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After 10 years on the ice as a hockey player, MIKE DONAVANIK hung up his skates, hit the gym and now he heats up our pages
By the looks of his impossibly tight pecs, Mike Donavanik is no stranger to push-ups. But the 21-year-old fitness trainer from Southern California had never done push-ups the way he did on an eight-day trip he won to Bora Bora in March, which included a taping of Kathy Griffin’s My Life On The D-List. “We were on a little private island with Kathy Griffin and a group of 40 other people. We decided to play a game of truth or dare. And I knew truth wouldn’t end up on the air, so I was like, ‘I’ll pick dare,’” explains Mike. “She yelled out, ‘Ten naked push-ups!’ so I stripped down and did 10 naked push-ups in front of the group.” And while, as of press time, it’s too early to know if Mike’s naked calisthenics made the final cut, you know our TiVos are set to catch all the action!
Perhaps it’s this fearlessness—mixed with a dash of raw determination and a pinch of hard work—that has taken Mike from the butt of jokes during his elementary school days (his nickname was Porky Pig) to the butt we all hope to catch a glimpse of on The D-List. “One of the most hurtful things said to me was in third grade, when this girl was making fun of me for being overweight and Asian,” Mike remembers. “She pulled her eyes back so they would slant and called me 'fatso.' I got really pissed off and called her a bastard and was sent to the principal’s office.”
Mike took some of that aggression with him to the ice in the fifth grade when he started playing ice hockey, a sport that not only whittled his weight down considerably but also managed to whittle away his free time. “I really loved it and I made a lot of really cool friends, but I had no free time,” says Mike. He would get up every school day at 6 a.m., do an off-ice practice, go to school all day and then hit the rink after school for private lessons or hockey practice.
The weekend offered no respite for the pint-sized Gretzky, who would either be practicing or hitting the road for hockey games. “It was almost like a job,” says Mike, who—like so many sports kids and even more showbiz kids (have you seen I Know My Kid’s A Star?)—had a loving, yet misguided parent pushing him too hard to glory. “My dad made it like a job. He wasn’t the nicest dad when it came to hockey because he was so strict with so many things. If I didn’t perform up to par, the ride home would suck. He was just the athletic dad to the max,” Mike explains.
For nearly 10 years, Mike kept up the breakneck schedule—also managing to play soccer, wrestle and do martial arts—before quitting during his junior year in high school. “After I quit, it was almost like I lost my sense of self,” he says. “If someone asked, ‘What do you do?’ or, ‘What sport do you play?’’ it was always like, ‘Oh, ice hockey,’ but once I stopped playing, it was like, ‘What do I do now?”
Without a rigorous schedule to keep him occupied, Mike had nothing but time on his hands, which led him to the realization that he was gay. The first person he told was his best friend from third grade, Bobby. “He looked at me and was like, ‘Shut up!’ and I was like, ‘No, really,’ and he said, ‘Oh, my gosh!’ and we just left it like that for a while,” explains Mike, who went on to tell the rest of his inner circle and family. And while his befuddled best friend eventually came to his senses and supported Mike—as did the rest of his riends and family—Mike’s still not so sure how his father feels about it.
“I don’t know how to read my dad. He’s never given me shit about it, and he’s always said, ‘I don’t care if you’re gay, straight or whatever, just as long as you’re a good person.’ But I don’t know,” Mike says, explaining that it’s not something he talks to his family about all that often. “They know who I date, and I bring them over to the house sometimes, but it’s not something I openly talk about with them. There are just some things I don’t want to tell my mom,” he says with a laugh.
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{mosimage}And while the suddenly empty schedule allowed Mike the time to come to terms with his sexuality, it also had a secondary effect—one that was not so positive for a young gay guy recently out of the closet. “Looking in the mirror, I began to see a round face and man-boobs,” he laughs. “I had to start buying bigger-sized pants, and the shirts I used to wear, I couldn’t anymore.”
It was at this point that dear ol’ dad came to the rescue, springing for a personal trainer, who not only helped Mike to slim down, but also gave him insight into what he might want to do with his life.
“It just looked like such a cool job, to be at a gym, and I saw the way my trainer interacted with all the other gym members. And I was losing weight, and I was like, ‘I really like this.’” Inspired, Mike got a job at 24 Hour Fitness and began studying kinesiology at Cal State Fullerton. He sheepishly admits that in the beginning of his fitness career he was completely green and had no business training clients but says that after a few years in school, he began to hit his stride.
Today, with his degree in sight and a good deal of practical experience, Mike trains clients in two private gyms—one in Pasadena and the other in West Hollywood, California—where he combines his knowledge of strength training, conditioning and nutrition to help his clients reach their fitness goals. Perhaps a function of having been overweight once himself, he prides himself on being a caring personal trainer (think Bob Harper on The Biggest Loser), opting to inspire his clients rather than shrieking at them or putting them down.
“For the most part, people respond better to caring and nurturing.” says Mike. “I mean, who wants to be yelled at for an hour, two to three times a week?” The softer approach to weight loss seems to have worked for Reggie, one of Mike’s success stories who has lost 40 pounds, going from a 38-inch waist to a 30-32 and who proudly admits that he can now see his man parts in the shower.
“He’s one of my favorite clients because that’s his type of humor,” Mike says. But old habits die hard for Mike, who still follows a fully-loaded schedule, waking up at 5 a.m. to see clients, squeezing in a workout—or two, if he’s bored—and then seeing more clients into the evening hours, before “going to bed and starting it all over again.” But, unlike hockey, he says it doesn’t feel like work to him, because he’s so inspired by the job. “Just seeing my clients go from not wanting to work out to actually coming in and enjoying working out and enjoying life a little more is the best part of being a trainer,” he shares.
His less-than-forgiving schedule leaves little room for a boyfriend, though the hottie with the body knows exactly what he’s looking for: “It’s a huge plus if they take care of themselves—working out, eating right. And having ambition helps. I have a very specific goal of where I want to be for my ultimate career goal, and I’d like to be with someone who is just as determined as I am.” That ultimate career goal is to become a celebrity trainer like Teddy Bass or Gunnar Peterson. “And being able to travel with my clients to train them at X location, I just think that would be so cool,” he adds.
And, for the record, we asked him the secret to having a rockin’ body. “Hard work and determination!” he laughs. “So many people come in saying they want to lose weight, but when they find out hard work and commitment goes with it, they usually don’t want to stick with it.”
Damn. We were hoping he wouldn’t say that!
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