SolCoreFitness

Jan 11 2025

You are the most valuable thing you have

You’ve heard it before, “Your house is the most valuable thing you have.” While financially that may be true, I would STRONGLY argue that you’re body is your greatest investment.

If you lost your house, it would be traumatic, but you would still be here with a fighting chance. If you lost your health, you would, at best, be here and a burden to those who love you. And worst, you would not be here at all for the people in your life whom you love.

I realize this is a bit morbid, but I see this a lot in the people who come here. Financially and career-wise, they have done very well. They took the time to invest in themselves to have a more fulfilling and generally better-paying career. They invested in financial planners to set up a well-rounded portfolio that could not only weather the financial ups and downs but also bring in a healthy return.

This is the result of well-defined goals, a plan of action, time and money investment, and seeking out expert advice.

But for some reason, most of these people’s plans of action for the most beautiful gift we have, our bodies, involve just walking, being randomly active, sitting on a bunch of machines, taking random classes, and only going to practitioners once something goes wrong.

Sure, by the time they come to me, they realize that what they have been doing or not doing to themselves wasn’t the best, but now it is absolutely harder.

It is not impossible, but in general, most people want working out to be as painless as possible, which is not the most effective way how you should look at it. Working out is more challenging the more deficient you are.

If you are tight, that stretch is going to be much harder.

If you are weak, the strengthening exercise is going to be much harder to do.

If you have lost coordination and body awareness, your whole exercise routine will feel much more foreign in your body.

***And here is a pro tip. Since your body functions and works together it also breaks down together. So, if you are tight, you will also be weak and lose awareness and coordination in your body.

This is not new news, but the quality of your body affects your physical and emotional state for good or bad.

“Structure Dictates Function.” A.T Still

But since you are reading this, I’ll go out on a limb and say you’re alive, which means you have the power to dramatically improve your body and life.

If you specifically instruct your body in the areas you need and use postures to help you perform the motions, you can not only reverse what’s going on with you but also improve it to the point that it can be a strength.

The best way to do this is with a specific, holistic, and integrated program like the one we use here. I have been in Health and Fitness for over 30 years. When I found Osteopathy as a way to train your body as it was designed holistically, the philosophy and detail blew me away, and the results on clients’ bodies and lives were dramatic.

This is a progressive, sustainable program that, if you take your time to learn and improve, will help you feel better, stronger, and more mobile. It will also empower you as you can use what you have been taught to be your own best therapist/trainer.

If you know, there is an area of your body that isn’t feeling the best, or that you want to focus on, you will have the tools to understand how to do it. You won’t be reliant solely on “having somebody fix you.”

“The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.” Buddha

Please don’t take my word for it; you must experience it yourself.

If you are local in Santa Fe, NM, Come for a two-week trial. Click the button to read more and sign up.

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If you are not local, then we offer private sessions via Zoom. Your homework is given to you within our member portal, where you will have access to videos of the exercises and stretches that we did so that you can practice.

Schedule a consult to find out more using the button below.

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Its not just working out its building a foundation for a better life.

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Dec 21 2024

Katy G – When All Else Failed, She Tried Again And Succeeded

The big smile that Katy comes in with is always a joy to see. But situations with her body were trying to take that smile away. You see, 10 years ago, she was injured at work. The pain and limited activity were constant companions.

She tried PT, Cranial Sacral, and all types of bodywork massage, including Rolfing, Feldenkreis, acupuncture, chiropractic, ergonomic office assessments, and yoga classes, and bought various DVDs specific to back issues. In 2023, I had spine surgery for sciatica and stenosis. She suspected her back would have been worse sooner without these efforts, but they didn’t fix matters.

Activities like gardening, bending, walking, and sitting were severely limited and painful. She had sciatica every day and neuropathy in her shin and foot. The walking distance was short, and her speed was slow. Sitting down really locked up her back and glutes. Standing was more comfortable. Lying prone with ice offered some relief.

Medicare cut off her PT five months after surgery, but she was still not okay. To make matters worse, and her more frustrated, PT had not helped much anyway. She was praying for direction when she saw an ad for a free SolCore Fitness trial class on Facebook (this is our Monthly Free ELDOA class).

She signed up online and attended the free Saturday group class, and since she found it so beneficial, then signed up for the 2-week trial to give SolCore Fitness a fair test. Ekemba Sooh did an assessment of my issues so he knows what is safe to do. Ekemba is active in class, hands-on, adjusting student postures, and he is very aware of our abilities and injuries. She also signed up for some individual sessions to include the manual therapy techniques because “I was desperate to get better.”

After six months of classes, she continues to improve. She walks better, moves easier, can sit longer, has reduced duration, is less frequent, and travels more efficiently. Since she continues to make progress, she is motivated to keep going and continue to improve her body, health, and life. So, She is sticking with the program that got her there.

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Dec 06 2024

Do Actions = Results 🧐

“Do these three 3 things and achieve X.”

“My 10 steps to achieve X.”

“I used this exact system to achieve X.”

These are common type phrases that you’ll see marked toward you in various mediums. And they all imply that if you “just” do what the title talks about, you will get “x.” It seems foolproof that you will succeed if you follow this plan and use a little elbow grease.

And if you have a recipe you’re going to make or a home improvement project you need assistance on, these would be great.

But you are not a recipe. And so if these articles or programs that use these titles are for self-improvement, then….Ummmm Huh! As I say to my kids when they tell me something that isn’t true. 😉

Relying on this “recipe” is just another way to absolve yourself of the responsibility of learning and growing into the person you need to be to achieve X.

If it were as easy as following some steps of a plan, everybody would be rich, with an amazing body and a life seen in movies.

But that is not reality. Nobody is going to do it for you. You have to do it. It’s your life.

The Facts on getting Results

Let’s get an essential points down. Those 3 or 10 steps or the system you are reading about will likely not be the only things you need to do.

Common sense says so.

The main point is that that little “= “sign is not so little in achieving that “X” you want to achieve.

That equals is the changes you need to make to become the person who can achieve “X.” It equals the trial, failure, learning, and adaptation you must undergo to reach “X.”

Working on the equals is the secret sauce.

So any “X” you want to achieve needs to have a philosophy to it to reach this goal. A philosophy allows for learning and adaptation to get you there.

Not some dogmatic steps you take that will lead most people to frustration and self-doubt.

That is why, in my therapy and fitness company, I use a holistic philosophy with thousands of different treatments, exercises, and stretches that allow me to adapt to help people achieve their “X” health and fitness goals.

Example:

Person 1 went the PT route and was told to do these three exercises for it and was given a handout: 1) Mckenzie press-up, 2) the clamshell exercise for their hip muscle, 3) Planks for their” core.”

The person had finished PT but had kept up with the exercises even though they told me they weren’t helping. After an evaluation and watching them move, I can see that they have an unbalanced SI joint, a flat lower back, no abdominal strength, and bad posture. Their only imaging showed what I talked about with their SI joint and lower back, showing some arthritis and degeneration at L4/L5.

With this info, I asked them to stop their current program and incorporate mine, which would take them away from McKenzie press-ups to ELDOA’S, which are spinal strengthening and opening exercises. Mckenzie press-ups are only good in one instance and if your body can properly open in the specific area you need. That is not usually the case. ELDOAs are specific, so I gave them one for the L4/L5, L5/S1, T8/T9 and C4/C5. So that we address the “main” area and other essential parts of the spine as they work together.

I also asked them to stop the planks. In life, your body needs strength, endurance, and mobility. The ab’s two main jobs are strength, mobility, and endurance for the spine. And so how you train your body is how it will react in life. Planks mainly train endurance and a little strength, as it is an isometric exercise. A better idea is to teach the abs and spine to move the way they waere designed. So I gave them a “good morning,” which is an ab exercise where you are sitting, holding your knees, and learning to roll down and roll up. This will lead to the 100s of abs exercises you can do, which is essential to having a good abs and a healthy spine.

I asked them to substitute the clamshell for a more holistic hip-strengthening exercise. You see, the clamshell only targets the middle fiber of this muscle, but there are three. Each muscle fiber needs to be put under tension to make it work. Also, the glute med doesn’t work alone as it is attached via fascia (connective tissue of the body) down to the tips of your toes and the tip of your head. So the posture you take has to put in tension one of the 3 fibers and the connection from the toes to the head.

This will significantly alleviate their back pain, BUT there is no way I would stop there. I would need to treat their SI joint because the lower back will never be balanced if the pelvis isn’t balanced. I would incorporate, at a minimum, some myofascial stretches for some pelvic trochanter (muscles from the pelvis to leg), the Iliopsoas, the glute max deep, and the glute medius. This would allow the muscles to return to normal and balance the body.

They would have to find out how they managed this program by setting aside time to do it and managing their mental and emotional baggage, which always comes up.

I would then adapt to what they were telling me and what I was seeing and feeling.

They would have to go through the pains of unlearning and relearning aspects of themselves and allow themselves to become that person who doesn’t have back pain.

We’ve all been there. You are not alone.

I’ve been there.

I work hard and thought that if I worked hard enough and did the steps, I would achieve my “X” things.

It didn’t for me.

For some, it did.

But in all these programs, the vast majority didn’t.

And for me, it led to frustration and self-doubt.

It was not super fun, but it taught me a lesson I knew I should return to.

You have to grow into a person who can achieve your desires. Your desires are there because you can reach them.

But you must accept the path that takes you there, not blindly follow a “recipe” and get mad when it doesn’t work.

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Nov 22 2024

How To Thank Your Body

We’re approaching the gratitude and thankful season. It’s a time to take stock of your life and think of all the wonderful things in it. In my opinion, your body is one of the best blessings we have received.

This remarkable body of yours allows you to live and experience life. But too often, we take it for granted and expect it to work or are annoyed when something comes up. And in these cases, you are left with somebody to “make it go away.”

But your body is your responsibility. And by not being proactive and taking care of your body, you are leaving your health up to chance or expecting different results from the same activities. This way of working with your body is the norm and is detrimental to your life.

The current system of preventive health is either dogmatic or focused on symptom-based actions.

Think about it. Isn’t it funny that you will go to different people in different professions and hear similar information? This information is generally correct but only part of the picture. But since you listen to it from multiple sources, it seems like it is.

That’s called an echo chamber.

Or you keep returning to the same people at the same frequency to fix the same issue. You may feel slight relief, but it never totally goes away. That is the reality of symptom-based care. The focus is only to have it go away and not on the whole body, and your body functions best holistically. So, while treating the symptom may be necessary, it is not sustainable.

By taking a proactive approach to your health, you gain control over your body’s needs, ensuring it can keep up with the life you want to live. This requires a balanced program that you can follow.

Our holistic program is designed to train your body in a way that’s specific to you. It allows you to focus on the areas that are important to YOU, not just perform random acts of movement.

Now, when something comes up, it won’t be as bad as it could have been, and you will have already been doing many exercises that will help you fix the issue. Seeing a practitioner who understands this way of working with the body will probably be necessary for some hands-on therapy, but now it won’t take as long, and again, you have more control over the outcome because you are doing the exercises you need.

Working holistically doesn’t mean just doing different forms of exercise and focusing on different parts of your body. That is necessary on a broader level, but working holistically means two main things:

1)That the exercises you do complement and build together

2)And the program you use addresses all the different ways your body needs training.

The best way to learn is by doing it. This way, you will not only experience it but also understand it better like learning any skill.

If you are local to Santa Fe, NM, come for a two-week trial. You’ll get two weeks of classes and a one-on-one session. Use this link https://www.solcorefitness.com/a-trial-without-any-commitment-2/ to read more about our in-house two-week trial and sign up.
If you are not local or if you know classes may be too much for you, then work privately with us. You’ll not only get to experience an actual holistic training session, but you’ll also get personalized advice on what is the best way for you to train and then access the exercises that you did via our online portal so that you continue to make sure you’re doing it right. Use this link to schedule a free consult and sign up for individual training/therapy. https://calendly.com/ekemba_solcorefitness/ica-interview

If you’re not ready to jump in yet and want a deeper dive into holistic training, grab our information-packed guide, “Move Better, Reduce Pain, and Live Life On Your Terms: The 4 Steps To Break The Cycle, Fix It, and Keep It! “

Go to https://www.solcorefitness.com/move-better-reduce-pain-and-live-life-on-your-terms-landing-page/and input your information, and you’ll get instant access.

Give thanks that you have your body and show it thanks by taking care of it.

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Nov 12 2024

Boost Immunity By Working Out Like This

Ever wondered how your body’s connective tissue might be playing a crucial role in your overall health? In today’s video, we dive deep into the fascinating world of fascia and its connection to your immune system! 🦠✨

Click on the image to watch the full video

Exercise has the opportunity to make our lives better. We can correct and prevent injuries, we can improve our posture, we can become stronger, more mobile, increase endurance, speed, power, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And we can also use it to be healthier. But it takes a specific program to do. So if you’re performing just random acts of movement, as I call it, which is for a walk here, you do a class there, you do something, you go to a therapist over there like you’re doing stuff, but it’s random, right? There’s no kind of rhyme or reason. It’s almost knee-jerk reaction-type stuff. And you won’t get there. And if you continue doing that, in fact, it may make your body worse. Because if you’re not specifically doing something for your body, well, then it’s being neglected. If it’s being neglected, eventually, it’s going to go downhill.

So I want you to stay tuned today when we talk more about being specific with your program to improve your health and immunity. Greetings. I’m Ekemba Sooh, and I own SolCore Fitness. I’ve been in the health and fitness field for like 30 years. I’m a Soma therapist and Soma trainer, which means I’m an osteopathic manual therapist and I’m an osteopathic trainer. And combine these two to help my clients live their best life. So we all know that exercise can help increase not only strength, endurance and speed and power and all that stuff, but it helps increase our health. We can become healthier by working out. This is not new information. There’s tons of studies on it, but these improvements generally are general, right? General meaning there’s a limit to how much you can improve ’em, right? So if I just go for a walk and take a class, I’ll improve my immunity, right?

But there’s going to be a limit to how much I can do that. If I have a goal to really increase my immunity, to make an active actively better, I have to have a program just like I have to have a program to get stronger. I have to have a program to get more endurance. I have to have a program to gain speed, for example. But too often the protocols we’re given are general, right? So what do we do if we want to increase immunity more than generally? Well stay tuned. I’ll talk more about that. The body responds best if you give it specific actions to achieve a goal. Like any goal you want to achieve, you want to take that specific path to get that goal. So if I had a goal to get through the forest and there’s a path they got me through the forest, I want to walk down that path.

I don’t want to just walk into the woods and just randomly move around and hope I get there. It’s the same thing, right? You want to do specific actions and the body’s built a certain way, and all these tendons, ligaments, muscles, bones, organs, they all have a job. So if I can use exercise and treatments to keep myself in place, so they do their job, I function well. I function well by not only moving well and being strong and mobile and good posture. I function well by thinking better. My heart pumps better, I digest better. And oh, by the way, I have a better immune response. So I have to have a goal to improve my immune response to achieve the goal. Then I have to have specific actions to do. Now, some parts you want to be aware for immune response are one, obviously the lymph system, right?

The lymph system carries lymph, which helps fight immunity and your body, there’s specific structures in your body that help with that. You have your clavicles, you have a big ganglions here, especially on the right side. You have your ci, ae, Kylie, I dunno how to say it, ci achille right here. You have your cloquet ganglion right here, and then you have a bunch of limb through your body. Your fascia houses, a lot of this a immune response. And so you also want to take care of your fascia by taking your fascia. I don’t mean foam rolling or some sort of aggressive technique, because that will actually degrade your immune immune response. As an example, if you’ve got a bunch of immunity immune lymphs on your inner thigh a lot, if you take a foam roller and you foam roller your inner thigh like a rolling pin, you’re crushing that immune response.

I actually told that to my teacher one time and he looked at me like I was crazy. I said, I’m totally being serious. And in true fashion, he goes, stupid than that is hard to find because you’re sacrificing your immune response. I don’t know what you’re, you’re trying to roll something out, but it’s not going to work anyway. But now you’re also sacrificing your immune response. What are you doing to help with your immunity? Are you actually using exercise along with the healthy life to increase your immunity? Lemme know in the comments. So helping with your immunity obviously comes down to also how you take care of yourself. So outside of exercise, the basic stuff you need, drink enough of water, half your body weight, an ounce of water. It’s kind the standard. What you want to work towards. You want to eat healthy, plenty. Fruits and vegetables, good meats.

You want to do more pasture raised, organic. You want to eat as natural as possible for you. So however you mix those things, that’s definitely empty to you. It’s different for everybody. But once you have that down, it comes down to the structure. Your body. You may think, oh, I take these supplements to have an immunity, that’s fine. But a couple of things come into play. What supplements do you actually need? That comes down to how’s your microbiome? How well does your GI tract process the food? If I have a bad body because of bad exercising or lack of exercising, then maybe when I eat that food, that GI tract doesn’t work the way it should. So it goes down and it should be absorbing these nutrients and breaking down food properly. But because it’s all twisted and out of place, it can’t secrete the stuff it needs to, can’t absorb what it needs to, which means those supplements you’re eating are very expensive pea.

Now, it also comes down to your food too. So you can eat all those super healthy foods. But again, if your body can’t process it, it can’t process it. This is why exercise is so important to help increase your immunity. We start with structure. If the structure of my body is good, I function well. If my functions off, that means I can’t digest and produce a good immune response like I want. I’ll give you an example. So a big thing with people is forward head posture. Let’s say desk posture. We call it forward head posture, right? Your head’s forward, your back’s rounded, your shoulders are protracted. So you kind of look like that, right? So I would say it’s bad for your structure of your body. You can’t move well, you don’t feel strong, you don’t feel mobile. But like I said, you have a big ganglion.

It’s right here at your clavicles. Well, if my shows are protracted, which means this, and my head’s forward, I get a lot of tension through this area. If I have tension to this area, that means this space that these ganglions should be in goes from this to that. So you’re not asking something to do its job with less space and less mobility than it’s used to, which means it can’t do its job, it can’t respond. So you have to go through your body and say, okay, how’s my posture? And you need to correct wherever posture deviations you have in your body. So relative to immunity, your shoulders can’t be protracted. They have to be back and retracted with good posture, heavy between shoulders. For your cys, Achille, it’s about T 12. I can’t have weak abs or compressed spine in this area because it won’t function.

I can’t have tight and out of place hips because my cloquet ganglion can’t function well. So you want to make sure the structure body is there so that they function. The structure body also helps with the flow of the immune response. And immune response is inflammation. And inflammation shouldn’t be a bad word. It’s the first line of defense for all pathogens. So for all, any type of cold or flu or covid, but also injuries, the first line of response is inflammation. So I want to keep that flow going. I want to keep that flow going by keeping my fascia healthy. If I keep my fascia healthy by again being hydrated, reducing overstress and taking care of it via exercises and treatments, keeping the instruction in mind is going to allow that flow to go. So I want to speak a little bit about the flow.

Think about the flow is like a little river that goes through your body. You got a bunch of rivers that go through your body. They want to keep moving. They help with immune response. They bring nutrition, they keep you healthy. If those rivers turn into ponds, then those ponds turn into festering disgusting ponds. That is the opposite of healthy. That becomes sick, a sick river, a sick pond. So by keeping structure in place and exercising with your fascia mind, you keep those rivers open. So to excess your fascia, you have to understand the fascial lines. For example, your fascia connects your whole body, right? Everything from in utero to now. It’s one fascia that is split in 2000 different directions. But you have different chains of the fascia. So like a spider web that goes out. So if I want to exercise with a fascia mind, I need to know these change.

So if I want to work my hip muscle, right, I pick those three fibers of my hip muscle. I want to know that that fascia line goes down my leg via my practice. Ieo tibial band, namely it band that goes down into my fascia, curious of my foot into my foot, plantar fascia that goes up into my thoraco lumbar ab fascia that goes up into my fascia to connect to my arm, out to my hand, and up to my head. So there’s a chain, right? So these muscles don’t work in isolation. They work in chains or gains, right? It’s a gain. They all function together to perform an action. So if I strengthen my hip muscle and I can keep tension along that chain I just talked about, now I exercise the muscle locally, but holistically, I work with a chain and namely the fascia that keeps the fascia healthy because when I stimulate tissue, I keep it alive because fascia is not inert.

It’s not just the white stuff you remove when you’re butchering, right? It has a bunch of jobs. So if I stimulate this fascial tissue, I keep it healthy. And one of the actions, the jobs of fascia is defense and protection. Now, I increase how much my fascia can defend and protect me from whatever. Now, I know you’d love for me to give you some sort of formula to follow, to increase humidity or recommend some sort of supplement that’s going to correct all your woes, but that’s not what I do here. I want to give you the information to it so you can enlighten yourself a little bit more as to what it takes to do what is needed for your body. And so I don’t want to do that, probably have a lot more subscribers if I did, but don’t care. I want the people who are really interested in that to really get the good results, which means you need be specific with your program for whatever you want.

So I encourage you to look around this site more. My YouTube channel, I talk a lot about a lot of different topics, all with the idea of holistic without being too formulaic. So you can get more information if you want to know more. Then in the description below, I got a free little ebook handout. All you got to do is click on the link, put your information in, you get instant access, and you get a bunch of emails that are going to help with that. Or if you want to talk to me personally, click on that link down below for a calendar schedule. Find your time, what book of time? We’ll talk about what you’re going through now, your sticking points, what it means to you to get your goals happen. And if I see a good fit, I’ll recommend my services, but it’s not an obligation. I want you to have good information first and foremost. So I hope this is helpful. Put any questions you have down in comments and I’ll see you next time.

it’s not just working out, it’s building a foundation for a better life.

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