Mike Gray is a fitness lifer. The current president and chief operating officer of Club Pilates franchisee Riser Fitness, Gray began his career in the summer between high school and college as a personal trainer at what would become 24 Hour Fitness.
That term – “fitness lifer” – has taken on new meaning for Gray, who nearly died from unexpected complications from COVID-19 a few years ago.
In April 2021, Gray caught COVID, which initially caused flu-like symptoms, common for a generally healthy middle-aged man. A fitness enthusiast who didn’t smoke and rarely drank, Gray figured he’d shake off the virus in a few days or at most, weeks.
That wasn’t in the cards for Gray, who at the time was serving as president of Club Pilates, one of the world’s largest fitness brands with over 1,000 studios across the globe.
“One evening, my (blood oxygen) level dropped down to 83 and my temperature was at 106. I woke my fiance at the time (now wife) and said, ‘I need to get to the ER, I’m not doing well at all.’ So she drove me to the ER, and that’s all I remember until I woke up,” Gray tells Athletech News, recalling a night that would forever change his outlook on life and leadership.
An Unthinkable Run-In With Death
After being rushed to the hospital, Gray was placed into a medically induced coma and strapped into an ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) machine, a life-support system used on patients suffering from severe heart and lung conditions. Placing patients on ECMO is rare – only around 500 hospitals worldwide carry the machines, according to the Mayo Clinic, and many COVID patients who received ECMO at the height of the pandemic didn’t live long beyond the treatment.
Gray was one of the lucky ones.
Doctors still don’t fully understand exactly what happened to Gray to cause such serious damage to his lungs and heart, but they do know one thing: he’s lucky to be alive.
“When I was in the hospital, my lungs had completely collapsed. I had zero lung capacity and was actually on a lung transplant list,” he says. “If one of the doctors didn’t administer the ECMO unit as an experiment to see if it would help me, I probably wouldn’t be here today. I had a very small percentage (chance) of living.”
Road to Recovery
Gray spent the next few months in intensive care and acute rehab, essentially re-learning how to walk, eat and live inside a body that had been severely weakened by an unknown ailment. (Gray even had to get heart surgery during his time in the ICU due to related complications).
Eventually, Gray recovered enough to return home, but he had to live with in-home nurses, oxygen tanks and physical therapy. Around that time, he returned part-time to Club Pilates, eager to get back to his normal life as president of one of the biggest brands in fitness.
“I jumped back into work as soon as I physically could,” Gray says, noting this was important for him physically but even more so mentally.
Gray’s colleagues at Club Pilates and throughout the brand’s parent company, Xponential Fitness, were excited to see him.
“The reception from everyone at Xponential was overwhelming,” he recalls. “There were a lot of emotions; a lot of people thought they were going to lose me. People would say, ‘Thank God you’re alive, we can’t believe it.’ And they supported me in every way you could think of, down to helping me carry my water bottle. I was like, ‘Guys, I got this.’”
Gray kept going on his recovery, drawing inspiration, motivation and desire from his young son. More than three years since that fateful night in April 2021, Gray feels much better, but he’s still working to regain full health.
“My lungs will never be 100%, but my heart’s still ticking and I’m off all my medications,” he reports. “I’m able to work out, go for a walk and ride a bike, the things most people can do. Am I doing what I did before? Not at all. But I’m very thankful for where I am today, and I’m not done yet. I’m still fighting.”
A New Chapter in Pilates
Professionally, Gray hasn’t missed a beat. After several years turning Club Pilates into a global powerhouse, he took a new position as president of the Xponential-owned Rumble Boxing, eager to help grow the young boxing fitness brand in the same way he’d grown Xponential’s Pilates concept.
But Gray quickly felt the itch to return to Pilates. In September, he was announced as the new president and chief operating officer of Riser Fitness, one of the world’s largest operators of Club Pilates studios. Riser has big plans to expand internationally, including in Mexico, and will count on Gray’s expertise along with $72 million in growth capital from Fortress Investment Group.
Gray is excited to be back in Pilates. He’s even more excited to be back inside a startup-like environment with Riser Fitness.
“I saw what they were building, and it excited me because I enjoy working with people. I felt the bigger we got at Club Pilates, the less opportunity I had – as a franchisor – to help impact people,” Gray says of his motivation for joining Riser. “What excites me now is I’ve got a great group of employees who are hungry and have done really good work. I get to help elevate their career personally and professionally.”
The people part is important. For Gray, appreciating the people he works with more than the work itself is perhaps the most important and lasting mental change he’s experienced from his near-death experience.
“At the end of the day, this is a job, and it’s gonna keep going with or without me,” he says. “This experience has made me realize how much impact people have on other people. The job is the job, and it was what I showed up to. But the people are what I really work for.”
He’s also learned to stop sweating the small stuff.
“My outlook has changed: the things that typically would have gotten me worked up rarely do nowadays,” Gray says. “And when I do get worked up – because I’m human – I’ve learned how to walk myself through it mentally and compose myself in a way that gets me back into a state of awareness.”
