which is my strength connectioncom. There's a free five minute video of how to take two specific practices that I found most powerful and start incorporating them into your life to change your mindset in 30 days. So that's a free gift that I can give out to you.

Speaker 1: 40:32

That's awesome, guys. That'll all be in the show notes. So whether you're watching it on YouTube or you're listening to the podcast, it is in the description. So make sure you guys share this episode with a friend. Don't be the bottleneck and hold all the information for yourself. Let your circle grow with you. But with that being said, michael, I want to say again thank you so much for taking the time to drop the knowledge for the audience.

Speaker 2: 40:52

Thank, I had a blast with you. Thank you so much for the invite.