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Septuagenarian
CrossFit coach Mike Suhadolnik refuses to let his peers age gracefully.
Mike Suhadolnik, a former
offensive tackle and middle guard at Illinois State University, spent most of
his life powerlifting. At this best, he benched 350, squatted 450 and
deadlifted 550 lb. His physique implied fitness. But when his daughter Molly
and her now-fiancé Tim Hahn asked him to overhead squat more than seven years
ago, he couldn’t get the bar over his head.
Then they asked him to do
burpees.
“I played football in college. I
said, ‘No problem,’” Suhadolnik recounted. “I couldn’t do a burpee.”
Disturbed by this, the
then-65-year-old visited his doctor in Springfield.
“I told him I wanted to live
until I was at least 110 years old but that I did not want somebody pushing
me around in a wheelchair, walking with a walker or having someone wipe my
butt,” said Suhadolnik, today 223 lb.
The doctor recommended changes to
Suhadolnik’s diet, including eliminating processed sugar, dairy and grains.
Suhadolnik also became an athlete at CrossFit Instinct, Molly’s affiliate.
In the year that followed,
Suhadolnik reduced his body fat by more than 16 percent and gained 12 lb. of
muscle. He also paid closer attention to the world around him and the people
in it.
“Every time I turned the
television on, it seems like all they were showing (was) big butts and fat
guts,” he said.
He decided to do something.
It started with a program he
dubbed Doctors Get Fit, and it turned into CrossFit Instinct’s Longevity
class. The Longevity program includes about 25 people split between the 7
a.m. and 4 p.m. classes that occur almost daily.
“Hey, don’t wait until you have
that heart attack and then start working out,“ Suhadolnik said. ”Bullshit. Do
it right now. Start right now.”
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- CrossFit Journal, June 2016
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