Meet Michael Kurkowski

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michael Kurkowski a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael , we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

One of the greatest practices I found in developing confidence is counting your daily wins. It’s so easy to keep focus on what is lacking in our lives, or the negative things that happened rather than the positive. In doing this, we forget about the good things, the small victories that we have everyday.

And we know all this, but it’s not enough to just know, and hope we remember. You need to create a practice, a system to develop it.

I think when you are aiming to achieve goals that you’ve never attained before, or trying to change your life for the better, you have to have a system to highlight the small steps you’re making, and celebrate those.

Confidence isn’t something that you have or you lack. There is an ebb and flow to it, especially when you are in the midst of your journey. I’m a big fan of small, simple practices you can implement to remind yourself of the success you’re making.

For me, counting your wins has been the most powerful practice in keeping my confidence up that I can do the things I want to do.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

So, I’m Michael Kurkowski, I’m the host of The Strength Connection Podcast, and Inspire Saratoga, where I connect with some of the greatest people in their fields of health, performance, business, and connection to share their stories, insights and experiences for the listeners.

I’m also a physical and mental performance coach, where in my company, Breakthrough Secrets, I help people who have been in a Yo-Yo cycle of successes and failures connect all areas of strength in their lives, and help implement training protocols to get them in the best shape of their lives.

I began my coaching career in 2008, when a friend (who was a personal trainer) introduced me to Functional Movement Systems. He put me through a thorough assessment of my body, and showed me some eye-opening data on my movement. I became fascinated with the intricacies of the human body, and wanted to learn everything about it, and how to get into optimal physical condition.

Not long after, this same friend was recruiting trainers, and asked if I every thought about becoming a coach. I asked him how it worked, and began the process of getting certified, and landed a job at this local gym working behind the front desk and building a client base.

I always knew I wanted to work with people, and help them in some regards, and as soon as I began working as a coach, I knew this was what I wanted to do for my life.

I managed a personal training team after that for 10 years, then went to work with a great friend at a small kettlebell studio in Saratoga Springs, where we built an incredible community of people for the next few years.

When Covid happened in March 2020, we were about to expand our facility and continue our growth of the studio. Then, we ended up being shutdown for 9 months, which caused us to have to pivot our training, and our program drastically.

It was during this time when my thought process changed a lot in regards to coaching. I saw that so many members who were doing great when they were in our studio, started to fall off into old habits and lose their progress.

From some deep conversations with them, I realized that the key to long term success, regardless of what happens in life, has more to do with our mentality, the stories we tell ourselves, than the tactics and strategies we implement to succeed.

It was during this time that my former partner and I, ( just trying to keep ourselves occupied), started our first podcast.

When we started getting on the microphones, and connecting with other people, interviewing them, I was instantly hooked.

In August 2021, after many changes over the past 18 months, I found myself starting from scratch in my own business.

I asked myself what it was I truly wanted to do, how I wanted to help people, and what mechanisms I could use for it.

Podcasting was it. I started The Strength Connection, which is now over 275 episodes, and started Inspire Saratoga in the Fall of 2024.

As people, we learn the most through stories. Hearing stories from others connect us on a deeper level, and I wanted to help bring people’s stories to light, helping inspire listeners and viewers of the show feel empowered to achieve what they want in strength, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

The mission of Inspire Saratoga is to create the resurgence of American Values of knowing your neighbor, strong community connection, and the power of positivity in our lives.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1.) The two greatest tools we have are consistency and simplicity.

2.) Your words matter, especially to yourself. Work on your words, and they will become powerful.

3.) Take care of your physical health, and it will flow downstream into your mental health.

Advice: To find the right answers, ask the right questions. The deeper your questions, the more aligned you will become with your vision. And action aligned with vision creates peace and confidence. Action misaligned with vision creates anxiety.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

This is such a great question.

In many manners, I think doubling down on your strengths will yield better results than trying to be generally good at everything.

There are always things we can improve on, even with areas of strength, so when you are aiming for mastery, you focus on being 1% better each day, but there will always be trade offs.

I think it’s better to maximize on your strengths, and with other things, either be okay with not excelling in it, or delegate it out.

The biggest struggle I see with trying to be good at everything, specifically in coaching, is people try to change or improve too many things at once.

They try and change their training, their nutrition, their mental practices, their sleep…and then they either get overwhelmed with so much change, or they make such small progress in a few areas that they get demoralized and frustrated.

I think it’s better to focus on one thing all out, and then move to the next when you have that one down.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Leah Ferrone

Jeff Grogan

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