Not About Looks: A Positive Outlook on Your Body

6/24/2023 • Thorne

Movement coach Kaisa Keranen opens up about her coaching journey, from managing her mental health as a student-athlete to co-founding JUST MOVE, a movement and wellness membership community.

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Joel Totoro:

This is The Thorne Podcast: Performance Edition, the show that navigates the complex world of sports science and explores the latest research on diet, nutritional supplements, and the human body. I'm Joel Totoro, Director of Sports Science at Thorne. As a reminder, statements in this podcast have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to The Thorne Podcast: Performance Edition. Joining me today is Kaisa Keranen, a movement coach and co-founder of Just Move, a movement and wellness membership community. After her career as a student-athlete at the University of Washington, earning a master's degree in exercise science, Kaisa has grown a huge social media following and has been featured all over mainstream media, including being asked by Michelle Obama to participate in the “Let's Move” digital campaign. Kaisa, welcome to the podcast.

Kaisa Keranen:

Thank you! Well, that's quite the intro! I was not expecting that. Thank you, Joel. I'm so excited to be here.

Joel Totoro:

Hey, you've done it all, so we're happy to have you on. I'm really excited to have you. You're one of my favorite people in the wellness industry. You're so honest and just real genuine about the message you bring. Can you talk a little bit about your journey you know, from a student-athlete to where you are today and where Thorne showed up in that process?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah. Well, okay, if we're going to talk about my journey, we have to go all the way back because my journey to becoming a movement coach and really my passion behind what I do, started at a very early age. So, I've always been a mover. Like, my mom had me in every sport possible just because I've had a lot of energy and I think I was a little bit too much for her. And so, she put me everywhere. I didn't pick a sport until basically high school. So, soccer was my passion and I loved it. And my story takes kind of a turn because I really dove into sports as a way to deal with my depression. High school, especially freshman and sophomore year, was a really, really difficult time for me. And it was a time in my life where I realized the only thing that brings me a little bit of joy is movement. And movement at the time for me was being on the soccer team and eventually the track team.

So that's where my love of movement came from. That's also where my really deep appreciation for my body and what my body does for me on a daily basis, and then also out on the soccer field and on the track, that's where that kind of all developed. I went to the University of Washington, and I was on the track and field team. And my career as a trainer started in college really because I was completely broken. I had never had an injury. I had maybe one little tweak, but I'd never really been injured before college. And I walked into college, and I was so excited to be at UW and to be on the track team and to be at a Division I school. And literally I think my first week I started experiencing injuries. And it was injury after injury after injury for me.

And eventually, it led to the fact that I never really had much of a career there. But it also led me into really wanting to learn about my body. I had been coached my whole life and I had been coached by males for the majority of my life. And I just felt like, “Maybe there's something missing here. Maybe I need to understand about my body. I need to understand how to train her.” And so, I went and I got certified to become a trainer for myself, not for anyone else, because at the same point in time I was actually considering going back to school to be a social worker. So, given my past in dealing with depression, I really wanted to kind of dive into that and figure out how... The overarching goal was, “How can I help other people deal with their dark days?”

And that's kind of the thought process behind going back and becoming a social worker. But at the same exact time, I was like, "I can't be injured. I'm 21, 22, I can't be injured for the rest of my life. Like movement is such a big component of who I am and how I take care of myself. There's no way that I can just walk about the rest of my life being injured." So, the two of those things kind of went hand in hand for a little while. And coincidentally, the summer that I was trying to decide whether or not I was going to go back and get my master's in sociology, I was also nannying for a friend. And shout-out to Leslie, she all summer long was like, "Kaisa, can you come train me and a group of my friends? Come on, come on, come on." And I was like, "Leslie, I'm a trainer to only train myself. Like I have no interest in training others." I didn’t even... That never crossed my mind.

Finally, at the end of the summer, I was like, "All right, okay, I will train you. I'm going to do this one session." I remember it. I don't have the best memory, but I remember this day like it was yesterday. We were out at a park. There were about five, eight women out there. And I started training them in a bootcamp style. And probably 5 minutes into the training session I fell so in love with coaching. And I think for me, because at that moment what I realized was the love that I have for movement and the love that I have of trying to help others, especially through you know struggling, things that are not easy – which is movement for a lot of people – kind of collided. And that's why I made the decision to change my career and become a trainer. The rest is not history though, Joel! It's a long, windy road to get here, but that's kind of where it all started.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I think we talk a lot, and you have been such a huge impact with your KaisaFit social media. And we talk a lot on this podcast about the impact of social media on health and wellness, both positively and negatively. And thank you so much for being part of the positive, right? But can you talk a little bit about who KaisaFit is on social media, but then when does KaisaFit end and just Kaisa, the rest of you, happen?

Kaisa Keranen:

Oh, this is the hardest question! Okay, there's so many answers to this question because KaisaFit is a very real part of me. And I often say that she is the part of me that I want to become. Like, she leads the way, I think she's the better side of me. In a lot of sense, she's also my alter ego. But KaisaFit was developed because I realized really quickly... So, when I became a trainer, I am 36 years old, and when I was a trainer about you know, 15 years ago, social media wasn't really around. It was around, but we weren't using it in the same sense. The only place that fitness and movement had a platform was Jillian Michaels on “The Biggest Loser.”

But I also was like, "I don't want to be a coach on “The Biggest Loser,” so how is this going to happen?" So that little nugget was in the back of my mind for years. And eventually, when social media became more popular, Instagram – I saw it as a perfect opportunity to be able to share my message with the masses. And although my message is probably a lot more mainstream now, 15 years ago, it was not. My goal was to help people move without that carrot and that end goal of weight loss. I wanted to help people move because I wanted to give them an opportunity to be super grateful for their body, be super empowered in what they could do with their body, and fall in love with their body in a way that made them want to continue to take care of their body. And so that was my goal. And when social media came along, I was like, "This is an opportunity to share my message with the masses."

So that's how I got my start on social. Never in a million years would you think that social turned into what it was today. I saw it as what I would've thought at the time was one of the avenues that I was going to communicate with people. But it gave me an opportunity to do my own thing and speak to people around the world in a way that I never even dreamed possible. And so I really dove into social. I created the personality KaisaFit because I knew that movement was a really scary thing for a lot of people. And I am an intense mover. My body looks intense, I do intense things.

And so, I wanted a personality that was really fun. I always have a smile on my face, which I do a lot in real life, so that's you know, totally a piece of me. I wanted to be out and about. I wanted to work out with the most random things to show people that you can move anywhere at any time. I think one of my most famous workouts is with toilet paper or a cooking pot. That was really the goal on social media, and that's where KaisaFit was originally developed.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I think that's great. And like I said, it is great to be... you kind of have that drive in you where you saw, “Hey, like somebody needs to be the voice of reason here.” And you're like, "Oh, I guess that's me." Right? And you really have to step up, right? And you have. That's awesome.

Kaisa Keranen:

Honestly though, Joel, I don't think I can give myself that credit. I don't think I was like, "Oh, someone has to be the voice of reason." I just was so naive in thinking like, "Okay, that's how the fitness industry does it over here. I'm just going to do this other thing that's different because there must be a bunch of people that want to move because they're so excited about what their body could do." But really, honestly, there wasn't a lot at the time, and there definitely wasn't in the fitness industry. But CrossFit hadn't come along at that point in time. And that's when CrossFit came. CrossFit was probably in existence, but CrossFit blew up a handful of years into my career, and that's what really started to kind of change the game of general pop people wanting to be competitive and wanting to move because they wanted to achieve certain things with their body. And that's kind of where a big switch happened.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, got you. I'm going to continue the hard-hitting questions here.

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah!

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. One of my favorite things I've heard you say is, "I am more than my body." Can you talk a little bit about the difference between like aesthetics, functionality, looking good, feeling good? There's a lot to it, and I think you've got a pretty great outlook on all of that.

Kaisa Keranen:

So, this is a really hard concept for people to wrap their heads around, because normally it sounds negative. When I say, "I'm more than my body," it kind of sounds like, “Oh, I don't like my body.” But here's the deal – I think of my body as my best friend. So as wild as this might sound, I think of Kaisa, the human inside of me, you know the things that I'm passionate about, things that drive me. And then I think of Kaisa, my actual body. And for most of my life, those two things were not best friends. For most of my life, I had a very, very negative relationship with my body because, in athletics, she let me down.

Mentally, on one side, I was super depressed. On the other side, I never got to be the athlete I wanted to be. And I always had this kind of like really difficult relationship with my body. But throughout that time, movement always brought me back to this place where I got to have these glimpses of being really grateful for my body, because at the end of the day, I knew that that was the only reason that I was able to work through my depression and be here today, honestly.

And so, I've had this really difficult relationship with myself. And in college, I kind of came up with a saying of, "I am more than my body." Like as much as people might view me, and especially women, our first initial judgment that people have on us is what we look like. I wanted to have a mantra that I didn't define myself that way. And so it was a reminder for me that I am so much more than what I look like, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. I didn't want to be defined by what I look like. And that started by me not defining myself by what I look like. And so that's really been my mantra. It's really something that I try to push out there because I think if so many more people understood that you are not what you look like, you are who you are to the world, who you are to your friends, to your family, you are what you're passionate about, you are so much more than what you look like. I think the world would be a very different place.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I think we talk a lot on this podcast, and listeners have heard me say it – you know, I've worked 20 years in human performance and so much of the work I've done is on the human side, right? If you're not taking care of that foundational part and understanding, like you said, there's a mental side to you, there's a motivation side, there's a physical side, there's movement. So, I had very early in my career, one of my mentors when I was working clinically in the hospital told me, "Joel, you need to be the CEO of you, right? You don't need to be the expert on everything, but you need to be able to identify where you need some help." And I think you've been really great about that. Hey, you didn't love the way you were being trained. Okay, I'm going to be my chief exercise officer, right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

But I think it's really great the way you talk about you know, movement is a part, and it can positively, negatively, but it's a tool that you can control to impact those other areas of your life. So I really like the message that you've been preaching for 15 years and more.

Kaisa Keranen:

Thank you, yeah.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah.

Kaisa Keranen:

And also, a piece of that, Joel, sorry – but a big piece of that is because so many times when I looked around, movement with the end goal of changing the way that you looked meant that most people did not stick with movement. They didn't stick with taking care of themselves in that way because changing the way that you look is not a sustainable goal, and it's most often not a realistic goal. And so, for me, I really wanted people to start to understand and get in tune with like, “When you work out, how do you feel?” So many of my clients early on were middle-aged women. And when I started to be able to set up environments where they were able to do their first 100-pound deadlift or their first push-up or their first pull-up, like those were the things that I was constantly trying to reiterate to them of like, "How do you feel right now, Mary? How does this feel?"

And that, how empowering it is to feel strong and confident in your body, is actually a feeling that changes your world. And so, for me, I knew that because I had gone through that at a very early age. But so many people had never gotten the experience of being able to feel badass in their body and then starting to be like, "That's what I'm fucking proud of. And when I show up at the gym or I show up to move or I choose to eat you know, my healthy meals or you know, drink less alcohol, I'm doing it because I want to have that feeling again, and I want to do all these amazing things with my body." And that's what ends up being their motivation. And that ends up being a sustainable motivation. And so, for me, that's always been a huge piece of why I speak. And obviously you can tell I'm so passionate about where I'm coming from when like the end goal is not about weight loss and changing the way that you look, the end goal is changing the way that you feel.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I think that's a really important topic. You know, I always talk about, I say performance is personal, right? Like it means as much to you hitting that deadlift goal or running that first 5K as it does to somebody trying to you know, medal in the Olympics, right? So, it's okay to be serious and have goals for yourselves and really take the joy in reaching those goals, right? Like too many times, and I know you and I, we talked before the podcast, we love being busy, right? So, it's good to step back and be like, "Oh yeah, I did that. Everything I'm doing, it's for a reason and it's paying off." So I love that vision and that way you frame everything there.

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

You talked a little bit about this when you said you were coached by men and you're like, "Maybe that's not it." There's a leading voice in sports nutrition that always says, "Women are not just little men." Right? For too long, a lot of the recommendations and even everything from like micronutrients and calorie needs were traditionally extrapolated from you know, research done in Western Europe and America in like the ‘50s and ‘60s on you know, white men. And you can't just be like, "Oh, okay. We'll just cut that in half." Right? Can you talk a little bit about your experiences both as a student-athlete and, like you said, what you didn't know into informing yourself and being the coach? Some of the specific differences around being a female performer?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah. Woo! This could take us all day. So, I would say one of the biggest things that I started to understand was the expectation on my body was completely unrealistic. And because I didn't know any better, I didn't know when to say no. I didn't know when to say enough was enough. So, I... In college, I was a heptathlete, which means I did a lot of training on the field, and then I did a lot of training in the weight room. And I’m a quick... The way that my body works, I pick up things quick. So, I picked up strength training really quick, and that was something that was really exciting for the strength coaches. But they're not communicating with the on-the-field coaches that I just did five hours of practice. I had seven events to train for. So, I'm doing 5 hours of practice. I'm a freshman in college. I'm already stressed out by like, this new life that I'm living.

Now in the weight room, like I love it. I love strength training, my strength coach loves it. But I'm doing like an hour and a half, 2 hours of strength training, and none of it, none of it was working for my body. But I didn't have the confidence or the knowledge to say like, "This isn't working. We've got to do something different.” And so, for me, that was where, kind of... Ultimately, I think what I felt was that I was really letting my body down. I was so disappointed that she wasn't showing up for me and that she kept breaking and that she wasn't as good of an athlete as I knew that she could be.

But ultimately, I knew I wasn't actually taking care of her. And I know it sounds weird, I speak of her as a she. But if we go back to, “I'm more than my body. She is my best friend.” So, I speak about her in that way. But that's where I started to have the conversation with myself of, “I want to figure this all out.” Rather than saying that my health or my potential is going to be in other people's hands, I want it to be in my own hands. And so that was the start and the spark of getting my cert and becoming a trainer.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I love that. We're going to take a quick break here. But after we come back, we've got some questions for you from the audience. And, just can't wait to continue the conversation.

Kaisa Keranen:

Awesome.

Joel Totoro:

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All right, and we're back. All right, Kaisa, let's get into some questions from our audience. This one I'm sure you've answered a thousand times. It's, “I haven't trained in years, where do I start?” And/ or, “I'm untrained, where do I start?”

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah. Okay, so first of all, you are my favorite human to have this conversation with. Someone that has not moved before or doesn't know where to begin, the number one thing I say is just make a commitment to yourself to start today. And that might mean 1 minute, that might mean 5 minutes. That can also mean any type of movement you want. That could mean that you stand up and you just stretch out your body for a minute. That could mean that you take a walk around the block. That could mean that you get your heart rate up by doing a really rigorous cleaning in your house. I don't care. That's why my whole thing is, “Just move.” My goal for you today is to set an intention to move for at least a minute every single day for the next week, and then we check in from there.

And if you've done that for a good week or 2 weeks, then from there I would love for you to pick some type of movement that you wanted to follow along, because I think it's super important that you start to get educated about your body and how things feel in your body. Not just to shout-out myself, I didn't ask Joel to ask this question, but it's why I started Start Moving, because for me, I think there's so many people that have no idea where to begin in their movement journey. And often, beginner movement is not actually beginner enough. So, I started Start Moving just so I could help you with really simple, easy, even 5-minute workouts that get you to understand the foundations of movement and how things should feel in your body.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I think it's great that it echos one of the things that stuck with me in my career, I had a strength coach in the NFL who, you know, can write the most intense programs, but when people are coming to me, he's always like, "It's too much. It's too overwhelming." So, he created the SUDS protocol, which is Show Up Do Something. Right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yes!

Joel Totoro:

And that that's really all it starts with. And I'd love nothing more, and you've seen it a ton in your career, when people come to you like, "I feel great." And you're like, "Yeah. No, that should be your normal."

Kaisa Keranen:

Yes.

Joel Totoro:

Like you shouldn't make noises when you wake up every day. You shouldn’t have... This doesn’t have... This isn't extra, this is your baseline now. And from here, what's next? Yeah.

Kaisa Keranen:

Okay, and I love that. And this goes back to tuning in with how you feel because so many people don't understand how shitty they feel in their body until they start moving and until they start being like, "Oh my gosh, I never knew that every single morning when I wake up, like that's how much pain I was in." But you don't know that until your new baseline changes. And movement, most often I hear people say, "I'm in pain, so I can't move yet." And the correction there is, you are probably in pain – unless you have an acute injury – you're probably in pain because you're not moving. And movement will actually, literally start to grease those joints and help you get out of pain. So, you can start, it's just about finding something that meets you where you're at so that you're starting in the right, appropriate place for you.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. And so often, your ability is significantly higher than your restrictions. Right? So, it's always the weak link, right? So, you strengthen that and you're like, "Yeah. No, you can a hundred percent do that. You just are stopping early instead of trying to fix the problem. You're just like dealing with the side effects." Right? Yeah, so I love that message.

Kaisa Keranen:

Yes.

Joel Totoro:

And leads into our next question, which you touched on a little bit with your toilet paper workout. And I didn't write this question, but it's pertainable to me, I'm on the road a lot. I'm often stuck trying to make due with hotel gyms. What do you recommend for those with minimal equipment?

Kaisa Keranen:

Okay, so my favorite way to move is body weight. So I think that you should open your mind to moving and using your own body weight as resistance. And I think, one, it's really fun. You have to get really creative. Most often when I'm traveling, my body is probably a little bit stressed out, and the number one thing I go to is mobility. And I would say 99% of mobility workouts are done without weights anyways. So, the thing that I say to people is like don't have weights or lack thereof as a restriction or something that holds you back. Use your body weight. There's a million things that you can do, whether you wanted a strength workout, a core workout, a recovery workout, a cardio workout. You can do it all with your body weight.

Joel Totoro:

That's awesome.

Kaisa Keranen:

Or random equipment! In a gym, or not in a gym, in a hotel room, you could use the couch, the chair, pillows. Like there's so many different things that you can do to spice things up a bit.

Joel Totoro:

Right. I think I've done dips over every piece of hotel equipment ever, right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Exactly, exactly.

Joel Totoro:

This one is something I think you get a lot and a little bit you know, going back to some of the heavier stuff we talked about. So, the question is, my training sometimes feels like a chore or punishment. How do I reframe training to be enjoyable again?

Kaisa Keranen:

This is so hard. So first, I will say that this differs for everyone, so I can really only talk about myself. When my training, something that most often I find a lot of joy in doing, when it becomes a chore, I try to take a hard look at the rest of my life. And I look at, if training is becoming somewhere that I'm really not enjoying going to, there's probably other things in my life that are really stressing me out. I often tell people like, "Your life is a pie. The pie is not growing any bigger. You can only slice it differently." So, in seasons, for me, when training is becoming really intense or I'm just not finding that joy, I know that there's probably some other things in my life that are really stressing me out. And I try to look at removing those things so I can create more space for movement to bring more joy.

But also, sometimes I have found that it means I need to switch up my movements. Like, I can get really in a pattern of doing the same thing over and over. I typically like strength training or like high intensity training. And sometimes, when I'm not finding a lot of joy in it, it's because I need to do something different. I've gone and taken dance classes for a whole season. I literally think I did all summer one year I tried to be a ballerina. It didn't go very well, but switching it up was what I needed.

During the pandemic, the type of movement that I needed was mobility and recovery. And that put everything into so much more perspective of when I came back to strength training or a lot of the power stuff that I liked, I felt really different and good in my body, and I was really grateful to be back there and do that. So, the number one thing I say is switch it up. Switch it up, and if that doesn't work, look at other things in your life that might be stressing you out. That means like movement is not that safe space for you to go to anymore.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I love it. And I think, as we talked about at the hotel, like exercise and movement doesn't happen only in gyms. You took a ballet class, there's rec leagues, it's a walk with a podcast on. Like, it doesn't have to be, "Oh, I didn't do my three sets of whatever." That's not a failure. You were just going to move somewhere else. So I love that kind of a perspective.

Kaisa Keranen:

Okay, Joel, but that brings up something. I've been having the biggest debate with my friend about setting goals. So I'm actually not really a goal person, especially in fitness because it creates this really negative dynamic within myself. I get super disappointed if I don't reach the goal. If I have a program and somehow I showed up that day and I just was like tired and I couldn't stick with the program, I'm super mad at myself.

So also, to some people, I say, "Shake up your goals or just cross them off the list." If my goal every single day is to figure out how to move and like I can show up and say, "What's going to feel good for me today?" Then I'm okay with whatever that means. Then I'm okay with the fact that it meant I put on a podcast and walked around the block. I'm not upset that I didn't get my you know, deadlift reps in. I'm happy that I showed up and I took care of myself that day. So maybe also for a certain human being, whoever asked this question, maybe it's also taking a look at your goals and trying to switch those up.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I think it's actually kind of throwing a mirror back in my face. That's one of the things I've had to learn as I've grown is my motivation changes in what you know, is real for me and what's going to get me to, "All right, I'm glad I did that," from, "Ugh." Right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

But for me, sometimes it is the, "Okay." It's, "I said 21 days in a row, I'm at 15. I don't want to break the streak." Right? Sometimes that's the biggest motivator for me, right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

And sometimes it is just, "Okay, what do I need right now? Is it you know, 40 minutes of letting someone else put new and interesting thoughts in my head from a podcast? And if I'm going to be doing that anyway, let's get some movement in there." Right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

So yeah, I think that is definitely a self-reflection. And being the CEO of me, you know, we had some years in the red, the company of Joel is doing well now, right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Good!

Joel Totoro:

I love that.

Kaisa Keranen:

But it takes time. Yeah, and for us, we've spent so much of our life in movement. And especially like if you have an athletic background, you spent so much of your life with goals and you had to get somewhere and you had to do something. And it's like, it's very interesting to have a new dynamic, like for me to have a different dynamic with my body and one that just says, "Hey, whatever you want to do is cool. I'm here. No goals, no end goal in mind. Like let's just do what feels good." That's a very different thing. But it's been for the past, I would say 2.5 to 3 years, it's proven to be very successful. I would say I'm ultimately the happiest, and I'm dealing with one little injury right now, but somewhat the healthiest that I've ever been because of that.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. So that leads me into the next question, which is actually mine for you. I always say to make a real big difference in human performance, it's a really tough demand where you have to be both a professor and a coach, right? And you and I kind of both went with the, you know, we got our education, we lived in the world, but you don't really get taught how to be a coach. What are some of the learnings you've had along your way, or like a light bulb moment of, "Oh, I'm a coach. Motivation is a thing I have to teach?"

Kaisa Keranen:

Oh gosh. I would say really early on in my career, I was lucky. This is going to sound odd to say. I was lucky to have had such deep, dark days with my depression that I knew when I got the opportunity to be a coach and be in front of people, I was in front of a lot of women. Middle-aged women were my clients early on. I knew that my biggest goal actually wasn't to teach them the squat perfectly. My biggest goal was to make sure that every single session, they walked out of their session feeling happier and more empowered and you know, just better about themselves. [29:07] And so that was always how I set my training sessions up. I knew that the mental part was more important than the physical part. I knew they were there to get movement in, but ultimately, they were there. Like, where else in your life do you get an hour that somebody pays attention to you and takes care of you?

So, I would say, early on, I really honored that side of it. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I felt like, I still feel like I'm actually stronger in that side than being a coach. I’m always like... I realize I'm never going to be the smartest coach in the room. And I think my aha moment was when I went back to school to get my master's in sports performance, I really did it because I still felt so insecure about who I was as a coach and what I felt like was a lack of knowledge. But I was viewing what a good coach would be like only from the lens of, did I know every single thing about the body? I wasn't viewing it from, are my clients having a really good time? Am I having a positive impact on them? And maybe that positive impact is because one of the things that I'm really good at is helping them just you know, feel better about themselves and have a positive time in those sessions and do fun and creative movement.

And so, my light bulb switch was actually when I graduated college and, well, my master’s. And I was like, "Shit, I don't feel any better about who I am as a coach. I don't feel any smarter." And I realized like I'm either going to walk out of this industry or I'm going to have a new perspective about what it means to be a coach. And so that's when I started wrapping my head around like my perspective.

What it means for me to be a coach is to really show up as the best version of myself for every single person that I'm in front of. And when I show up as the best person, that means that I can be like a light to them. That means I can be a support system to them. That means that I'm going to bring the best energy possible to them. And I think that was my biggest switch of realizing a coach means so many different things, but ultimately, it means, like, “How are you going to show up in front of either one person or a group of people or a team of people and consistently bring the best version of yourself so that you can bring the best version of them out?”

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I think the way I've heard it explained to me that was kind of my aha moment is, like, “We're in the service industry. Our service is improving your lives, helping you get to where you go, whatever that personal is.” You know? And I can't just have a program and be like, "Well, this is what I want you to feel." It's like, “What do you want to feel?” “Okay, my job is to provide that service and get you there.” And one of the things I was saying to younger people in the field is you know, I'm an expert in my specific area because I've been asked more questions and had to answer them. And I've made more mistakes than you. That's the wisdom of age and experience. But it is really the mindset that I'll never be done, I'll never know enough, right? And I don't have to, right? I built this team of super friends around me that can do it with me, right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

So I love that. I love this.

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah. But I think that's an amazing piece of being a more seasoned, that's a nice way of putting it, more seasoned trainer these days, is that our ego, I think, in some sense, becomes less and less because we start to understand where our circle is and like what we're allowed to navigate in. And when I was an early trainer, I thought I had to be a nutritionist or a dietician for everyone. I thought I had to be a physical therapist. I was so insecure in thinking like, "I am not all these things. I don't have any of that knowledge." And now these days I'm like, "This is exactly what I am. And if you need this, I send you out to them or I send you to them, but like, “this is what I bring. This is what I can do, and I know that really, really well."

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, and it takes a long time to get there, right? For sure.

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

And I love that. Yeah, I love that. I just love this conversation and we could continue having it for hours, but –

Kaisa Keranen:

Ever.

Joel Totoro:

Right. We are running short on time, so I'm going to end with you know, a pretty easy one. It's a mix of we always get these same mix of questions, which I always find the hardest part for me when I'm in your chair, but what's your favorite exercise, supplement, and meal?

Kaisa Keranen:

Okay. My favorite exercise, well, I love anything strength training. Like I would say, I mean, I love deadlift. I love Olympic lifting. I haven't done it in a while. So, there's nothing that compares to the feeling of like lifting or being under a ton of weight. Like I love that, I always have. Favorite supplement, by far and away, Thorne Recovery Protein, and Catalyte is a close second, but... Just because I use them daily and so it's like my go-to. Favorite meal, if you know me, you know that I eat anything and everything 24/7, that's like impossible. Chicken and waffles, steak, and mashed potato. Like I love everything! I don't think chicken and... If chicken and waffles is on a menu, I order it no matter what, so I would say that's like one of my favorites.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, we all have those, "Okay, I'm on the road." All right, if you're going to put it on the menu, you know it's going to be good, right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, nobody puts a subpar chicken and waffles on the menu. I love that. All right.

Kaisa Keranen:

Amen.

Joel Totoro:

So last question, what's next for Kaisa?

Kaisa Keranen:

This is a big question. I mean, because my goal, I have my North Star of you know, trying to get the world to move. And I think the biggest goal is being able to create movement for everyone on our platform. So Just Move is the original platform that all of my online workouts were located. But as of this past Friday, we launched Start Moving, which is another app just because we really felt like the person that's just starting their movement journey deserves to have something that is solely them. They belong in a community of other like-minded movers. And so that is brand new. And that's kind of where a lot of my energy is going right now. But yeah, the goal is to get the world moving. So it's just going to be a constant evolution of trying to figure out how to do that.

Joel Totoro:

All right. Well, that's all the time we have. But Kaisa, so where can our listeners keep up with you, learn more of your amazing message, and kind of follow your journey?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah. Well, if you're on social media, you can find me on any platform @KaisaFit. And then if you would love to move with me, you can go to justmove.com or startmoving.com. And that is where I have all of my workouts.

Joel Totoro:

All right. Well, excellent. That's all the time we have. That was movement coach and all around rockstar, Kaisa Keranen. Thanks, everybody for listening.

Thanks for listening to The Thorne Podcast: Performance Edition. Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on your podcast app of choice. You can also learn more about the topics we discussed by visiting thorne.com and checking out the latest news, videos, and stories on Thorne's Take Five Daily Blog. For this Performance Edition of The Thorne Podcast, I'm Joel Totoro reminding everyone to stay active and stay hydrated.

Joel Totoro:

This is The Thorne Podcast: Performance Edition, the show that navigates the complex world of sports science and explores the latest research on diet, nutritional supplements, and the human body. I'm Joel Totoro, Director of Sports Science at Thorne. As a reminder, statements in this podcast have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to The Thorne Podcast: Performance Edition. Joining me today is Kaisa Keranen, a movement coach and co-founder of Just Move, a movement and wellness membership community. After her career as a student-athlete at the University of Washington, earning a master's degree in exercise science, Kaisa has grown a huge social media following and has been featured all over mainstream media, including being asked by Michelle Obama to participate in the “Let's Move” digital campaign. Kaisa, welcome to the podcast.

Kaisa Keranen:

Thank you! Well, that's quite the intro! I was not expecting that. Thank you, Joel. I'm so excited to be here.

Joel Totoro:

Hey, you've done it all, so we're happy to have you on. I'm really excited to have you. You're one of my favorite people in the wellness industry. You're so honest and just real genuine about the message you bring. Can you talk a little bit about your journey you know, from a student-athlete to where you are today and where Thorne showed up in that process?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah. Well, okay, if we're going to talk about my journey, we have to go all the way back because my journey to becoming a movement coach and really my passion behind what I do, started at a very early age. So, I've always been a mover. Like, my mom had me in every sport possible just because I've had a lot of energy and I think I was a little bit too much for her. And so, she put me everywhere. I didn't pick a sport until basically high school. So, soccer was my passion and I loved it. And my story takes kind of a turn because I really dove into sports as a way to deal with my depression. High school, especially freshman and sophomore year, was a really, really difficult time for me. And it was a time in my life where I realized the only thing that brings me a little bit of joy is movement. And movement at the time for me was being on the soccer team and eventually the track team.

So that's where my love of movement came from. That's also where my really deep appreciation for my body and what my body does for me on a daily basis, and then also out on the soccer field and on the track, that's where that kind of all developed. I went to the University of Washington, and I was on the track and field team. And my career as a trainer started in college really because I was completely broken. I had never had an injury. I had maybe one little tweak, but I'd never really been injured before college. And I walked into college, and I was so excited to be at UW and to be on the track team and to be at a Division I school. And literally I think my first week I started experiencing injuries. And it was injury after injury after injury for me.

And eventually, it led to the fact that I never really had much of a career there. But it also led me into really wanting to learn about my body. I had been coached my whole life and I had been coached by males for the majority of my life. And I just felt like, “Maybe there's something missing here. Maybe I need to understand about my body. I need to understand how to train her.” And so, I went and I got certified to become a trainer for myself, not for anyone else, because at the same point in time I was actually considering going back to school to be a social worker. So, given my past in dealing with depression, I really wanted to kind of dive into that and figure out how... The overarching goal was, “How can I help other people deal with their dark days?”

And that's kind of the thought process behind going back and becoming a social worker. But at the same exact time, I was like, "I can't be injured. I'm 21, 22, I can't be injured for the rest of my life. Like movement is such a big component of who I am and how I take care of myself. There's no way that I can just walk about the rest of my life being injured." So, the two of those things kind of went hand in hand for a little while. And coincidentally, the summer that I was trying to decide whether or not I was going to go back and get my master's in sociology, I was also nannying for a friend. And shout-out to Leslie, she all summer long was like, "Kaisa, can you come train me and a group of my friends? Come on, come on, come on." And I was like, "Leslie, I'm a trainer to only train myself. Like I have no interest in training others." I didn’t even... That never crossed my mind.

Finally, at the end of the summer, I was like, "All right, okay, I will train you. I'm going to do this one session." I remember it. I don't have the best memory, but I remember this day like it was yesterday. We were out at a park. There were about five, eight women out there. And I started training them in a bootcamp style. And probably 5 minutes into the training session I fell so in love with coaching. And I think for me, because at that moment what I realized was the love that I have for movement and the love that I have of trying to help others, especially through you know struggling, things that are not easy – which is movement for a lot of people – kind of collided. And that's why I made the decision to change my career and become a trainer. The rest is not history though, Joel! It's a long, windy road to get here, but that's kind of where it all started.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I think we talk a lot, and you have been such a huge impact with your KaisaFit social media. And we talk a lot on this podcast about the impact of social media on health and wellness, both positively and negatively. And thank you so much for being part of the positive, right? But can you talk a little bit about who KaisaFit is on social media, but then when does KaisaFit end and just Kaisa, the rest of you, happen?

Kaisa Keranen:

Oh, this is the hardest question! Okay, there's so many answers to this question because KaisaFit is a very real part of me. And I often say that she is the part of me that I want to become. Like, she leads the way, I think she's the better side of me. In a lot of sense, she's also my alter ego. But KaisaFit was developed because I realized really quickly... So, when I became a trainer, I am 36 years old, and when I was a trainer about you know, 15 years ago, social media wasn't really around. It was around, but we weren't using it in the same sense. The only place that fitness and movement had a platform was Jillian Michaels on “The Biggest Loser.”

But I also was like, "I don't want to be a coach on “The Biggest Loser,” so how is this going to happen?" So that little nugget was in the back of my mind for years. And eventually, when social media became more popular, Instagram – I saw it as a perfect opportunity to be able to share my message with the masses. And although my message is probably a lot more mainstream now, 15 years ago, it was not. My goal was to help people move without that carrot and that end goal of weight loss. I wanted to help people move because I wanted to give them an opportunity to be super grateful for their body, be super empowered in what they could do with their body, and fall in love with their body in a way that made them want to continue to take care of their body. And so that was my goal. And when social media came along, I was like, "This is an opportunity to share my message with the masses."

So that's how I got my start on social. Never in a million years would you think that social turned into what it was today. I saw it as what I would've thought at the time was one of the avenues that I was going to communicate with people. But it gave me an opportunity to do my own thing and speak to people around the world in a way that I never even dreamed possible. And so I really dove into social. I created the personality KaisaFit because I knew that movement was a really scary thing for a lot of people. And I am an intense mover. My body looks intense, I do intense things.

And so, I wanted a personality that was really fun. I always have a smile on my face, which I do a lot in real life, so that's you know, totally a piece of me. I wanted to be out and about. I wanted to work out with the most random things to show people that you can move anywhere at any time. I think one of my most famous workouts is with toilet paper or a cooking pot. That was really the goal on social media, and that's where KaisaFit was originally developed.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I think that's great. And like I said, it is great to be... you kind of have that drive in you where you saw, “Hey, like somebody needs to be the voice of reason here.” And you're like, "Oh, I guess that's me." Right? And you really have to step up, right? And you have. That's awesome.

Kaisa Keranen:

Honestly though, Joel, I don't think I can give myself that credit. I don't think I was like, "Oh, someone has to be the voice of reason." I just was so naive in thinking like, "Okay, that's how the fitness industry does it over here. I'm just going to do this other thing that's different because there must be a bunch of people that want to move because they're so excited about what their body could do." But really, honestly, there wasn't a lot at the time, and there definitely wasn't in the fitness industry. But CrossFit hadn't come along at that point in time. And that's when CrossFit came. CrossFit was probably in existence, but CrossFit blew up a handful of years into my career, and that's what really started to kind of change the game of general pop people wanting to be competitive and wanting to move because they wanted to achieve certain things with their body. And that's kind of where a big switch happened.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, got you. I'm going to continue the hard-hitting questions here.

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah!

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. One of my favorite things I've heard you say is, "I am more than my body." Can you talk a little bit about the difference between like aesthetics, functionality, looking good, feeling good? There's a lot to it, and I think you've got a pretty great outlook on all of that.

Kaisa Keranen:

So, this is a really hard concept for people to wrap their heads around, because normally it sounds negative. When I say, "I'm more than my body," it kind of sounds like, “Oh, I don't like my body.” But here's the deal – I think of my body as my best friend. So as wild as this might sound, I think of Kaisa, the human inside of me, you know the things that I'm passionate about, things that drive me. And then I think of Kaisa, my actual body. And for most of my life, those two things were not best friends. For most of my life, I had a very, very negative relationship with my body because, in athletics, she let me down.

Mentally, on one side, I was super depressed. On the other side, I never got to be the athlete I wanted to be. And I always had this kind of like really difficult relationship with my body. But throughout that time, movement always brought me back to this place where I got to have these glimpses of being really grateful for my body, because at the end of the day, I knew that that was the only reason that I was able to work through my depression and be here today, honestly.

And so, I've had this really difficult relationship with myself. And in college, I kind of came up with a saying of, "I am more than my body." Like as much as people might view me, and especially women, our first initial judgment that people have on us is what we look like. I wanted to have a mantra that I didn't define myself that way. And so it was a reminder for me that I am so much more than what I look like, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. I didn't want to be defined by what I look like. And that started by me not defining myself by what I look like. And so that's really been my mantra. It's really something that I try to push out there because I think if so many more people understood that you are not what you look like, you are who you are to the world, who you are to your friends, to your family, you are what you're passionate about, you are so much more than what you look like. I think the world would be a very different place.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I think we talk a lot on this podcast, and listeners have heard me say it – you know, I've worked 20 years in human performance and so much of the work I've done is on the human side, right? If you're not taking care of that foundational part and understanding, like you said, there's a mental side to you, there's a motivation side, there's a physical side, there's movement. So, I had very early in my career, one of my mentors when I was working clinically in the hospital told me, "Joel, you need to be the CEO of you, right? You don't need to be the expert on everything, but you need to be able to identify where you need some help." And I think you've been really great about that. Hey, you didn't love the way you were being trained. Okay, I'm going to be my chief exercise officer, right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

But I think it's really great the way you talk about you know, movement is a part, and it can positively, negatively, but it's a tool that you can control to impact those other areas of your life. So I really like the message that you've been preaching for 15 years and more.

Kaisa Keranen:

Thank you, yeah.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah.

Kaisa Keranen:

And also, a piece of that, Joel, sorry – but a big piece of that is because so many times when I looked around, movement with the end goal of changing the way that you looked meant that most people did not stick with movement. They didn't stick with taking care of themselves in that way because changing the way that you look is not a sustainable goal, and it's most often not a realistic goal. And so, for me, I really wanted people to start to understand and get in tune with like, “When you work out, how do you feel?” So many of my clients early on were middle-aged women. And when I started to be able to set up environments where they were able to do their first 100-pound deadlift or their first push-up or their first pull-up, like those were the things that I was constantly trying to reiterate to them of like, "How do you feel right now, Mary? How does this feel?"

And that, how empowering it is to feel strong and confident in your body, is actually a feeling that changes your world. And so, for me, I knew that because I had gone through that at a very early age. But so many people had never gotten the experience of being able to feel badass in their body and then starting to be like, "That's what I'm fucking proud of. And when I show up at the gym or I show up to move or I choose to eat you know, my healthy meals or you know, drink less alcohol, I'm doing it because I want to have that feeling again, and I want to do all these amazing things with my body." And that's what ends up being their motivation. And that ends up being a sustainable motivation. And so, for me, that's always been a huge piece of why I speak. And obviously you can tell I'm so passionate about where I'm coming from when like the end goal is not about weight loss and changing the way that you look, the end goal is changing the way that you feel.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I think that's a really important topic. You know, I always talk about, I say performance is personal, right? Like it means as much to you hitting that deadlift goal or running that first 5K as it does to somebody trying to you know, medal in the Olympics, right? So, it's okay to be serious and have goals for yourselves and really take the joy in reaching those goals, right? Like too many times, and I know you and I, we talked before the podcast, we love being busy, right? So, it's good to step back and be like, "Oh yeah, I did that. Everything I'm doing, it's for a reason and it's paying off." So I love that vision and that way you frame everything there.

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

You talked a little bit about this when you said you were coached by men and you're like, "Maybe that's not it." There's a leading voice in sports nutrition that always says, "Women are not just little men." Right? For too long, a lot of the recommendations and even everything from like micronutrients and calorie needs were traditionally extrapolated from you know, research done in Western Europe and America in like the ‘50s and ‘60s on you know, white men. And you can't just be like, "Oh, okay. We'll just cut that in half." Right? Can you talk a little bit about your experiences both as a student-athlete and, like you said, what you didn't know into informing yourself and being the coach? Some of the specific differences around being a female performer?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah. Woo! This could take us all day. So, I would say one of the biggest things that I started to understand was the expectation on my body was completely unrealistic. And because I didn't know any better, I didn't know when to say no. I didn't know when to say enough was enough. So, I... In college, I was a heptathlete, which means I did a lot of training on the field, and then I did a lot of training in the weight room. And I’m a quick... The way that my body works, I pick up things quick. So, I picked up strength training really quick, and that was something that was really exciting for the strength coaches. But they're not communicating with the on-the-field coaches that I just did five hours of practice. I had seven events to train for. So, I'm doing 5 hours of practice. I'm a freshman in college. I'm already stressed out by like, this new life that I'm living.

Now in the weight room, like I love it. I love strength training, my strength coach loves it. But I'm doing like an hour and a half, 2 hours of strength training, and none of it, none of it was working for my body. But I didn't have the confidence or the knowledge to say like, "This isn't working. We've got to do something different.” And so, for me, that was where, kind of... Ultimately, I think what I felt was that I was really letting my body down. I was so disappointed that she wasn't showing up for me and that she kept breaking and that she wasn't as good of an athlete as I knew that she could be.

But ultimately, I knew I wasn't actually taking care of her. And I know it sounds weird, I speak of her as a she. But if we go back to, “I'm more than my body. She is my best friend.” So, I speak about her in that way. But that's where I started to have the conversation with myself of, “I want to figure this all out.” Rather than saying that my health or my potential is going to be in other people's hands, I want it to be in my own hands. And so that was the start and the spark of getting my cert and becoming a trainer.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I love that. We're going to take a quick break here. But after we come back, we've got some questions for you from the audience. And, just can't wait to continue the conversation.

Kaisa Keranen:

Awesome.

Joel Totoro:

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All right, and we're back. All right, Kaisa, let's get into some questions from our audience. This one I'm sure you've answered a thousand times. It's, “I haven't trained in years, where do I start?” And/ or, “I'm untrained, where do I start?”

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah. Okay, so first of all, you are my favorite human to have this conversation with. Someone that has not moved before or doesn't know where to begin, the number one thing I say is just make a commitment to yourself to start today. And that might mean 1 minute, that might mean 5 minutes. That can also mean any type of movement you want. That could mean that you stand up and you just stretch out your body for a minute. That could mean that you take a walk around the block. That could mean that you get your heart rate up by doing a really rigorous cleaning in your house. I don't care. That's why my whole thing is, “Just move.” My goal for you today is to set an intention to move for at least a minute every single day for the next week, and then we check in from there.

And if you've done that for a good week or 2 weeks, then from there I would love for you to pick some type of movement that you wanted to follow along, because I think it's super important that you start to get educated about your body and how things feel in your body. Not just to shout-out myself, I didn't ask Joel to ask this question, but it's why I started Start Moving, because for me, I think there's so many people that have no idea where to begin in their movement journey. And often, beginner movement is not actually beginner enough. So, I started Start Moving just so I could help you with really simple, easy, even 5-minute workouts that get you to understand the foundations of movement and how things should feel in your body.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I think it's great that it echos one of the things that stuck with me in my career, I had a strength coach in the NFL who, you know, can write the most intense programs, but when people are coming to me, he's always like, "It's too much. It's too overwhelming." So, he created the SUDS protocol, which is Show Up Do Something. Right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yes!

Joel Totoro:

And that that's really all it starts with. And I'd love nothing more, and you've seen it a ton in your career, when people come to you like, "I feel great." And you're like, "Yeah. No, that should be your normal."

Kaisa Keranen:

Yes.

Joel Totoro:

Like you shouldn't make noises when you wake up every day. You shouldn’t have... This doesn’t have... This isn't extra, this is your baseline now. And from here, what's next? Yeah.

Kaisa Keranen:

Okay, and I love that. And this goes back to tuning in with how you feel because so many people don't understand how shitty they feel in their body until they start moving and until they start being like, "Oh my gosh, I never knew that every single morning when I wake up, like that's how much pain I was in." But you don't know that until your new baseline changes. And movement, most often I hear people say, "I'm in pain, so I can't move yet." And the correction there is, you are probably in pain – unless you have an acute injury – you're probably in pain because you're not moving. And movement will actually, literally start to grease those joints and help you get out of pain. So, you can start, it's just about finding something that meets you where you're at so that you're starting in the right, appropriate place for you.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. And so often, your ability is significantly higher than your restrictions. Right? So, it's always the weak link, right? So, you strengthen that and you're like, "Yeah. No, you can a hundred percent do that. You just are stopping early instead of trying to fix the problem. You're just like dealing with the side effects." Right? Yeah, so I love that message.

Kaisa Keranen:

Yes.

Joel Totoro:

And leads into our next question, which you touched on a little bit with your toilet paper workout. And I didn't write this question, but it's pertainable to me, I'm on the road a lot. I'm often stuck trying to make due with hotel gyms. What do you recommend for those with minimal equipment?

Kaisa Keranen:

Okay, so my favorite way to move is body weight. So I think that you should open your mind to moving and using your own body weight as resistance. And I think, one, it's really fun. You have to get really creative. Most often when I'm traveling, my body is probably a little bit stressed out, and the number one thing I go to is mobility. And I would say 99% of mobility workouts are done without weights anyways. So, the thing that I say to people is like don't have weights or lack thereof as a restriction or something that holds you back. Use your body weight. There's a million things that you can do, whether you wanted a strength workout, a core workout, a recovery workout, a cardio workout. You can do it all with your body weight.

Joel Totoro:

That's awesome.

Kaisa Keranen:

Or random equipment! In a gym, or not in a gym, in a hotel room, you could use the couch, the chair, pillows. Like there's so many different things that you can do to spice things up a bit.

Joel Totoro:

Right. I think I've done dips over every piece of hotel equipment ever, right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Exactly, exactly.

Joel Totoro:

This one is something I think you get a lot and a little bit you know, going back to some of the heavier stuff we talked about. So, the question is, my training sometimes feels like a chore or punishment. How do I reframe training to be enjoyable again?

Kaisa Keranen:

This is so hard. So first, I will say that this differs for everyone, so I can really only talk about myself. When my training, something that most often I find a lot of joy in doing, when it becomes a chore, I try to take a hard look at the rest of my life. And I look at, if training is becoming somewhere that I'm really not enjoying going to, there's probably other things in my life that are really stressing me out. I often tell people like, "Your life is a pie. The pie is not growing any bigger. You can only slice it differently." So, in seasons, for me, when training is becoming really intense or I'm just not finding that joy, I know that there's probably some other things in my life that are really stressing me out. And I try to look at removing those things so I can create more space for movement to bring more joy.

But also, sometimes I have found that it means I need to switch up my movements. Like, I can get really in a pattern of doing the same thing over and over. I typically like strength training or like high intensity training. And sometimes, when I'm not finding a lot of joy in it, it's because I need to do something different. I've gone and taken dance classes for a whole season. I literally think I did all summer one year I tried to be a ballerina. It didn't go very well, but switching it up was what I needed.

During the pandemic, the type of movement that I needed was mobility and recovery. And that put everything into so much more perspective of when I came back to strength training or a lot of the power stuff that I liked, I felt really different and good in my body, and I was really grateful to be back there and do that. So, the number one thing I say is switch it up. Switch it up, and if that doesn't work, look at other things in your life that might be stressing you out. That means like movement is not that safe space for you to go to anymore.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I love it. And I think, as we talked about at the hotel, like exercise and movement doesn't happen only in gyms. You took a ballet class, there's rec leagues, it's a walk with a podcast on. Like, it doesn't have to be, "Oh, I didn't do my three sets of whatever." That's not a failure. You were just going to move somewhere else. So I love that kind of a perspective.

Kaisa Keranen:

Okay, Joel, but that brings up something. I've been having the biggest debate with my friend about setting goals. So I'm actually not really a goal person, especially in fitness because it creates this really negative dynamic within myself. I get super disappointed if I don't reach the goal. If I have a program and somehow I showed up that day and I just was like tired and I couldn't stick with the program, I'm super mad at myself.

So also, to some people, I say, "Shake up your goals or just cross them off the list." If my goal every single day is to figure out how to move and like I can show up and say, "What's going to feel good for me today?" Then I'm okay with whatever that means. Then I'm okay with the fact that it meant I put on a podcast and walked around the block. I'm not upset that I didn't get my you know, deadlift reps in. I'm happy that I showed up and I took care of myself that day. So maybe also for a certain human being, whoever asked this question, maybe it's also taking a look at your goals and trying to switch those up.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I think it's actually kind of throwing a mirror back in my face. That's one of the things I've had to learn as I've grown is my motivation changes in what you know, is real for me and what's going to get me to, "All right, I'm glad I did that," from, "Ugh." Right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

But for me, sometimes it is the, "Okay." It's, "I said 21 days in a row, I'm at 15. I don't want to break the streak." Right? Sometimes that's the biggest motivator for me, right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

And sometimes it is just, "Okay, what do I need right now? Is it you know, 40 minutes of letting someone else put new and interesting thoughts in my head from a podcast? And if I'm going to be doing that anyway, let's get some movement in there." Right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

So yeah, I think that is definitely a self-reflection. And being the CEO of me, you know, we had some years in the red, the company of Joel is doing well now, right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Good!

Joel Totoro:

I love that.

Kaisa Keranen:

But it takes time. Yeah, and for us, we've spent so much of our life in movement. And especially like if you have an athletic background, you spent so much of your life with goals and you had to get somewhere and you had to do something. And it's like, it's very interesting to have a new dynamic, like for me to have a different dynamic with my body and one that just says, "Hey, whatever you want to do is cool. I'm here. No goals, no end goal in mind. Like let's just do what feels good." That's a very different thing. But it's been for the past, I would say 2.5 to 3 years, it's proven to be very successful. I would say I'm ultimately the happiest, and I'm dealing with one little injury right now, but somewhat the healthiest that I've ever been because of that.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. So that leads me into the next question, which is actually mine for you. I always say to make a real big difference in human performance, it's a really tough demand where you have to be both a professor and a coach, right? And you and I kind of both went with the, you know, we got our education, we lived in the world, but you don't really get taught how to be a coach. What are some of the learnings you've had along your way, or like a light bulb moment of, "Oh, I'm a coach. Motivation is a thing I have to teach?"

Kaisa Keranen:

Oh gosh. I would say really early on in my career, I was lucky. This is going to sound odd to say. I was lucky to have had such deep, dark days with my depression that I knew when I got the opportunity to be a coach and be in front of people, I was in front of a lot of women. Middle-aged women were my clients early on. I knew that my biggest goal actually wasn't to teach them the squat perfectly. My biggest goal was to make sure that every single session, they walked out of their session feeling happier and more empowered and you know, just better about themselves. [29:07] And so that was always how I set my training sessions up. I knew that the mental part was more important than the physical part. I knew they were there to get movement in, but ultimately, they were there. Like, where else in your life do you get an hour that somebody pays attention to you and takes care of you?

So, I would say, early on, I really honored that side of it. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I felt like, I still feel like I'm actually stronger in that side than being a coach. I’m always like... I realize I'm never going to be the smartest coach in the room. And I think my aha moment was when I went back to school to get my master's in sports performance, I really did it because I still felt so insecure about who I was as a coach and what I felt like was a lack of knowledge. But I was viewing what a good coach would be like only from the lens of, did I know every single thing about the body? I wasn't viewing it from, are my clients having a really good time? Am I having a positive impact on them? And maybe that positive impact is because one of the things that I'm really good at is helping them just you know, feel better about themselves and have a positive time in those sessions and do fun and creative movement.

And so, my light bulb switch was actually when I graduated college and, well, my master’s. And I was like, "Shit, I don't feel any better about who I am as a coach. I don't feel any smarter." And I realized like I'm either going to walk out of this industry or I'm going to have a new perspective about what it means to be a coach. And so that's when I started wrapping my head around like my perspective.

What it means for me to be a coach is to really show up as the best version of myself for every single person that I'm in front of. And when I show up as the best person, that means that I can be like a light to them. That means I can be a support system to them. That means that I'm going to bring the best energy possible to them. And I think that was my biggest switch of realizing a coach means so many different things, but ultimately, it means, like, “How are you going to show up in front of either one person or a group of people or a team of people and consistently bring the best version of yourself so that you can bring the best version of them out?”

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I think the way I've heard it explained to me that was kind of my aha moment is, like, “We're in the service industry. Our service is improving your lives, helping you get to where you go, whatever that personal is.” You know? And I can't just have a program and be like, "Well, this is what I want you to feel." It's like, “What do you want to feel?” “Okay, my job is to provide that service and get you there.” And one of the things I was saying to younger people in the field is you know, I'm an expert in my specific area because I've been asked more questions and had to answer them. And I've made more mistakes than you. That's the wisdom of age and experience. But it is really the mindset that I'll never be done, I'll never know enough, right? And I don't have to, right? I built this team of super friends around me that can do it with me, right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

So I love that. I love this.

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah. But I think that's an amazing piece of being a more seasoned, that's a nice way of putting it, more seasoned trainer these days, is that our ego, I think, in some sense, becomes less and less because we start to understand where our circle is and like what we're allowed to navigate in. And when I was an early trainer, I thought I had to be a nutritionist or a dietician for everyone. I thought I had to be a physical therapist. I was so insecure in thinking like, "I am not all these things. I don't have any of that knowledge." And now these days I'm like, "This is exactly what I am. And if you need this, I send you out to them or I send you to them, but like, “this is what I bring. This is what I can do, and I know that really, really well."

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, and it takes a long time to get there, right? For sure.

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

And I love that. Yeah, I love that. I just love this conversation and we could continue having it for hours, but –

Kaisa Keranen:

Ever.

Joel Totoro:

Right. We are running short on time, so I'm going to end with you know, a pretty easy one. It's a mix of we always get these same mix of questions, which I always find the hardest part for me when I'm in your chair, but what's your favorite exercise, supplement, and meal?

Kaisa Keranen:

Okay. My favorite exercise, well, I love anything strength training. Like I would say, I mean, I love deadlift. I love Olympic lifting. I haven't done it in a while. So, there's nothing that compares to the feeling of like lifting or being under a ton of weight. Like I love that, I always have. Favorite supplement, by far and away, Thorne Recovery Protein, and Catalyte is a close second, but... Just because I use them daily and so it's like my go-to. Favorite meal, if you know me, you know that I eat anything and everything 24/7, that's like impossible. Chicken and waffles, steak, and mashed potato. Like I love everything! I don't think chicken and... If chicken and waffles is on a menu, I order it no matter what, so I would say that's like one of my favorites.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, we all have those, "Okay, I'm on the road." All right, if you're going to put it on the menu, you know it's going to be good, right?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, nobody puts a subpar chicken and waffles on the menu. I love that. All right.

Kaisa Keranen:

Amen.

Joel Totoro:

So last question, what's next for Kaisa?

Kaisa Keranen:

This is a big question. I mean, because my goal, I have my North Star of you know, trying to get the world to move. And I think the biggest goal is being able to create movement for everyone on our platform. So Just Move is the original platform that all of my online workouts were located. But as of this past Friday, we launched Start Moving, which is another app just because we really felt like the person that's just starting their movement journey deserves to have something that is solely them. They belong in a community of other like-minded movers. And so that is brand new. And that's kind of where a lot of my energy is going right now. But yeah, the goal is to get the world moving. So it's just going to be a constant evolution of trying to figure out how to do that.

Joel Totoro:

All right. Well, that's all the time we have. But Kaisa, so where can our listeners keep up with you, learn more of your amazing message, and kind of follow your journey?

Kaisa Keranen:

Yeah. Well, if you're on social media, you can find me on any platform @KaisaFit. And then if you would love to move with me, you can go to justmove.com or startmoving.com. And that is where I have all of my workouts.

Joel Totoro:

All right. Well, excellent. That's all the time we have. That was movement coach and all around rockstar, Kaisa Keranen. Thanks, everybody for listening.

Thanks for listening to The Thorne Podcast: Performance Edition. Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on your podcast app of choice. You can also learn more about the topics we discussed by visiting thorne.com and checking out the latest news, videos, and stories on Thorne's Take Five Daily Blog. For this Performance Edition of The Thorne Podcast, I'm Joel Totoro reminding everyone to stay active and stay hydrated.