LORI Johnson
Lori has been a certified massage therapist since 1994. In 2005, she was Certified by Michael as a PUSH Therapist. For the next several years she worked as one of his teaching assistants at various trainings around the US, helping people in chronic pain. PUSH Therapy saved her career as a bodyworker and saved her from the terrible pain she was feeling every day. In 2020, Lori found herself working way too much and her body was hurting again, and that's when she started doing RooT Fx Functional Training and learning how to teach it to others. After a serious car accident in 2021, Lori used RooT Fx to help heal her body from a major whiplash injury. Lori's students who train with her in RooT Fx love the relief they find with improvement in mobility and significantly less pain. They also love that the training evolves with time and they are not stuck doing the same thing all the time. She is a RooT Fx Instructor, Tai Chi practitioner and full time bodyworker at LJ Muscle Therapy in Littleton Colorado.
DONNA Elich
With a background in swimming, ceramics and art, Donna has always had an attention for detail. She taught art for Denver Public Schools for 20 years. She took an interest in ways to heal her body and release tension, and became a Certified PUSH Therapist under Michael’s guidance in 2005. She became a PUSH teaching assistant the next year. One of Donna's many super powers is working with and training professional Musicians on how to use their bodies to minimize repetitive strain and injury. Any training Michael offered, Donna took and in 2020 she began doing full time training in RooT Fx Functional Training and Tai Chi with him online and in person seminars. Both these modalities helped her knee that had become torqued from 20 years of using a ceramic kick wheel. Anytime Donna learns something new, she figures out a way to pass it on and teach it. What she loves most about RooT Fx is that we always have something new to share with our students.
BRI Watts
In the spring of 2020, the global pandemic brought my PUSH Therapy practice to an absolute standstill. We could no longer use in-person manual therapy to treat our clients, friends, or families’ tension and pain. Our fearless PUSH founder, Michael had been in the background spending many years experimenting with and developing a new form of dynamic, progressive functional training based on his decades of training in Tai chi. He decided it was the right time to implement and share it with the world. I had been doing the training and having amazing results with tension release, strength, and increased mobility. Michael asked me to help him build the business and together, we decided to call it RooT Fx – Functional Strength and Mobility Training.
I was so grateful that I was able to be part of the process as we built an online community of people from all over the nation, all working towards finding a solution for their tension, pain, and lack of mobility. This form of training the body is the most unique form of functional training in the world. Its application is both dynamic and progressive. And as the classes, programs, and seminars continue to grow, Michael and I have worked together to bring it to life. We feel like RooT Fx can help an unlimited amount of people to become strong, functional, and mobile.
We want to change the narrative of living with dysfunction, pain, and reduction to one of living with grace, mobility, and experiencing a fullness of life’s activities. We focus every day on what we can do to live a more dynamic and mobile life, no matter our situation, and we invite others to do the same.
MICHAEL Takatsuno
I started playing competitive tennis when I was 10 years old and continued on past college. I played and trained almost every day for 15 years before retiring from tennis and starting my training in martial arts. ​​RooT Fx is a culmination of a lifetime of extreme repetitive, physical training, failed rehabilitation, dysfunctional patterns, searching for answers, finding the right teachers, training and more training. I finally learned about core-based movement, functional strength and correct ways to train the body from several teachers that trained their entire lives to master these methods.
​I studied Yang-style short form t’ai chi ch’uan from Benjamin Pang-jeng Lo. Ben taught the old ways of tai chi training that requires intensive physical training, attention to detail, consistent practice and discipline. I studied Zazen, or Zen meditation and martial arts training under Tenshin Tanouye from Hawaii. Tanouye “Roshi”(Zen teacher) had the deepest understanding of how to develop the human body of anyone I’ve ever met. From breath and posture training to cultivating the power within you, he had no equal. I also trained under Toshiro Oshiro in Matsubayashi-Ryu Okinawan Karate. Oshiro Sensei studied the “old forms” of movement and self-defense and has achieved levels of human movement that few will ever touch.
​I consider myself very fortunate and am forever grateful to have studied under these rare teachers. I have combined much of their teachings with training exercise methods that have been modified and adapted so that they are teachable and repeatable. But the basic foundation and fundamentals of RooT Fx are strongly tied and rooted to these disciplines that have their origins in more ancient times.
I don’t teach RooT Fx to attract the most clients. I don’t teach it to build the RooT Fx business. I teach it because I know it’s the right way to use the body and it can help many people maximize their potential, prevent injury, stay strong and mobile throughout their lives and allow people to age with dignity and freedom. That’s pretty powerful and it’s what drives and motivates me.​
