MICHAEL LEARY

HEY, I’M MICHAEL.

Today, I’m someone who experiences joy, connection, and purpose. I train hard, make the most of every day, am deeply rooted in my community, and regularly push my body to its limits.

So most people are surprised to hear that I during my senior year of high school, I was hospitalized for complications related to being unhealthy and overweight. My hospital room faced west, and on the horizon was Mount Washington. I realized that I wasn't physically capable of doing something like climbing it. Lying in that bed, I made it my mission to get healthy enough to stand on top of it. I spent the next couple of years changing that — training, becoming stronger and more capable —and year later, I did.

That experience changed the way I saw my body. Physical capability wasn't about looking a certain way. It literally changed what I believed I could do with my life.

That’s why I train hard. Not for a perfect physique, but for a body built for the life I want to live.

A few years ago, right after my first child was born, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Suddenly I was caring for a newborn and a parent at the same time, watching one life begin and another slip away, each needing so many of the same things. I came face to face with mortality.

More than anything, it showed me how important it is not to miss out on a life worth living.

My life looks drastically different now than it did from that hospital bed. Whether I’m pushing myself in my own training, giving a client my full attention, or out on weekend adventures with my family, I’m not missing the things that make me feel alive.

That’s what training is really for.

It keeps you strong, so you can keep doing the things you love long after you leave the gym. It keeps you powerful, physically and mentally, because life is going to demand resilience. It gives you support when something isn’t right, and a place to belong among people living in ways that inspire you.

I absolutely believe strength, aerobic fitness, nutrition, sleep, and biomarkers, matter. I also believe that relationships, purpose, joy, adventure, stress, family, community, and fulfillment matter.

You don’t need an incredible body at the expense of an incredible life. But you can build a body that lets you say yes — today and decades from now.