A conversation with Mike Cerbus
I sat down with Mike Cerbus from Power Monkey Fitness to find out what he means when he talks about ‘Strength in Faith’.
Read below what we got to talk about! You can also watch the conversation on YouTube.
Learning what I would like my purpose to be, to spread some goodness all over the world, I think the only way that was possible, was to get into weightlifting.
SK: I first met you at Power Monkey Camp, where I was very curious about the ‘Strength in Faith’ t-shirt that you were wearing, which is your brand and as I later found out, your purpose in life. What does ‘Strength in Faith’ mean?
MC: Just really where I am grounded, and where I feel most strong and most purposeful and it’s my faith. Being somebody that tries to ground all of my choices, all of my decisions, all of my thoughts, in Christ, as a follower of Jesus, that is ultimately where I feel strongest. When I start to feel weak, when I start to feel overrun, when I start to feel stretched too thin, that's where I retreat to. It's definitely like a place of safety, but also a place of purpose. Knowing where that's grounded allows me to feel very strong in more of my endeavours, I guess that's the easiest way to put it.
SK: I am hoping we will find out a bit more about this today. But first.. how did you discover weightlifting?
MC: Learning what I would like my purpose to be, to spread some goodness all over the world, I think the only way that was possible, was to get into weightlifting. Ironically, the principal at the high school that I went to, was an international weightlifting coach. So, he had begun in the 1950s / 1960s and he had a pretty solid national, competitive career. Then transitioned in to being a very high-level coach in the 1970s / 1980s and then up to the present day. He's about 82 and he still works out, still coaches. I was just really, really lucky that I moved into that school district, and some of my older family members had trained with him, and competed and I just fell into it! I was very fortunate.
SK: Did he pick you? Did he say ‘I think you should begin weightlifting’?
MC: Yeah, a little bit, there was always kind of a tradition at the school that some of the guys and girls that were pretty good at some of the other sports, he would encourage them to come to his club gym to train.
Weightlifting is much more popular now worldwide because of CrossFit. It's always been pretty popular in Europe, especially in Greece, there's Pyrros Dimas, he is crazy famous. But in America, especially when I was younger, it was not popular at all.
So, it was almost like he would have to trick you into coming to train with him for weightlifting, he would say - you play American Football, so it will make you faster and stronger, you should come do it. Then, once he got you hooked on weightlifting, he would get you to start competing, then see that there's some opportunity in the sport.
He invited me, and it was kind of through an older cousin who was a nationally ranked weightlifter, who, I admired because he was my older cousin, cool and strong, so it was a mixture of family connection and then Lou DeMarco, who was my coach, a nice Sicilian, Italian guy, he's the one who brought me under his wing.
SK: Where did weightlifting take you?
MC: Where weightlifting ultimately took me was outside of my bubble. The town that I grew up in was very, very small; even if you played sports, you weren't likely to travel more than an hour by car away from the village that you lived in. Once I was able to qualify for some national competitions, it allowed me to start to travel to other places around the United States. I remember my first national competition I was 18 years old and, we went to Florida. I had gone with our club team, a couple of years prior just to watch some of the national competitions and they were in Georgia and Louisiana and some of the southern States. I would come back to school, and none of my friends had ever even visited any of those States so, even that was like a foreign country for most of us! So, it definitely, I would say, in the most basic sense, weightlifting just took me out of my comfort zone, out of my bubble and started to expose me to different cultures, different groups of people and light a little bit of a torch inside of me, to investigate a little bit more.
SK: You seem to be very much ‘in tune’ with people.
MC: I think I'm trying to continuously get more in tune, with myself and everybody I come in to contact with. I think I've always been a pretty empathetic person. But when I was younger I was also a lot more self-focused, self-centred in the sense of I had what I wanted to accomplish. But it's funny that an individual sport like weightlifting brought me into way more of a community-focused life, in terms of not just fitness but even in a faith perspective, which has been pretty cool for me. So, saying that I was in tune, or have always been in tune, I think it's had its ups and downs and it's always a learning process for me, it still is.
SK: Has travelling helped?
MC: It's a perspective builder I think, for sure, and I think that yes, I'm fortunate, maybe I was exposed to that pretty quick at 18,19,20. I didn't go away to University, the University I went to was still very close to home. But the sport itself, weightlifting, the contacts that I made, started to open up that view of different people, different ways of life, different opportunities and that allowed for an empathetic regard. I'm very happy to keep practising.
What did you study?
SK: You studied Education and Counselling, how did it go?
MC: My initial assumption was that I would play football and go to University and probably do some sort of sport there and get a degree to be a teacher and then find a job somewhere being a teacher and coach sports. That's pretty much what I assumed I would do. I did end up with a bachelor’s degree, a Bachelor of Science and Education which was great. It was a nice degree to go through the learning process.
I used that degree for a couple of years, so I took a long-term teaching position. I think that turned in to a pretty big blessing, in the sense that I didn't feel completely secure and it let my mind keep processing and think of if I wanted to have that career, if I wanted to have that job. All the while I was teaching maths, science, reading, I was teaching special needs students, a lot of different things.
I really appreciated all of the children, all of the process, but I didn't feel so fulfilled, I actually had more of a trapped feeling. I felt like this was just not right, so I went back to University and started to take graduate courses in counselling, to be a counsellor of some sort.
SK: Has counselling helped you as a coach?
MC: I didn't realise that it would be such a learning process for me, it's definitely a vocation and it's way more feeling-based. I was maths- and science-focused as a teacher, so I was not much into feelings or anything like that so, that was a cool thing for me to have to start to learn.
It has really helped in having healthy interactions, relationships and focus with people and groups large and small. In a global work community, that we're both in, you come across different cultural backgrounds and sensitivities. I would not have had a lot of the coping skills to learn about them or, be aware of them or without that programme. I'm very, very sure of that.
What is a mindful athlete?
I had a lot more respect for the athletes that were very thoughtful, that had a lot of composure and control over their emotions.
SK: What influence did your weightlifting coach have in your life?
MC: The weightlifting coach that I started with, Lou, he spent 8,9 almost 10 years in seminary. His plan was to be a priest, but he also went to a very athletic Catholic school. It was an all-boys boarding school to lead to seminary but he was very, very good at football so, we had a lot of similarities in that sense. So, this guy that a was really, really respected weightlifting coach and strength-focused guy, his upbringing and background was to be a priest. Then he turned that into a Masters in Latin and English, focusing more on poetry. So his exposure to some of the more intellectual or delicate sides of people still in that strength sports focus, I'm sure that was a big influence for me, because I had hours and hours and hours of time and conversation with him. He was definitely a very big father figure for me I guess. That kind of emotional intelligence, him always wanting me to think more and take more ownership of my actions, my training and all of those things, put a different spin on weightlifting and strength sports for me. I had a lot more respect for the athletes that were very thoughtful, that had a lot of composure and control over their emotions, versus the more stereotypical strong guy ‘just go for it and bang your head on the wall’.
SK: What difference does mindfulness make?
MC: In my instance, it has allowed me to connect sport to every other area of life, and when you find yourself stuck in a certain area, you can start looking at parallels. So whatever principles work in one domain, in theory, should work in all of the domains. So, in weightlifting and in training, just working harder and doing more does not necessarily make you better; it usually turns in to overtraining, injury, lack of progress. With life, school and work, just putting your head down and pushing generally doesn't help; you have to be a little bit more aware of things. Create a process, have a plan, stick to it and be more proactive than reactive. We need to be aware and not just have our eyes closed and be too single-minded in what we’re doing.
What’s your purpose in life?
When I go to bed, can I think about the day and can I say that I did something good, that I have a good effect, and when I wake up in the morning, what do I want to do today that is good?
SK: What's your motto in life?
MC: We had a children's show when we were little, in the US, called ‘Mister Roger's Neighbourhood’. I watched it when I was little and very impressionable. They recently did a documentary about his life and they did a film where Tom Hanks was the actor that played Mr Rogers.
It was cool because, they asked him what’s his purpose in life, what does he want to be and do. He was a very, very strong man of faith, he was very much Christian-centred but he never really let on to that to too many people. He just tried to portray a lot of what he believed to be the best principles; he simplified everything to saying that 'he just wanted to be a good man'. Then from that, he was able to base all of his decisions, all of his actions, all of his work choices. I've actually been thinking a little bit on that. When I go to bed, can I think about the day and can I say that I did something good, that I have a good effect, and when I wake up in the morning, what do I want to do today that is good?
So, one of the posts I shared on Instagram today was 'what does it mean to be a light, like the light of the world, and to shine some light' and when you think of the idea of a completely dark room, the darkness is very present, very full, and all it takes is one little light to open up and allow you to see and have some perspective.
So, a really long answer to a motto but, ultimately ‘being a good light’. I think you can put that into any situation. You know, we're dealing with a world pandemic and people are very frustrated or insecure with what's going on. So, even in a simple situation like going out in public, is what I'm doing potentially helping other people or potentially hurting other people? That can be a good gauge for how to act in situations. There's plenty of situations where I can say that wasn't a moment of being light or being good, you can correct that, you can improve that. For me, that's a very good gauge to have in my mind as a motto because ultimately, I always want to be good. I want to offer more than I take away from circumstances, situations and relationships and life.
Most interesting weightlifting classes you’ve taught?
SK: Do you remember your first class?
MC: If you're a thoughtful athlete, you're always doing some type of coaching, whether it's with your peers, or with dialogue back-and-forth with coaches. So, training with a friend, who was a really good CrossFitter, we always had really good technical discussions, like ‘what were you thinking about on that lift’ or ‘why did you do that’. Some friends at his CrossFit gym wanted to know more about weightlifting, so they asked me to come out and teach a small group class for their competitors.
That small group class was like 15-18 people and it was definitely a bit chaotic in the sense that I was trying to demonstrate a lot of things and have them practise, so I put them all into smaller subgroups so that I could go around and check. That was very much what my coaching class settings looked like for about 3 or 4 years. I refined them quite a bit and I put a cap on class sizes when I had the opportunity.
I started to teach, upwards of 16 classes a week at multiple CrossFit gyms, and I would always try to keep them at my dream number was 6 people. I got pretty comfortable with 8-10 people in a class. Then the next transition was synching up with the Power Monkeys and starting to do clinics and workshops in bigger group settings, more like 20 - 30 people, in a different country with a translator. I had to learn to be even more deliberate with the words that I was using; you can tell already, I can be very long-winded! So I had to become quicker with my comments and my feedback.
SK: At some point, you were coaching all the classes…
MC: I’ve coached 1:1, 2:1, 3:1 sessions, classes of 8 - 12, 2-day seminars, week-long camps and clinics.
In terms of age groups, I have a girl that specifically trains for weightlifting, she's 17. She started taking weightlifting classes with me and her parents when she was 10 and has never stopped.
I also had a women’s' weightlifting class where the youngest woman in the class was usually 50 - 52 and the oldest woman was around 70 - 72. I guess there were a few women that were younger that would pop in, but the average age was definitely mid to late 50s into the 60s and they were phenomenal.
Other unique class settings, I did with one of our other coaches, Kevin Montoya, we travelled to Saudi Arabia and did a 3-day gymnastics and weightlifting coaches course for only female trainers in Saudi Arabia, that was a unique experience. I followed that up with going to Israel and doing a week-long youth camp, so the age range went from 8 to 17 and I had those guys from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, all day long. Any format you can imagine for teaching and instruction, I think it's happened.
Last year I was asked to do a small talk, demo and class for something like 50 football players and I felt like I was going right back to the first class I had ever taught. I had no idea what to do with this group. In those moments I resort to my natural instincts so, I actually do not plan. I just go in with a very blank slate and trust everything that I've practised and learned and go with it. Every type of class and setting you can imagine has happened.
How would you teach kids?
If I could just snap my fingers and have any dream, it would be that schools are rooted in wellness first. Physical wellness leads to emotional wellness.
SK: Let's imagine you are in charge of education. What would be the first thing you would do for kids right now?
MC: If I could just snap my fingers and have any dream, it would be that schools are rooted in wellness first. Physical wellness leads to emotional wellness. The amount of time that children have to try and memorise things that are eventually important, they could also spend it on running around or learning how to do a push-up, or learning how to appropriately play with other kids. There are so many things that still have the opportunity to happen if we, as adults continue to also educate ourselves on how to be healthy and how to have more purpose with our movement.
SK: How do we get kids into strength?
MC: Children go to school to figure out what they want to be for a vocation or career or work. We could put fitness and strength in that category too if children are just exposed to it more often. Maybe they'll find a sport that they love, maybe they won't. Some will say ‘I just like to look nice and feel better’, that's good too. Or some will say ‘I really don't care what I look like, I just want to know how much of this heavy weight I can pick up, or I want to know how fast I can run’.
It's important to have a foundation for wellness right now. I think you can have so much more practical fun with strength and fitness and exercise, there are so many areas to get into. That’s why CrossFit is so addictive. You can focus and embrace the more technical side of one area or, you can look at all the different skills and find something new to accomplish.
Best and worst thing about coaching?
SK: Best thing about coaching?
MC: The relationship side! Without coaching, I would be very limited in how many friends I have. I like to accumulate friends and it starts to get difficult, psychology that says it's very hard for our brain to have more than 100 friendships. After that it's difficult to stay that connected with everybody, but I like the meaningful connections that I get from coaching and they never leave.
So, right now I'm actively working with 20 people one on one but over the last 10 years, let's say I've worked with 200. I still feel connected to all of them, there's never a point where one of those people couldn't send me a text message or, call me or, FaceTime me or email, that I wouldn't remember most of everything about them.
I would always want to know more about what's happening now, so just the connection side of coaching.
Of course, if somebody wants to be competitive then you know, somebody wanted to become an Olympian at weightlifting or somebody wanted to be a CrossFit champion or anything like that, that's fun and exciting but ultimately just the interpersonal relationship side of it to me is. I love it, I crave it, just because I know there's so much value to it.
I know how much it offers me in terms of fulfilment, feeling very good, but in the same sense, I also know how much it offers to some, just from different private conversations I've had with, whether it's a family issue that's happening or relationship issue, or emotional depressive issue, it's so cool as well to be a resource in that sense.
A coach can be one of the safest people to talk to without any judgement, especially when it's a conversation that's outside of the training and I think that's something that I definitely did not anticipate at all going into coaching or going into teaching fitness classes. I also feel very prepared for it from the degree in education, from the time spent in the counselling programme, I think I'm very aware of how much value I place on that and how important it is to me.
I'm generally I'm very, very impressed with all of the other coaches that I meet, that have that same perspective, and even the ones that maybe don't realise they do, once they start talking about it, they really do. When you know those people stay in a field study, or field of education or vocation for a long period of time, I think that's the ultimate factor, especially in a community setting, if you don't love relationships and value people, you're not going to be in it for very long because you're not going to be successful.
SK: Worst thing about coaching?
MC: Time. As much as I love doing it, I love coaching in person, I love even just the back-and-forth interaction of remote coaching side. I like studying videos, I like giving feedback and I also like reading the feedback from the athletes that I work with. I like having a phone call with somebody, I like having a FaceTime with somebody. But the amount of time that takes, does not allow for much else. It can be very consuming to the sense of not knowing when to turn it off, when you do turn the computer off, turn the phone off or leave the gym your coaching. You can have a sense of guilt too when you're wanting to disconnect a little bit. I guess that what I love so much which is the relationships and the interconnectedness, is also the part that I can sometimes be frustrated about as well, because that can drain you.
How do you find balance?
SK: Have you ever hit a burnout point?
MC: Probably, 2 or 3 years ago, I probably got close to it because I was not comfortable saying 'no' to something. I was teaching my weekly weightlifting classes at 5 different CrossFit gyms, so, I would go Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday every week to multiple gyms, but then also, on Friday, I would travel sometimes to a different country to teach a workshop, and then on top of that I was also trying to work with 15 - 20 remote athletes. It was doable and I actually would enjoy each one in its own silo, but what was lacking was meaningful relationships outside of that, in terms of whether it be family, very platonic relationships or even anything intimate; I wasn't able to have anything like because there was no time for it. Then there was lack of sleep and taking care of your own wellness.
SK: Tips for staying healthy?
MC: When I do feel that things are going a little bit too quick or a little bit too fast, I'm thankful to feel capable of just slowing down, bringing it back within me. Why am I doing what I'm doing? Why am I’m travelling to all these places? Why am I teaching all these classes? Why am I working with these people? I'm okay with the activities that I'm doing, or the work decisions or the projects that I'm taking on, as long as I feel that they're projecting what I want my character to be and they're building towards where I want to go.
Where can people find you?
SK: You’re a pretty nomadic guy. Top 3 places to live?
MC: It's so tough. I could have three places with three different scenarios. Saint Augustine, Florida. Las Rozas, near Madrid, Spain. Hod Hasharon in Israel. The reason being those are the three places where I've probably had the most immediate family feeling. Over the last ten years, I've accumulated a lot of time in each of them and really felt a sense of belonging, They're all very different cultures and I really appreciate all three of them. Now, I could choose pretty much anywhere in the United States that has a Power Monkey person and I would be completely happy there. And now that I'm married and I have a wife and her family, all in Germany, I'm incredibly happy here, I could see myself here.
SK: Where can people get hold of you while we are in lockdown?
MC: I've had some remote athletes that I've never met and I feel like they're family, just because of working in a daily back-and-forth, through whatever platform we work through. So emailing me or Instagramming me, I've opened myself up to that and I enjoy it. On Instagram, is Mike Cerbus and then my email is the same - MikeCerbus@gmail.com. Those are always easy ways to get hold of me and philosophise about life or get stronger and more fit.
SK: Where can people get hold of you this summer?
MC: God willing, we will be in Crete in Greece this summer. I spent one week there last year with you and with my lovely better half and I think both of us would put that on our number one list of at least partial living.
SK: Thank you for episode 1 of Chats with Mike Cerbus!
MC: To anybody that's reading, they should know that most of my conversations with Stella, end up like this, sometimes 1 hour, sometimes 3 hours, sometimes 5 hours.
Thank you so much for reading!
You can get touch with Mike @mikecerbus or mikecerbus@gmail.com and you can find him this summer at CrossFit Plaka.
Stay tuned on Instagram for more episodes this season!