A New York City-based artist reflects on the mindset shifts and strength gains he’s experienced while working with an Equinox COACH.
Forged at Equinox is a series highlighting an Equinox member’s foray into a new workout regimen, with help from an expert coach. The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
An artist by day, Jason Wallace has always kept himself moving. He played tennis year-round growing up, taking lessons from pros, and cycled around Washington, D.C. and Boston throughout his college years. Throughout his 50 years on Earth, Jason says he’s stayed relatively fit.
But in 2021, a rotator cuff injury took the Chicago native out of the gym for a year and a half. This downtime, combined with his age, left Jason with noticeable muscle atrophy, he says. He wasn’t able to sleep on his right side due to shoulder pain, and he noticed reduced mobility in his affected joint. But he was determined to get back to feeling like himself.
Jason signed up to work with a coach at Equinox DUMBO and ultimately switched to Hudson Yards, a Club conveniently located six blocks away from his studio. There, he paired up with Mike Nicholson, CSCS, CPT, a Tier 3+ Coach at the Club. As Jason puts it, it was “love at first sight.”
That first meeting, Jason and Mike chatted for two hours — twice as long as the usual initial session. They walked through Jason’s injury and exercise history and bonded over their passion for their careers. Importantly, they connected over their preferred style of communication.
“A lot of times people get in the gym and it becomes this overly masculine type of expression,” says Jason. “And for me, it was great to have the right relationship with Mike, in terms of conversation, that allowed him to push me in certain areas but also allowed me to be like, ‘Whoa, whoa, too much, too much. I can't do that.’ Whenever I would say that, he would come up with a physical exercise…that would allow me to have some type of progress with the exercise that formerly couldn't do.”
In the last five months, Jason has trained with Mike three times a week, usually showing up early and staying late, always giving 100 percent of his effort, says the coach.
In the process, he’s made notable improvements in his overall strength and injury rehabilitation. “[With Jason] being from Chicago, I could tell he had that grit, but I could also tell that the shoulder injury he had already started his rehab on was really holding him back,” Mike recalls. Today, Jason’s deadlifting hundreds of pounds and boxing without taking it easy for his shoulder’s sake, he adds.
Here, Jason and Mike open up about the progress they’ve made in their training sessions, as well as how these milestones have positively impacted life outside the Club.
Mike, how did you factor Jason’s injury into your training program?
Mike: “I've had injuries personally and I've helped other people get over injuries, so I know what that journey is like. In the beginning, it's an actual musculoskeletal problem. Then, it eventually becomes a problem that you have to overcome mentally and almost teach yourself that you can, in Jason's situation, use that arm again.
“I could tell that his shoulder was holding him back physically, but mentally, he had the drive to push through it. That was four or five months ago. I would say by month two or month three of doing mobility and lighter-weight [exercises], I realized that the shoulder was good. He just had to tap into that grit, and he was open to letting me push him a little bit. Then we transitioned to just getting stronger because the shoulder wasn't holding him back anymore. We tapped into formal strength training, and he's gotten stronger and stronger since. Now he's, like, 25 years old — he's like Benjamin Button."
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Jason, how would you describe Mike’s approach to coaching?
Jason: “I noticed very early on that Mike’s style is empowering me with information. It really suited the way I like to train. We even [send] each other training stuff — I'll shoot him stuff that I think is interesting or ask him about the legitimacy of certain physical activities. It's just been a great relationship.
“One of the things about the shoulder injury, especially a rotator injury, is that it does get to a part where it's mental. Everything's on the other side of the pain that you're looking for. And for me, because I'm an artist, my life isn't easy; a lot of things are on the other side of the pain for me, and it takes discipline to be able to get there. For me, Mike's demeanor, his delivery, are very focused but also personable in a way.
“The thing that sticks out is when I first started training with Mike, I couldn't do a push-up. I was overweight. I didn't have a lot of energy. Mike helped break down what my target weight was. We had a conversation about creating a calorie deficit. Through his instruction, he makes everything just very plain in a way that I understand. For me, with understanding the calorie deficit, I was able to cut weight within a couple of months and that made a big difference in my training.
“People don't really understand that, a lot of times, you're in competition with yourself in a certain way, trying to achieve discipline. A lot of the stuff that I've been able to learn with Mike has helped me in other facets and areas of my life. He not only explained the calorie deficit thing to me to be able to get to my target weight, but he also advised me on supplements to be able to maximize my performance. Every week was about bettering my best in some type of way. And for me, It's not one major thing — it's all these little things that make a difference in him as a trainer.”
Mike, why do you think empowering members with information is so important?
Mike: “I think the more a client can internalize what's going on, the more they're going to get out of it. There’s the old saying, ‘Where attention goes, energy flows.’ If you just show up to your training session and get a good workout in, you're absolutely going to get stronger and going to get results. But if you start internalizing the why and then connecting that to your personal life — which, for Jason, was to lose a little bit of weight, get stronger, and start to feel like himself again — you’re then able to…bleed [the benefits] into the rest of your life.
“Everything is connected in the human body — emotional, spiritual, psychological, physical. I think that's the best kind of training, when you're able to let that whole experience be connected and make your life better — not just in a way that your muscles are stronger, but where you’re mentally stronger, the way you interface with the world, with your friendships and relationships in professional life. Everything then starts to get better.”
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What progress have you made in the Club, and how have those improvements translated to your everyday life?
Mike: “His deadlift is way up; he was starting off with 135 pounds or 155 pounds, and now he's able to do, like, 315, which is a huge, huge advancement. On all the eight major lifts that my program includes, he's gotten stronger on every single one of those lifts. Because he's naturally strong and he's naturally been able to do the physical stuff his entire life, one day we brought out the boxing gloves and the boxing mitts and he was unable to unleash the beast. That was really cool because a couple of months before, his shoulder would have just been telling his mind, like, ‘There's no way I can do this.’ It's such a dynamic workout that it's not something that we kept doing every week; the high risk, high reward of boxing wasn't worth it to put that shoulder in that risk. But I think that day, once we started boxing, you saw Jason light up. He was swinging for the fences and he wasn't even thinking twice about the shoulder holding him back.
“And then the major thing that me and Jason still joke about nowadays is, when we first started, let's say we were doing a set of 10. He would do, like, five reps and he would say, ‘Let's break it up into five and five’ because he was protecting the injury. But now, he doesn't even think twice about it; if it's a set of 10, he's doing all 10. I think that was a mental breakthrough because he started to trust that his body was back to where he wanted it to be.”
Jason: “The part that we're all struggling to get to is our best self. A lot of people think that you just naturally get to be that, and I don't subscribe to that. I think life is hard, and most of us are trying to prove that we're fit for life. It's beyond just the aesthetics of looking good and [wearing nice] clothes — although I do like fashion. The mental benefits for me are where it's at. With maturity, working out gives me a skin, in a way, to be able to tolerate life stressors a little bit more, to be less reactionary.
“For me, I love that. I see myself having more energy. I see how all my relationships have improved in some way because of my discipline. I'm just more centered in myself, in a certain way, without being moved so easily. And a lot of that comes from the dexterity of working out in some type of way, or at least I attribute it to it. It’s about overall wellness; I'm in therapy. Even though I'm physically training with Mike and there's a certain mental aspect to that, I’m also making sure that I’m cultivating the right conversations and having the right skills and the right techniques in life overall.”
Working out gives me a skin, in a way, to be able to tolerate life stressors a little bit more, to be less reactionary.
How have your sessions shifted your outlook on fitness or life in general?
Jason: “Mike definitely has changed the way that I see things, in a sense of how to always better your best. Keep a mental tab of what you've done and try to increase that almost every week. I've worked out before but I would just push myself to the point of exhaustion — never from the point of view of, ‘We’re increasing.’
“I think a lot of that applies to my life. As an artist, there are a lot of deadlines. There's a lot of stress. And for me, I want more, not less. So as a part of wanting more, you have to also want to be stronger — to be able to take on more, to have more shoulders. A lot of the philosophies and ways in which Mike approaches fitness have been very beneficial in terms of how I approach my art, in the sense of making sure I'm always up in the game in some type of way or pushing myself past my comfort.”
Mike: “I think that's the key about exercise in general: It's the one aspect of your life that, no matter how strong you are — whether you're just beginning or you've been working out your entire life — it's the one aspect of your life that is a controlled environment where you can always push against that upper limit. It’s so comforting to hear that pushing against the upper limit has bled into Jason's professional life. That's exactly what exercise has been for me personally and what I try to coach people. But you’re not pushing against the upper limit because of the destination — ‘Once I get to X amount of body fat’ or ‘Once I get to X amount of weight lifted.’ You can always rely on coming back to that mindset, and then that mindset will bleed into the rest of your life.”
Photo Credit: Jared Ryder