Hello I’m A.J. Vollmer, for NPR Illinois Podcamp.
Mike Suhadolnik is a Springfield CrossFit coach who wrote the book “I Knew We Had a Cure,” and he is doing so at 75 years old. Mike inspired many people with chronic diseases to eat healthy and exercise.
“We all have chronic disease, it’s dormant, just sitting there and it’s waiting for bad habits to come alive.”One way to fight against this is through exercise, and why Coach Mike started coaching CrossFit.
“I was interested in health, my health in particular to be selfish with but then once I learned what to do and felt confident about it, then I decided to turn the tables and get in front of people.”
His personal journey to fitness turned into an opportunity to help others.
“Dr.Backs, who writes the forward to the book, and I got him about 8 years ago when he was obese and he was pre-diabetic and he was hyper-tense, and he had all of these different chronic diseases and I challenged him to change his self and he basically followed some recommendations that I had to go through and live myself because of a doctor and I had my prostate increasing in size and stuff like that told me to see a nontraditional doctor and I did and that doctor literally cured me.”
As an older person himself, Coach Mike, primarily focuses on clients who are over the age of 50.
“It occurred to me that one of the things they do and people have cancer if they get them in a state where the cancer no longer is there and isn’t there for the next 5 years, they say their cured. And then I responded and I said ‘well let’s go back to what I was talking to you about’… it was 8 years ago and I said ‘are you still obese?’ ‘no’ ‘are you still hyper tense?’ ‘no.’ ‘are you still incident resistant?’ ‘no.’”
His book focuses not only on the importance of exercise but the whole mind/body experience, including diet.
“The definition of being healthy is being able to do what you want to do when you want to do it. Not only that, but your ability to adjust to change and stress to do that you have to be alive.”
And that’s Coach Mike’s goal, to help make others feel better so they’re able to live the fullest life possible.
For NPR Illinois Podcamp, I’m A.J. Vollmer.
