His world championship campaign didn’t go entirely to plan.
Michael injured his hand and was bleeding badly enough that medics prevented him from attempting some obstacles. He continued through the course, but because he was forced to bypass obstacles he couldn’t record an official time or placing.
It hasn’t diminished his appetite for competition.
“I think some people tend to use their age as a crutch and say, ‘Well, I can’t because I’m X years old’,” he said.
“I just think, ‘Why not? Let’s do it.’”
From the classroom to Trainer of the Year
There was a time when Michael’s working life had nothing to do with gyms, barbells or body fat percentages.
He started out as a primary school teacher before eventually turning a lifelong passion for health and fitness into a new career.
About six years ago he made the switch to personal training and today works at Anytime Fitness Ballina.
“I’ve done fitness pretty much my whole life, so it makes sense for me,” he said.
“It’s something where I’ve got a passion for it, but I’ve got a skill set for it.”
Within just a few years of changing careers, Michael had risen to the top of his profession.
In 2023, he was named Anytime Fitness Trainer of the Year nationally.
Michael admits the recognition came much earlier than he expected.
“I still think it’s hard to imagine that I was named best in the country,” he said.
“I would think that was something I’d be getting maybe now, or maybe another three or four years. But to get it then, I was stoked, blown away.”
His clients range from young adults through to people in their 70s and 80s. Over his career he has trained people as young as 15 and as old as 85.
And at 50, Michael is increasingly becoming his own advertisement for the message he gives his older clients.
“Don’t let your physicality or your limitations stop you from moving, getting fit or improving yourself,” he said.
“You’ve still got more left in you than you think.”
The Hugh Jackman of Japanese weddings
Then there is perhaps the most unlikely chapter in Michael Bosman’s CV.
Long before the bodybuilding stage, Michael spent six years performing Western-style wedding ceremonies in Japan.
And he did a lot of them.
Michael estimates he performed between 500 and 600 ceremonies, sometimes appearing at eight, nine or even 10 weddings in a single day.
The ceremonies were essentially theatrical Western-style additions to the couples’ formal marriage arrangements.
Michael’s role was part celebrant, part performer.
Ballina News Daily suggested he was effectively “the Hugh Jackman of weddings”.
“100 per cent,” Michael laughed. “That was me. I played that role.”
It was a very different stage, but the experience has proved unexpectedly useful decades later.
After spending weekend after weekend performing in front of audiences in Japan, standing under lights in posing trunks while bodybuilding judges scrutinise his physique isn’t particularly intimidating.
“You’re so zoned into what you do that really the crowd, everything else doesn’t register,” he said.
“It’s more doing a good job, doing the best job I can. That worries me more than anything else.”
In Classic Physique, competitors are judged on an aesthetic body shape reminiscent of bodybuilding’s golden era — broad shoulders, a narrow waist and developed legs creating the characteristic “X-frame”.
Michael points to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous physique as an example of the classic look.
Three competitions into his bodybuilding career, he now has three new divisional titles and the Nationals waiting in October.
And there is unfinished business in Spartan racing too.
Michael has never achieved a Spartan podium finish and next year wants to compete at elite level in his age category and finally claim a top-three place.
“Why can’t I,” he says.
“There’s nothing to stop me.”
