How a Conroe man left prison, became a TikTok star and trainer
Founder of X-Cons Fitness boasts 130,000 followers
Michael Galloway leads workouts with the unrelenting optimism of any good personal trainer. “It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish!” the 33year-old yells as he leads exhausted clients through series of squats, burpees and deadlifts.
Coming from anyone else, the expression may sound like a cliche meant to carry you to the end of a workout and be forgotten once the last bead of sweat has dried. To know Galloway’s journey, though — from accidentally killing his friend to starting his own business, X-Cons Fitness, and blowing up on TikTok — is to know how personal the mantra is.
“It took everything in my past to make the me person I am today. I’m not ashamed of my past. I take ownership of all the mistakes that I’ve made,” Galloway said.
With his slicked back hair and Wayfarer glasses, Galloway may look more like an white-collar worker than a personal trainer — until you notice the biceps that look like they’re going to rip through his T-shirt. The tattoo of Taylor Swift on his arm makes it even more surprising to learn that the Conroe native spent a good chunk of his childhood in and out of lockups.
Galloway first got locked up when he was 12, after he was caught selling weed at school in Spring. He spent nine months in juvenile detention, where kids formed gangs and learned how to carry themselves based on what they saw in movies, Galloway said. Far from rehabilitating him, the experience only encouraged Galloway to embrace his criminal ways, because he saw no other future for himself.
“It made me so much worse,” Galloway said. “When I got out, I felt like I needed to take ownership of the role that I was placed in.”
The son of incarcerated parents, Galloway grew up in the Spring and Conroe areas, bouncing around schools selling drugs and starting fights, unable to fit in as a child with “a target on (his) back.” Going to jail became a pattern for Galloway, one that ended in 2011 with an eight-year stint in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for accidentally shooting and killing one of his best friends.
Galloway was 21 at the time, and on his way to shoot his ex-wife’s partner in retaliation for an attack he had suffered at his hands. His friend, James McCleary, rode along and asked Galloway to show him how to disarm a gun. Galloway accidentally pulled the trigger and shot McCleary in the shoulder. The 19-year-old died on the side of the road while his friends, who had been riding in the back seat, tried to flag down an ambulance.
Galloway was placed in solitary confinement at the Montgomery County Jail for two weeks, he said, with nothing but nightmares and his friend’s dried blood on his arms. He eventually was convicted of criminally negligent homicide.
“When that happened, it changed me. Something inside me said ‘Now that my friend is dead, I have to live the lives of two people,’ ” Galloway said. “I had to be twice the man, twice the father, twice the son that I can be, because the biggest thing I want to do is honor my friend’s life by how I live out mine.”
Galloway got his GED and began taking college courses, earning a degree in computer science while he was in prison from Western Texas College in Snyder.
He also dedicated himself to personal fitness, working out twice a day for eight years straight. When other inmates and even some prison guards began to join him, he realized he could make a career out of training others, and began studying textbooks from the National Academy of Sports Medicine, the International Sports Sciences Association and more.
By the time he was transferred to the Cleveland Unit in East Texas, Galloway was leading workouts in the rec yard for dozens of inmates, who would pay him in coffee and soup from the commissary. The warden took notice and had him develop a formal 90-day program available to the entire unit. Eventually, he led more than 150 inmates in workouts every day and required them to report to him their mental, physical and spiritual goals.
With the assistance of the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, a nonprofit that helps inmates develop their own business plans, Galloway launched X-Cons Fitness upon his release in 2019. He also locked down a full-time job as a “life caddie” with the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, helping newly released inmates adjust to life outside of prison by teaching them life skills, such as finding housing, getting their legal documents in order and more.
Galloway now serves around eight clients at a time with X-Cons Fitness, often setting up shop in parking lots around the Houston area. He leads two nurses in weekly workouts outside Memorial Hermann Northeast Hospital in Humble, and even counts one of his former prison guards among his clients.
In the process, Galloway began uploading workout videos and “prison hacks” to TikTok, and now boasts more than 130,000 followers on the site.
“It’s pretty amazing to me, he has come such a long way. He’s always been respectful and mannerable,” said Antonio Scott, the former prison guard who has used Galloway as his trainer for nearly two years.
“I’m a pastor now, so I had him speak at an engagement I had, and he told his story and a lot of people were touched. I’m super proud of him and how far he’s come,” Scott said.
Galloway doesn’t consciously design his workouts with prison in mind, but his experience rubs off on everything he does. He pushes one client, Tara Freeman, through a workout in the East End Maker Hub parking lot by constantly encouraging her with her nicknames, “TFree” and “Taradactyl.”
"Just like prison, you don't get to choose your own nicknames," Galloway remarks as they jog around the parking lot. His was "Simba," a fitting reference to the young Lion King protagonist given Galloway's boyish face and compact stature.
The 30-minute workout begins with the jog to warm up, followed by stretches, leq-quaking squats and medicine ball lifts, and a gauntlet of kettlebell, ladder and rope exercises. Freeman and Anthony Rose, a friend of Galloway’s from prison who has joined him for the occasion, are soaked in sweat by the end, but Galloway remains a bundle of energy, as fresh and sunny as a spring morning. Freeman, a former coworker of Galloway’s, said she has lost about 60 pounds since she started working with him more than a year ago.
“If I work out by myself, I’ll give up really quickly. He’s not only talented in knowing how to work out, but he’s also a great encourager. So, those times where I feel like I can’t do it, I can’t breathe, I’m exhausted, he’ll encourage me to keep going and I really like that,” Freeman said.
Four years after being released from prison, Galloway is a homeowner, entrepreneur, TikTok influencer, and family man — he is marrying his fiancee in April. The start may not have been perfect, but he is aiming to finish on his own terms.