Rick Testimonial

Rick Cussigh

CEO, Chicago health care company

For decades, Rick Cussigh skeptically watched others as they used personal trainers to help them pursue their health-and-fitness goals. A pretty decent athlete in his own right, Cussigh figured he knew how to work out.

So it took some physical setbacks—and a friend’s rave accounts of Mike Padua’s training abilities—to bring Cussigh to a point of agreeing to hire Padua. Even then, Cussigh had begun formulating an exit strategy: use Padua’s services for a month, at which point Cussigh would know all he needed to wage workouts on his own.

That was more than a year ago.

“He’s wonderful,” said Cussigh, whom Padua trains twice a week in Cussigh’s home. “That’s all there is to it.”

“I was pretty busted up when I first started working with him,” said Cussigh, 54. “I’d had shoulder surgery, was running a company, and was kind of a slug. He just kept working with me and making me stronger and stronger.”

“He’s someone who knows a whole lot about physiology and exercises and how to improve your body. Unless you have that kind of training, you’re not going to figure it out on your own. I’ve worked out at many health clubs and I’ve not seen anything like he’s done with me.”

“People think they know what they’re doing working out, but the exercises that Michael does with you are unique. They’re creative, they’re kind of low-stress, high-impact and what he’s doing is molding your body from the center out. It’s just a great experience. As you’re working with him, you can see what part of the body he wants to attack, and how to attack it.”

“Michael is very scientific about what he does. It’s a lot of core stuff and what he is doing is taking the small muscles and building them out…He can bring you to your knees with five pounds.”

Cussigh has what he calls “special needs”—he has an arthritic foot, has had rotator cuff surgery, and muscles in his left arm had atrophied. “Little by little, we got that back. It’s almost 100 percent now.”

Until he was 42, Cussigh worked out regularly, but over the next decade his level of activity had dropped off considerably.

Cussigh said he appreciates Padua’s soft-spoken demeanor, which conveys a “quiet confidence” backed by a keen knowledge of physiology and ability to communicate in practical terms to his clients.

“He’s not someone who’s all full of himself. He just gets down to business. He’s knowledgeable about what he’s doing. He’s got a really good touch with people, just the way he conducts himself. He knows what he’s talking about.”

“I thought I was strong. I wasn’t. A lot of his training approach is starting small and working your way out. It’s a much more complete attack on your body.”

On one recent morning, he did 200 sit-ups and crunches during a workout with Padua. “If you line up 100 54-year-old guys, I don’t think you’ll find too many who can do that.”

“One thing I like is you never know what he’s going to come up with. It’s always unique; it’s always dynamic. He’s always changing things up.”

“I dropped 15 pounds pretty quickly, but that’s just the start. This may sound silly but one of the things he has you do is stand on one foot, keep one leg up, and touch your left foot you’re your right hand. Some may say that’s easy. Well, do it a dozen times. It’s very difficult.”

“When I first started doing it, I could barely do one or two before falling over. Yesterday, I could do a dozen on both sides, no problem. And the minute you achieve something, he’s going to ratchet it up. The way that his exercises work is that they look like fairly simple movements. They clearly have a lot of science behind what they’re doing and the evolution of improving and increasing your strength and stability is almost infinite.”

“He has a very good understanding of physiology, a very good understanding of exercise therapy, and customizes what you are doing to get you to the right starting point and continue to evolve and get better.”

“Michael’s been dedicated to this profession since he was a teenager.”