Why People Hate Exercising: The Psychology Everyone Needs To Know

Discover the intersection of mind and muscle with Mike Kelly, the Oldest Psychology Graduate from Queens University, as he guides us through the complex dance of psychology and fitness.

As we unpack the symbiotic relationship between these realms, Mike's skepticism of quick fixes and celebrity health fads shines a light on the need for a scientifically grounded approach to wellness.

In this transformative episode of the 2% Solution, host Dai Manuel sits down with Mike Kelly, an expert in fitness psychology, to discuss "Why People Hate Exercising: The Psychology Everyone Needs To Know".

Mike shares his 45 years of experience and delves into exercise psychology, revealing how understanding our mental approach can revolutionize our fitness journey.

Listeners are treated to a special offer: an exclusive discount for Mike's upcoming course, "Why People Hate Exercising – The Psychology Everyone Needs To Know."

To get 20% off and pay NO TAX, contact Mike directly at mkelly@wemeanfitness.com and mention the 2% Solution podcast.

This is an unmissable opportunity for anyone looking to enhance their fitness knowledge and apply these insights to personal and client fitness journeys. Don't miss out on the chance to be part of this limited-seat session and make a lasting impact on your fitness journey. 

Connect with Mike to confirm your participation and transform how you view exercise! 

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Course Details:

• Why People Hate Exercising – The Psychology Everyone Needs To Know

Other Links:

• Website
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• Facebook

Chapters

• 0:06 Mike Kelly
• 9:42 Challenges of Life and Exercise
• 20:47 Fitness, Aging, and Self-Gratification
• 34:28 Exploring Health and Wellness Perspectives
• 39:23 Assessing Functionality and Setting Realistic Goals
• 48:47 Human Functionality
• 58:57 Discussion on Health and Fitness Program
• 1:08:48 2% Solution and Mental Fitness Journey

Transcript

Dai Manuel: 0:06

Hey everyone, welcome to another electrifying episode of the 2% Solution Podcast. Today we're in for a treat as we chat with the Titan in the World of Wellness and Personal Development, mike Kelly. Mike's a celebrated trainer and speaker, known for his no-nonsense approach and decades of experience in transforming lives. He's the real Theo. Mike's journey in fitness and health spans over 45 years, touching lives from Olympians to everyday warriors. His blend of psychology and fitness insight is nothing short of revolutionary. And guess what? He's got a special surprise for you all, but only if you stick around to the end. Mike's also the proud recipient of the title Oldest Psychology Graduate from Queens University in 2020. A testament to his never-ending quest for knowledge and improvement.

Dai Manuel: 0:58

Today he's here to share his journey, bust some myths and provide actionable advice that can change the way you approach health and fitness. So buckle up, tune in and get ready to have your perspectives challenged and horizons broadened. Mike Kelly is about to take us on a ride through the intricate world of physical and mental wellness. And remember there's a special invitation waiting for you at the end of this episode. You won't want to miss it. Mike, welcome back to the podcast, and I know I'm saying welcome back because tech was not in my favor. Last time we connected and I had a great talk with you. Unfortunately, we didn't hear me.

Dai Manuel: 1:42

We only heard you, and so I really appreciate you being back again today for Part Deux. As we are Canadians, so I will use the French reference there. But I just want to dive right into it today, mike, because there's some amazing things that you're doing, but I also know we're going to have some space to talk about a program that you put together, an amazing course. Also, I know you provided something pretty special as far as actionable items and some tips and tricks that we'll share later on in the episode. So, everybody, if you're ready, I'm ready. We're going to hear from Mike right now. Mike, how are you doing today?

Mike Kelly: 2:13

I'm good Dye, Nice to see you again.

Dai Manuel: 2:18

Mike, you've been the most kind person in this situation and I just got to acknowledge your grace, and it's probably also coming from someone that's got extensive experience just with doing hosting and facilitating large to smaller groups and I know that you speak a lot. So those tips you gave me on how to protect my throat and my book words, they're coming in handy now. Thank you, it's a tool.

Mike Kelly: 2:43

It's a tool right. You have to look out for the tools.

Dai Manuel: 2:46

So true man.

Mike Kelly: 2:47

Right tool for the job and look out for the tools.

Dai Manuel: 2:50

That's my goal now, and now that we're back for this second sort of go around, I was thinking a lot about our first conversation and I think today what I'd love to really dive into is giving you just really the platform to talk a bit about your story, to how you became, to this place, where I don't know if this was a reference you gave yourself, or someone else gave this to you, but the cynical trainer. I just think it's such an interesting play on words and it captures some different images for me. But was that a moniker you came up for yourself or was that something that was actually presented to you?

Mike Kelly: 3:22

No, it's a self-induced.

Dai Manuel: 3:27

So can you talk about that?

Mike Kelly: 3:29

Generally speaking, everyone on the planet is probably cynical at some times. They're really self-analysed. Even the biggest optimist in the world is somewhat of a cynic about cynicism. That being said, what I generally find is that cynicism is about questioning things that we may not believe or whatnot. If you don't question things, the world is just going to completely run amuck, more so than it is to avoid manipulation and so on, et cetera.

Mike Kelly: 3:56

But for myself, I'm not cynical about everything. I love life. I think I've told you that before. I do feel somewhat cynical about a couple of things related to health and wellness from a sustainable perspective, and there's very few people you can take a pretty good microcosm look at the people on the planet that are able to stay fit and healthy throughout life. It count on my hand that I'm a people I probably know in that area. I hope to be one of them when I'm talking in my 90s or whatnot, to be able to feel and do the same things I'm doing now. It may not sound realistic, but there are some that have done it, so I think realistic is possibilities, assuming they don't get hit by a truck or something before that.

Mike Kelly: 4:36

And, generally speaking, I'm cynical about people, for example, who will quickly fall into the trap of easy to be healthy, and so I'm sorry, there is no easy. I'm talking from a science base and there's anecdotal information out there, and then there's empirical. I'm more of an empirical person and if there's science to back it up, it's never 100% concrete, but it offers me a little bit more credence than my late mom used to tell me to stand on my head and prevent air loss. Hey, nice, full head of hair. It really works.

Dai Manuel: 5:09

What are you talking about? You got a big head of hair.

Mike Kelly: 5:12

My brother's hair is actually thicker. That being said, there's no quick fix. Out there and the social media small bullet-sized windows, you hear of information from celebrities saying do this or do this, or even from an equipment perspective, here's a piece of equipment that's the latest and greatest. It'll burn three times the number of calories from anything that you used before. It's all BS, because in order to burn those extra calories, you have to put that amount of effort in to do that, to turn the machine and so on. The people demonstrating these machines. They probably didn't get fit by using these brand new pieces of equipment that they're demonstrating and selling to you. Normally it's your weakest moment, at two in the morning, when you can't sleep.

Dai Manuel: 5:54

That's right.

Mike Kelly: 5:55

You get your credit card out and you buy it, but sadly there's no quick fix and it's also in the pharmaceutical industry. So although the pharmacists out there, the scientists who have their fart in the right place at the outset to come up with something, ultimately it falls into a large system which is very money-driven, ulteriorism, maybe ulterior motives driving things. You could literally give a person a pill that would rid them of all the excess body fat in their body. That wouldn't make them healthy, it would just make them lighter. Their body fat counts still may be high because you have to do other things and it's not easy.

Mike Kelly: 6:31

At the end of the day, for myself, humans don't plan to fail, they fail to plan. Why don't we plan? It's all about this the brain does not want to burn extra energy because it works so hard to get that energy in the first place and think of it prehistorically, if you want Famines and so on, even hundreds of years ago. That's how we're wired and for that reason the brain really doesn't want to give up calories, which is why exercising is so hard to do, and I won't try and pin you down to an answer on this, but a lot of people I chat with, I'd say, 99% of them. When I ask the question, do you love doing exercise? The answer is inevitably yes, especially from the fitness health world. At the end of the course that I teach, which I'll talk about a little bit later, the answer is normally I don't think I do. I personally hate doing exercise.

Dai Manuel: 7:26

You've got to expand on this because I think this is just such an interesting. I remember when you first told us, when we first met, and I was like, yeah, this is just your shit. But man, the more you've talked about this and the more of your content that I've consumed, I'm like, oh my gosh, you're right. You have me questioning myself Do I love it?

Mike Kelly: 7:44

I have a good friend who was also a client for like 15 years and for years I would tell this individual that I hated doing exercise and he would say come on, really, you're fit. How can that be? It took a long time because when I train clients, I educate them. I have a whiteboard in the studio gym and so on. I try to educate them because I want them doing things on their own. But it took probably two years of consistent effort to convince this individual that I do hate exercise. Now I love exercise, I hate doing exercise. There's a big difference. I understand I teach anatomy. I train certified personal trainers.

Mike Kelly: 8:27

I've taught for over 20 years of the 45 years that I've been in fitness and health. I understand it, I get it. I can explain the concepts fairly in depth. I don't know everything, but I know more than the average bear in this domain and what I've learned is that if you don't look after the one body of gut, it's not going to look after you. If you're looking for a catchphrase, challenge the body or it will challenge you. I actually trademarked that I don't know 50, 20 years ago Challenge the body or it will challenge you. And the reason people fail on that concept is because exercise is so hard to do. I'm not talking physically, I'm talking getting by this.

Mike Kelly: 9:09

Answering your first question, I'm not cynical at everything, but I am cynical about things in the fitness domain because there is no quick fix and yet everyone is coming up with. There's not a week that goes by that you won't get an email with somebody pitching something new, be it a celebrity or not, and there's no quick fix. You can look at a thin individual walking down the street and be envious of them for whatever reasons, but they may not be healthy. They may in fact be. We call them skinny fats. They may be very high body fat and low muscle tone, you don't know, but life is challenging.

Mike Kelly: 9:42

I was on a podcast some time ago and the interviewer very intelligent person. They just they couldn't get the point that I was trying to make, that life was challenged. Because in their mind, no, don't present it like that. Life is not challenging, you can deal with it. Things are exercises fun to do. No, it's not.

Mike Kelly: 10:04

And the reason it's difficult sometimes in a sound bite social media or even short venues like this, to get that across is because we've set up biases in our brain. It's wired over decades, in many cases for adults, and we have this understanding from peer pressure that everyone's telling us exercising is fun from. I won't mention the name specifically, but there's a lot of organizations that can't have the best pitch. Exercising is fun? No, it's not. And if you need any proof other than taking a course like mine to give you that credibility and, I guess, the context of resonating your mind to make the decisions yourself, to start to slowly change how you think, just look at the obesity. It's an epidemic. It's only getting worse. If exercising was so fun, why do we have these issues Sure, yeah, no valid point.

Mike Kelly: 10:57

If a health organization came out literally tomorrow and said listen, we've just finished a massive study. If you consume three jelly donuts every day for the rest of your life, you will live an extra 10 years and you'll be helping you fit. How long do you think you would take for people to jump on board to consume three jelly donuts a day?

Dai Manuel: 11:14

I think I know what the campaign would look like at 10s, that's for sure.

Mike Kelly: 11:17

Yet, ironically, these same organizations have been saying for decades, certainly since the 50s, that you need to exercise X minutes a day, and so on cardiovascular, and so on, et cetera to extend your longevity and improve your quality of life. Do people do it? No, it's gotten so bad that some health organizations like Health Canada have actually put out their study guides that are actually degrading the amount of time you need to put in. It used to be an hour, it used to be 45 minutes, now it's down to 20 minutes. Why are you sending 20 minutes instead of an hour? Because if you're not going to do any at all, you might as well and you'll have a better chance of doing at least 20. That's the concept. They're hoping Right Again. It just comes down to that. Physical exercise activity is challenging. You have to understand it before you can move forward to actually do it consistently.

Dai Manuel: 12:07

That's the trick. I think this is great For the listeners those that are watching, listening to this right now. Mike's the greatest guy to be speaking on this subject matter, not just because of his extensive background in the wellness industry, but you actually recognizing that there's this sort of lagging muscle between the ears. It's really that mental mindset and perspective. You did something very interesting. You went back to school as not only a mature student, but you even got the Queen's University oldest psychology graduate in 2020. Can you talk to that? I think this is such a wonderful example of this is how our industry needs to mature.

Mike Kelly: 12:48

Mature is a rolled of term, by the way After a while I don't know if I'm always being mature, but I'd say 15 plus years ago I'd have trained individuals from world class one Olympian down to mulling pops mostly, and varsity level team strength and dish coach and so on Training trainers, expert fitness winners. I've been in this fitness industry for 45 plus years, but it was 15 years ago that this epiphany kind of hit me. I was a trainer at the US Embassy here in Ottawa under contract for seven years. So I met a lot of people, made a lot of friends, but they're all three-year contracts and after three years they put them somewhere else, normally back to their hometown. They'd meet their goals that I'd set with them, even though I educated them. I'd hear back from them maybe four or five years later, say, mike, I wish you were down here in Nebraska or I just can't get it. And what had happened is the fitness wagon they'd worked so hard to get on they fell off of them. Why is this being? Because I educated them as to why.

Mike Kelly: 13:47

So that started the wheels movie, meaning there was something else missing. I mean, this is my focus from here down, from the neck down. Really, if I could do things over again, it would be the exact reverse. I'd learn more about what's going on upstairs and this is easy to deal with from the neck down. So it took a while to get the gumption, because it's not comfortable going back into a scenario of school as an adult an older adult and I took the plunge some five years ago and I went back and in spring 2020, during that period I was their oldest psychology graduate and I really put the focus on fitness and health. That was my main interest. So when I talked to Profs which I monopolized, the tantas which I could I only put the focus on those areas. I took that information and I created a course almost two years ago and it's called why People Hate Exercising Python the psychology everyone needs to know.

Mike Kelly: 14:41

And to sum up very quickly if you don't understand the problem as best you can, how do you expect to solve it or deal with it? In the case of health and wellness from a sustainable perspective and it's an accredited course Some organizations like BCRPA or Alberta Fitness and so on. They'll offer a lot of CECs. Canfid Pro authorizes it, movati Good Life it's been blessed. It's an accredited course. It's a two-module course. One's a prerecorded module you'll receive beforehand, and then the other's a live one-day session, a lot of interactiveness, and in that program I try to address number one, what all the challenges are, that we're typically dealing with the major challenges that the body is dealing with as it ages.

Mike Kelly: 15:27

And one of the references I have in the course is that I think the biggest problem humans have in general is that the youthful body is really tolerant of abuse or lack of care. I'm talking from an endocrine system perspective or modal production and so on. You can really be abusive, you can be a raging alcoholic and addictive eater and still get by. But if you take these lifestyles that you've developed in these early years, when the body is producing good from one level and so on, into your later years, you're going to be a mess, and that's what happens with people, because it's very hard to change these lifestyles that you put forth. So I cover a number of areas, probably a dozen areas, from genetics to stress to habits to sleep, and you name it with tools on each of these to help you deal with them.

Mike Kelly: 16:20

And if I had my way with things, if I could get Justin Trudeau or Joe Biden in the room for one minute and chat with them. It would be listen. Our healthcare costs are out of control, which is taxpayer-supported base. It's mostly reactive. It's not proactive healthcare, which we'll come back to in a second, by the way, healthcare that would be great.

Mike Kelly: 16:40

The reality is we aren't taught as youngsters, as we grow up, how to have coping mechanisms, how to deal with the challenges of life. If you're born with a silver spoon, you're probably going to be worse off as a latter adult because you haven't had any challenges. Perhaps. But as average individuals, what are our coping tools that we can deal with the challenges of life? I try to provide those. And is it possible to make changes, to write your ship, so to speak, the direction of your path? Sure it is. That's the incredible thing about the human body it's so adaptable. But here's the problem it's extremely slow at adaptation, extremely slow, so slow. The majority of humans give up because we want our brain wants instant gratification. I don't know if you know this, but we come into this world with only two fears the fear of falling and the fear of sound. Every other fear is self-induced. All these phobias are self-induced, of which I've got many. I've got itch-to-phobia, by the way, you can research that later.

Dai Manuel: 17:39

What is that? What's itch-to-phobia?

Mike Kelly: 17:42

It's the fear of fish. Really, I've never been bitten by a fish. What's going on? I can probably blame Steven Spielberg, I don't know, but I stopped doing triathlons. I was doing a triathlon in Kingston and I took a panic attack because I thought a fish was attacking me. I don't know People of Lake Ontario, it was just weeds, seaweeds, right, but I took a panic attack and I literally breast-stroke the entire swim. I was the last in all the water, which, by the way, really allows you to pass a lot of people on the bike if you're a good biker.

Dai Manuel: 18:12

Oh yeah, that's the weight of the ground there.

Mike Kelly: 18:15

As I say, most of these things are self-induced, including I won't quite call it a fear, but our, I guess, our adversity wanting to be consistent with doing proper exercise. I could talk for hours on this, but I'll let you throw another question at me and maybe put me on a different course.

Dai Manuel: 18:37

What I'm actually thinking is for the listeners and I think I've shared with you before and a good chunk of the audience is between the ages of 35 and 55. It's almost an even split of men to women, which is wonderful With respects to that group. I know what it's like because I'm smack dab in the middle there, right, I know I'm newly an empty nester. People close to the 35, they got younger families. They're consumed by family. They have this martyr approach, right, what everybody else needs before my own. And then they find out, oh boy, that's not paying off very well, especially when it comes to personal health.

Dai Manuel: 19:14

Then I got people in the 55 category a little bit above 50, that are empty nesters, that are looking at the second half of life, thinking I need to make some changes because I want the second half of life to be just as good as the first half. It's not better. And they're confused. They don't know how to get started. But also, when they do start, there is that concern that they stop before results have even occurred. I was wondering if you could speak to the psychology that like, how would you work with someone that's sort of on the fence of making that commitment, but it's not as much making the commitment as then sustaining it, and I think that's where a lot of people fall short. Right, they give up, they stop, they give in, I guess, to that mental stop sign, right, and I'd love to just hear your thoughts on that, to just go a little bit deeper, on the psychology of why we dislike fitness, but also why we won't continue if we know it's going to do something good for us in the long term.

Mike Kelly: 20:05

Just on that part. As I said earlier, if you ask a lot of people, they will never say they dislike.

Dai Manuel: 20:09

Right.

Mike Kelly: 20:10

That's a problem. That's a problem in itself. You've got to understand that. It is challenging to do on a consistent basis. And so why is it? And the more we understand things, the more it will resonate with the cognizant mind. I mean this is tough to pitch this stuff to a teenager whose frontal cortex is not even fully developed yet, but to an adult, if you give them proper, credible, empirical context I won't call it dumbed down, but in terms they can understand then they can start to resonate with it and start to get it and also understand what the ramifications really don't.

Mike Kelly: 20:47

Two of the problems I mentioned one that the human body youthfully is very tall and the aging body is not. And we've actually got names for it. We say things like sarcopenia, age-related muscle disease. I'm not boasting, I'm not a muscle-bound individual, but I'm very functionally fit. I do a lot of stuff that 20-year-old again not boasting, it sounds like, but I'm in the 95th percentile for 18-year-olds in all the fitness categories. How can that be? Number one, our fitness standards. They're not that high because they're based on the masses and the masses are not that terribly fit. So you come back to the fact is how can one individual in their mid-60s be pretty fit and others are not. Again, there's a little tiny bit of it as genetics, but it's really not a major part of it. It's planning, it's consistency, it's understanding things and that's the challenge. People don't understand things.

Mike Kelly: 21:43

But I will say this that most humans, because we're driven by self-gratification, that's we're wired like that and I talk a little bit about it to help people understand it. But because we're driven by that, guess what? You don't get instant gratification from actually doing exercise. You get it afterwards, after you've done the exercise. You know if it's been done properly and you've progressed it with the resources there and you sleep well and you hydrate well and you eat well and all that stuff. You get the benefits after. That's what people are thinking that they love about doing exercise, the actual act of exercising.

Mike Kelly: 22:18

By the way, the definition of the Webster's Dictionary it's laborious, that's work, it's work, fun, laborious. Do those two words relate? They're opposed, diametrically opposed. You have to understand that aspect of it. But unfortunately, most humans, because our decline physically is very insidiously slow, you're not 25 years of age feeling great and then wake up the next morning all of a sudden, go oh my God, I can't get over a chair. I'm not sick, I just I lost all my ability. I can't get over a chair. It doesn't work that way. It happens over many years and because it's so insidiously slow, people don't catch wind of it. And by the time they catch wind of it, in many cases they wait until the person in the white coat with the stethoscope says you know what? You've got type two diabetes or, worst case, I'm going to see you on the operating table in three months because we've got to do a double bypass.

Mike Kelly: 23:16

Okay, now some of this stuff is out of an individual's control. There's socioeconomic aspect and so on and so forth. There's mental illnesses. I get all of that. With a majority of people that's not the case. It's self-induced because they don't know any better. No one provided them the information. Oh wait, mike, there's a lot of information on the internet. No, there's too much information on the internet. Oh wait, oh wait. Try and focus in on what you're trying to do. But if you end up waiting until you're told, that makes it so much harder because your body is probably already declining to a point where the physician has told you oh my goodness, this is not good. You're going to see it in the operating table.

Mike Kelly: 23:58

I have two friends, no lie, they're both relatively fit-minded. They both went for double bypass. The same surgery another five years apart, but double bypass surgeries. This was five, six weeks ago, just for Christmas. You shake your head and there's.

Mike Kelly: 24:13

I don't know definitively why that happened, but there's certain things and it probably comes to lifestyle. On the cases with a little bit of genetics, both my parents were social alcoholics, as most adults were in the 50s, 60s, 70s. That's what you did. I'm completely absent. It'll be 37 years, coming up in April Zero. I had my reasons. I won't spend time talking about it.

Mike Kelly: 24:38

If you ask an individual it's funny, ironic If you ask an individual, would you consume any toxins or toxins good for the body? They'll say no, the toxins are terrible. I understand, I'm not an idiot. Guess what my friend? Alcohol is a toxin. The brain looks at it as a toxin. When it comes into the body. The brain changes most specifically how our endocrine system responds and produces hormones. Or doesn't you pay the price for that? And they go. I have no idea. Are they going to change? Probably not, because they haven't had some kind of a rock bottom moment that would mitigate that, cause them to want to change it all comes back to. If you understand these things, you'll start thinking about them differently and think for the long term. That in itself is a challenge for humans because we're always told good for us humans.

Mike Kelly: 25:28

Here, certainly in Canada, average life expectancy is 82 years, 79 for a man, 83 for a female. Have you gone into a long term care facility recently and see what an 82 year old looks like? It's not good. There's some rare exceptions, but trust me, there are not always. If you go into your local gym, die or anybody listening goes into the local gym, they'll look around and they'll see there's a lot of fit people. This is incredible. Mankind has a great opportunity down the road. No, it's a microcosm. If a club has 5,000 members and there's 10 clubs in the city, that's 50,000 people. Multiply them at the number of franchise businesses, you'd be lucky, like here in the city of Ottawa, you'd be lucky if you had 100,000 people that were as really super fit. It doesn't work that way.

Mike Kelly: 26:17

Your podcast is really important because you're getting the word out, but let's face it, people listening, watching, are probably already right minded. From a long term fitness health perspective, you're unfortunately not going to reach a lot of people, at least initially, that really need it because they might be too far gone. They fall off the beaten path so far that they just feel they can't get up. Let me tell people out there you're never too old for the body that has the resources provided to it to actually respond positively. My oldest client was 93 years of age.

Mike Kelly: 26:53

We saw a positive change from a dorsiflexion, which is basically being able to lift your toes off the ground so you can walk better. That's the tibialis anterior muscle in your shin to cause that to happen. It's called droch foot. When you do it, if you want to know what it is, go to any shopping mall and look at the older people walk around. They shuffle because they've lost the ability to lift their toes off, which makes it more unstable. But in three months we had her walking and following it, she could squat down and get up from the garden. That's incredible, right? Is she an anomal? No, it's just.

Mike Kelly: 27:23

You provide the right resources and the progressive man, you put a plan together and you'd be patient. If you can't be patient at 93, when can you be patient? That's a trick. But again, humans aren't inherently patient, impatient, and I hate to say this, but we are selfish. Every human on the planet is selfish. It's how we're wired. Now you can be altruistic in nature, which is a good thing, but even the late mother Teresa, who helped the down and out in Calcutta in India, she admitted that she was selfish. She did this, but she hasn't made a figure.

Mike Kelly: 27:57

That's why I'm in the fitness health business. I do it because I get a buzz when someone reaches some goal or attains some level or milestone that I might have helped them do, or I helped turn things around. I would say my average client, 50 years of age, is on three to five medications, from blood pressure meds to you name it, and within six months they're normally down to one, if not none at all, because they're starting to really get it. I guess my one selling diversity tool, as a trainer myself, is that we're relatively old compared to those trainers that are not. And yet how can you do this stuff you're doing? There's no magic. There's no steroids involved other than my natural steroids that I generate. So how do you do it? It's a plan and it's hard, and I'll let me tell you. Dave, my least favorite and favorite cardiovascular tool is called an ascent climber.

Dai Manuel: 28:51

There's spicy, spicy.

Mike Kelly: 28:54

I'm the most evil cardio tool on the. You're always against gravity, so there's not a single ton that I've ever done that that I've tried to subconsciously talk myself out of it. I'm like you're feeling good today, do you really? You don't really need to do this. Why don't you go use a row? It's a little bit easier. Use a spin bike or whatever. Go for a walk or a runner one. No, do this because you know it's benefits and you know there's not the negatives of impact and all that stuff as opposed to running. So you've got to have a plan. We failed the plan because it's mentally hard to do. Once you really start to grasp this and say what's the alternative, why don't do it? If I blow off that exercise session, what's going to happen in a short period of time? Probably not much. But what if I do it two or three times in a row? What's going to happen? It's going to be harder to get back on the level that you were at.

Dai Manuel: 29:47

Can I ask your question Please? I get this a lot from just people I connect with, obviously clients and just general conversation. I'm sure you get this all the time too, just based on the nature of the industries that we work. I get people ask me all the time it's like what can I do to be more motivated? And I know there's sort of this idea of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and we can complicate the conversation as much as we can, but when it gets down to it, how do you respond to that question? How can you motivate me to want to do something for myself, like that's what I often hear, right, and I'm curious what your thoughts are on that, based on all your studies and experience in this industry.

Mike Kelly: 30:27

Right, it is upstairs driven. There's no doubt about it. I have an hour and a half in the course that I've talked about motivation, but at the end of the day, I throw this at people as a real powerful driver. I'll ask you directly I know you're a family man, you love your family and I don't want you to give a specific name up, but who's the most important person in your life? I won't put you on the spot. Most people, when they answer their questions, they have loved ones. They will say what's my dog? It's my son, it's my wife or whatever the case may be, no, it's you that's right.

Dai Manuel: 31:04

It has to be you.

Mike Kelly: 31:06

And I'm not talking from a purely selfish perspective of being a narcissist.

Dai Manuel: 31:10

The concoct chief right. We're not talking about being a narcissist here.

Mike Kelly: 31:13

No, exactly You're talking about your life, right, but if you truly loved your loved ones and you want to be there for them in your best way possible, you have to look after yourself. I used to do a return investment analysis for companies from a fitness perspective, from a productivity gain. You baseline what the productivity levels are, their absenteeism and so on, etc. And then you put together some kind of a plan that's functionally a doable plan for the people within the company and you come back and revisit it three months later. You see what the differences are. Absenteeism is down, etc. That's your ROI, your return on investment. So if you invest in yourself, it will bode well from a long term perspective. So you'll be there for your loved ones. So, yes, the most important person in life is you. It's not selfish, okay, even though, as I said, we're inherently selfish. You're looking after yourself so you can be there to look after others. That's my drive. I want to be there. My daughter is an adult, growing up, married, moved away. I want to be there for her for whenever, whatever she needs. I want to be able to do that.

Mike Kelly: 32:17

I went over and they were away the other day and I went over and I shoveled their laneway. In fact, I shoveled four laneways because we're people that didn't have it. Why I can do it and, by the way, I also know how to do it properly. I'm not talking about just from bending down, but treat shoveling by the way for everybody in the snow belts. Treat it like you're doing a set of exercise. Do eight to 12 repetitions of your lift with the snow, then take a break. Don't look at the whole laneway and try to shovel the damn thing and you're winded each five seconds or something. That's crazy.

Mike Kelly: 32:52

To answer the question, though, on the bigger picture, it has to be easy for people to do it, so start slowly. The problem with that is people are impatient. So think of it this way If you're 55 years old and you're 55 years of age and you're listening to this, you're having challenges right now and you're feeling maybe desperate or just fed up with the whole thing, which will tend to cause you to want to eat emotionally and so on and spend things out of control. Think about it differently If the average life expectancy is 82 years of age in Canada, 79 down the states, and you're 55, my goodness, you've got decades to go. So, yes, it's going to take you six months to a year to see some effective change based on you educating yourself, putting a plan together and progressively, slowly, making the changes. But it will be sustainable change.

Mike Kelly: 33:50

I talk for a little stew an hour, maybe 45 minutes on the course, about diet, making people understand what it truly is and how to deal with it. And sadly, most people on the street haven't got a clue. They're taking these sound bites from social media that, oh, I'm going to do a paleo diet today or whatever the case may be. That's not what diet is supposed to be. So you have to understand. So I come back to my initial comment. You have to understand the problem, or the facets of a problem, to better deal with them, and if you don't, you're just making it harder on yourself.

Mike Kelly: 34:28

And there's no perfection. Listen, I don't have a six pack set of abs. I've got a five and three quarter pack. I can take a good punch through the gut. I teach martial arts still a little bit privately. I'm not going to get the wind knocked down on me easily.

Mike Kelly: 34:41

With that being said, if I wanted a true six pack, I'd have to drop down from the 18% body fat that I've been able to sustain. I'm in 190 pounds now for like 30 years. Can I gain weight? Yes, I can gain weight. There's no magic to that, and I don't want to talk about a type of thyroidism or whatnot, because at the end of the day, it truly is calories in calories.

Mike Kelly: 35:01

You look at socioeconomic things. You just have to plan differently and deal with the cards that you've been dealt. Some are worse hands than others. You may have to work harder and, that being said, if I wanted a true six pack, around 12% body fat, I'd have to be in the gym six days a week. I'm sorry, didn't no one listen? I hate doing exercise. This is not going to happen, let alone I'd have to change my diet radically. No life is too short. Everything in moderation. I had some fries the other day. Actually, I had them yesterday. I could die of a heart attack tomorrow, but it's not likely. Statistically, I might get hit by a truck. It could be more likely, hopefully not. But otherwise, those things aside, I should live a long life and I expect to be able to do my ballistic full body lift push-ups on my fists when I'm 90 years of age. Is it realistic? I don't know. Check me out. 90 years of age, hell yeah.

Dai Manuel: 36:00

I'll keep watching.

Mike Kelly: 36:01

You'll be around, I know you will. You've got the right mindset. You'll be around, you know what Like.

Dai Manuel: 36:06

I'm going to cut you off there, but there's also something I'd feel remiss if we didn't at least talk about it. And just because you're someone that's seen this landscape evolve in the health and wellness industries, but also, coincidentally, we've also seen our medical system I don't know if I would say advanced quite as much, but it's definitely. There's some challenges present. Okay, and so? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, like health span versus lifespan.

Mike Kelly: 36:35

First and foremost, we don't have a healthcare system. Yeah, what do?

Dai Manuel: 36:40

we have. What do we have? We have a sick care system.

Mike Kelly: 36:43

Oh, there it is. We have a sick care system. Really, yeah, you don't go to the hospital unless you're working there or you're a contra. You don't go there because you're feeling great, you feel great.

Mike Kelly: 36:55

Maybe you do preemptive work, to go to see your doctor for medical and hospital. You don't go to a hospital because you're feeling great. You go there because you're not feeling great. It's a sick care system. Many people fall into it unwillingly or unknowingly. That's the reality of things. From a sustainable perspective. No one's going to look after you. If you think the government's going to be there to look after you in your lot of years, it's not going to be great healthcare, trust me. Okay, the government can't look after itself, how do you expect them to look after you? The same falls true for pharmaceuticals.

Mike Kelly: 37:28

If you fall into that trap, it's a sad fact, reality that every pharmaceutical, by definition, is going to have side effects, some more major than others, but they don't. Unless you're talking to a vaccine or whatnot, you're not actually curing the situation. You put in a bandage on it. When you take an anti-inflammatory Oxone, cox-2, whatever you're not solving the problem that caused the problem. You're putting a bandage on it to deal with it, which also ended up ramifications, side effects and so on. Understanding that is amazing. When you don't understand that, you're head in the sand. Come back to your original question. You can see I can read something.

Dai Manuel: 38:07

No, but it's on the same topic. It's okay, we're on that same vein. I guess it's just this idea that we're seeing some shifts in some of the conversations online, also offline. I was fortunate enough to go to a talk not too long ago that was given by a functional medicine practitioner. They were really speaking to this idea of looking for root causes, but also this idea of making the focus more on health span, not as concerned about lifespan any longer. I was wondering if you had a comment on that, because I know your perspective on this, especially with the fitness industry, I believe, will be quite unique.

Mike Kelly: 38:41

Baselining is important. When I meet with clients individually, I use ultrasound to actually show what the inside of the deep adipose tissue looks like, which is the second area of our gut area on top of the superficial layer that has direct connectivity to health risk stratification, some cardiovascular disease and so on. I want to show them that and I give them a science to back up what 8 centimeters means, or 8 millimeters compared to 10 centimeters or 20 centimeters. They get a real shock, a precursor to them actually going to see a physician who says it's too late, you've already got type 2 diabetes. By seeing internally what's inside them, it gives them a bit of a wake-up call to want to look at things differently. Here's what I'd like people to think about. Take a look at, do a self-inventory of how you're currently doing. If it's working well for you, don't change it. But if things have gone astray for you and I'll give you a real simple example.

Mike Kelly: 39:38

Your people on the audio won't see this, but I'm just going to back up here for a bit of a panoramic and I'm going to squat fully down to the floor. All you can see now is my head and the camera, my feet completely flush on the floor. The heels are not lifted off. My calf muscles are touching my hands, feet and the back of my leg. It's easy to get up and I equally get up on the right side and left side. There's no compensation. That's something that we were all again excluding genetics or systemic or trauma issues. That's something we were all given to as a gift. It's a precursor you have before you fully stand up and walk. It's like a frog walk or a sumo squat. Your listeners out there, they should try and do that. If they can't do that, that's the start of a physical decline in functionality. It's very insidiously slow. It's not a big deal. If you can't do it, unless you're a sumo wrestler, then I suppose the reality is it doesn't affect people, but that's the sign of things starting to go. Where might it go from? It means you've got some dysfunction or lack of ability in your posterior chain likely. But you can magnify that with saying let's see, I sit in a chair and when I sit in my chair I'm perfectly fine. When I sit up in a sagittal plane, I straight up, no issue. Maybe in five years' time, when I get on the chair, I'm one day, if I think about it, I'm turning maybe to a right doll and pushing more of my right, right, right, right, right wrongness to push me up. That's a sign of the slow in cities decline. Then it starts getting worse if you don't address it. You're giving them easier hands and they'll push out the armrest together. Or you're going to get into your car by pulling the handle, pull yourself out of it, etc. And what's the worst case, you go from an upright let me think like this too. You're one. You're like this the forward position, upper cross syndrome and so on. It's very insidiously slow.

Mike Kelly: 41:31

So take a baseline as your current lifestyle Is everything that you want to do in life. Is your body restricting you from doing it? And be realistic. If you're 455 years old and you say you want to enter the next Olympics, that might be a bit of a challenge, unless you're going to throw darts or something and assuming that's the event. But take a look at what you want to do. Are you able to do it without really any restriction?

Mike Kelly: 41:55

I also teach another course here, kennethford Pro, called fashion, movement and assessment. Our fashion is a really cool physiological side of things, but it does also have connectivities to the psychological side. So they're all important, but I put my focus on the psychological side of things from fitness. But, if you can, basically what you currently are able to do and then compare it to what you want to do. I want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, okay, but I'm having difficulty walking around the block right now. Okay, that's your baseline.

Mike Kelly: 42:28

So start to identify where the weak links are, and I'll often get clients asking me this and I'm not talking high level what muscle should I work the most? My answer is always the same it's not the glutes, it's not the quads. The answer is it's the weakest one as it pertains to your functionality. Like, what do you want to do? If you're a house painter and you've got a lot of vertical movement with your arm and your shoulder like this, obviously you want to have concentration on the shoulder complex. You have to look after that, otherwise it's going to start to kick back on you. So that's your level of functionality you need to work on and maintain and learn about, to deal with. Otherwise it's going to catch you and become problematic. And because our bodies are so kinesthetically connected, my upper left shoulder can have issues down on my lower right side. You have to be aware of that. So take a look at what you're able to do now. Compare it to what you want to be able to do.

Mike Kelly: 43:30

I'm talking for life. If you want to maintain a six-pack throughout life, good luck. It's just probably been nobody out there, even the great Jack LaLayne who passed away I think it was 96, he didn't have a six-pack, a true six-pack. He was probably five and three-quarter like myself, but he was doing his push-ups a week prior to his demise. So his wife said that's something to aspire to. I want to live a long life with my family in that, a quality of life that actually makes me feel like getting up in the morning. And again, there's all kinds of ramifications and bad cards dealt to associate economic or whatnot that make it more challenging. But the alternative is there to look at and you, just as I say, look at any long-term care home and it's not a pretty picture for most people in those organizations. So pick the weakest ones and there's a lot to choose from.

Mike Kelly: 44:25

We've got over 600 muscles in our body and muscles will generally start to atrophy from a functionality perspective within about two weeks. Smaller the muscle groups like I've got osteoarthritis diet okay. In the morning I can't really close my hands effectively. You know, give me 50 minutes of doing movement and so on and I'm good to go. Okay, these hands are strong. You wouldn't be able to bend my wrist without using two hands. You'd have to be forceful. It takes a while to get to that level, but it's possible to do, and the reason I do that is because there's no cure for osteoarthritis that they know of. The information is there and it can be painful, but if the 27 muscles on my hand are functionally strong, they will overcome the negatives that the inflammation is trying to put forth of not allowing me to close my hand. I can close my hand Again, understanding the problems, and we spend far too much time looking at things that aren't actually helping us understand how to be functionally healthy, fit, sustainable humans.

Dai Manuel: 45:27

So I gotta commend you because I think a lot of what you're also saying is really getting a very clear picture of the kind of life we want to be leading in our future and getting vividly specific about what kind of quality of life, what kind of relationships do I want, what kind of activities do I want to be doing.

Dai Manuel: 45:46

Like, because you're absolutely right, like I even think of my own father and after he retired he was just he had like one health issue after the next, but he had all these aspirations for travel and he had a laundry list of things that he was excited to do when he retired. But I know it was very challenging for him to do many of those things, if any of them, due to the health issues that were arising. But those were sort of brought on based on lifestyle choices, and I guess the clearer the picture, the more defined that. Why is that internal driver or reason for doing it? And I guess, is it possible and this is sort of my lead up to the question, is it possible to fall in love with exercise? Is it possible to love the activity itself?

Mike Kelly: 46:30

As I say, let's say it's perfectly clear, it's not?

Dai Manuel: 46:32

like Richard.

Mike Kelly: 46:32

Nixon, I love exercise. I get it. I can talk ad nauseum about how our mitochondria works and breaks down to the full, grabs, pros, all the cycles and so on. I love exercise. I hate doing exercise. That's the difference.

Dai Manuel: 46:49

Can we fall in love with doing the exercise I?

Mike Kelly: 46:51

doubt it. I doubt it. If you understand how the brain does not want to release calories, I actually show you the science of why the brain heats, releasing calories. And when you see that you go oh my goodness, I had no idea. What was all this stuff that everybody's told me decades and all the clubs tell me I should love doing exercise. The science says no. Does that mean you're not going to do it? No, it just means you understand that. That's why you blow an exercise session off when it's minus 20 outside and you say how do you call to go to the gym today? That's why you blow it off, because your brain doesn't want to do it. I'm talking very high level.

Mike Kelly: 47:30

Now, to give you that context, have you ever tried to change someone's belief or opinion in something? Die in a short period of time? If you have, your results are probably not what you wanted to. They have a political part of the vote for and you vote for another one and you want to argue, forget it. That's why social media is such a time sucking waste and void. When you're arguing, you haven't got the platform to give the context to let people reason things out. But if you give the context for individuals to think about and let it start resonating, and so on. They can then say, oh, I hadn't thought about it that way. That's a different way to think about it. And you say there was a study with 40,000 people done and these are the results, and they're diametrically opposed to what I'm thinking. Maybe I should start looking at that.

Mike Kelly: 48:22

And you give that enough time and it starts to percolate and then people start to say, oh, my goodness, we really do hate exercising. I know I need to, which is why I'm going to, but now that I understand that I hate doing it because my brain doesn't want to give up calories, I'm going to try to put a plan together and use tools a lot of the tools I give you in the course to allow you to deal with this stuff and to cope with it from a stress perspective and so on. Being a human is really challenging. It's amazing that we're so complex. It's amazing we can walk and talk at the same time. There's a psych concept called illusion of explanatory depth, and all it simply means is that we don't know anything. I can talk for hours on it, but in the grand scheme of all the knowledge that humans have put forth about physiology and psychology and pharmacology. I've only touched the surface, so I don't know anything at all.

Dai Manuel: 49:18

That's a good thing.

Mike Kelly: 49:19

That's a good thing because it keeps you open-minded. I'm not saying, go back to school to get my psych degree, but I am saying perhaps take a one-day course plus a pre-recorded module to learn a little more. That might set you on a different path. From a long-term sustainability perspective. It's not about no pain, no gain. If you fall into that trap, I'm sorry. You're going to be really disappointed from the long-term perspective. That doesn't work for the average individual, not from a long-term perspective. It should be no strain, no gain. That's what I'd love to change the phrase to.

Mike Kelly: 49:57

The good news is people that are 55, 65, 75, you still got. A year is a long time. A year is 365 days. It's a long time. If you think of it that way. Put a plan together as to what you want to be able to do from a long-term perspective. It's relatively easy for, say, 50 plus people to be able to do it. They want to be able to do their weekend warrior stuff. They want to be able to ride their bicycle. They want to walk with the kids, walk with the dogs. They want to be able to enjoy foods. They want to do, they want to travel. Those are all very doable things. The majority of people that are physically being challenged because the decline has happened. All of a sudden they woke up one morning and, oh my God, the decline is there.

Dai Manuel: 50:37

Can I say one quick story I have? Please, I'd love that, I'd love to segue into just tell us a bit about the course and how people can get involved with that. Also, you've got a little bit of a sentence for the audience.

Mike Kelly: 50:48

First of all, I want to get people on the course. I have to pay the bills, but I want people to get it. If they reference Die-Manuel or the 2% solution when they email me directly or have everyone to set it up, I'll give them a nice incentive discount to do that. You'll also see CECs with it. If you're a fitness health professional, you need those CECs Wonderful. That being said, the course covers the challenges we deal with and which you understand them. I'll give you tools or workshops to help you work with them, to understand why you want to do them and how you can deal with them better.

Mike Kelly: 51:27

I love this there's a lot about sleep. There's all kinds of podcasts to tell you about sleep, but I gave you some reality segments of how to cope with these things and people who are challenged with sleep. If you're not sleeping well, I don't care how active you are in the gym, how perfectionist and diet or cook you are, life is not going to be good if you're not sleeping well. Let's keep it simple. I'm going to give you listeners the simplest things that they can do. Number one baseline where you're currently at and what you want to be. You need to know how to plan right, otherwise don't know where you're going. Secondly, keep it simple because I know if I give you something really challenging to do, you're not going to do it, not consistently. So what's the simplest thing you can do that most people do not do well consistently? It's drink more water. Excuse for any dehydration.

Mike Kelly: 52:16

In North America, at least, for the most part, we unfortunately don't have a precursor to the thirst reflex that we have when you feel thirsty. You have already started down the dehydration aspect. They say 1-2%. Very subtle things happen when you're 1-2% dehydrated. They can be enough to actually start just sliding down the slippery slope, though Work on your aspects of how to deal with water. I'll give you some tips on how to do that. The second thing to work at is take a baseline of how you're sleeping. I actually provide a fairly in-depth survey to go through in the course that you do offline in the course. But majority people don't sleep well, which is really sad. Because there are things you can do and I'm not talking supplementally from a pharmaceutical aspect, I'm talking it's all of the brain chemistry, a lot of it, excluding pain, trauma or what not systemic issues that might physically keep you awake. But if it's not those things, there's things you can do to get more facilitated to sleep in bed and if you sleep better you will function.

Dai Manuel: 53:25

And so long, so true. And so you had a story. I'll let you finish with the story.

Mike Kelly: 53:30

Oh sure yeah, and so the book yeah it would be great yeah. When I cover a lot of areas in fitness, I'm into a lot of things, a lot of different topics 40 plus years, mike, we can imagine why.

Mike Kelly: 53:43

It's easy to get sidetracked. But, coming back to the point, I have one individual that never leaves my mind and we think about what makes you feel good about training people. I said earlier about making them reach a goal. This was an individual. He didn't tell you about this goal up front, but one day we'll call this individual, tony, who identifies himself as a male at birth. And Tony was morbidly obese. And one day we're four or five months into the training, weight was down, muscle strength was improving.

Mike Kelly: 54:14

And one day I'm watching him get ready to leave. He's putting on his boots and he bent down and he brought his leg over and probably seem to be in the video but brought his leg over his other knee, reached down, started tying the bootlaces on. He started crying and I was taken aback. I wasn't ready for that. Tony, is everything okay? Did you just get a text message or something that set you up, mike? This is the first time in like 25 years I've been able to reach over and tie my boot up. So I started tearing up. That wasn't a goal he told me about and it was one of these things that we take for granted as humans, from a functionality we used to have that we almost suddenly lose because we didn't know any better and we let it insidiously slip. Life's a slippery slope from a health perspective.

Dai Manuel: 55:12

It really is. I love that story. I love it. I mean just, I can only imagine, how happy that must have made you, but also for him I mean, it's life changing.

Mike Kelly: 55:21

Yeah, and just imagine how many people are at that precursor stage to that where they're finding it difficult to sit down, let alone get out of the chair. They have to position themselves so they don't fall down and they're already starting to feel challenged from that. That stuff is correctable, but it doesn't happen overnight and that's again the problem with exercising. We don't get these mystical epiphanies and all of a sudden I feel like an Olympian the next morning Doesn't work that way. What can you do with your abilities? So the 93 year old I talked about earlier I had her name is Dorothea. I had her doing pushups. What? How do you get a 93 year old who's never done pushups doing pushups? I stood behind to make sure she didn't fall over and she did vertical pushups on the wall. Perfect, it's identical, anatomically moving, horizontal shoulder reduction. Same muscles are moving, it's just the load is different.

Mike Kelly: 56:20

We're all able to do these things. Again, excluding genetic systemics and so on or trauma. We're able to do these things. We just have to be educated as to what we're able to do and then work from there and then progressively make the changes and work in consistency. And if you don't, you have to understand talking from a subconscious perspective. That's why you could leave this podcast and say, yeah, I'm like to all my listeners that I kind of get what you're saying, that I might actually hate doing exercise, but it's not enough. It's not enough context for you to take that forth and all of a sudden change your subconscious thoughts to actually truly believe that. And if you don't truly believe that, again your baseline isn't going to be in the right place as to where to go from there and also understand you and I and many people listening have many years to go statistically to make the change and to get on that fitness wagon we want to get on. That's going to take us forth to the end of the ride.

Dai Manuel: 57:15

I actually on that note.

Mike Kelly: 57:16

I'm falling asleep, having just done my push ups.

Dai Manuel: 57:19

I mean, yeah, but you've also like you have a lifestyle now that this is just how you live. But it also serves you very well because it allows you to be a better version of yourself. And I have a similar connection to why I do and I prioritize my health, because I also like how I feel from a confidence standpoint. But I also appreciate the clarity that I have of Claudia thought of mind and that productivity that I gained by prioritizing my health. And I know it's not something I came to naturally, so I came to a little bit later in life. But to your point, you're right.

Dai Manuel: 57:50

At any given time there's an opportunity to start to improve things. And I think where everything starts from is education right, because through education we get clarity. Through clarity we get confidence that we're at least going the right direction, know what actions to take, and it just creates the ability for us to do the right things. Now, being able to justify this is the right thing. I'm doing it for the right reasons and, look at this, the right results are happening right and that's that sort of perfect space we want to be in and I think your course is a wonderful way to get people on that path as we close out today. Can you just speak a little bit about that course? What's it called? How do people get involved with it? I'm going to make sure I include all this in the show notes, so don't worry, I'm going to list them. You can't go on those show notes. You'll see everything there for you. But, mike, if you want to just finish that before I give you the last word, so it's titled why People Hate Exercise and it's like college.

Mike Kelly: 58:40

Everyone needs to know it's easy to deal with the mechanics. Really doesn't take that long to learn how to do things on a simplistic perspective. But learning the upstairs part is how it's dealing or working against you. It's important to know that so you can counter it and deal with those challenges. The next session is February 17th. That's module two, the live portion. I would like to get your useless incentive. They contact me or through you or whatnot. We'll get them into an incentive discount to do I won't even charge them any tax on this particular session coming up. Save them that aspect. We'll give them the CACs Instruction in a way that with each hurdle I physically present a hurdle on the screen and then I title what the hurdle is called, which may be genetics. So let's say you've got a genetics challenge. Whatever the case might be, I speak to what it actually means and how it can affect you and how our lifestyles can be altering that, meaning the genes may not get expressed. That's the psychological terminology. If you understand the issues, the hurdles as we go through the course and you have the tools and the opportunity to practice them and so on in the course.

Mike Kelly: 59:47

There's a lot of interaction. I've got a lot of information. I want to pass it on to people. I'm happy to answer questions that may even be somewhat outside of it. Some people ask me about fashion because they know I teach fashion courses. There's a psych aspect to that connectivity. Yeah, that's basically it. I don't run them that often because I'm doing other things, but I try to run them once every couple of months. Next one's February 17th and, depending where you are, you'll get the UCCs which people use anyways to their accreditations.

Mike Kelly: 1:00:15

I was speaking with you earlier that I feel challenged. They're all five star reviews on Google. How do you get that? That's just how people feel about the course. It is what it is Love to see your speech, literally see and speak with the podcast listeners and give them some insight. I'm always open for insight from other individuals, especially the older people who are actually presenting well. I don't mean presenting speeches, I mean they're functioning well. How often do you see a six foot five individual walking, tally that's 75, 80 years old. You don't see that many. I talk to those people, I go up and I say I'm real listening. I'm on the fitness business. I'm really impressed that I'm guessing you're not in your 70s or 80s.

Mike Kelly: 1:01:00

Richard Trick, I understand your things, but you never know when someone's going to share some wisdom with you. I love that. So be open to new information. That's hard to be inhuman. It's hard to get new information because it's mentally challenging. When we have to think about things, that's the brain using energy which it doesn't want to give up. That's why it's so hard sometimes to learn new things. Trust me, when I was a queen, surrounded by the 20 year olds, it felt challenging. When I was there, for different reasons, and I love I could find the time I would go back and learn as much more as I could about psychology. All the aspects behavioral aspects are incredibly interesting, but it's what drives us.

Dai Manuel: 1:01:44

Yes.

Mike Kelly: 1:01:45

It's what drives us.

Dai Manuel: 1:01:46

You're so right. I'm excited for your program and your courses. And, mike, this has just been. I know we barely scratched the surface, so I'm going to be feeling unsure. Plenty of questions and for the audience. Eric, do you enjoy today's conversation? No, connect with Mike online. I've got his links in the show notes. Reach out, learn more about this program. I know I'm excited to check it out. And also, mike, if you're open to it, I'm just going to get you on the record right now. Would you be interested in coming back in a couple months, sure.

Mike Kelly: 1:02:16

So we'll see where everybody's at for those things Exactly.

Dai Manuel: 1:02:21

That's what I'm thinking too, and listen, I always like to give my guess the last opportunity to have the closing words. Is there anything that you would love to share with them before we go today?

Mike Kelly: 1:02:35

Understand that if you don't change, it won't occur the way you want it to. Healthy change is really challenging. Unhealthy change is extremely easy to do. Escape mechanisms they're typically all unhealthy, they're really easy to fall into and they're really hard to get out of. I actually talk about habits. I'll show you what a habit actually looks like in the brain. Oh it's really cool.

Dai Manuel: 1:03:06

Oh, I love that.

Mike Kelly: 1:03:07

When you understand that, you kind of get a better picture. Understand you. But that being said, healthy change is challenging. So you can easily sit down right now and probably yourself self-assess, find behaviors that you're doing currently in your life that you probably, just from general knowledge, think, ah, that probably not the best for me long term and they're affecting me now, but I think long term they might. Don't try and fix all five of them. You're going to lose. It's too mentally challenging.

Mike Kelly: 1:03:41

Pick one, so what's the simplest one you can do? Most people listening probably are not consistent with water. Yeah, now are you going to be successful? Just from me listening and mentioning this to you? You need to plan it OK. So when you understand the reasons for wanting to do it, you're probably more motivated to do it and you're not going to break a sweat. Your brain is not going to give a lot of calories. You're not going to do this. So keep it simple. Keep things simple. We're not all going to be. I'm not saying don't go to the gym six days a week, don't get a six pack. Maybe it's what you do for a profession. You have to be. I did fat and body fat assessments for an NHL team here in Ottawa quite a number of years ago with ultrasound, and if you want to make the training camp you've got to come in at 12%.

Mike Kelly: 1:04:31

Oh really that's your entry point, maybe, unless you're a gold tender. But that being said, you've got to come in like that. Is that sustainable? Not when you're 75 years of age. Sure, I've developed different coping mechanisms to keep you in good stead, to keep you functional for what you want to do.

Mike Kelly: 1:04:52

Find out what you want to do in life. That should be your starting point. What do you want to do in life? You want to travel. You don't have to be as fit functionally as you would be if you want to be able to bicycle every second day. That requires more physical demand that it would be to travel typically. So find out what you want to do throughout your life for as long as you can, and then try and put a plan in place. It's going to do that over a slow period of time. If it's too rapid a change, your brain is going to kick back at you. I explain why in the course, which gives you some insight as to why you may not want to take on these last minute high-intensity interval training programs that someone told you to just do now, without any preparation or any prior ability to do. You're going to hurt yourself and your brain is going to kick back at you in ways that you can't imagine, first of all, consciously so. Pick a plan, keep it simple, think long term.

Dai Manuel: 1:05:50

Make worse than advice. Oh Mike, it tremendously helps, I think, if anything. People are probably like oh man, I think I've heard you say that before.

Mike Kelly: 1:05:59

The best spot to be in by when you're taking this kind of information. The best spot to be in, ideally, is to already be functionally fit and healthy. Right, sure, because you don't have this high ramp decline to get to that point. But sadly there's no fairness in life. Those that have climbed that ramp already and are at this fairly stable level, they get to stay there easier than those trying to climb it. That's right. So that's another reason why you want to get to some level. That's good for you.

Dai Manuel: 1:06:25

Stay ahead of it. That's amazing what happens when you lose your health, but it's also being unhealthy and being sick.

Mike Kelly: 1:06:32

It's only a few degrees difference, the psychological aspects of the immune system it's incredible the connectivity aspects, so I speak about that also.

Dai Manuel: 1:06:43

I wish I had a team. Can I ask you then? Can I ask you back, mike? I'm like we're barely scratching the surface, but at least I know those that are interested. The information about the program is going to be in the show notes. Mike, I'm excited to have you back, but I'm also excited to learn more about the program and be a participant, and so I'm really excited about this. I feel so honored to have had you here today. It's not every day I get to speak to somebody that's got as much history in our industry. There's only a few of us that I know like. I was connected with Pete Twist the other day, and he's been around for quite a long time as well in this industry. We've got a few years on him.

Dai Manuel: 1:07:16

Yeah, you do. You've got a few years on him and I just think there's not a lot of us that have been doing 30 plus. I'm just at 30 years now myself, and it's interesting, right, because there is quite the attrition rate in our industry these days, which is unfortunate, but I hope, with the kind of continuing education that you provided, reignites a lot of the passion in those young trainers because you're giving them the tools and resources to really significantly impact change in their clients. And so thank you for prioritizing from the neck up. It's an important thing to be doing and our industry needs this next evolution. I appreciate you leading the charge, man.

Mike Kelly: 1:07:52

Cool Pleasure, nice talking to you. Look forward to joining with you again.

Dai Manuel: 1:07:59

Nick, nick. What an emigrating conversation with Mike Kelly today. Thank you, listeners, for joining us on this mentally stimulating episode of the 2% Solution podcast. We've just unlocked the secrets to not just moving your body but also energizing that all important muscle between your ears and what I'm talking about, you're my heart.

Dai Manuel: 1:08:25

Today's key takeaway Exercise isn't just a physical journey, it's a mental marathon. Remember Mike's insights on the psychology behind exercise and how understanding this can revolutionize your fitness approach. Eager to dive deeper, don't forget Mike's exclusive offer, that early bird discount plus an extra 20% offer. Anybody that references the 2% solution Can reach him directly via M Kelly at wemeanfitnesscom. I've included this all in the show notes for you, as well as links to his course. I know I'm excited to be in his next cohort doing it myself, and hopefully you'll be there to join me. So, as we head off today, it's your action step today, not tomorrow, not next week, but like today, immediately after listening to this episode, start flexing your mental fitness, whether it's a short meditation, a brisk walk or just mindful breathing. Remember it's all those small steps for massive gains. Share the mental health love. Let someone know about today's episode, whether we grow stronger, smarter and more resilient. Keep pushing for that 2% improvement daily. Join us next time for more Transparency.