Ep 027 – Dedication and Discipline in Fitness, Parenting, and Careers

Suburban Folk 0:00
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Suburban Folk 1:08
Thank you.

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Unknown Speaker 1:14
pain, emotional

Suburban Folk 1:17
health, travel, finance, parenting and home improvement. This is the Suburban Folk podcast $250 a month into my child’s 529. From the month that they start kindergarten, I should

Unknown Speaker 1:28
be able to pay for 80% of my child’s college

Suburban Folk 1:31
fees. I don’t trust that most people will eat their vegetables. So our kind of standard

Unknown Speaker 1:36
is three servings of vegetables per meal. Do you take something like a two by six and you cut it with a circular saw? That’s like a superpower. Those middle school years are not as fun but at that age, you’re still willing to talk to you.

Suburban Folk 1:49
Welcome to the Suburban Folk podcast. I’m your host Greg. Today’s episode is going to be a crossover of topics that we talk about regularly health and fitness and parenting. My guest today is Mike sock you have the fun fit father podcast. Mike, how are you doing? I’m doing well.

Unknown Speaker 2:07
Thanks, Greg for having me on. Oh,

Suburban Folk 2:09
absolutely. This is an interesting topic to me because as we were trading information, there are definitely overlaps. I think in the way someone views parenting as well as being regimented with fitness and nutrition. So I think there is definitely an overlap of those worlds. So when you were explaining to me what you focus on in your show, it made a lot of sense how those things get married together. So can you start us off by giving us the story of how you became a father and you have a son? He’s 17. Is that right?

Unknown Speaker 2:46
Yes. 17 You bet. Okay, so

Suburban Folk 2:48
yeah, hit me with how that came to be. Well, a man and a woman get no I’m just kidding.

Unknown Speaker 2:55
So I had met my now ex wife Nearly 20 years 19 years ago, spent some time together as friends and then basically we had one of those moments and then Blake was kind of conceived from there so quickly we we were both very young rush towards marriage with this idea of you know from my end of it you know to provide for you know a family it was the right thing to do now you you you’re going to take responsibility, you’re going to be a man you’re going to get married, you can do all these grown up things that you haven’t done yet and and that’s kind of going to be the your your life. And I went into it like that, you know, I went into into, you know, raising my son, the best I could by working a lot of hours providing, of course, an income, house, holidays, all the fun things that everybody wants and enjoys and kind of put my own self interest on the back burner. I don’t even know if I know what those were anymore. So, you know, long story short for that aspect of the question. You know, I spent 13 years married to somebody that I shouldn’t have been, and really spent a lot of time inside this thought process that, you know, I was just there to kind of provide income and, you know, therefore food and housing and things like that, and that anything that I wanted to do for myself was kind of a backburner idea and, you know, long behold, we can only take so much and just over, you know, a couple last years of a shaky marriage, it came to an end. And, you know, I made that decision then to kind of look in a different direction towards my life. So and obviously, we can get involved really involved in in going through fatherhood for me, and what it What it’s like, but I spent a majority of my child’s life at work, not available not there when when he needed me the most than I spent a chunk of time through the divorce process, even further away from my son, and just in the last two years, now, he lives with me on a full time basis. So it’s come full circle. And I attribute most of that new relationship to my health and fitness. And that’s kind of the short and short of that, that part of your question.

Suburban Folk 5:37
I’m sure it’s hard to say, but did it make it harder or easier to have a child in the picture during your marriage? That that did it cause to some of the issues or did it alleviate some of the issues that were brewing? Um,

Unknown Speaker 5:56
I think it complicated things from From the point of view, when you, when you when you’re raising child, there’s, for, again, back to an old thought process was that, you know, divorce parents equal, you know, a rocky parenting or it’s going to affect the child in the long run and it’s going to be detrimental. But I quickly realized that having a child in a toxic relationship where there’s constant fighting and bickering and you’re not showing that love, that’s actually worse off. So it was a really difficult balance of what I knew or thought was right. And then the deep down, you know, this probably isn’t the best way to go about it. And then I just ultimately made that decision that something has to give something has to be better than this. And I’m willing to take that risk and I’m not sure Why I took that risk because I wasn’t somebody who was ever you know, I was that plain, boring guy that just wanted his simple you know, go to work, come home watch TV, go to bed do the same thing over and over again type of lifestyle and, you know, probably just got used to it.

Suburban Folk 7:15
During this time you were working in construction correct. So when you say that you didn’t have a lot of time that was your day job or is it still your day job?

Unknown Speaker 7:24
Yeah. So to kind of narrow that down. So I was in the industrial scaffolding industry for 20 years, all the way from honing in that that craft or that trade, and then working my way up into the management team. So throughout the marriage, it was I was the building process of my career. It wasn’t necessarily a career that I dove into for interest. I was a bit of a wild child as a as a teenager and young adult and I really enjoyed partying and you know, lack of responsibility in those things. So I kind of gotten into that job as an opportunity to make money and in a kind of an opportunity to kind of wiggle my way out of this immature way of living and into you know, manhood or whatever it My dad was in construction or in that type of field and was very successful at what he did. And I just kind of got into it made really good money and I just never kind of looked back I chased the dollar chase trying to make as much money as I could. Because that’s what I thought was the right thing to do, even though I was never educated on money and really had no idea of what to do with money when I had it. And it really was only up until last year, no, I don’t I don’t do it anymore. What what ended up happening is I had one of those revelations where I was at a point in my life where I couldn’t stand the you know, the work ecosystem that people you know, in my, in my field, you know, other managers that were fighting with each other for position everybody was, you know, talking behind everybody’s back everything all the principles and and things that we stood for were were nothing more than, you know, crap on a piece of paper that didn’t mean anything when it came down to it and it was just at the point where I said what how much better can this get for me I’ve already made it to the top of my my field I’m in the management sector me getting any higher isn’t gonna yield any more money it’s not going to it’s actually going to start to decrease, you know, funds and then I thought to myself, like, you know, I spent all these years making hundreds of thousands of dollars and I have no money in the bank. I have zero I’m like, bro, I’m like, so 20 more years of this and I’m miserable doing it. Like what do I expect to get out of this? So it was then I was just recently Actually where I just said, you know what I’m I have to pursue something I enjoy. And that’s kind of where I got into the personal training because I did spend a lot of time while in the construction industry is kind of like the, the go to trainer or the go to guy when when coworkers had nutrition questions or exercise or whatever because I really, after my divorce and being overweight, I really dove like headfirst into it, I wanted to get in the best shape of my life. I wanted to be more active, more functional, I wanted to date again. And I kind of got a little obsessive with it. So I made it my own. And then yeah, just recently pulled the pin on construction and have really revamped my entire life and I’m kind of starting over again,

Suburban Folk 10:52
about what you were saying with the money and hitting a certain level and then realizing that You know, it’s not really the thing that’s going to keep you motivated and almost the terror of what your next 20 years might look like, if you’re doing something that you don’t want to be doing. I read something not that long ago. That said, I want to say it’s mid 40s, early 50s that suggested it can very potentially be the most unhappy point of a person’s life for either one of two reasons. Either you didn’t hit whatever you thought the pinnacle was of your career, or you did and it wasn’t what you thought it was gonna be. So you’re either disappointed that you didn’t get there are you get there and you’re disappointed that it’s not what you thought it was going to feel like so that definitely sounds like it rings true a bit with what your experience was. So you mentioned being overweight and then using fitness maybe to recenter where you want it to be. Talk about what your history has been with fitness Have you always been into sports or any kind of workout regimen? Or is that something new for you?

Unknown Speaker 12:06
Yeah, no, I mean I played recreational sports as a kid. And then of course, as I got into my, my later teen years, I’ve kind of pulled away from that, you know, I was more interested in partying and drinking and doing things like that. So that kind of led me into a bit of a Downward Spiral Spiral early in my 20s and then I met my ex wife and tried to scoop myself out of that way of living. So I you know, I was normal Wait, nothing, nothing special when I got married and then I kind of you know, you know, as I became a father and dove into the work life and trying to climb that corporate ladder that you know, that I did get to the, the pinnacle of and it wasn’t what I thought it would be so and just really just started to pack on the weight and you know, I Got up to and i’m not i’m not tall I’m only five foot six and I got up to about 240 pounds. Those are pretty hefty boy I had, you know, you know sick all the time I had acid reflux and gut problems and and you name it ailments from what you know my my joints were sore all the time. I was lethargic throughout the days there would be days I get to my desk in the morning and you know three coffees later I’m still passed out you know over the keyboard type thing so getting into fitness kind of it kind of sparked Well, it did spark from from my divorce. So, you know, overweight you know, at my wit’s end fighting all the time, unhealthy. And it really I moved in with my sister was living I was spending some time with her kind of in transition. And, you know, I thought to myself, boy, if I’m ever going to date again and I had really so really low self confidence and self esteem like I thought I was just a disgusting pig I really did as harsh as that may sound. And I thought to myself, you know, if I’m going to get back out there, I’m going to start dating again and start like having a bit of a social life. I better get in shape because nobody’s gonna want to interact with some the way that I had looked or the way that I perceived myself. So that’s where it all started. I was doing workout videos in the basement of my sister’s house and she would join me and we would kind of make it a group thing. And then it just I started to lose weight I you know, I lost my first 30 pounds and six months, I want to say 30 somewhere in there where I’d really got down to the boat, the 200 mark just made me break in the 200 mark. And it’s really saw some some really good results. You know, things like my lead proceedings weren’t as stressful for, for a reason they were, they were what they were or my, you know, my dating life was, you know, it was nerve racking and stressful because I hadn’t done it in 15 years. But it was so much fun in the same sense and I had this kind of different view on life and I had more energy I wasn’t falling asleep but you know, my rest was good. And I was like, geez, you know, I’m feeling better and I’m you know, I had forced myself at the time to kind of eat you know, that what we call that famous bodybuilder type diet where it’s just chicken and broccoli and rice and that’s all you eat for free year upon you here and did that for a while and you really got some benefit from not eating not picking up potato chips and getting into that process, food and whatnot. So and then it just I just got obsessed with it. How do I get more muscle definition? How do I do this? How do I how do I how do I and I googled the crap out of it. many articles and contradictions and diet plans anything you can think of I went through and tried until I got to a point where like, I love this so much I need to show other people and then that’s kind of where the inception of personal training and nutritional coaching got in. In so the divorce is really the that’s the igniter for where I’m at right now. Best thing ever happened to me

Suburban Folk 16:24
two questions around eating and when you were overweight, was it a symptom of not having enough time to choose healthy things? Or was it more of eating as a stress relief?

Unknown Speaker 16:42
Yeah, I definitely eating as a stress relief. He you know, eating those foods felt good.

Unknown Speaker 16:48
You know, it was there was routine. I had a, you know, probably five to six cans of Pepsi every day. I would have my first one at our first break at work. I’d have another one for lunch. Another one for last break, one on the right home, one at dinner and then one before I went to bed that was a routine of pop in and amongst that was, you know, where are we eating out? Is it you know fast food are we getting the corner store stuff? Maybe it’s a pizza. And then what backed up that was always my ice cream. Got to have ice cream. And it was just perpetual because it was I was trying to bury this marriage that I knew was was destined for, for Doom, a lousy financial situation. And in you know, and I knew deep down every time I went to work, you know, on a Saturday or a Sunday or stayed late I was like, this is this is not the right thing to do. Like there was that voice that just kind of kept it but I just I buried it and bear And, yeah, it just it just becomes perpetual after a while and it was just very stress driven eating for

Suburban Folk 18:07
sure. And then when you did start to get on the fitness regimen, did you change your eating habits right at the same time? Did that come a little bit later? And would you attribute the workouts more or the diet more for the initial weight loss? Or is it 5050?

Unknown Speaker 18:26
Yeah, definitely a combination of both. Now, the way I kind of started is actually not the way that I would instruct any of my clients to start maybe I got lucky or just have a different sense of what I was trying to accomplish at that point in time because they’re, I think, you know, motivations huge when people decide to change their their health and fitness but motivation can’t drive you to be successful in health and fitness because there are days where you’re not moving motivated and you still need to eat correctly and exercise for me, you know, they both were a big part of it and nutrition I went, I went full bore into when it came down to like, you know, counting calories playing around with understanding macronutrients like proteins, carbohydrates, fats, how they work what they do. And you know a little bit not the average person wants to really dive that deep in it. They just want to know what they can eat healthy and kind of have a little bit of play with with alternative foods. And I think having balance and not being hard on ourselves for the food, the foods we eat is the best, most optimal way to do it. I was very regimented, and did that because it was more important to me to look a certain way then to eat a certain food or feel good while eating that particular foods already. Really flipped a switch. And it was the same free exercise the exercise was very, you know, six days a week, you know, an hour and a half I was working on certain things I was you know, making notes and changing certain exercises and very goal driven in the beginning and of course, I’ve I’ve kind of turned gears a little bit for the for the long haul, but in the short term that’s you know, it was a 5050

Suburban Folk 20:26
I’m actually right there with you about being regimented with my diet well before I got married, I’m a terrible cook so it was grilled chicken on I don’t know if the George Foreman grill is still a thing, but that’s what I used. Maybe I would have fish instead to switch it up you know, brown rice and steamed vegetables pretty much for every single meal because like you said, I am definitely fall into the category of just give me the thing that I know will work. keep me away from whatever those pitfalls might happen to be and I’m okay without a big variety of foods. But who knows how long that’s going to work in the long term. And I think I’ve discovered that I’m in the minority with that perspective on food. So I’m sure with your clients, you have to keep that in the count. And like you said, do a lot of the research so that it is still relatively plug and play, but they’re not getting burnout on just one diet set of rules, right?

Unknown Speaker 21:31
Yeah, I think, you know, the big The biggest thing that or takeaway I get from this is that we all when we’re when we’re either gaining weight or losing weight or changing habits, we all have that voice in our head that convinces us to do one thing or another. And what I mean by that is, you know, being regimented is fine, you’ll hit particular goals or you’re just really strong willed. I think at some point though, you you may say reach a certain goal or get to a certain point where you get comfortable and then you’re like, you know what I’m gonna eat and really good for the last six months. And I’m look look like I look in the mirror, I look really good. I’m gonna have a, I’m gonna treat myself and I’m gonna have a pizza. And then you’re you, you do that. And then next thing you’re like, you know what, I’m gonna follow it up with a six pack of beer and a, and a, an ice cream and all the whole time you’re talking to yourself, you’re, you’re telling yourself, this is I’m just going to do this for a couple days. I’ve been really good for six months. And sometimes we actually fall out of our basic good nutritional heating patterns that we have and we fall back into or create new habits around pizza and ice cream. And, you know, oh, I’m two pounds heavier on the scale, but I still look good. So we’re okay, we’re still okay. We play with this threshold that we never actually reach. We just keep playing and convincing. ourselves to get to these certain goals and I think if we approach nutrition, where we have balance where we allow ourselves to go to a friend’s and have pizza, and not worry about is that one pizza going to affect the way I look in the mirror or the the effect on the scale or things like that, you know, on a scientific level, we can go through what that breakdown would look like, but at the end of the day, that’s not going to make a big, big effect. You know, it’s it’s not gonna hurt you what’s gonna hurt you is, you know, bingeing or creating these mental blocks or go or having to justify why you did something to yourself. Were the are big our worst enemies or worst critics. So balance is always key, I think for them for the majority of the population, because then they give themselves permission to dive into some of those foods. Now. It’s not for everybody, and It’s definitely not for people who have massive eating addictions or have a ton of weight to lose who who need to kind of build on their relationship with food first. But I think for the average person, you know, balances is key. And that’s kind of how I live my life. Now. I know when to eat healthy, I know when to make changes, if I want to make those aesthetically or functionally or however that may look. And at the same time, I can go to a dinner party, you know, for instance, we got Valentine’s Day coming up on Friday, I, my girlfriend and I are not going to suffer because I’m on a diet. So I’m, you know, prepared to have whatever food we want to have on that Friday and just do what we want to do. Because that that part of the relationship or that part of my life is just as equally important or not more important than some of the food choices they make. So it’s balance in the same regards, that kind of answers. Your question,

Suburban Folk 25:00
how does that strategy compared to the concept of a cheat day? Is that the same thing? or different in some way?

Unknown Speaker 25:08
That’s a, that’s a, that’s a good question. cheat days are more a thing I don’t like about a cheat day is we tend to, like, create a very short term goal or this, this permission. And I know that this is counter, you know, kind of going back on what I said on the last one, but when you have cheat days, it’s like you You will relish like, maybe it’s Saturday is your day, from Sunday to Saturday. That’s the only thing you’re thinking about. And when you get to that day, it’s like, it’s like a free for all. And I tell people, if you do the cheat day thing, like really accurately count your calories and they’ll find that they’re eating four to five times that they normally would eat. And now that becomes a bit counterproductive. Yes, you’ve you know, it’s Give yourself permission to eat, you know, foods that you want to eat. But you can’t do that what I’m trying to promote is not setting yourself up for a particular day or time that you relish that, but more, live your life. Normally, you know, schedule events with your family, do those type of things, go out for date night, do those particular things that everybody would do, and allow yourself to eat outside of your normal nutritional window. When those times arise. I think there’s a big difference between the the cheat day and then just allowing some balance because the cheat day again, it’s just it’s something that we get to convince ourselves that we’re in and it’s just the short term goal, like, I’m going to work my butt off for six days and then I’m going to eat whatever I want and people overdo it and they don’t realize it.

Suburban Folk 26:54
I also wonder if backlash from the cheat day is just hating All those other days that lead up to cheat day, so you have even more of a negative relationship with your diet the other six days of the week, and I would think maybe even similar to, like you said overdoing it, even overdoing it with your workout regimen. You know, people want to see results too quickly, then they go to the gym and can’t move day later because they did too much and then they just hate the experience and can’t ultimately stick with it. So it would make sense to me that a cheat day might have that same effect potentially, as as somebody’s not being able to keep up with a workout regimen.

Unknown Speaker 27:39
Yeah, no, absolutely. And it becomes perpetual as well too. And, and, you know, going back to that I, we we did a we have a set of stairs in the city that I’m in here in Edmonton. And we it’s 200 sets and it’s they’re really steep. They’re actually the steepest in the area. And we did 10 sets of these up and down so we did like 4000 steps and I can barely move to the mic. my calves are so sore from doing those steps. You know, it’s a little self abuse. But yeah, you know it, it kind of ruined my week. And my training schedule kind of has to take the back burner for a couple days. So I lose and I always tell people when you overdo training, because everybody, everybody wants this short like it’s, we live in this anomaly with fitness where where the rest of your life like with your career and parenting, like, you know, you want to see your kid graduate high school, you got to wait 18 years, sorry to say it, but it’s gonna you have to go through the process of parenting. You want to be the CEO of a company you need to you need to be loyal and work for that company for four decades for the most part. Why does fitness have to happen in 30 days? Like this is the part that just it’s mind blowing to me. And we need to ensure that when we’re when we’re looking at fitness and our fitness goals, we don’t have to go you know, six days a week, you know right out the gun and just try and do all this stuff that really it’s going to beat you up you’re going to be sore and then you’re just going to discourage you from continuing to go where making simple movements, getting people to just do simple movement patterns without weight or you know, stabilizing the body understand how how the the kinetics work through through the human body and, and just really getting people to not feel pain anymore is a big deal and that’s what we want to do. We want to move towards kind of this gradual long term sustainable fitness and health wellness thing. Putting little goals inside of that is fantastic and everybody should be doing it but we should always strive for for the long game, especially as we get older and You know, when we beat ourselves up at the gym, and like I was mentioning, when people get motivated and we know motivation only take you so far. They I’m ready to go. I’ll do this five days a week, no problem I’ll eat. It’s not sustainable. You haven’t started, you haven’t done it before, you know, start with one day a week start with to, you know, move in progress and, and be okay with where you currently are, you know, whether it’s weight loss or weight gain, whatever it may be. It’s a lifetime goal for sure.

Suburban Folk 30:33
I wonder if there’s overlap here with what we were saying around career and hitting a pinnacle with health. It is a continuous ongoing journey that presumably, even if you hit some sort of final goal, the ability to maintain whatever that is, probably would be just as difficult if not more, so than getting There. So I would think there would be an argument to be made that you don’t want to hit some final goal in the world of health and fitness to your point. It should be a continued journey and yes have milestones along the way. But if you’re not able to challenge yourself for our next thing, whatever that is, and I would assume that would be changing it up from different sports like I’m a runner, so different distances and looking for different personal bests for times or if it’s weightlifting, you know, continuing to try to best whatever weight that you can do or certain wraps or things like that. Because when you would get there, whatever that means, again, I would think that would almost be a hurdle in and of itself to have to maintain after you get those Yeah. See the

Unknown Speaker 31:51
the beautiful thing about the human body and our physiology is is that our body as we get older starts to, you know, regress and we we lose, we lose bone density, we lose muscle mass. So the beauty of exercise and into our later years is that we are always going to be fighting the clock, always so, you know, getting to that Pinnacle, you know certain modality or maybe sport or whatever it may be. Normally people who achieve those or get through those things like as a runner I did, I did a bit of running myself for some certain challenges that I want to just just accomplish. Not a runner. I’m more of a cyclist when it comes to my cardiovascular exercise. But most of the time you kind of set yourself a new goal or you find something different inside of your, you’re always challenging yourself because I think too as we get older, like I mentioned with, you know, going against the clock is you’re going to have you’re not going to be as strong as you used to be and you’re going to have to continually push yourself to elicit Less change as we get older. So you know, as we’re younger, we can put on muscle and we can do all these things really fast because we have, you know, a different level of hormone production officer testosterone is through the roof. We’re growing growth hormone or bodies just like as a teenager, early 20s. That’s just the prime. And then we start to, you know, go backwards where, you know, are most people and then there’s some some science to this where we do get married and we do have kids and become more sedentary week we get more involved in our careers, and we gain more weight, and then we we have higher stress levels, and then our testosterone levels go down and growth hormone kind of subsides a bit over time. And we just need to continually move and exercise just to play, you know, to try and balance that out. So I think as we, as we continue to exercise newer later years, we’ll continue to challenge ourselves just with the basic things that We used to take for granted I think when we were younger.

Suburban Folk 34:04
And bringing us back to your personal story, you said about 240 is where you had maxed out at start your workouts. I’ll be curious if you can say what kind of workout videos you’re doing cuz I’ve definitely done a few my own. So I wonder if we’ve gone through some of the same or not. What was the timeframe from starting to do that to then when you became interested in being a personal trainer and offering the things that you have learned to the general public? Sure, yeah. So

Unknown Speaker 34:37
for the first part of your question there I watched two Beachbody videos. I did p90x and I did insanity.

Unknown Speaker 34:47
And those two programs I had bought

Unknown Speaker 34:53
the DVDs like maybe I’d say three or four years prior when I was still married, and had one of those like, oh, Aha moments like I’m gonna get in shape and then you bought the videos and they shipped them to you and then you like undid the cellophane and then that’s where they sat for the next two years. Right? So, you know, I blew the dust off those and we put them in and that’s kind of where I, I, I do we did those two programs. I did insanity, twice p90x one, so ones to 60 days in 90 days. So what’s that, you know, seven months

Unknown Speaker 35:25
and then transitioned into the gym,

Unknown Speaker 35:28
where I’ve kind of wanted to, you know, explore the muscle building and the weightlifting aspect of it. And just really got really, really enjoyed it got into it’s kind of learned just using Google or people inside the gym or asked questions with, you know, co workers and friends and stuff at the time. So I was really not very knowledgeable at all. And that was 2016 then I of course Got this like a massive like a newbie gains we’ll call it where you know I just never work those muscles before in my life and and in literally oh I want to say five or six months I completely looked like a different person and people were just like whoa what have you done and people hadn’t seen in a while and and that was a nice feeling boost of confidence you know I was I was dating again things were going really good and I just progressively kind of gravitated to watching fitness professionals watching YouTube videos, watching you know, going into different gyms and exploring and talking to people and and really just got like, like a baby learning the world for the first time I was just fascinated by it and and wanted to educate myself on everything from nutrition to you know, how the body works and how to lift weights and how to gain muscle and different techniques and how to get stronger and I even dove into Not that I personally use but I dove into understanding. You know, exoticness hormones and steroids and understand what those do to the body and the detriments and the benefits all these like everything you can think of. And kind of as a know it all in the last couple years and I say as a no at all because you know, we’re all self taught something when we push some of this information and I thought, you know, like, I’m when I’m giving advice to somebody, a coworker and I’m just I’m just gonna go backwards and when I was in this, like research mode, or when I was really really loving it, I’m like, that person’s looking at me like they they’re like, they’ve trusted me with their their body. They’ve trusted me with like, their food, you know, food choices, things like I don’t want to fuck this up. I really want to get this right. And it’s that one I decided, you know what I need to I need to do this in some way or form or another, like I need to? How do I do this for a living? Like how do I figure this out? And, you know, as a personal trainer, you you go on indeed or these websites and find out what they make per hour or what their yearly salaries are. And I mean, personal trainers, you know, can start at 40 or 50,000 years ago up to a million bucks against it, the sky’s the limit, depending on who you train and credibility and all those other things. So I’m like I, you know, I could maybe do this, but, you know, I was locked into this thought process about finances like, well, if I quit my job, or if I leave and whatnot, you know, who’s going to pay the bills and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, I kind of built a little bit of a, an escape route in the last position, I actually seen, you know, the demise of some people inside the company and I think it was on that hitless so I made the mad dash to try and put about, I think about 30,000 bucks in the bank over the course of Six months because we had gone into this really extensive project that had me working like 14 hour days, seven days a week anyway. So that job ended I had some money in the bank I had you know, it’s good for six months. Okay, here we go. And I’m like, I need to get certified. I need to do this properly. I need to make sure that I have the credentials to do this stuff so that I can give advice and do this proper way. So you know, nutritional certification Personal Training, learned a whole lot about what what actually transpires with people and how to how to do those things and, and it really just like, spark this new level of like, now I get to get up every morning and do what I want to do. And I’m not worried about the money is as backwards as a lot of people may view that. I really don’t and it’s not because I do Don’t have or want to be successful financially or fix that part because going through divorce, ruins you or can ruin you in that aspect.

Unknown Speaker 40:10
But I, I figured that if I could get into a groove of doing something that I enjoy every day with my life, I will get so damn good at it that I will there be no choice for the money to follow because I looked at it like I got all the way to a management position in a career I absolutely hated with very little effort and I’m not using that as a, you know, a podium to be arrogant or whatnot, but it’s just in my own view. I thought if I put everything I have into something I absolutely love and I’m dedicated to doing and I you know, pardon my my expression when I say this, but if I have to each for a couple of years, then so be it but if I’m going to do it, and I’m going to be damn good at it. The money will flow Follow.

Suburban Folk 41:00
I think that’s probably a good segue even into the parenting mindset. As far as there’s probably no greater incentive to be good at something than your kid. Right? And you mentioned, you know, feeling like you lost a lot of time. What are the similarities and overlaps that you found in being a father and what have you learned? I’m assuming even from time management, being able to do the personal trainer stuff while you were coming up with your exit strategy took a lot of foresight, like you said, just even having a parachute financially, but also even managing your time. So talk a little bit about how those worlds and how those mindsets crossover specifically for parenting

Unknown Speaker 41:51
Yeah, I think for parenting wise, you know, when I look at my and I say this all the time in especially For parents with teenagers, it goes for all ages, but they don’t listen to what you say. And I what I mean by that is, you know, my 17 year old, his his rooms a disaster half the time and I try and get him to clean it on occasion. And I always say like, hey, you’re not you’re not listening to me, why aren’t you listening to me, and a lot of parents will probably agree with that thought process. But one thing your kids are doing is they’re watching you. So they may not be listening to your directives, because they’re at that age and they’re trying to figure themselves out. And, you know, doing what you have to say, is probably the furthest thing from it. And you know, I remember that as a teenager. But what I’ve done is I’ve, you know, through this career change and making this this change in my life later on is I really taught my son, you know, that permission to not figure it out. You like, you don’t need To figure anything out at 1718 1920 years old, because I’m 42, and I’m just figuring it out, or I’m just trying to figure out this part of my life. And what it does for him is it allows him to, like really explore different things that he enjoys to do and not pigeon holing him into this thought process. Like, you need to go to university because that’s the right thing to do. And if you just ask that question, why, like, you know, and he and he does that, like, why do I need to go to university? The answer from the parent is generally they probably can’t answer that question because they just think that’s the thing to do. Or maybe they want their child to enter a career that suits them or it’s something they wanted to do. Very important that we you know, as I do with my son Blake, is I give him the freedom to explore the options And to just give him that, pat on the back to say, you know what, if you try something and you fail at it, that’s fine. Try something different and fail at that too. And then try something different and, you know, go through the things that you enjoy. And then, you know, he can do what I’m doing at an earlier age maybe and, and really look at, like, you know, we talk about finances, and we talk about and I’m very vulnerable and, and I put myself out there when it comes to this is like, you know, and I’ve said to him, like your dad needs help, you know, externally financially because he, he spent 40 years of his life, not knowing what to do with his money other than spend it and, you know, these short dopamine blasts every time he pulled his credit card out, and I wanted to kind of, you know, show him as well, you know, went from big house to this small apartment. We don’t have a lot of materialistic things because I’ve changed my viewpoint on on my life. And I’ve had to kind of make sacrifices to change it. But it’s that relationship that we have now where we could sit down and have conversation, we can explore different things that he that he’s got on his mind or things that he wants to do. And he gets to see me go and go, you know what my dad’s 42 and he’s changing things and he’s making mistakes. And man, I like it does that doesn’t seem so bad. Now, I’m only 17 like, and I can go get a job, you know, at the corner store and just work for six months and then take all that money and maybe I’ll just go travel for two months. I’ll go to Europe, bro, go here. Perfect. That’s what you want to do. Like, and I think that just bridges that gap. You know, with the parenting part of it and really allows, you know, us as parents to kind of, you know, bind that relationship with our kids.

Suburban Folk 45:58
Yeah, my kids are much you younger than yours. So I’m still figuring out some of those communications. But from what I’ve at least read, to be vulnerable, I think as we’re using the right word to use just to sometimes show that you’re human as the parent as well seems to have an impact in the way that you communicate. So you’re not trying to be infallible and every single situation actually tends to go a long way. Or at least like I said, from what I’ve read, and even for my kids that are in those toddler years, they see what you do more so than they probably listen to what you do, and I’m sure the more mature they get, the more that will be reflected in our interactions, maybe even further, crossing over these two concepts, with your focus and your journey on health and fitness. Has that been something that you’ve instilled in your son or make sure that he’s at least active In some way,

Unknown Speaker 47:00
yeah, like, you know, I’m driven with him obviously making decisions on his own. He’s a baseball player, he doesn’t do the gym, he doesn’t do well, we’ll do little activities like pushup challenges or Sprint’s or runs like things that he can relate to, in a competitive way because I think kids kids need to be competitive. They you know, they’ve got all that hormones running through them and that in trust me, everything is a game and everything’s about winning. Um, so anytime we do fitness related stuff, it’s it’s it has to have some sort of competitive nature to it. He just isn’t into it for his own health yet. Food wise, that’s a tougher one. I he eats what I make him but he walks to the corner store on a frequent basis to get what he wants that isn’t provided in the house and that’s fine by me. You know, I let him understand that these are healthier choices. Those are not And then I just queue him with things like, so. How do you feel after having those cans of pop? Or that bag of chips? How did that make you feel? Are you tired? You know, and sometimes I get feedback, like, yeah, I feel groggy or Yeah, I feel okay. That’s why, you know, this is why but sometimes as a kid, he just he doesn’t care. You know, I’m gonna, you know, why are you drinking pop? I thought you said it means it makes you tired. Yeah, but I like it because it tastes good. And I just want to have it. So he has the tools, he he probably has a bit of a bigger nutritional knowledge base than most kids his age because I do like to go through those things with him and educate him. Um, but as far as his application of it, that’ll be up to him. For the most part, I don’t facilitate it. But you know, there’s a balance there as well.

Suburban Folk 48:55
Let me go back one more time to time management for my own purpose. or interest my kids, whenever they’re at home. I am with them all the time, you know, playing, making sure that they have what they need, and so on. And you know, sometimes when it’s a long day of that I find myself thinking, Oh, when they get to x age, you know, they’ll go and keep themselves occupied and doing whatever the things are. Now, the downside of that is when I want to go and interact with them, they may not necessarily want to, for you again, just from the time management aspect of it. How does that compare to when your son was younger and trying to make time versus now and when he has other things going on?

Unknown Speaker 49:44
You know, I look back at baseball was kind of our biggest tie as a father son relationship, you know, from an early age he played and video games is a big part of the I was a big video. Game person. So time with my son younger, we were big into the video games or reverse baseball, those two things. And now managing time with him now is a little bit actually easier than it was then. And just because two things like first and foremost, you know, when he was younger, I didn’t go out of my way to make time, I thought it was more important to, you know, work and things like that. So, you know, I have a different outlook on it now, from that point of view where, you know, time with him is important. So our biggest thing now is we try and catch a movie once a week or once every second week. Just him and I, we try and do we have, you know, we’re up at the same time in the morning, we kind of, you know, have our daily conversations. Before he goes to school, and we we discuss a lot of things. You know, we make time for each other, and it’s not a lot, you know, as a teenager like he’s always on the move. I’m talking five to 10 minutes, twice a day, where we just have a real simple conversation about how the day was what our challenges are, you know, anything that came up, you know, let it you know, let it out the emotional stuff, whatever it may be frustration didn’t like, particular kid at school or somebody picked on them or, you know, they, they get outrageous with certain things and, you know, I let him you know, have those conversations with me and try and be as relatable as I can as a parent and you know, most importantly, just support and guide him and, and always tell him, and I think this is important is you know, how proud you are of your kid. And the things that they do and I think they need that positive affirmation to kind of, you know, even when things are kind of in the dumps, or we get frustrated, and then getting that feedback from him as well where he does the same thing with me. You know, like Geez, Dad, you know, a friend at school. Mom, like listen to your podcast and they were talking about it that dinner table and oh my god, I’m so embarrassed and then I laugh and, you know, and just like that, it’s it’s, it’s great to have those those type of that type of bond and, and I think I probably try and do get down to his level as far as like where we are in the world with technology and things like that with social media and really try and be a little more pronounced with with how I do that, you know, everyone’s posting on Instagram, so I’m, you know, I’m on there. I’ve got a couple accounts and, and I do my crazy posts and my fitness stuff and, and it’s kind of at his level because he sees that he’s okay, my dad’s kind of cool, he he’s on Instagram. So yeah, I hope that answers your question. Yeah, maybe the difference between where I’m at now and where we’ll be his structure probably, as far as how those interactions go in. The future you know, the the beauty of life is, is we we get shaped and formed you know by events that occur throughout our life and and you know where your children will be 10 years from now. Nobody knows their you know where my kid may be in five or 10 years from now and what may shape or mold them to, you know, be a certain way or act a certain way or do certain things and I think just as parents the best the most, the best thing we can do is just help guide them in allowing them to make their own decisions and explore things on their own and figure this world out and in their own eyes and then really just support that for the most part and and be patient patients as big as a parent for sure.

Suburban Folk 53:50
I think that is a great quote for us to conclude on. I feel like we just scratched the surface and the good news preview while depending on Whose episodes come out first or second Mike and I have scheduled for us to chat again on his podcast fit fun father. So folks need to check that out wherever they get podcasts. Mike, do you want to go ahead and give folks your contact information again places to get your show and any events you may have coming up to let people know about

Unknown Speaker 54:22
Yeah, so um basically you can get me on all the social media platforms so at fit fun father on Instagram Of course you can catch the fit fun father podcast on basically every major platform. My right now you kind of email me I might get back to you in a day or two, but I generally get back to people fairly quickly. It’s fit fun father@gmail.com um, as far as up and coming stuff, I’m doing the online coaching. I’ve got an E book that will be coming out in the next coming months. I want to get it done a little earlier but I am really making sure I get this done right that is going to be really around divorced and separated men and how to kind of get through that funk and then back into the the world through health and fitness so I’m really excited to to work on that and I definitely will when it comes out everyone will get a copy that that is in my email group so you as well Greg will get a copy that for free and yeah, that’s that’s about it and just check. You know, check out the podcast, you know, I’m always doing a lot around health and fitness for for man, I do some science deep dives if people are interested in going a little deeper with nutrition or biomechanics or whatever it may be. I do a couple of those and then I’ve always got, you know, a vast array of guests on that. That center around You know, health and fitness and different aspects. So, just really grateful and thankful to be on your podcast, Greg again, and just, yeah, just do what you love. Most importantly, just find something that that grabs you by the soul and, and incrementally step by step trying to try and do it a little more each and every day.

Suburban Folk 56:23
Great advice. And I appreciate you coming on. I’ll be looking out for all of the things that you’re working on right now. So get really appreciate it and we will be in touch.

Unknown Speaker 56:31
Awesome. Appreciate you man.

Suburban Folk 56:36
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Unknown Speaker 57:12
Hello there physically attractive podcast listener. My name is Steve Ross. I’m Sean Crandall. I’m Dustin white and we’re the hosts of drags up Craig’s on our podcast we explore the most bizarre, repulsive and downright confounding Craigslist ads we can find from all over the country live for your amusement comm find out the best place to book an extra reading party for your child’s birthday and stay up to date on Mario’s Hawaiian sex marathon. Or just sit back and relax as we make more animated references than any rational human beings should be comfortable with. It’s a hilarious exploration of how we as a species are drifting further and further from the possibility of redemption and we want you along for the ride. Listen to dregs of Craig’s on Stitcher, iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts

Transcribed by https://otter.ai