A Conversation Not About Fitness - Michael Blevins - #160

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Modern Wisdom. My guest today is Michael Blevins, one of the big dogs behind Nonprofit. He is also part of the team who has trained some of Hollywood's biggest actors to get them into shape, including Jason Momoa, Henry Cavill and the cast of 300 So if you were hoping for a conversation about what's the best exercise to get big biceps, or how can I grow my calves, I'm afraid you might be a little bit disappointed because me and Michael talk about everything to do with the fitness industry except for fitness. So exactly how are modern gyms not contributing to our sense of wellbeing? How is fitness training in some of its current manifestations potentially really damaging to people's both mental and physical health? We get into metaphysics, we talk about philosophy. It was not what I expected, but something that I wholly enjoyed. If you are feeling like going deep today and having some very symbolic thoughts about the world around us, then you're in luck. But for now, please welcome a conversation not about fitness with Michael Blevins.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Michael Blevins in the building. How are you doing, man?

**Michael Blevins** (1:45)
I'm good, man. Thanks for having me, Chris. I appreciate it.

**Chris Williamson** (1:47)
Really happy to have you on. We've got one of our mutual friends out with you at the moment, right?

**Michael Blevins** (1:51)
We do, Elodie. Yeah, Elisaurus.

**Chris Williamson** (1:56)
All the way from Newcastle to... Where are you? Where are you based?

**Michael Blevins** (1:59)
I'm in Salt Lake City, Utah.

**Chris Williamson** (2:01)
Cool, sweet, man.

**Michael Blevins** (2:02)
Which is a strange place to visit, I guess, if you're in Europe and you're thinking about coming to the States, it's not generally the destination that you're thinking of. It's usually East Coast, West Coast. The middle area admittedly is not that interesting, but Salt Lake seems to be kind of a sweet spot.
Yeah, it just seems to be... I don't know what it is about it. It's pretty here. It's high desert, high altitude. They're skiing if you're into that. There's a lot of outdoors. You're three minutes away from Red Rock Desert. So it's pretty good.

**Chris Williamson** (2:36)
Yeah, it's good, man. Elodie's a little bit of a wanderluster, isn't she? So I'm not surprised that she's ended up on your doorstep. So how would you describe your approach to fitness?

**Michael Blevins** (2:48)
Ooh, I tend to run away from it, but I have to kind of asterisk that.
I run away from the fitness industry. Fitness, I think, is really important because it's kind of our last attachment to what it is to be human, right? Like, before we become all so technologically advanced that we have robots throwing food down our throat and all entertainment is LED screen and all senses are sensed through some other machine. I think it's kind of the expression of being in your body, your mind. It's kind of the combination of maybe, I don't know how weird you want to get, but it's kind of like a spiritual experience when you express it appropriately and I think my approach to fitness is providing that experience for people, providing like the idea that this is an all-encompassing philosophy that influences other parts of your life.

**Chris Williamson** (3:50)
Isn't it interesting that a lot of people use video games, social media, et cetera, et cetera, as an escape from reality in quotation marks. And now, you're offering people an escape to reality with fitness.

**Michael Blevins** (4:05)
That's a really good way to put it. I would say, and I would kind of bookmark that for a really deep conversation about what it is to actually sense something.

**Chris Williamson** (4:17)
We are here. This is the deep conversation, Michael. Let's fall down the rabbit hole, my friend.

**Michael Blevins** (4:22)
All right. So there's something to this experience and how I frame this for people, because people are very... I don't know how to put it, because I don't want to... People's initial belief is that what I see, what I hear, what I feel is reality, right? But in reality, that's not it at all. So what I sense is an interpretation of certain signals, wavelengths, patterns, particles, that my brain translates for something that I can make sense of. So the color is green, but that's just a wave-like spectrum. In reality, what is that? Like, does that actually exist? Or are we already in a sort of virtual reality? And by putting on virtual reality through our reality, we're just devolving into one level of abstraction. So how I first like to think about it, and this is a nightmare situation for people.