jews d
in
the
p ro f i l e
[detroit]
Diaspora
Living globally,
rooted locally
Mike Israetel: Fitness, strength expert.
KAREN SCHWARTZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER
M
ike Israetel, 32, picked up his first weights at the Jewish
Community Center in Oak Park. Today, he’s an authority
on how to gain muscle and lose fat.
Israetel is head science consultant for Renaissance Periodization,
a fitness/nutrition company he and friend Nick Shaw co-founded
in 2011 when he was a Ph.D. student in sports physiology at East
Tennessee State University. They met at the University of Michigan
and have build a successful global business based in Charlotte, N.C.
The competitive landscape lacked, from their perspective, a sci-
entific approach to getting results in fitness, strength and health,
Israetel says. And sometimes people were being steered wrong. The
company began by offering personal coaching services, including
training programs, diets or both, with follow-up correspondence to
make sure goals were being met and questions answered.
Now, more than 15 coaches provide those services, some are
world-class athletes and many have doctorates in sports and bio-
logical sciences or expertise as dieticians, doctors or bodybuilders.
“We’ve trained world champions and Olympians,” he says. “We
are telling them how to lift weights, how to organize their training
and how to eat.”
Israetel now designs digital products for the company, so people
who don’t want to hire a coach can purchase workouts or diets
with self-coaching elements. He’s also been the primary author on
three of several books they’ve written on dieting and training.
When he goes back to Michigan to visit his parents, Alexander
and Yelena Israetel, and his sister and brother-in-law, Sonia and
Phil Bramwell, he makes sure to stop for Chinese food at the
Golden Bowl in Oak Park. He’s also reminded of the journey that
originally brought his family to Southfield when he was 7.
It was 1991, and they were coming from the Soviet Union. A local
Jewish Federation program matched his family with an area Jewish
family who welcomed them to the community by showing them
the ropes, inviting them for dinner and answering their questions.
“My family and I will be forever indebted to the Metro Detroit
Jewish community for welcoming us from the former prison that
was the Soviet Union,” he says. “We’ll never be anything less than
totally thankful for how we were treated and the service the Jewish
Federation offered.”
Israetel went to Hillel Day School in Farmington Hills until his
family moved to Oak Park, where he graduated from Berkley High
School before going to U-M for his undergraduate degree in kine-
siology. After a master’s program at Appalachian State in North
Carolina, he worked as a personal trainer in Manhattan, then on to
Johnson City, Tenn., for his Ph.D.
He worked as a professor of exercise and sports science at
University of Central Missouri and, a year ago, took a job at Temple
University in Philadelphia, where he teaches sports science and
public health. •
If you know an expat Detroiter with strong ties or influences from the D who could
be featured, send an email to Karen Schwartz at myfavoritemitten@gmail.com.
10
March 2 • 2017
jn