Working It Out: Professional Trainer Micah Lowe On Staying Grounded While Growing A Business
His secret? Yoga, pliates, and therapy.
Micah Lowe has recently switched up his morning routine to start the day off with a seemingly random activity: checking his Snapchat memories and scrolling back through his Instagram feed.
Most of us do this out of boredom when nothing else on the TL is popping, but the founder of the ever-growing, Chicago-based athletic training school Hands Team Academy (HTA) says things are moving so fast for him as of late that it's necessary to “take time each day to reflect and be thankful” in order to stay grounded.
He also does yoga and pilates now — slow, lengthening workouts that are the exact opposite of what he's used to. A lifelong athlete and collegiate footballer, Micah's been in the weight room since age 13. But the "often overwhelming" environment of his newfound role as an entrepreneur calls for a different type of physical release. "I need to slow down wherever I can,” he explains.
Since one of HTA’s IG posts went viral earlier this year, Micah has been a man on the move. During the day, he’s doing private sessions with an increasing number of individual clients in the Chicagoland area. Come evening time, he’s coaching the DePaul College Prep football team. And on weekends, he’s traveling the globe (literally) to run training camps for elite and amateur athletes alike.
How is he handling all of this? I get a definitive, one-word answer: “therapy.”
While an unflinching advocate of the practice now, Micah hasn't always held this position.
"There's this outlook in the Black community, especially among Black parents, where church is often seen as the right and only way to deal with mental health stuff. But since I haven't lived at home for a while, I haven't had that mindset in my ear as much." And in a big win for the ladies, it was actually watching a girl he was dating go to therapy regularly that convinced him to seek out a provider and give it a try.
His experience, he says, illuminated a truth: mental health is just like physical health in that it requires constant upkeep. “If you notice a negative change in your body, you should hit the gym. If you notice one in your mind, you should go to therapy. If you're already feeling long and lean, you should still go to the gym. And if you're already feeling positive and centered, you should still go to therapy.”
Undoubtedly spoken like an athlete, that evolution from viewing therapy as a reactionary tool to a proactive one feels important. It's a natural tendency to want to wean off a behavior once a particular outcome has been achieved. But when it comes to dealing with feelings of inadequacy, negative self-talk, and the general stress of running a business, as Micah puts it: "you've just gotta stay the course.”
And stay the course he did. Micah started HTA in Summer 2019 and for a long time, "people weren't messing with it." What kept him going? A few tried and trues for those making it on their own — passion and perspective. "It sounds like bullshit, but it's real," he promises.
When he’d get rejections from teams or players he wanted to work with, he’d “lean in hard” to his few existing clients and find joy through their improvement. Micah also knew his situation could be worse, and reminded himself of it a lot. "I was totally broke in 2018. I understood it could happen again at any time, so I used that as a point of reference to keep myself moving forward."
All in, the daily anxiety Micah experiences as a founder feels a lot different than what he’s dealt with in the past. “My reputation and name matter so much now,” he offers in contrast to his time as a college athlete where this sort of self-awareness was largely a non-factor. “No one was really going to remember if I dropped a ball on 2nd and 3 in the 1st quarter. But now, I’m a role model to kids and an employer of real people. I worry about doing and saying the right thing.”
Micah says time also feels different to him these days. “When I was playing college football, my dream was to make it to the NFL. And when that’s the dream, you get ‘old’ at 22 or 23 — so I had a sense of urgency to get my shit going. My clock was always ticking down.” Today, it's the total inverse. He’s 25 and feels like his runway for success “goes on forever.”
There’s no doubt the latter clock arrangement is preferred over the former, but Micah admits that not knowing exactly what lies ahead is still pretty scary. I tell him I think that's something a lot of 20-somethings can definitely relate to — even us regular, non-athletic ones.
He nods in agreement, but is quick to call out the importance of spotlighting this particular experience for athletes.
“When you’re playing sports, at any level, your goal is to win games. It’s literally a game. It’s fun.” But then the game inevitably ends. “You don’t get drafted or you get injured or whatever happens, and you’re finally thrust into the real world and it’s like, who the hell are you?”
To address this unique type of identity crisis that can leave so many “spiraling,” Micah offers up the same solution he did before — this time in three words instead of one: “therapy, therapy, therapy.”
Teams have strength and conditioning coaches on the payroll. They’ve got coordinators and assistants of every kind. “Sports psychologists,” Micah argues, “need to be there too.”
With this, I press him on whether or not he was secretly a part of the Ted Lasso Season 2 Writer's Room, to which he maintains he’s never seen the show. Either way, he — and Jason Sudeikis — are definitely onto something.