Meet Mike Schatzki – “The Recovering Couch Potato”

Mike Schatzki is a recovering couch potato.  When he was 55 Mike took a fitness assessment test and was stunned to learn that he had been classified as an “out of shape, middle-aged male.” So he decided that he had better get fit and then proceeded to make every mistake in the book.

He overdid, he got injured, he quit, he started again, overdid again, got injured again, quit again.  But eventually he got fit.  And he felt great.  And he told everybody how great he felt, and how they should do it too. You know how insufferable the newly converted can be.

And the folks who were exercising said, “Wonderful! We love it, you love it, do it.” But most of the folks whom he talked to politely responded with some version of, “Exercise, yuck.” They didn’t want to exercise, and they weren’t going to exercise.

But perhaps there was a non-exercise way to get fit.  So Mike began to read books on fitness and that led to scientific articles and eventually he amassed a library of over 200 research articles from such prestigious journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Annals of Internal Medicine and similar publications.

The message was clear. In order to your cut illness and death rate by 50%, you needed to get fit, but you didn’t need to sweat to do it.  Anyone can become a recovering couch potato.

But astonishingly, this message hasn’t really reached the general public. The academic researchers were great at doing research, but totally unable to communicate their message to the world at large. And that is what the “No Sweat Couch Potato Recovery Program” is all about.

Mike has a unique ability to take the science and research that underpins the “No Sweat Couch Potato Recovery Program” and make it immediately accessible to people in a high energy, entertaining program that absolutely motivates them to get going on their own “No Sweat” fitness program.

And now Mike has placed the the entire “No Sweat Couch Potato Recovery Program” in the Creative Commons so that anyone can download the audio, slides and handout and present the program themselves.

Mike Schatzki has been speaking to and motivating audiences worldwide for over 35 years. He has been designated a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) by the National Speakers Association, a distinction achieved by only 7% of the over 5,000 professional speakers worldwide.

Mike received his B.A., Magna Cum Laude, from Haverford College, and his MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University.