Health Update: Health Update: Fitness influencer encourages UF students to ‘find your floors’ at Spring Accent event – What Experts Say– What Experts Say.
Michael Smoak believes success is simple. The 28-year-old health content creator visited UF’s campus Wednesday evening, and students poured into the University Auditorium awaiting his words of advice on how to achieve personal, physical and career goals.
Smoak answered questions through a Q&A-style panel about his experience at college. He encouraged students to use their resources to build a network, which he said influenced his own career path.
Smoak then said while success might not be easy to achieve, it’s “easy to understand,” which plays into his slogan: “Success is simple.”
“Do the obvious thing,” he said. “You want to get good grades, start with showing up to the class. You want to build an incredible physique. Start by going to the gym.”
Smoak began his career as a content creator over two years ago, posting and sharing advice on health, fitness and nutrition, according to a post on his LinkedIn.
He went on to found Higher Wellness, a coaching community consisting of workout plans and coaching calls. He also hosts a health and fitness podcast that now has over 800,000 followers on Instagram.
As he spoke more on his experiences, Smoak discussed struggles he overcame. As a child, Smoak said, he was overweight and fought battles with his body image.
When he reached the point in his life where he became “fit,” Smoak said, he realized the importance of showing up for himself. He also realized how people were treating him differently.
Smoak said he saw other people around him struggling with the same issue he had as a child, and he wanted people to know success and physical wellness doesn’t need to be overcomplicated and unachievable.
“I just wanted people to understand that it doesn’t have to feel hopeless,” he said. “They can just compound the obvious things, obvious efforts for long periods of time.”
Smoak also discussed how social media has caused a rise of wellness trends that spread misinformation and the impact of unrealistic goals like the 75 hard challenge and carnivore diets — expectations he calls, “ceiling goals.”
Smoak instead encouraged students to find their “floors.”
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“Find your floors, find the things you can do everyday,” he said. “It takes minimal effective change to elicit massive results if you’re willing to stick with a minimal effect of change for an extraordinary period of time.”
Alexia Andrews, a 22-year-old UF graphic design and mass communications senior, said she’s followed Smoak’s brand for a while and appreciates his advice on confidence.
“Be bold,” she said. “No one knows what they’re doing, and no one cares.”
Ayush Sharma, a 19-year-old UF biomedical engineering sophomore, said he looks up to Smoak. Sharma said he was excited for the opportunity to listen and see Smoak in person.
“The event was quite inspiring,” he said. “It was truly inspiring to see him not only repeat these quotes that I’ve already heard from him, but build upon them to really extrapolate the data.”
Sharma said his favorite quote from the seminar was, “It’s difficult, but it’s not complicated”.
Yuliya Tsoy, a 19-year-old UF finance freshman, skeptically came to the Q&A with her friend with minimal knowledge of Smoak’s background.
Tsoy said she’s been creating content for two years, and she left the Q&A with confidence and new lessons learned.
“It was pretty interesting to me to see another content creator,” she said, “I was actually so inspired by his speech today.”
Contact Alabama Weninegar at aweninegar@alligator.org. Follow her on X at @AlabamaW40513.
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Alabama Weninegar is a first-year journalism major and The Alligator’s Spring 2026 University General Assignment Reporter. She also works a part-time job at Wyatt’s Coffee downtown. In her free time, she enjoys watching her favorite shows on a rainy day or re-reading the Twilight series.