Kaisa Keranen is a personal trainer, fitness educator, and social media influencer known for her fun and innovative ways to get people moving. She graduated from the University of Washington where she was a member of the Track and Field team and later went on to get her Masters in Exercise Science, Sports Performance, and Injury Prevention.
As the owner of KaisaFit, she has developed her own method of movement which she shares daily with her clients and social media followers worldwide. She lives and teaches by the motto that health is a feeling not a look and believes whole-heartedly in her mission to get people around the world up and moving!
Kaisa has been featured in such digital magazines as Vogue, Shape, SELF, Harpers Bazaar, Oxygen, and ESPNW. She was featured on the Greatist as one of the most influential people in health and fitness and most notably was asked by Michelle Obama to be one of the go-to trainers for her “Let’s Move” digital campaign.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Kaisa Keranen about why you don’t want to look healthy.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– Why many people get left behind in the movement industry and how to include them.
– How movement is a celebration of what people can do with their bodies.
– Why the fitness industry needs to make movement accessible to everyone.
– How fitness experts assume people know things about their body they might not.
– Why your health is about how you feel and not about how you look.
Connect with Kaisa:
Guest Contact Info
Twitter
@kaisafit
Instagram
@kaisafit
Facebook
facebook.com/kaisafit
Links Mentioned:
justmove.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
When we decide we want to make some sort of effort to be healthier, it’s not uncommon. We just take a look at people who look healthy and we go, “Well, I just want to look like that.” What if that’s the dumbest thing you could possibly be doing when it comes to health? Well, we’re going to find out more about that on today’s episode of The Movement Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body, starting feet first, because those things are your foundation but there are other things that come into play as well. We’ll be dealing with those today. On this podcast, we break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the outright lies you’ve been told, about what it takes to run or walk or play or do yoga or cross bridge to live your life enjoyably, efficiently, effectively.
Did I mention enjoyably? Great question. I know I did because look, if you’re not having fun, do something different in who you are, because you’re not going to keep it up any way for not having a good time. I am Steven Sashen, your host of the podcast and the CEO and co-founder at Xeroshoes.com. If you want amazing, lightweight, super comfy shoes for anything you do, that’s where you go for that. We call this podcast, The Movement Movement, because we are creating a movement and I say, we because that includes you. It’s free. It doesn’t take any effort, more about that in a second, about natural movement, letting your body do what it’s made to do, helping people rediscover that natural movement is the obvious, better, healthy choice, the way we think about natural food.
Now, the movement part that involves you, it’s easy. Go to the website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com because you’ll find previous episodes, all the ways you’re going to interact with us. I mean, you’ll find us where we podcast or podcasted, but you’ll also find our links to our YouTube and our Instagram and Facebook, et cetera, et cetera. There’s nothing you need to do to join. That’s just the URL that I found, but what you need to do, if you like what you’re discovering is share it, spread the word, give us a like, a thumbs up or review, all the things you know how to do. In short, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. So let’s get started, Kaisa, it is a pleasure and have you here. Why don’t you tell people of who the hell you are and what you do?
Kaisa Keranen:
Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me here. I’m very excited to have this conversation with you. I am a lot of things. I like to sum it up, I like to say I am a movement coach and I am the co-founder of Just Move, which is a movement platform geared to really speak to those that we tend to leave behind in the movement industry. So my goal is to get people to start moving and to give them an opportunity to really enjoy exploring their bodies and celebrating what their bodies can do.
Steven Sashen:
When you say people who are usually sort of left on the sidelines, who are you referring to?
Kaisa Keranen:
Everybody except for that 10%, that the fitness industry likes to talk to. I think it was something … I grew up as an athlete and so, when I came into the fitness industry, obviously my eyes were very opened up to how we operated as an industry. From the very beginning, I didn’t agree with a lot of things, but one of the things that really stuck out for me was we weren’t speaking to the 85, 90% of the population that wasn’t moving and instead of saying, “Well, that’s on them. They don’t enjoy movement. I guess they’re just not a part of our industry.” I really wanted to solve, why are they not moving? Human bodies are meant to move. Movement is a celebration of what we can do with our bodies. Why are they not enjoying it yet? So that’s really been my goal and my mission.
Steven Sashen:
Then, what did you do to sort of explore the answer or look into that question, what did you find?
Kaisa Keranen:
I mean, I think one of the main overarching things is the fitness wellness industry, which I am a part of, so I’m not like … I’m not talking negatively but we tend to talk about movement as this thing that happens inside of a box when you do these handful of movements. For me, what I felt like it really wasn’t meeting people where they were at. One, it wasn’t really fun, like I’m somebody who enjoys going to a gym and lifting weights and working out, but not really very many people actually do. So I felt like we weren’t really meeting people where they were at and we weren’t making movement fun and accessible for everyone.
Steven Sashen:
So then once you sort of found that, tell me more about what you then did with that information.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah, absolutely. So I realized this pretty early on. I think, the first thing you realized as a trainer, I came from an athletic background and I came from being really excited about seeing what my body could do and challenging my body and having it all be about like what I could do performance wise. So when I came into the industry, it was a very eye opening thing, and I know this sounds a bit naive as a trainer but to realize that most people just wanted to change the way that their bodies looked. So first and foremost, I really tried to help people understand that we were not going to be concerned about changing the way that their body looked. We were going to be concerned about feeling better in our bodies, learning how to move, feeling more connected and empowered in our bodies.
So, I started there and then as I grew, social media came around and I realized I wanted to put my message on a bigger platform because for me growing up as an early trainer, the biggest loser was the only platform that fitness was on.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah. So I immediately saw that platform and realized like I don’t stand for anything that it’s doing, but I do like that everybody can see what’s happening there and everybody could maybe be encouraged about movement because it was on a TV show and people had exposure to that. So as soon as social media happened, I was like, “This is the thing I’ll be able to put movement out. I can have my own say in making it fun and creative and then, people can use it for free.”
Steven Sashen:
So, I often do this at the top of a show, but not always but especially given what you just said, can you think of any movementy thing that you could share with humans who might be watching or listening or driving and listening, hopefully not driving and watching, just anything that could give them, just the tiniest little flavor of what you like to do with other humans.
Kaisa Keranen:
Right now.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kaisa Keranen:
If you are sitting right now, take your hands, place them at your shoulder reach them up and over, as far as you can one way, bend, keep getting that stretch, huge stretch in the side of your back, bringing it back to center and then you’re going to go up and over the other way. So we’re just stretching out here. Exactly, and we move side to side. So the thing for me is actually my start moving program starts seated in a chair. Our entire first workout is in a chair because I feel like most people who look at movement and look at working out, think if they’re not doing that, that it’s not for them and I want people, I want everybody to understand that you have a body, your body is meant to move and it’s just about finding the right starting place for you.
Steven Sashen:
I love that, because the starting place for most people is they’re sitting in a chair.
Kaisa Keranen:
Absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
Mini chair all day and working all day. I can’t do, fill in the blank, so give them a simple one and by the way, for people who aren’t watching that, so I’m going to describe what we did. So it’s like (singing). So we just did the shoulders part, which I want to do a … I want to make a dandruff shampoo for kids, this head and shoulders, knees and toes. So, anyway, by putting your hands on your shoulders, so right hand on your right shoulder, left hand on your left shoulder, then literally take one arm, reach it straight up and then reach high, and then over to it, I’m doing it with my right arm. So reaching high and over to the left and I’m getting the stretch. It’s fun.
Because not only am I getting that in my lap, but also like in my entire lap, including the back where it’s connected to my spine, but also in my neck, which I didn’t know needed that right now and I like that you’re mirroring me without intending to. Then, same thing, hands back on your shoulders and then to the other side and you can literally … I mean, I’m imagining, depending on how you’re driving, you could do some of that in your car too. I don’t necessarily recommend it, but I’m just saying, so starting in a chair, what’s the progression then from there? What do you do beyond that?
Kaisa Keranen:
I mean, so the starting in the chair is for me, what feels like the starting point for our start moving program because it takes a lot of barriers out of the way.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kaisa Keranen:
And they’re also pretty short movement programs. So no more excuses, we’re meeting you in a chair and then we progress from there, so we really learn the foundations of movement. I think when the fitness industry tends to say, this is a beginner workout, we assume that somebody has an understanding of movement, movement terms, names and also an understanding of their body and how to move their body around. So, I realize right away the beginner workouts are truly not beginner. They’re not meeting people where they’re at. If you have never moved before, if you have really no understanding and connection with your body and maybe you’re dealing with some injuries, I wanted you to feel like you had a starting spot that actually met you where you were at. So we start in a chair.
We progressed from there. We learned how to squat, lunge, balance, all the foundational movements because once you understand those movements, like the fitness industry workouts, they’re all just more creative ways to do a handful of movements.
Steven Sashen:
It’s so funny you say that. I was on a panel discussion years ago at … it was about ancestral movement things and there was people talking about, “Hey, we’re just trying to move the way we did as our ancestry did.” Finally, I said, “Yeah, that’s just nonsense.” When we were having to walk down to the river to grab rocks and bring them home and stack them up and turn them into a house or chasing down prey or being chased by something we thought we were at lunch, you can’t fake those.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
There is no analog for that. In the example I gave and you as a former track athlete will appreciate this. I said, when I’m training for a hundred meters, I can do the hardest workout that I can possibly think of and maybe I’ll be sort of the next day, I do one track meet where I run for 12 and a half seconds and I’m shot for four days. It’s a whole different biological, neurochemical, physiological thing when there’s that feeling … because a race is kind of like chasing or being chased by prey and completely different thing going on biochemically, and the way your body responds is different. Some of the natural movement or functional moving things, the way it’s been taught, like let’s just climb trees, let’s just do whatever.
It’s fun. I’m all for the fun part, but the idea that that’s going to get us fit the way we see indigenous tribes and Aboriginal tribes fit, it’s like, yeah, it’s not going to happen.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah. I mean, we could spend the whole hour talking about that, but I think one of the things I do appreciate about primal movement is just bringing it back to a little bit more like innately what is human nature and how to move in your body and I think that we’ve made movement overly complicated. So I think simplifying it, I totally agree with.
Steven Sashen:
Agreed. The distinction that I want to make for … is that what you’re talking about is getting an understanding and a familiarity with these fundamental movements versus we’re just taking you out of the weight room, into something else that’s, faking the weight room and that’s the distinction or at least let’s say, I think that’s the distinction, I don’t know where … you’re nodding your head, so I’m going for the fact that you agree with that.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
So, squatting, lunging, balance. Talk to me what you … I mean, anything else you want to add to that list and also I’m curious what you do for balance. Balance is one of my favs.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah. So squat, lunge, balance, I think balance, technically speaking, we walk, which is like a single leg, so you’ve got to be able to balance and I think as … that’s like a very underrated trained movement pattern and then core is really important. We work on breathwork so that we can engage with our core. Obviously it’s the center of your body and really what I’m trying to do is get people to make the connection between everyday movements that they do and then putting them in a workout class, but that they understand what’s happening in their body. So when you sit down to your chair, 20 times a day, you actually start to hinge correctly, get into your hips and protect your knees and your back. So I think for me, it’s really making it accessible, fun and simple.
Steven Sashen:
So how much are you doing online versus in person?
Kaisa Keranen:
Everything I’m doing now is actually online. I miss in person a lot, but I realize I wanted to be able to speak to the masses and there’s only so many hours within a day, and so for now, I think at some point in time, I’ll go back to in person, but for now online programming and workouts is what I’m doing.
Steven Sashen:
What was the most surprising thing or the biggest challenge you ran into moving from in-person to online?
Kaisa Keranen:
Where do I even begin? I mean, it’s been a slow progression. Yeah, so I went from running my full-on training business in-person to slowly going on to social media, to slowly making that a company and then selling programs and now, we have Just Move, which is our platform. So it’s been a very slow transition for me. I think I miss human connection. There’s so much that happens when you’re in person with somebody and you’re feeding off of their energy. I’m not just teaching people how to move in their body. I’m also like their therapist in that hour or their cheerleader or their support system. So there’s so much of that, that I miss when it’s behind a screen but I also … the trade off for me is that I get to move with so many more people than I would, if I was training in person and I would never change that.
Steven Sashen:
Well, a question just popped in … I know what else, so I want to go back to the very beginning of how I tease this thing. We touched on it briefly, but I want to go back to this whole thing about how bodies look versus health and I’m going to … there’s a bit of an intro for that or funny you say it, there’s a fitness guy who’s a good friend of mine. Very successful author. He refers to himself as an amateur … or no, recreational body builder, which is just that he likes to lift, is the way of putting it. He did a whole thing about how this whole idea that you can lift weights to shape your muscles in a particular way. He goes, “FYI, complete bullshit. Your muscles are shape the way they’re shaped because of genetics. You can make things bigger. You can make things smaller.”
They’ll get bigger, how they get bigger. They get smaller, how they get smaller. End of story.” You can work on certain things a little bit, basically, he was just trying to debunk this idea that you could look at a picture of somebody and go, I want to look like that and think that that’s actually doable for you, especially when who you’re looking at in magazines or et cetera, or genetic freaks, who’ve been airbrushed.
Kaisa Keranen:
Amen. Yeah. My saying is health is a feeling, not a look. So for me, I am genetically muscular. So I grew up … I’m 35 right now, but I grew up in a time where there were definitely female athletes, but there weren’t magazines, there was definitely not social media. So I wasn’t seeing anybody that looked like me. I was basically a … I was a freaking nature back then and totally with CrossFit and everything now, strong is beautiful. That’s a whole thing and young girls coming up can see themselves in many women that are more genetically muscular now. I had to have an understanding of being grateful for what my body was doing physically rather than what my body looked like. So for me, my saying, I am more than my body really helped me to understand that I’m not defined by what my body looks like, but I’m also grateful for everything that she can do.
When she is her healthiest, when I’m taking care of her, I’m moving, I’m sleeping, I’m eating, she’s going to look however the hell she wants to look like, and I’m not going to be able to change that. So when it comes to training and helping encourage people to live a healthier lifestyle, it’s also helping them to understand that having … like looking a certain way, isn’t the same thing as being your healthiest self.
Steven Sashen:
What happens in your mind when you refer to yourself in the third person?
Kaisa Keranen:
I started to do that.
Steven Sashen:
I mean, I asked because I did a whole thing where I spent a bunch of time referring to it as it and even sort of depersonalizing it even more and I so rarely hear people do that, and you did that very fluidly of talking about your body as she versus I as what you were doing.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So that was very interesting. I want you to say more about that.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah. So again, it goes back to growing up. It goes back to, I am more than my body because for me, I’ve had a very interesting and often dark relationship with my body. She didn’t look the way I wanted it to look. Sometimes she didn’t perform the way I wanted it to perform and so, I had this very negative relationship with my body and it wasn’t until my mid 20s that I started … I had a lot of things leading up to it, but I started to have a realization that if … this is the only body I get, so if I could look at her as my best friend, I think I would take care her a lot differently. I would appreciate her more. I would value her and the things that she did for me and I wouldn’t break her down based on what she looked like or what she didn’t look like.
So that happened in my early 20s. It was always something that was in me, like I didn’t quite say I am more than my body in middle school, but that kind of started happening in my 20s and it’s been the best thing that ever happened. It’s actually how I try to help mainly other women understand that they don’t need to be, even though culturally in media and everything tries to define you by what you look like, you don’t actually have to define yourself that way, but it’s still a positive relationship because she’s your best friend. She’s the only thing that you have.
Steven Sashen:
Can I dive into that a little more? So, I can imagine, and I could be wrong. Let me know, if when you came to this realization or this idea that she didn’t necessarily feel like your best friend right away. So, I’d love for you to talk about if you’re willing to, that both those early stages of what it was like developing that relationship, and even now, what you do when she’s not … when you and she are having a disagreement.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah. Yeah. So, awesome and I appreciate that you’re going down on this tangent with me, because I think sometimes people are like, “What is she talking about?”
Steven Sashen:
This is a really big deal for a lot of reasons, and I mean, I’ll give you partly why it’s interesting to me. People ask me questions all the time because we’re running this rapidly growing company, things go wrong every day and they say, “What do you do to manage stress?” And I go, “What do you mean?” I mean, it seems kind of obvious. Well it’s like, well, if I’m having a bad day, if I’m upset, if I’m tired, if I’m whatever, I’m just upset or tired or whatever, I don’t make myself wrong for having that experience or I don’t add another layer on top of that and there’s things that I do every day just because I enjoy them, so they’re not designed to change my state. They’re just part of my life.
I wake up in the morning, I jump in a hot tub. I do the crossword puzzle on there or Sudoku. In the evening, Lana and I sit on the couch, we watch some TV. I go lift weights when she goes to sleep, but I don’t think of it as trying to change what I’m feeling. If I’m stressed out, I’m stressed out until I’m not and if I’m this … God, here, I’m going to reveal a really crazy one. We were on vacation a couple months ago up in the mountains and we were driving on these places and in these mazes where right on the other edge of where we could stand was an 800 to a thousand foot drop. I had something happen to me that had never happened before. I was getting this image in my mind of like jumping or driving off the edge.
Not falling, not landing, not dying, just that first second of jumping, and it was a little stressful that I was having this, what felt like a really crazy image. So the first thing was I wasn’t thinking there was something wrong that I was having these thoughts. I didn’t think I was going to jump. I did back up, I will admit. I was driving a little slower than I normally do but mostly I was curious like, “Wow, this is so out of character for me.” I had an idea about what it was and I mentioned that I had this urge of my wife, to Lana and she said, “Oh, is it just about that freedom, and that first moment of freedom?” I’m like, “Oh my God. Yeah. That’s exactly what it was.” That was my realization was that if there’s been so much going on, that just the idea of jumping and feeling that there’s no control, it’s out of your hands was really enjoyable.
The fact that that thought was coming up was just a little … freaking me out but again, I didn’t make more of it and then once I realized that that’s what it was about and then my next realization was, “Well, I’m free at any moment to just walk away from this.”
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
I can do whatever I want. There’s no obligation, and then it stopped coming up. I didn’t go to the edge of the cliff, but anyway, so having this shifting relationship with one’s self by either not making a derivative of bad, like if it’s bad, it’s worse because it shouldn’t be bad or it’s sort of where my brain went. I’m hearing you do the third person thing as fluidly as you do, is why I found that just so compelling. So anyway, that was some giant tangent, but I just wanted-
Kaisa Keranen:
No, I’ve actually have … I have a lot of the same feelings as you, when I see something hot. I mean, I’m afraid of heights but I’m also like, “Do I not trust myself, like what is happening?”
Steven Sashen:
Wait, the epilogue for it is the other day I was thinking maybe I should take a base jumping.
Kaisa Keranen:
See, the weird thing for me is I am deathly afraid of heights, like I will start shaking but there’s this free … I totally understand what your wife is saying. I think there’s this freedom with all of a sudden, letting go and having no control. Not that it would happen. I wouldn’t do that.
Steven Sashen:
No, no. I got to tell you, I just realized this, so years ago I did go skydiving. I did a tandem jump, which means I got a guy strapped in my back which I do all the time anyway, but this time we jumped out of a plane. Anyway, and there’s two ways of getting out of the plane. One is you stand out on the strut and you just let go and the other is you just roll out of the plane. We are going to do the roll out of the plane version and the guy says, what you have to do, as soon as we roll out, just spread eagle because if people freak out, we start rolling and then we’re out of control and we can just hit the ground. So we start to roll out the plane and I have no experience of having left the plane.
It didn’t feel like anything. So, we start to roll a little bit and as a former, all American gymnast, I’m going, “Oh, this is awesome. Man, we’re going to flip.” I’m like enjoying the whole thing. Meanwhile, this guy is slamming my helmet as hard as he can because he thinks I’m panicking. I’m just loving it and then I go, “Oh yeah, yeah. Right.” Then I do the spread eagle thing. Well, we land like five minutes later and there’s a picture I had on my refrigerator where I’m ecstatic and you can tell he is still furious.
Kaisa Keranen:
My gosh. I couldn’t even imagine. Kudos to you. I don’t think that … that’s never going to happen for me. I will never have that experience.
Steven Sashen:
One day, I’ll do another tandem jump, I’ll give you a call. Look out.
Kaisa Keranen:
I think I’m going to have to pass, but bringing it back to … I think the original question was how did I start having a separation-
Steven Sashen:
What was it like early on, when she clearly was not your best friend and what’s it like now when every now and then best friends have conflicts?
Kaisa Keranen:
Disagreements. Yeah. So again, I grew up as an athlete. I grew up feeling very different than my peers, but I also grew up feeling very empowered in what my body could do, so there was always a very interesting relationship with what was happening with myself and my body, and when I went into high school, I started to go through some really deep dark times and we don’t have to get into that, but I did not want to live. So for me, my freshman year in high school, one of the things that I had to do was turn towards what I felt like brought me the most joy at that time, and the only thing for me was movement. So at that time, I kind of went full force into soccer and track and field. So, this is when my love and appreciation for movement happened because it actually saved my life.
At that point in time, I started to have a deeper connection with my body and became grateful for her, but at the same point in time, I was often very disappointed in her, based on either what she was looking like or the fact that she wasn’t as good of an athlete as I wanted her to be. I had expectations that she wasn’t matching or meeting. Then, I went to the University of Washington. I did track and field and again, she just completely disappointed me with injuries. So, in my early mid 20s, I had a freak soccer accident and I broke my leg. At that point in time, I had already been training, but I had … that was my like most pinnacle moment of realizing that I was separate from her.
It was the first moment that I realized how much I depended on her and how grateful I was for everything that she did for me, no matter how many years I spent, talking trash about her and beating her up and always saying she wasn’t good enough and literally looking in the mirror and nitpicking everything about her. I had the moment of being like, “I am nothing without you. All of my hopes and dreams disappear if I don’t have you to go carry me through life.” So I literally remember, it was my left leg. I literally remember talking to her in that moment and saying, “If you heal faster than the doctor said that you would, I promise I will take care of you for the rest of my life. I will do anything and everything that you ask me to do. I will always listen to you.”
I think that was that pinnacle moment for me and that was that game changing moment. So she’s always been my best friend, but she’s been my best friend ever since.
Steven Sashen:
I mean, that realization that despite all of your … I mean, it’s metaphorical somewhat, despite all of your horrible treatment, she never left. She never … I mean, he kept showing up over and over and over, despite all the things that you were doing to deny, distance, change, not accept, et cetera, which is … I mean, I’m only crying a little bit because we can all do this. I mean, it’s an amazing thing. I had a … I didn’t have that version. I had one where I realized that all the complaining that I had ever made about how I thought my parents, particularly my father, should have been but had he been the way I had been internally demanding, I would’ve been unfit for human consumption. Had he not been the sort of create the walls that he did.
I would’ve not had anything to bounce off of or contain and I literally … the thought was, I literally wouldn’t know how to deal with humans. I mean, I have a hard enough time dealing with them as it is because I say things like … I’ve had people say to me, I say, how are you doing? They go, “Well, I just got cancer,” and I go, “Oh my God, that must be so exciting.” They say … and here’s the thing, people usually look like you do and their eyes pop out like, “What are you, crazy?” What they usually say is they look around to make sure no one else can hear and go, it totally is because having something like that is one of those moments where you suddenly realize I’m only going to deal with people that I like. I’m not going to deal with situations that are not helpful for me.
I mean, it really just puts your life in focus. It’s a variation of … I had an ex-girlfriend who was dying of cancer and I called her. I said, “I’m very upset because you’re living my fantasy.” She goes, “What’s that?” I said, “Think about it.” She goes, “Oh I know I’m going to die.” I said, “Yeah, what a gift.” She goes, “It’s incredible,” and she just … but back with the thing with my father, like the moment I realized that had he been different in your case, had your body been different, you wouldn’t have the life you had and I could think of the infinite ways that mine would’ve been worse. My next thought was, “Hey, I don’t need therapy,” because it’s over, I’m not arguing with that kind of reality any longer.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So, I love hearing your story about that.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah. Yeah. I still go to a lot of therapy. I need a lot of therapy.
Steven Sashen:
So now when you find yourself having one of those thoughts, how do you experience the thought differently than you did early on and what do you do when … after that thought arises?
Kaisa Keranen:
Absolutely. Yeah. So for me, it’s human nature to have negative thoughts about yourself or life or anything.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kaisa Keranen:
So, I don’t try to control them. I actually try to welcome them and have them. The difference is I don’t sit in them. I don’t dwell on them. So for me, especially as a teenager and early on in my 20s, I just lived in those dark moments. They just consumed me. I was those dark moments. I was every negative thought that came into my mind. I was that and so, it’s not for me that I’m trying to get rid of that. I’m just trying not to dwell in that. So every single day I have a negative thought about my body, every single day. I mean, she is 35 now and she looks completely different and the first thing I want to say about her is something negative and I just allow it to go in and out and then I replace them. It’s how people talk about practicing at the gym and doing reps.
I replace them with something positive. I say this all the time, I have big ass arms and I can talk negatively about that or I can also say, “And she can do 20 pushups and 10 pull ups,” like so who cares? You know what I mean? So I think it’s not trying to act like as human natures, we’re never going to have negative thoughts but we don’t have to be those thoughts.
Steven Sashen:
One of my favorite hobbies is as I roll out of bed, I pinched to see if I somehow lost a bunch of body fat while I was sound asleep.
Kaisa Keranen:
My gosh.
Steven Sashen:
I swear to God every morning and it’s like an ongoing joke. I mean, I find it very entertaining that I do this.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Since it’s just a habit, I don’t really care. It’s like literally … there, I just did it again, and it cracks me up. I mean, I know that if there was going to be any change in the way this thing looked, it would take not unreasonable amount of time and the change would be slow enough that I wouldn’t notice them between last night or yesterday morning and this morning and yet, I literally can’t stop myself from doing it and I find that hysterical.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t pinch my stomach, but I hear you. She can do whatever she wants.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I don’t complain about my arms. Actually, it’s been fun. I’ve been working out more lately than I have before because I started another habit, which is once my wife goes to bed, she goes bed around 9:30 or so. That’s when I get into work out. I’ve been able to do that more lately than I have before and it’s been very entertaining because since I’ve been doing this now for like nine months, my body has changed a bit. It’s kind of getting not back to gymnast shape, but it certainly getting some of that back and my favorite part is the other day, Lana just came up to me and she just put her hand on my delts and just went, “Hmm.” So part of it is part of it is neurotically funny and the other part is fun. People ask me, like they say, “What do you do for workout?” I go, “As a sprinter, I mostly just work on my posterior chain and as someone who’s vein, I do some bench pressing and pulls ups.”
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah, but you have an appreciation, and it sounds like you have your entire life for what your body can physically do. So, I think there’s just a completely … you might jokingly also kind of break it down or pinch your stomach or whatever, but you also very deeply have an appreciation for what your body does for you and I think some people don’t.
Steven Sashen:
I’m going to be 60 in a couple of months and what that means is when I’m on the track with a bunch of younger guys, including the master’s guys, like the guys in their 30s, I’ve now gotten to the age where I’m an inspiration and every time they tell me that, I want to punch them. I go, “Not yet. Give me another 10 years.” I do love that for whatever crazy reason, 99% genetics, I’m still able to do the things that I can do and I have to remind myself that I can’t do the things that I was doing when I was 20, 25, but the fact that I can do them is something that I don’t take lightly. It’s really delightful and if I didn’t have this body doing that thing. I’m sure I’d be grateful for what it’s doing then, but I enjoy that one because it gives me something to do that I like, that I actually enjoy and there’s not a lot of … other things like that for me.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah, and I think bringing back to joy, I think that most human beings would enjoy moving their body around if only they were given an opportunity to explore what their body could do, and I think that’s why I come so passionately in an industry where we say movement only looks like this or it’s labeled this, this and this, where it’s not. Movement, I say all the time is a celebration of what your body can do and there’s a million different ways to move. It’s just about finding the right one or one’s for you.
Steven Sashen:
So, thank you for bringing it back to that. I mean, we took a fun psychological detour. I appreciate you being willing to do that. That’s also my favorite conversation, but so backing up to getting people to really understand and appreciate and enjoy movement, one thing that occurred to me is I also find it interesting people like to have a script to follow, a plan, things like I do the following, I get the following result. That’s just the way we’re wired. I have a sneaking suspicion that that’s not how you work, but you deal with people who have that idea. Am I incorrect?
Kaisa Keranen:
No, that’s 100% correct.
Steven Sashen:
So, talk to me about that.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of funny because it’s like, for me, my simple thing became Just Move, like just move, just do whatever you want to do, but early on, it was with the assumption that people knew what to do, that people had any idea what to do. So I have totally understood and adopted meeting people where they’re at, means helping to coach them and to help to get them to understand what movement feels like in their body, and then maybe once they start doing that and they’re connected, then maybe they have an idea of what they want to do, but most human beings are looking for a professional to guide them through an experience that they feel inexperienced in and I’m happy to do that for them.
Steven Sashen:
How do you deal with people who … another thing about humans, they seem to not like to look like beginners or look like they don’t know what they’re doing and you’re introducing them to things that they haven’t done? Haven’t felt. Don’t have experience with. How do you handle that part of the equation?
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah, that’s an awesome question. So, all of my programs are at home programs, so I take away the barrier of feeling like you don’t know what to … you’re new at something and people are going to be judging you. So I think that gets taken away. I also have found that people really enjoy when somebody calls out where they’re at. I think that people really enjoy that they are starting their movement journey, that they are completely inexperienced, they don’t know what to do and that I recognize that. I think the issue is that most of the time in this industry, a beginner gets talked down to or gets like dumbified in some way and I think that for me was really important that as I coach, you’re on your own spot in the movement journey and just because I’m over here or you’re over here, doesn’t mean anything different about you. You’re not any less. So I think I have not experienced anything negative about people feeling like they’re starting their journey. They actually really enjoy it.
Steven Sashen:
That’s a wonderful position to take and it’s similar vein. I mean, there’s another thing with coaches in particular, where people come to them to a certain … well, the problem that I see with people who are fitness coaches is there’s a certain kind of pressure where they think they need to look a certain way in order to get clients because they think the clients are going to use them as the thing to emulate, and I’ve seen more than my share of people who are in that biz, who don’t look the way that they … they don’t look like their picture that they’re putting online. They look like that for a couple of days, 10 years ago and there are very few people who are not caught in that trap and I’ve seen it cause a tremendous amount of stress for people.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah. I mean, I don’t sell anything about the way that I look or the way that you are going to look, I sell all about how you’re going to feel and learning about your body and learning how to move and get connected with your body. So I’m not worried about that. I also think some of the most intelligent coaches don’t look a certain way. So I’ve been … my mentors, I’ve been in the industry for 12 plus years, some of the most incredible coaches are actually very knowledgeable and educated in what they do and they’re not selling a look, they’re selling how they can help you feel better and perform better in your body.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Again, we could go into this almost forever. It is so interesting how the fitness industry has grown, how people approach it, from both sides. The people who are teaching, the people who are participating, the people who aren’t participating, and I love that you’re kind of deconstructing this in a certain way. I think that’s super important, because if we don’t know the pool that we’re swimming in, I can’t figure out what the rest of that metaphor is going to be, but if you don’t know it … maybe it’s this, if we don’t know we’re in a pool, it’ll be hard to swim.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah, absolutely and I think one of the things that’s so easy is to be a trainer, be inside the industry and kind of talk negatively about the industry and I think for me, what I realized was we actually … we have so much power and control over how we change the conversation of health and wellness. So for me, what I’m trying to do is get just a lot more people on the same page, about as trainers, as people that are actually working one on one, we have far more control role than media like sex sells in the media. That’s never going anywhere. They’re always going … like the industry is always going to prey on, the big corporations are going to prey on your insecurities and how they can sell you something to fix all of you. That’s never going anywhere.
If more trainers, if more people in the fitness industry can own the power that we have and the influence that we have on the individuals that we train, I think that’s where an actual difference and an actual healthy journey starts, so that’s really my goal.
Steven Sashen:
I like that and I would hope that more people start to similarly kind of deconstruct the whole thing so that they’re not just pitching a program. That’s here’s the beginning, here’s the end here, promising that you’re going to get results that you can’t necessarily get and probably can’t get. You know what, I just remember, there’s another fitness person that I adore who did a long rant about this, that was basically saying, “Take a look at the people you want to look like, really look at them hard. Now, I want you to think about this over and over. You will never look like them.” It just went off. It’s like, you should be … look, if you are somewhere between 15 and 20% body fat as a guy, and you can do that and enjoy it, good, you’re done.
Kaisa Keranen:
I mean, the thing is just like, that’s never going to change though. That is the easiest thing to try and sell, but that will most likely, never happen and the one thing you have to remember is most of those people, even me, like I happen to be on a magazine cover. That moment that the image is taken is just a moment.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Kaisa Keranen:
When I look back at those magazine covers, those were not the most miserable times in my lives, but they certainly weren’t the happiest times in my life and we talk about this all the time, like you can’t do everything all the time, so you have to be … like I say, you have to respect the season you’re in. You have to be okay with that. So when I looked a certain way, that’s because my business was super slow and I had the time to be in the gym for three hours a day. So for me to be where I’m at now and be so happy in what I do business wise and be so happy that almost my entire day is consumed with the things that I find so much joy in, and that I’m so passionate about, which means also that I only have 30 minutes or an hour to move, that’s quite all right. I am totally okay with that.
Steven Sashen:
I love it.
Kaisa Keranen:
So, I think as human beings, we realistic … we don’t have a realistic understanding of where we’re at and what we can do in life.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, and you nailed it, because this is not just about fitness. This is … that we are often arguing with reality in many, many ways but I love that what you’re doing is getting people to … giving people a way in, to not argue with reality, to discover something that they haven’t found that is real for them and becomes theirs. It’s not just, here’s a program to follow. This is … now you understand movement and joy, which is totally, totally dreamy. So I super appreciate that.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah, and not only like that … now, you’ve found movement and enjoy it but if you start moving, you can notice all the things that change, not only like in your body and feeling better, but you probably have better energy. Your mood is probably different. You’re probably sleeping better. So, for me, I think those are the things that we have to hold onto because if you’re somebody that happens to be a season in life where you’re crazy busy, there’s ways for you to move throughout your day, that don’t ever include going to the gym, like literally simple things, I say. You can take the stairs. You can park further away at the grocery store. You can stand up and stretch during a meeting, like there’s so many ways to incorporate movement into your day, if that’s something that you can understand and value.
Steven Sashen:
I thought of one related to what you just said. I’m an efficiency geek in many, many ways. So like when I’m parking, I like to park as close to whatever it is as possible. I’ll drive around until I find that. I also like to move more but I can’t reconcile those two currently. So right now, I park as close as I can park. My fantasy is that one day I’ll have enough cash to buy a stupidly expensive car where I’m going to want to park it far away so that no one is going to bang into it and then, it will inspire me to walk more, which I enjoy doing but I couldn’t justify it currently.
Kaisa Keranen:
So human of you to be like, “When this happens, then all of this will happen.” How about you just do it now?
Steven Sashen:
I know myself well enough that the only thing that will get me out of my efficiency thing is I don’t want someone to bang into my car. The only way I’m going to have that thought is if I have a car where I really don’t want someone to bang into it, where it would really be upsetting. So I understand that about me.
Kaisa Keranen:
The powers that you understand that about yourself. So I actually, I appreciate that.
Steven Sashen:
Exactly, exactly. I know that I need to have chocolate in the house and it has to be really, really good because then I only eat a small amount because that’s all you can tolerate when you have really good chocolate.
Kaisa Keranen:
Okay, but you’re bringing up a great point of understanding yourself and knowing … of knowing yourself, like the point of knowing yourself is so powerful because I think we … if you don’t know yourself, you can’t set yourself up for success.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kaisa Keranen:
So, I think that’s something for me that I like … I really appreciate that you’re bringing that up, but I think it’s huge for people to understand and be very real with themselves, know yourself, understand yourself, what part of life are you in? What season are you in? Then, do what can within that season with the energy and time that you have?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, again, for me, I don’t like using myself as an example this way, but here we are, like I said, I do these workouts when Lana goes to bed. It’s like a 20 minute workout because that’s when I have the time and it works for me. I enjoy it. I look forward to it instead of thinking of it as something where I have to work out because or whatever, I know that when I do it, I’ll feel better and I’ve only got a limited amount of time during that time and on the weekends. I get stuff done on the weekends too. Yeah.
Kaisa Keranen:
And you value your body, your body has done a lot for you. Your body is trying to go … you’re going to The Masters, like you value your body.
Steven Sashen:
It’s an entertaining thing. It’s like when people say … sometimes people argue with me about the whole minimalist footwear thing. They say, “Well, we didn’t evolve to run on hard surfaces. We didn’t evolve to do double twist and double back flips but I used to be able to do one.”
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
And it’s entertaining to push and see what you can do that you haven’t done before. I always like … I mean, one of the reasons I wanted to chat with you is I like the idea of playing with movement so that you can find a broader repertoire of things that you can do, because that’s what I enjoy doing, like if I was ever in some sort of workshop where they wanted us to move in some way, like see how many ways you can do, fill in the blank. I’d be the first guy to climb like into the rafters or leave the room or be upside down or just like look and see what everyone else is doing and find a way to do the opposite of that, because I just find that … like my latest one, I’m trying to see how long it’s going to take me to train myself to put on my pants, right leg first instead of left leg first until I can’t remember which way I actually do it.
Kaisa Keranen:
Yeah. We had to do that in training. We demonstrate always on one side then we had to start demonstrating on the other side. Yeah, I mean breaking patterns and mixing things up is so important. Yeah, I appreciate your understanding of your body and I think that that’s a gift that I am trying to bring to so many other people because we have experience as athletes of how incredible our bodies are, and I think if more people understood that the body you are in is the only body you get and it is an absolute miracle that you are in it and if we celebrated that and moved because that’s a way to express how much we’re grateful for what it can do, I think the world would be a very different place,
Steven Sashen:
I think, and I’m going to start wrapping it up on this idea. I think at the very least, I want to hear from people and I hope that we hear from people, who just start talking about their body as a third person or as a second person, just use the third person because I know how interesting that can get and I imagine that if people start doing that and play with that, even for a few days, they will discover something surprising and I’m hoping that we hear from comments somewhere that people decide to give that a whirl and see what they find and how that-
Kaisa Keranen:
I love that. I love that.
Steven Sashen:
Okay, so this has been such and such a treat. Can you do me a favor? Tell the people if they want to find out more about what you’re up to so they can join you in what you’re doing, can you tell them how to do that?
Kaisa Keranen:
Yes, so you can find everything about me on justmove.com. That’s the platform. That’s where I coach and I encourage movement, and I also have my social media, which is Kaisa Fit. So I’m in my DMs. If you have any questions about anything, please feel free to reach out.
Steven Sashen:
Awesome. So Kaisa again, thank you so, so much. For everyone else, thank you and again, just a reminder, go check out www.jointhemovementmovement.com. If you have any questions, comments, recommendations people who should be part of this conversation, drop me an email. I’m at move@jointhemovementmovement.com and of course, again, if you want some awesome footwear to move in, that’s xeroshoes.com. Most importantly, go out, have fun and live life feet first.
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