"Recovering Couch Potato" Mike Schatzki '66 Launches Second Career as Fitness Motivator

Mike Schatzki '66 usually begins his talks by explaining not who he is, but who he isn't. He's not an Olympic gold medalist, a tri-athlete, or a former track star.

He is, however, a“recovering couch potato.” And through a series of lectures and his “Recovering Couch Potato” web site, he's telling the world how to get fit and stay fit“sweatlessly.”

There was a time when Schatzki didn't give too much thought to his own physical fitness. Under the auspices of his business Negotiation Dynamics, he traveled the world teaching the art of negotiating, and, he says, thought that“all of this public speaking, and being on my feet, was keeping me in shape.” However, when he had a fitness assessment 12 years ago, he discovered that he was an“out-of-shape middle-aged man,” he says. He began exercising, but didn't actually lose the 17 extra pounds he'd put on until he added dieting to his regimen.

About two years ago, Schatzki started independently researching the physiological aspects of aging, inspired by the plight of his mother and elderly neighbors who, he says, were“wasting away.” He found numerous articles in prominent medical publications explaining that senior citizens become frail when their systems decay from lack of use. People who are fit, Schatzki discovered, have a rate of all cause mortality (dying of anything, including accidents and violence) that is 50 percent lower than that of people who are sedentary.

A former political science major with a master's degree from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and years of experience as a lobbyist under his belt, Schatzki decided to use his powers of persuasion to promote the value of physical fitness and the various ways to achieve it.“I see myself as a motivator,” he says.“The world needs to get its head around being fit.” According to Centers for Disease Control data on physical activity, he explains, two-thirds of the U.S. population is not active enough to achieve that 50 percent reduction in all cause mortality.

“There are about 2.5 million deaths per year in the U.S.,” he says. “If 70 percent of the population is dying at twice the rate of the other 30 percent, than about 40 percent of deaths would be avoided if everyone suddenly got fit. Obviously, if everyone was suddenly fit, eventually the death rate would climb back up again since we all die sometime, but the long term impact would show up in substantially longer life spans.”

In his talks, Schatzki cites expert sources like the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, and claims that the best way to stay fit is to burn energy. This can be accomplished not only through sweat-inducing activities such as running, biking, or aerobics, but also through simply walking.“If people walk 10,000 steps a day, they can burn an additional 2,000 calories per week,” he says.

In addition to working the public speaking circuit, Schatzki is updating his website with a free database that will convert users' daily physical activities into the number of“steps” needed to burn 2,000 calories a week.

Schatzki, who lives in Far Hills, N.J. with his wife Jeanne, continues his full-time job as head of Negotiation Dynamics and runs his“Recovering Couch Potato” initiative as a side project. He says that his audiences are impressed with the energy he exudes for a man of his age (64).“Everyone can have that energy level,” he says,“just by being fit.”

-Brenna McBride