Day 218: Michael Carson
“And my goal … is to come in and open that up, take the blinders off. If you’re familiar with horseracing, they put those little blinders on so they can’t see the other horses. I want my clients to see the other horses. I want them to see the beauty.”
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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Michael, for agreeing to part of the Project and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?
Michael Carson: Yes, hi. I am Michael Carson, and I’m very lucky to be here. Thanks for having me.
Toni: Well, you’re quite welcome. Michael, what do you do?
Michael: Well, I do a number of things. Mostly I work in the fitness industry. I create, develop, and implement fitness workout programs and products that are brought to me that I improve upon. So sometimes I’ve given a product and they say “What can you do with this product?” And other times they say “How can you make improvements to make this product better?” And that’s what I do.
And very luckily I’ve had a training business with personal clients for a couple decades – some of them I’ve actually had for nearly 15 years – and I keep them in shape, I motivate them, and I inspire them to stay young and continue on their pursuit for continued health.
Toni: Well that’s a beautiful lead in to the first question, which is who do you inspire and how, which it sounds as though you have clients that you inspire. Are there other people that you inspire, and how does that happen?
Michael: You know, it’s very interesting. I’m a lucky person, because I live in Southern California, I’m around children, seniors … people of all ages — in the middle age group where I am in my 40s — and I’ve been very lucky that I inspire people by teaching classes that I have in certain locations. I also work out a lot outside, and I’ve found that kids and families that are on spring break – just in the last couple weeks – come up to me and give me compliments and accolades, asking me “How do you do what you do? Where do you go to school? I laugh at them because I’m 43 years old, and I’m well beyond being in school. Most of them are usually younger than I am, and they’re asking “How do I get to look and feel and be as youthful as you are?” So what I do a lot with my inspiration is to show by performance what you can do, what you’re capable of.
Toni: So really it’s leading by example as well.
Michael: Yes, exactly, that’s a great way to say it.
Toni: So how do you think then that that helps people to explore their potential?
Michael: Well, it’s funny, because the conversations I have with people, they always tell me what they’re doing, what they haven’t done, and I have an immediate sense of figuring out where someone is with regards to their fitness whether it’s mentally, physically, nutritionally. You can really gauge in a 30-second conversation with someone where they’re at, what they’ve been avoiding.
And what I try to do – and this is real important with just about everybody – is that I try to give them what would be considered an evolutionary bit of information to change their lifestyle. I don’t try and make a revolutionary change in someone’s life where I ask them to change every single thing at one time, because it’s impossible to ask someone to do that. It doesn’t work that way; it’s proven.
So I give them small incremental ideas that might be directly towards their question of fitness or directly towards nutrition, and I try and … when I’m speaking with them, and usually it’s the family, it’s not just one person. I make sure that I’m looking in the eyes of each one of these people so they’re hearing what I’m saying, that I know that it’s not going in their ear and out the other ear. So I let them ask me the questions, but I give them specific answers.
And I’m always making sure that I’m smiling when I’m talking to them. It’s not as if I’m giving them serious information that they have to feel like it’s a doctor that’s prescribing something, that if they don’t accept it they’re going to have a terrible, terrible effect. I try to show them the positive side and what can be felt, what can be achieved, and how you’re going to be motivated in other areas of your life if you make these small changes that you can make in all of your life.
Toni: Can you give an example of how that integration occurs?
Michael: Sure. I have several clients … I actually won’t say clients, though people have come up to me, that are on vacation, and they tell me that they don’t have time to exercise, they just don’t have time to get to and from the gym, and I’ve made very simple suggestions to them, and I’ve shown them as I’m speaking to them a 90-second three-exercise routine that allows for 90 seconds that I want them to do after they’ve been sitting for a long time, driving for a long time, prior to any meal that they have, and shortly after any meal that they have.
And what this does is give their entire body a boost of metabolism, a boost of circulation, sort of a wake up, if you will, without giving them caffeine, without giving them something that would be an artificial physical jolt. And I find that that physical jolt allows them to be more open to other things like a nutritional change, like a change in, let’s say, intake of alcoholic beverages or something like a caffeinated drink to search for energy when they could be doing it from their own natural source, which is a simple amount of exercise. So I think that I try to inspire people quickly through movement, and that’s what gives them inspiration through other parts of their life.
Toni: So it really is giving … what I’m hearing from you is that the inspiration occurs in almost bite-sized nuggets. No pun intended on the nutrition side of things.
Michael: Little baby stepping, you know … if you take small steps, you can monitor the steps you’ve been taking. If you try and rifle through things, forget everything that you’ve done to get you to the point that you’re at … because most people, let’s say they’re in their 30s or 40s or even 50s and 60s, they have been told by their physicians, told by their bodies, “I need to make a change, I don’t have the energy, I keep getting injured, I have this comfort.” People are constantly in agony from typing, driving, commuting, and these aren’t things that have to be if you just add some simplistic exercises that will make you feel better and allow your productivity for the rest of your life to be better. So it gives you more life in your life and less exercise than you think you need in order to become healthier. People think you need to do 30 minutes, 45 minutes, or an hour at the gym. It’s just not the case.
Toni: That’s interesting. And we will have a way for people to check out what it is that you do and the techniques that you use at the bottom of this interview.
Michael: Great.
Toni: So Michael, what inspires you? What do you need to be inspired?
Michael: You know it’s funny – for me it’s many things. I’m inspired … I have to say every single day music inspires me. If I am in a down mood, if I’m in a stressful mood, if I’m in a … in a lack of energy, if I put on music that I know I like and enjoy, that immediately gives me a boost. And it gives me an energy that my toes are tapping, my heart rate increases — you just feel more of a euphoria. And for myself, that has really been a real important aspect, because I do teach classes. I choreograph, I create things in the music.
The beat, the baseline is something that is a pulse for life. There’s certain beats per minute … 120 beats per minute that they call is the beat of life, which would be an average of like a heart rate of 60. And when you’re at that 120 beats per minute, your body just moves better. You just have a better feeling, and the individuals that listen to music on a daily basis, you’ll find, are more easily inspired and more easily brought out of, let’s say, a down mood or a lack of motivation. Music really helps me as well as exercise. I mean, I am an exercise enthusiast of course, but when you say I need an instant inspiration, it would be music that I would turn to probably more than anything else.
Toni: Is there a certain type of music you’re drawn to?
Michael: You know, it depends on the mood. I am … I’m a huge jazz fan. I’m a huge R&B fan. I have hip-hop records that are unbelievably …. I love rock & roll. It all depends on the music itself. It’s not something that there’s one genre that can give me a straight across the board “that’s what inspires me.” I think that it’s … jazz and blues sometimes can give you more inspiration than rock & roll, it just depends on the mood that you’re seeking to get into, and the mood that you may be in. I do love rhythm, so anything that has a syncopated beat and has more movement to it, that’s what I’m going to sort of go towards.
Toni: Have you always know that you would be in the fitness arena, that you would be teaching and training and motivating? Was that something that you just knew intrinsically or was it an evolution for you?
Michael: You know, it was intrinsic as soon as I was in my early 20s. I think that I found an outlet for my athleticism when I became a California resident, first of all, from upstate New York. And when I moved out here, I ended up working for a gentleman that wasn’t in the best of shape, and I would work out before work, and he asked me what I did and he said “Would you mind showing me some of those things?” I must have been 20, 21 at the time, and I realized that I was changing his life and that he was getting more out of what I was doing with him exercise-wise than I was in my job performing for him at what I was hired. So I went to UCLA and decided to get certified for private training in group exercise instruction, and I haven’t looked back, because I’ve just been … I’m very gifted physically.
I’m very lucky. I’m not a large person, I’m only 5′ 7″, but I can do so many Cirque du Soleil gymnastic style movements that genetically I’m just very lucky, and that is giving me sort of a platform where people will look to me for my information, because I can break it down for them as to what I’m doing and how to do it so they can try to do it. A lot of people can do things, but they can’t tell you how to do it. I’m really good at the breakdown and making it so you understand completely how to do something so when you’re doing it it’s not just “I hope I can, maybe somehow, sometime I will be able to.”
So yes, I think I’ve always been a natural teacher. I’m the oldest of two kids, and I always used to teach my sister everything growing up, and it’s just … yeah, I think intrinsically teaching was my thing, but fitness became an eye opener when I was in my early 20s.
Toni: And so what do you do to continuously explore your own potential so you can continue to do the work that you do?
Michael: Well, it’s funny, because I’m always looking for new ways of stimulating my physicality, as it were. I was an ultra-endurance athlete, so I did 300-mile Team Endurance races for a short period of time – short period of time – long period of time, actually, I feel like now looking back, and triathlons and outdoor activities.
Now that I’m in my 40s, I’m realizing beating myself up to that extent isn’t needed to get what I want, so I will literally pick a place and explore it physically. I will park the car and go for a walk through an area, take a 30, 45, 50-minute walk, and learn new areas and see things and look around, not just put my iPod and ignore everything and listen to the music. I look around, and I see what is there.
And when you do that, when you see what you’re surrounded by, you actually get much more out of the exercise than if you stay in your tunnel, as I would say, and stay into the maybe the stress that’s caused you to need the exercise. If you forget those things for a few moments, you actually will process your problems, let’s call them, and issues in life better by getting out and doing things.
And that’s what I’ve been doing for myself is making sure that I continually move my body in ways that aren’t necessarily testing it to see if I can do things, but putting myself out in nature, getting outside. Being outdoors is what motivates me a lot.
Toni: And so you’re exploring your own potential and fitness by putting yourself in other surroundings in order to, again … I like the words that you said you didn’t test yourself but to maybe stretch yourself.
Michael: Expand, exactly. And one of the things I’ve added to that is museums. I’ve been going to lots of museums. LACMA and MOCA out in Los Angeles are two large museums, and I will park far away from the museum and walk to them, explore the museum, and walk back, and you learn so much. And art is a passion of mine. I wish that I could afford more art. There’s so many wonderful things, so many artistic things that you can purchase out there, that I find that if you’re able to go look at beauty and not test yourself in a way like I said before to physically to … can I even accomplish this?
You get more out of your physical being by feeling, by getting the emotion that you get from looking at a piece of art, going to some terrain that you may have never explored before. It’s just a better way of expanding, like we said before, your horizons. Mentally and physically you’re still moving, so my momentum is never lost physically, but I’m adding to it emotionally and mentally.
Toni: How does that correlate then to what you do for others?
Michael: Well it’s funny, because a lot of people, they stop short of seeing what’s outside of their small periphery. And my goal, and what’s had to be my job in many cases, is to come in and open that up, take the blinders off. If you’re familiar with horseracing, they put those little blinders on so they can’t see the other horses. I want my clients to see the other horses. I want them to see the beauty. I want them to understand that their child that’s growing up around them isn’t going to be there in 5 years in the same age and the same situation, so embrace it. Don’t try to … don’t look negative at situations all the time.
There are difficult situations that often it’s hard to avoid looking at it, but I see that people will look more to the negative than the positive, which draws you more into the negative. So with my clients, I try to give them what their attributes are that are good and show them where they’re at as opposed to telling someone “You can’t … you’re not doing this, you need to do more of that.”
I like to focus on the positive, especially with clientele that are young or elderly. The middle group, they’ve got some passion still, but when it comes to young kids they don’t know that they’re going to get older. When it comes to older people, they’re not so sure it’s worth the time because they’ve gotten old at this point. So breaking through those two groups, that’s the most important for me.
Toni: Fantastic, Michael. Your passion and enthusiasm for what you do is coming across loud and clear, and this interview will drip of it, and that’s really encouraging to hear. And for being part of the Get Inspired! Project to talk about not only who you inspire, but what inspires you and really have that connection between the two, it’s really been amazing, and for that we thank you for being here today.
Michael: It is my pleasure, thank you so much.
Toni: Okay, take care Michael.
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For more information about Michael Carson: www.mindbodyseries.com/fitness, mymobileminute.com
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