Author Bio

Michael Wood, CSCS, is widely recognized as one the nation's top fitness experts. He serves as chief fitness officer at Koko FitClub, which develops interactive software and hardware for the $60B worldwide fitness and wellness industry, and is founder of the Sports Performance Group, an award-winning fitness consulting company.

Michael's recent honors have included receiving the coveted Boston Magazine "Best of Boston" for the personal trainer category, as well as being named twice consecutively to Men's Journal Top 100 Trainers list (2004 and 2005). In the December 2004 issue, Men's Journal also included Michael on their trainer "Dream Team," comprised of the nine best trainers in the U.S.

His professional experience includes director of business development and business director at Velocity Sports Performance, fitness director at New England Sports Academy, assistant strength and conditioning coach at the University of Connecticut and senior exercise physiologist at the Nutrition, Exercise Physiology and Sarcopenia Laboratory at the USDA-HNRC on Aging at Tufts University. Michael also consults to Sage Strategies, LLC, a premier management consulting firm specializing in the health and fitness, as their corporate fitness expert.

Michael has taught undergraduate strength and conditioning courses at Boston University and the University of Connecticut where he also attended graduate school. He currently serves on the Exercise Physiology Review Board at HealthGate.com and is a review board at HealthyWomen.org. In addition, Michael wrote a monthly fitness column for WALKING Magazine called “One Minute Moves” and his fitness column during his three-year tenure as contributing editor at HealthGate.com was seen on more than 650 medical websites.

Michael has developed 100 strength training programs and 50 audio-based cardio programs to date that are currently featured on the Koko Smartrainer® and Precor cardio equipment. The products are available as part of each Koko FitClub franchise.

His exercise programs have also appeared in two books, The 30-Minute Fitness Solution (by Dr. Jo Ann Mansion and Patricia Amend, Harvard Press, 2001) and Cut Your Cholesterol (Dr. William Katz, Reader’s Digest, 2003).

He attended Springfield College on an athletic scholarship before earning a BS in Human Performance/Exercise Physiology from the University of Massachusetts Boston and an AS in Physical Therapy (PTA) from North Shore Community College.