Meet Turbulence Training’s New Video Super Star
Listen to my full interview with Fitness Specialist & Master Nutrition Therapist Missi Holt here. You can also read the transcript of our interview below.
Craig: Hey everyone, this is Craig Ballantyne from Turbulence Training here with this month’s Certified Turbulence Trainer call and I have a very special guest. It’s Missi Holt, our Turbulence Trainer video star who was in the new videos with me. She did an amazing job. I’m surprised she’s still talking to me after those workouts but it was a really, really great time and she filmed a ton of workouts. She took me through a couple, too, so she did get some payback. So Missi, welcome to the call.
Missi: Thanks, Craig. It’s really great to be here with you.
Craig: Yes, awesome. Missi is Denver and I’m here in Toronto and let me tell you a little bit more about Missi. She’s a fitness and nutrition therapist and I’m really interested in hearing more about that. She uses personalized exercise and nutrition tools as a foundation for her behavior change and we’re going to talk about the clients that she has had. She is a master nutrition therapist and she has degree in Health and Exercise Science from Colorado State. Some of her certifications include MSCA, CPT, a really good one there, TRX obviously a good one, RIP Core and some yoga certifications so she created a really unique method for helping her clients to maintain health and wellness of course.
She approaches her clients based on their personal lifestyle goals and state of readiness. So Missi has a very holistic approach, I would say, and she truly believes that we cannot embody a genuinely good life without a sense of balance and connection in our approach to health and fitness. I really like that, Missi. That’s really well said. Now can you tell me a quick little background on what a master nutrition therapist is? Did you get that through college or was that through one of these certifying bodies?
Missi: There is a school here in Denver called the Nutrition Therapy Institute. They have various programs. They have just the Basic Nutrition Therapy and they have a Master Nutrition Therapy. It’s a pretty intensive program designed to help you understand all facets of nutrition, wellbeing and how it relates to health on all levels. Really it was transformative in my life personally and it has really transformed how I approach health and wellness with my clients, too, so it’s a great thing to have.
Craig: Okay, that sounds awesome. Now you were saying your wellness philosophy stems from passion for teaching your clients—and I know how passionate you are about that; it’s awesome—and how to deliver self-awareness which is really important these days and regain their personal power which I love that phrase. Now the primary steps that you use are helping people understand where they’re at and why that is vital to progressing towards their physical, emotional, mental and spiritual goal and you have a foundation to practice rooted in love, respect, if you’re happy, kindness and gratitude for yourself and for others. So I guess that might be some of the yoga principles coming in there.
We can definitely talk about that so let’s hear about your story. That’s a wonderful background. How did you get involved in the fitness industry in general and become this leader in the Denver fitness area with that specialization?
Missi: I have kind of an interesting story. I’ve always been involved in sports or athletics of some kind. I started out at a very young age in gymnastics and competitive dance and moved into ballet where I excelled greatly. By the age of 15, I was offered a pre-professional program and had to kind of make the decision whether to stay in school or to pursue ballet as a career. That was such a huge decision at such a young age and I look back on it as this really sweet moment of clarity where I knew that that was not the right path for me. Even though I loved it, I gave it up and I chose to stay in school and branch out into other sports.
So I went into high school, got involved in cross country track. I was a sprint and a jumper and then I ended up getting involved in competitive powerlifting which was a total exit from ballet except that I think that ballet really gave me a cool foundation for understanding properly alignment and attention to detail and it helped me really excel in all of my other sports.
But when I went home from my first semester in college, it was Christmas time, my mom said to me, “Can you help with some trouble spots?” She was grabbing her flabby triceps, poking her hips and her little belly and I said yeah, let’s go to the local rec center and I’ll give you a little workout and show you how to do that. That experience, I loved it. It felt very natural. I loved helping her. It was fun and I kind of thought to myself, I wonder if I could do this for a living; It’s really cool.
So I did a little research and found the program at DSU and transferred up there. I got my MSCA, my Certified Personal Training and started to work at the athletic club right out of college. Within a few months, I had a small clientele and I was just rocking and rolling in my career as a personal trainer. It was great. I loved it.
But along the way, there were a few points that happened that sort of derailed me personally and I look back now and see that those were extremely vital to my personal and professional growth. I think we’ll probably talk about that a little bit later but that’s how I got my start, it was with helping my mom and I think that awoke that passion for fitness and the passion for helping others and it just kind of came together.
Craig: Yeah, you made a very good point that there were certain things that you needed to go through in order to get where you are now and I think everybody listening to this call will need to feel the same way, whether or not they recognize that. But we go through the trials and tribulations that we go through and they make us stronger and we come out better in the end. We might not be as successful as fast as we want to be but in the end we’re more successful when we help more people. I have a quick question for you that I did not prepare you for but what did you learn in ballet that helped you in powerlifting? Was there anything?
Missi: Well first of all, I found out that I’m naturally really strong which is cool, but I think the attention to detail. In powerlifting, there is a precision with the execution of movements, with the form, with the patterning breath work, the depths of the squat and the locking of the arms in certain positions and I think just having an awareness of my body spatially, knowing where I am and how to move and how to make adjustments was really valuable in translating. Even as a runner, I have been told I have an incredible running form. I really attribute that to my days of ballet as being lifted and lithe in my core and connected like that’s the center and everything stems out from there. So I think it really helped me to be as strong and powerful in other areas of my life.
Craig: Okay. Then obviously, it helped with wearing this thing in powerlifting from wearing the tutu with ballet, right?
Missi: Oh my goodness, that powerlifting, they’re one of the most unattractive things I’ve ever worn.
Craig: Do you have the fashion style for. That’s fantastic. You’ve really done the extreme.
Missi: I have.
Craig: Now another extreme that you did recently which was an amazing job, a really, truly amazing job of being our fitness model in our Home Workout Revolution videos so what were some of the biggest lessons you learned about our Turbulence Training style of exercise during the filming because you were kind of new to it?
Missi: Yeah well, I was drawn to Turbulence Training because it was similar to how I train. I love doing bodyweight exercises. I love the simplicity of even just a ball and a dumbbell or bands. Really all you need to have a great workout is the right mindset, the motivated heart and the body, that body what’s willing to do the work. I think that the thing I found the most important out of doing the Turbulence Training program is how important recovery is because we did some really intense workouts. I would have to say that it was fun and it fed into my competitive nature, which was great, but I realized that rest and adequate rest is vital to quality athletic performance and to seeing immediate and long-term body transformation.
So that would be the one thing I would encourage people – just push yourself to the max and then carve out time for recovery and make sure your nutrition’s on par. It was so much fun doing those workouts. It was really, really intense.
Craig: Yeah, it was a lot of fun and you did a great job. Yeah, you found out the great results that people get in a short amount of time.
Missi: Absolutely.
Craig: And obviously, like you said, you need to have type of training that you did. So why don’t you tell us more about the types of training that you find effective for the fat loss transformations and even some of the mental secrets that you deliver to your clients because that’s so important. There are many ways to get somebody in shape and transform their bodies but if you don’t get that buy-in at the start, it’s difficult and I just know that you’re a master at doing that.
Missi: This is where my approach maybe is unique. I think no matter what kind of programming you’re doing, there needs to be five factors in place. It starts with number one, your mindset. We carry around so much emotional weight on a day to day basis and that in and of itself can be a factor that allows your physical body to hold onto weight even when you’re doing everything right. So I personally and even with a lot of my clients talk a lot about what is your mindset, where is your heart at, what are you doing outside of the gym that you might be carrying in or holding onto that’s inhibiting your physical transformation.
The second thing that goes probably right under that is nutrition. I would say that mindset and nutrition need to be in place and everybody’s nutritional program is unique because everybody’s body is unique. Our biochemistry is different and it’s always changing. So nutrition can be frustrating but there’s an opportunity to look at life as a journey and your nutrition as a journey. So being willing to understand what your body can digest, the foods that serve you now and today and how those work with nutrient timing and staying in your caloric boundaries is really vital and having that consistency.
Then the physical piece, intensity and novelty, I think, are two of the most important factors. The intensity has to be there. Whether it’s interval style or compound workouts or changing it up, the intensity needs to be there. You’ve got to push yourself beyond where you think you could go. Then the novelty of new exercises is something that’s new to your system, constantly challenging. Our bodies love to adapt. They’re designed to adapt. So keeping it fresh so that your body is forced to change and staying in that transformative place is important.
Then I think the fifth thing would be your sleep and your recovery, having adequate sleep and time between those intense workouts so that you’ve got the tissue repair, your body can detox and you’re ready to go for the next session. So those would be kind of the foundation pieces I talk about most often with my client. They kind of roll into you had asked about the mental coaching tips.
I also take another sort of deeper level approach to this. Because I learned on my personal journey, lasting health and emotional, mental and physical wellness really starts with awareness, the questions I often find myself asking myself and my clients are: Who are you? Who are you today? Who are you being and who do you want to be? What is the difference between the behavior of who you are and who you want to be? What are you doing and what do you want to be doing and what is the difference between these behaviors? Then of course, how are you behaving and why? Why are you doing the things you’re doing? Everything we do serves a purpose, whether it’s out of fear or safety or control or whether it’s coming from a place of love, nourishment and respect.
So I try to open the door to curiosity and replace judgment so that the place of curiosity allows you to understand yourself better and it creates an opportunity to build on your strengths, recognize and improve areas of weakness and you are allowed to approach the process not with force or coercion or shaming yourself into it but rather from a place that you really love and care about yourself and you’re curious about becoming a better person mentally, emotionally and physically. Then you celebrate the gratitude that you have for the opportunity to grow and to learn and to connect with others on deeper levels. So that’s kind of a long answer.
Craig: That’s a wonderful answer and it’s so interesting. Just to give people a bit of a background, we were looking for fitness models to be in the videos and we were looking for them from Denver because that’s where we were filming and that’s where ETR is that runs Turbulence Training. You found us and it’s really amazing how much overlap you have, like you come with a background in gratitude and the same type of workouts and all that sort of stuff. So it really has been a nice connection here.
Missi: It has. It was a very pleasant surprise to know we’re on the same page with how we view our approach to health and wellness.
Craig: Yeah, because sometimes we forget that there are other people out there that do the same sort of thing. You think this person is just a fat loss expert. I’ve worked with all these people who are good and skilled but none of them have this whole approach that I do. Then you go and you do find some of these people. That’s what a lot of Turbulence trainers are which is why we have our big come together event in June with the TT Summit so we hope to see everybody there. Everybody will get a chance to meet Missi and do some boot camps with her.
But going back to your questions which are really great, they’re really great questions, I recently read an interview with Tony Robbins and Tony has six questions that he uses with people. I think he might have copied a couple of them from you because they’re really great. He asked all his clients: Who are you? What are your proud of? What are you made of? What are you after? What’s stopping you? What are your wounds? And what are you proud of?
Those are good questions and I ask myself one of those questions every morning during my daily review of my documents, my questions and all the stuff that I do. So I go through one question every day and they always make me think and I always come up with a new perspective on things with problems that are troubling me or whatever is going on. Your questions are great, Missi, and so are Tony’s. I encourage everyone to put some type of self-coaching into your daily activities, where you’re asking yourself these questions. It’s one thing to ask your clients these questions but you do need to turn around and ask yourself them as well.
Missi: Yeah, true. I think there’s a great value in teaching our clients that they can be the expert in their own life. You don’t need to be dependent on anybody else. When they learn the tools and the skills to be a self-sufficient, healthy, functioning individual through the self-coaching and through the awareness, it’s really empowering and it really does set them free from that rollercoaster of just dieting and gimmicky programming and things like that. It’s much more of a holistic lifestyle point of view.
Craig: Yeah, and you’re giving them the tools to cope. You’re not going to be there on Friday night when the pizza comes. You’re not going to be there when it’s like one more drink. You’re not going to be there but your questions are going to be there and your influence is going to be there and they’re just going to help the people make the right decisions so it’s wonderful, Missi.
My next question for you, and you’ve covered a lot of this already but I just wanted to make sure that we’ve gotten all of your biggest mental coaching tips that you give to your clients when they want to make a transformation in their lives, is there anything that you haven’t let us in on yet?
Missi: No, but I think it’s important to understand why I use these mental coaching tips and why this is my approach. The reason goes back to a major obstacle that I overcame in my life and that really transformed me personally and my professional trajectory. If I can share that, I would love to.
Craig: Yeah, it’s really, really powerful to share personal stories. We have hundreds of people listening to this call and I know that many of them relate and would even want to talk to you about it at the TT Summit.
Missi: Okay, so kind of going back to my ballerina days, I had a really sort of traumatic experience where one of the prima ballerinas took a couple of us apprentice dancers into the bathroom and showed us to throw up and told us that when we’re at the studio or when we’re around director, you can’t not eat. So eat and here’s how to throw it up. Then when you’re outside of the studio, you’re home or whatever, you can just.
As a 12-, 13-, 14-, 15-year old, you idolize these prima ballerinas and you want to be them some day so you’d take everything that they say as gospel. So that was sort of embedded in me at a young age as how to behave, how to control my weight and just have control I guess. I talked about that moment of clarity when I decided to not stay in the dance world and I really, truly believe that that was a divine moment of this is not healthy and this is not who you want to be. I didn’t really have that kind of language or thinking at that age but I distinctly remember thinking that.
So through high school and college, I behaved very healthy. I was normal and happy and I ate well. I didn’t feel like I had any major “demons.” But once I had started as a personal trainer, I was invited by one of my girlfriends to do a fitness competition with her. I did and that process woke up those demons, so to speak. I struggled from the age of 23 to about to 28 with a severe eating disorder, exercise and body dysmorphia. I had mental language and kind of tape players rolling in my head that were extremely destructive verbal abuse of myself. It really affected my self-perception and I just kind of felt like I was in this downward spiral. And professionally, I felt like a total hypocrite.
It was during that time, right around age 26, that I just didn’t want to be this person. This isn’t me. This isn’t who I am and I didn’t know how to get out of it. I was just so bound by the fear and the control of the eating disorder. So very long story short, I got help. I found a book that really helped to ask the right questions and get me thinking on a different level.
Then I also went back and that was when I started getting my Master Nutrition Therapy because I realized that I was so disconnected from my own body and I really don’t understand how it works, how nutrition works, what nourishment even means. So I really went back to school for me because I needed to save my own life. Through that process, I realized if I am just brave enough to be honest about what I’ve gone through and the transformations I’m making, I guarantee I’ll be able to actually help other people by relating to them. That took me off the pedestal of that perfectionist, perfect body, perfect life or whatever. That’s not true for anybody. Once I became real with myself, I started seeing transformations in my clients’ lives, too. It was pretty powerful.
That is sort of how the journey of my professionalism evolved into it matters so much more what’s going on inside because when you take the internal temperature and find that homeostatic place of wellbeing, that sense of inner calm and peace which comes from treating yourself with respect and curiosity and compassion and not force, the transformation physically occurs. It’s not effortless but there’s no longer a struggle.
So I no longer struggle with food. I love food. I view it from a place of fun and nourishment. I have peace with it which I never thought would happen. Exercise is fun. It’s no longer forced. It’s no longer a performance. It’s just because I love to do it and it’s challenging. I rest appropriately and I push appropriately. It’s just this really cool evolution that has occurred because I chose to work on the inside and I have found similar patterns in my clients’ lives that are happening when they turn inward and kind of let go of really worrying about their weight and they focus on who they are and how they’re showing up in the world. It kind of rebounds outward. It’s pretty neat.
Craig: Yeah, there are so many big lessons in there, Missi. Thank you so much for sharing first of all. Second of all, the biggest lesson there for trainers is that you have to let your guard down. You have to show people that in one way or another, you’ve had a transformation in your life. If they don’t know that you’ve had any type of transformation in your life, they really do think that you can either A) eat whatever you want or B) you have no problem not eating what they think they would want to eat, that exercises comes easy to you and all this sort of stuff and they discount what they’re going to be able to do. They’re doing to discount your advice. And you’ll need to show them that again whether it was overcoming anything at all, even if it’s not even related to physical but it was getting out of debt or something, you have to be willing to share with them your stories so that they, like Missi said, open up to you.
That’s so valuable. Missi, thank you again for sharing and I know that a lot of people are going to thank you at the TT Summit for sharing and also for giving them that advice of now you’re going to be a better trainer. Now you’re going to be better able to help people. It’s unfortunate that you went through some of that but you do know have this complete understanding.
So what do you want to give as like the first lesson to people where let‘s say someone comes in and you know that they’re hiding something from you, they’re willing to share with you that they want to lose weight but they kind of just like dance around on the surface of things but you know there’s something deeper? How do you really sleuth in there to help people out and say it’s okay to share this with me and the more you share, the more we’re going to be able to help you? What is your first step there?
Missi: Well, kind of going back to those foundation words I’ve mentioned a lot, one of them is curiosity and another is respect. So I always approach my clients with curiosity and respect. I respect where they’re at and what they’re ready to share and whether they know it or not, they will eventually get to the place where they can’t not share. If I am just patient enough and loving enough in our sessions and I listen deeply and I listen with discernment to what they’re saying so that I can reflect back, I think of myself as like a loving mirror so that they can see themselves clearly and they come to their own conclusions about well, I need to open up about this because this is a dark place in my life that I struggle with and here’s somebody who has been in a dark place and has overcome it and it offers them a story hope. I think that the curiosity comes in. I ask a lot of questions and sometimes just the right question gets them going down a path they didn’t even really intend to go down. But they start to tell a story and they realize it feels really good to open about this.
So I would say that being a little bit intuitive when you’re working with clients you know are struggling with something and being very patient and loving because they’re expecting you to judge them, to condemn them and to tell them they’re wrong. They don’t need that. They tell themselves that all day long. So what they really need is somebody to love them through it. It’s a very different point of view from coming from a place of force or kind of like that buggy/whip mentality of whipping you into shape. It’s very, very different with getting them to actually have greater transformations even faster because the work that they’re doing and the transformations they’re having are genuine and they’re internal, which always translates to an external transformation.
Craig: That’s fantastic. Let’s flip that advice because I know there are a lot of trainers listening who are new trainers or who are struggling to go from kind of level 1 to level 2 in terms of their success. I know you’d be a great career counselor at training trainers so what would you say to the trainer who is just maybe not as confident in their abilities as they could be or in connecting with clients? How do you help them? Take our Turbulence trainers under your wing, Missi, and help them grow.
Missi: I would say to start with your own personal work. The more that you work on yourself the more that you’ll understand human behavior and that really does give you a blueprint for how other people might be behaving, what they’re thinking and how to help them grow. I think trainers need to be voracious learners. Get your hands on all kinds of books, whether it’s behavioral types of books or whether it’s specific training styles. Just get as many different certifications as you can and branch out and then see what works for you and what fits. And get creative. Put on your creative pants and have fun. There’s a process of working with the human body. It’s such an incredible tool that we have at our disposal and there are so many fun ways to employ what we do.
If you’re starting out as a personal trainer and you want to take it to the next level and you’re in a club setting, I would say also be visible. You have a great opportunity to market your expertise by putting yourself on display, doing workouts that are challenging or that are creative and having people get curious about what you’re doing, what that exercise and why. The next, you know, can you teach me that? Yeah, let’s set up a session.
I have probably gotten most of my clients through either word of mouth or somebody saw me doing something and came up and asked what are you doing? I just explained to them in a very intelligent way what I was doing. It got them curious and then the next thing you know, they’re my clients for five years.
So I think don’t be afraid to connect with people when you’re in the gym working out. You can have your ear buds on but make eye contact, smile and be approachable. I think that those are some of the most important things that we as trainers do because we are that bridge to where they want to be and so you’ve got to make yourself available.
Craig: I have a feeling that once somebody becomes your client, almost all of them become 5- or 10-, or 15-year clients. I imagine you.
Missi: They do. The funny thing is my goal is always to train them so they’re self-sufficient and they never want to leave. It’s a good problem to have.
Craig: Yeah, you’re having a great workout with an awesome person. It’s hard to get kicked out of that one.
Missi: Yeah, and it is great for me because it challenges me to continue to be creative for them over the years, to keep workouts fresh, to keep them motivated and see their personal and fitness transformations over the years. It’s a really neat thing to be a part of somebody’s life.
Craig: Right. You went through a phase or maybe you’re still going through a phase where you did a lot of certifications?
Missi: I did. For a while there, I worked privately for a family and that was a really cool opportunity. It gave me a lot of extra time to go back to school, to get certified in TRX and RIP Core and get certified in yoga and just, like I would say earlier, kind of branch out and see there are so many different modalities out there, what fits, what do I like, what am I drawn to, what don’t I like and then kind of carve out my own professional path and how I want to apply this with my clients. So it also gives you the opportunity to keep things fresher. You have a lot of different “toys” to use in your sessions if you want to, especially if you’re in the club setting.
Craig: Absolutely, and that’s what translates into “What’s that trainer doing over there?” as they do their own workout or as they train somebody else. “I’m interested” and that’s kind of what gets some people off the fence into personal training. There’s so much value in having more knowledge.
So let’s actually now talk about something that we don’t talk about a lot in Turbulence Training which is the role of yoga, breathing and meditation in weight loss and stress reduction, why it’s so important and how trainers listening can start to use these in their own lives and their clients’.
Missi: Gosh, yoga, breath work and meditation are transformative actions and they’re always accessible. They’re tools that you can employ anywhere anytime so they’re extremely valuable. There’s a physiological change that occurs within the brain and the body during that meditative deep breathing state. There have been and they are doing tons of studies right now proving this, scientific studies to back up the effects of yoga and breath work. It’s really exciting to be a part of it right now.
Most of us know that the breath rate and the breath depths are intimately tied to our nervous system. If you employ a quick, shallow breath then it’s stimulating our sympathetic nervous system and our fight-or-flight and if you slow your breath down and you engage the diaphragm kind of deeper and more rhythmic, you’re stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system, your rest-and-digest.
Just having that basic knowledge gives you the information to become aware of how do I breathe throughout the day and how is that translating into the sensations my body is feeling? Is it contributing to pain and anxiety and overwhelm or am I stimulating a sense of calm and peace and clarity? With just shifting the way you’re breathing, you can absolutely transform your mental outlook and your emotional state within a few minutes and it’s extremely powerful. So that’s a very simple way that people can employ it immediately.
Craig: What would you recommend to somebody? Would you recommend them going in and doing a few classes to figure out what they like the most or would you recommend they try and get certified or just read some books? What’s the best way to get started there?
Missi: Well, there are a lot of different avenues that are accessible to everybody and I would say that if you have a yoga studio near you, it’s a great way to figure out not only what type of yoga you enjoy. You would try a few different classes and know that some of them are going to be a miss, you’re not going to like them at all and that’s okay. But some of them you may really love and you’ll find a teacher that has the right energy and the right language that really speaks to you. Yoga for me has really become a spiritual practice. It’s someplace I go to just completely rejuvenate.
But if you don’t have a yoga studio accessible or you’re kind of nervous about that, YouTube is a really great place to find stuff. Just click on yoga breathing exercises and go through a few of them. We’re developing a program right now for yoga that will be a great avenue for people to learn about some of the basics of yoga and then progress to a little bit more advanced stuff. So there are all kinds of ways to do that.
There are plenty of great books out there as well. It just kind of depends on how you learn best and what you’re ready for. But if you’re looking for an actionable thing, I would say dive into a class. Take that leap and get involved. You might find that you connect with the community you never would have connected with before and that’s a whole other level of wellness, the connection with others. And yoga is a big on human connection.
Craig: Very cool. Now let’s go more traditional and talk about some of your favorite exercise and diet tips for fat loss for our trainers.
Missi: I would say favorite tips for exercise are make it fun, make it inviting and know your audience. Know whether your client thrives on being challenged or whether they thrive on positive reinforcement or whether they just need loving support. You have clients who love to be yelled out and then you have other clients who almost look like they’re about to cry when you tell them to make an adjustment because they’re so sensitive. I think knowing your audience is really important to how successful you are as a trainer but then also cultivating creativity within the bounds of safety and effective movement pattern, probably one of the tips I can give for exercise.
Then number two for diet, I would say stop dieting. Eat with nourishment in mind because that is your main focus and listening to your body. I do a lot of work with myself and others, talking about creating a relationship with your body and understanding the cues that your body is giving you. It can be a little scary at first because a lot of us are really disconnected to the sensations of hunger and fullness and there are a lot of gradations of hunger and fullness.
But once you begin that process of understanding the signals your body is giving you, then you’ll know what foods serve you and what foods don’t. There may be a “super food” that your body specifically can’t digest and if you’re forcing yourself to eat it, you’re just creating inflammation, indigestion and all kinds of stuff that’s going to throw off your whole metabolic rate.
So I would say that knowing your body and taking time to get to know it is paramount to getting off the diet track and being able to just eat for enjoyment, know your body and have success with fat loss and maintaining it over a really long period of time so you’re not doing this yoyo thing of extreme diets and then you can’t maintain it and so you go binge and then you get back on it. That just messes with your metabolism over time. I think having a nutritional lifestyle that’s not rigid, it’s rhythmic and it’s organized but it’s also fluid, is a really important foundation for getting started.
Craig: Yeah, that’s fantastic advice and I think that the whole forcing yourself with super foods and the whole forcing yourself with a strict regimen, dieting, whether you want to gain weight or lose weight is quickly losing your credibility and the mindful eating that you described is a much, much better approach. Now you must have some amazing success stories, Missi. Why don’t you tell us about a couple of them?
Missi: I do. I was trying to figure out which ones I wanted to share. I have a few that are vastly different. I’ve got one gal who has been with me since 2004. When I first met her, she wanted to simply get in shape for her wedding. She wanted to tone her arms, her belly and tighten her thighs. So we did that and it was easy. This was back in 2003 and ‘04 so I was very much about the physical. We put her on a very strict diet and it worked.
Then she came back from her honeymoon. She loved the workout and she wanted to keep going. She stayed with me through all of my eating disorder stuff and all of my personal transformation so she has also had her own personal transformation. She was a ballerina so she knew all about that life, the perfectionism and the performance-oriented mindset and so I would say that not only over the years has she maintained and improved her fitness level but she has also improved her internal fitness. She has since had two kids and knows that as a mother, the tools that she has developed through this whole love, respect and compassion point of view is really helping her be a different kind of mother that she probably would have been.
For me, that’s a success story. I know people probably want to hear how many inches, how much weight but life is really about who you are and the impact that you have on the people around you and I think that her finding her voice as a mother who is raising children to be thoughtful and compassionate and loving toward themselves and others is a success story in and of itself. She just recently came back to me. She probably has over two dozen different programs from me over the years and we just began reworking all of them.
One of the coolest things is we’re taking old workouts that she’s done maybe a decade ago, we’re flipping the order, changing the progression, changing the sets and reps and she’s sending emails saying, “Oh my god, this is like a brand new workout. It’s so awesome. It’s so hard. I’m so sore.” But it’s pretty fun to know that you can just take one workout, flip it a few times, change a few factors and it’s completely new. That gives you a lot of longevity out of the same movement patterns. That’s one story.
Another story, I have a little at-home business called ProLife Health that focuses on clients with adrenal fatigue and autoimmune disorders. We basically do personalized nutrition and yoga therapy. One of my clients who has MS was a very high-powered woman in the business world and she just had great success. As her MS progressed, she found that she couldn’t work. She literally was unable to do the kind of work that it required physically and mentally and being able to support her on her journey. She was beating herself up and was having a really hard time letting go with who she had been.
It was such a blessing to be able to help her navigate to a place where she now knows her boundaries and knows her limits and knows that this has happened in her life for a reason. She has now found a new calling and is sort of paying it forward in her own way with her own gifts and I think that that also is one of my better success stories. It’s being a part of somebody’s transformations through another seemingly tragic physical illness but allowing it to open the door for something that’s so much greater and deeper.
Craig: Missi, you just have such amazingly powerful transformation success stories and just client stories in general. That’s amazing and I know it’s really going to inspire the TT trainers listening to go and as we said before, share their transformation story, get as much information in many fields of discipline like you have so that you’re able to help people on the holistic level and then be able to have these success stories. That’s just wonderful stuff. Are there any other ones you wanted to share?
Missi: No, I think those are my two. There are a lot of them but those are two that are really close to my heart and I think everybody gets the gist of the kind of transformations I look to see.
Craig: Yeah, well really thank you for sharing those two. They’re really, really powerful stories. So you will be at our fifth annual Turbulence Training Summit and you’ll be leading some boot camp with me and maybe doing some other stuff on yoga. It’s going to be fantastic. People are going to love meeting you and talking with you between sessions and after sessions about their personal stories and where they’re at in their businesses so thank you very much.
You are new to the Turbulence Training world but what does our mission, our 10 million transformation mission mean to you and what can our TT trainers do to help us achieve it in addition to going out there and using your great advice?
Missi: The 10 million transformation mission is such a powerful statement about the kind of impact we expect to have on the world and I think transforming lives physically, financially and emotionally is an admirable endeavor and it’s necessary but it begins with your own personal transformation. I kind of alluded to that earlier. I think that’s why all of you guys need to be at this year’s summit, all our TT trainers, our colleagues, new trainers in the field. It’s an inspirational, informative, activity-packed summit and it’s the exact opportunity you need to have your own breakthrough this year so that you can also pay it forward in your own life.
Craig: Thank you for saying that. You’re right, it really does have that holistic approach to it in that we do cover a lot of modalities and different speakers, different energy levels and different ways of being successful so thank you for saying that and sharing that. What are you looking forward to learning at the TT Summit?
Missi: Oh my gosh, everything. There’s so much going on there I don’t know where to begin, Craig. There is so much going on that I just want to be a little sponge and I just want to soak it all up. I’m somebody who still handwrites a lot of things. I learned best that way so I’ll probably have a large fresh notebook with my pen, ready to go, taking notes and learning and then applying. I’m kind of a little science freak dork like that and I love that about myself.
Craig: Well, that’s wonderful and we look forward to filling that notepad with notes. I mean you certainly have filled our notepads with notes today and really, really wonderful call, Missi. Thank you so much for being so open and vulnerable and encouraging our trainers to do that because that is how they’re going to become better. Thank you again. Are there any other things you want to mention to anybody before we go?
Missi: No, I think that’s it. I just want to say thank you, too, for having me on and for letting me share my story. I just encourage everybody not to be afraid of who they are and also just figure out who you want to be and don’t be afraid to go after it.
Craig: Such simple words but you’re right. Don’t be afraid. We have nothing to lose when we’re going out and helping people. So thank you, Missi, very much for being on the call. Thank you for being in the videos and thank you for listening. We will be back next month with another great call but most importantly make sure that you get registered for the TT Summit. As a TT trainer, it’s free for you to be there in San Diego, June 5th and 6th. We have Todd Durkin leading boot camps on Saturday. We have Missi and I leading the boot camps on Friday. We have people doing kettlebell stuff. We have people doing TT training certifications and we have of course Bedros and other CTTs teaching all weekend.
So it’s going to be great fun. We’re going to have our awards as usual for TT Trainer of the Year, Rookie of the Year and Client of the Year and we’re going to have birthday cake. So I hope to see everybody there and sharing in the birthday cake on the Saturday. Thanks again. Thank you for listening and we’ll talk to everybody very soon with another amazing TT call. Bye-bye.