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This warmed the cockles of my heart…

I was doing my perpetual task of checking on and deleting emails today and I came across an email that made me smile. When I was training back in L.A. personal training and working at the big box gyms, I met a lot of really great people. This was probably the single greatest thing about working in those factories. Getting to know all these interesting people over the past 20 years is one of the perks of having this career and being a personal training.

And there are always some people who stick it out more than others. One of these people was Geri. I met her when I first moved back to L.A. (I know…move back…you were out!) and was working at a box gym in West L.A. She was always smiling, working hard and super friendly. We had some good conversations, but when I decided to leave that gym we lost touch.

Then about two years later I was personal training for another gym in Santa Monica, and as I was doing my walk around the gym, lo and behold, who do I run into but Geri. We struck it off as if no time had passed and she asked me if I would be interested in training her. Well, as most of you who know me would guess, I said, “Let’s have a consult first to see if we are a good fit.”

During our consult I found out what her goals were and what she was doing for her workouts. I also learned about her lifestyle and dietary habits. This is the holistic part of my personal training practice. It’s not just what you do in the gym during your workout; it’s how the whole picture fits together.

I found out that Geri had some big challenges. She had pushed herself so hard, in her workouts and in life, that she ended up with a couple of autoimmune diseases in her thyroid and adrenals. This made her goals significantly harder to achieve. She also had some physiological issues in her pelvis and spine (like most of us). Digging further I discovered that her workouts were in direct opposition to her limitations and goals. She had fallen prey to the obsessive high-intensity workouts plaguing our nation. The last thing you want to do is to overwork yourself on a structure that is compromised both inside and out. She was also stuck in a 90s diet in which fat intake is minimal and all grains are good.

I always try to explain to everybody I do a consult with what exactly it is that I see and realistically how long it’s going to take and what training will be involved. In a nutshell, for Geri it was a huge scale-down of her training ( with an emphasis on Myofascial stretching, ELDOA, and basic proper movements), plus getting more sleep and starting to eat good fats and meats (grass-fed organic, of course).

She resisted a bit—not because she didn’t believe me, but because what she had been doing was so ingrained into who she was, even though it wasn’t working. The good thing though was that she was obviously open or she wouldn’t have signed up!

And to her amazement (not mine) she started to make progress. She made progress because she was following one of our core principles of SolCore Fitness Personal Training: consistent, steady improvement. You don’t have to be perfect, you just gotta try your best to the level you can do that day, and then be happy for that and make improvements where possible.

 Hi Ekemba,

Just wanted to say thank you for truly helping me improve my overall health over the past year and a half. When people say how great it is that I’m more flexible with my eating and how impressed they are when I say I’m taking a rest day, I know I really owe that to you. I am definitely a changed person and will not go back to my old ways. I’ll gladly be a reference for you as you work to build your business in New Mexico. You are a one-of-a-kind trainer and I’m glad I bumped into you and changed my equifit that day to work with you!  

Safe travels.  Wishing you and your family all the best!!!  hugs, geri

 

This is the number one reason I chose this career: to see “regular” people achieve a level of well-being they never thought possible.
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Happy Holidays!

How to have a truly Happy Holidays.

The craziness is upon us, and sometimes its feels as if you are not having a Happy Holiday. Its tough! Travel, short work weeks, long weekends with family, feeling like you are bleeding money, etc,etc,etc. Tough to squeeze in happiness.

Generally when you receive an email from somebody in the Health and Fitness field during this time they will tell you about how people gain an average of 6 lbs during the holiday’s. And how to combat that with a positive mindset, of moderation, water, walks with the family is essential. I know because I have done it!  And all that is this is true, but I want to talk about what this Holiday time really is good for. Its about giving thanks. And not just on Thanksgiving. Having a truly Happy Holidays is about taking stock in the wonderful things in your life and being TRULY BEING grateful for it.

How To Truly Be Grateful And Have A Happy Holidays.

The easiest way to have a Happy Holidays is to give thanks. With all the “too do’s” and being pulled this way and that way it is easy to lose sight of the wonderfulness that is right in front of us.

Giving thanks can be done a number of ways:

  • At night before you go to bed
  • Taking some time on the weekend to sit down and write out everything that you are thankful for.
  • When you start to feel overwhelmed and possibly angry.
  • Give yourself a designated amount of time to build your gratitude i.e “The 30 days of gratitude.”

Or use this list to stimulate your imagination to design your own gratitude program.

How I am going to have a Happy Holiday.

I am going to “eat my own dog food.” I am grateful first and foremost for my family. I am grateful for my friends. I am grateful that we are in Santa Fe and it has been good to us. And I am grateful for you. All of you who have supported me and continue to support me. I love what I am doing and I love that I get to not only to continue, but to grow. Thank you

 

P.S. If you have any really cool ways of giving thanks, post them in the comment box below. The more options we have the better!

 

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The 3 Reasons Why Boot Camps Wreck Your Body!

In 20 years of being a personal trainer, every bootcamp I have ever seen made me cringe.

The Fact of the matter is that I have never seen a fitness boot camp that didn’t tear up peoples bodies or actually produce real, lasting results. I see people who stay in these fitness boot camps for years and never lose that “last ten pounds,” gain proper strength, or end up looking and feeling like they had hoped for. The one thing I see them gain, were injuries.

Here are the 3 main reasons to avoid boot camps exercise classes:

1)Fitness Boot Camps Push You Further Than Your Body Can Handle.

Lets take a look at Sally. Sally is 55 and works in Santa Fe and sits at a desk 8 hours a day hunched over a computer. Sally is fairly active. She takes moderate walks and hikes with her dog. She goes to Santa Fe ski and skis (when there is snow), and she eats “healthy”. But she is frustrated because she has been slowly gaining weight and the pain in her low back and neck has been getting worse and worse. She has made the effort to put herself on a program but she doesn’t know all the aspects that are required, she doesn’t know how to put it all together, and she doesn’t have the support system in place to see her succeed. So a friend of hers tells Sally that her mother’s brother’s son’s girlfriend (who is 27 by the way) did a boot camp and now looks amazing, and it only took a couple of months.

Sally is PUMPED she Googles “Fitness Boot Camps”and calls the first company on the list. She is excited and signs up for the 5:30 am bootcamp and dreams of a day when she can look like she did when she was in her 20’s.  After a long day at work, she is going to bed at 11:30 pm, and she forces herself to get up at 5am to workout. She gets to the class which has 24 other people along with her  and only one instructor. After some light static stretching they are off! Running, squatting, trying to do pull ups, and something called power cleans. She is wrecked afterward and a kind of  in pain, but Hey…. “No pain. no gain.” And Sally is proud of herself for doing “something.”

Wrong! Sally was not ready for this type of load on her system. Yes, she does some light activities (walks with her dog), but the majority of the time she is sedentary. So to make her go from 0 a 1,000,000 is not the smartest thing to do. A proper progression is needed for each person.

2) Exercise Boot Camps Have No thorough Evaluation.

Just taking your body fat and signing you up for classes is not a thorough evaluation. Where is Sally coming from? What does she want? What can she safely handle? All this and more needs to be factored into a program designed for her.

Keeping in mind the above description, we know that she has low back pain (among everything else). Just from that one symptom, there could be numerous causes that need to be considered. Her lumber discs could be compressed causing a bulge, herniation or worse prolapse. She could have her arteries, veins and nerves compressed from a tight Ilio-Psoas and fascia Illiaca. Her lumber erectors and thoracolumbar fascia could be tight and not moving. She could be dehydrated etc, etc, etc. When evaluating somebody, a personal trainer has to keep in mind HOW COMPLEX the body is! Because each of the 24 people in Sally’s boot camp class need something a little different…….Segway

3) Exercise Boot Camps Have No Individual Adaptation.

To “just move” around is not enough. There is a popular phrase that says “you just gotta get out and move!” Well, sure you have to move. Movement is required! But if you want to achieve a specific goal, then a plan needs to be put into place. Just like any other goal.

First and foremost, your program needs to have a good solid structure. If you don’t have that structure in place, then loading your body in all these “fancy”  and “new” workouts will eventually lead you to an injury. Once your structure is in place, then you have to have a program that directs you toward what you want. If you have a goal to lose weight (like Sally) then that is a different program than gaining strength and/or gaining flexibility. Be wary of the Boot Camp class that promises it all!

So when Sally and her 24 other Boot campers are running around doing exercises she may be hurting her back more, while some others may need to work harder, and a select few are getting exactly what they need.

Why SolCore Fitness Boot Cam….”Structured Group Class” is the perfect class.

So after that big long ramble about the danger of boot camps, you might be surprised to learn that as soon as I moved to Santa Fe, I started a Group Exercise Class. I, too was a little surprised. But the time was right. You see,  5  years ago (15 years into my Health and Fitness career) I saw the light. Well, I saw a short, energetic Frenchman, Guy Voyer (who I affectionately call “A Genius Nomad”) and he opened my eyes up to what a “Balanced body” really is and what it means to provide a “Holistic” fitness program. I have now seen how having a balanced body is the foundation for obtaining any fitness goal safely, to be able to continue the activities that you love, and oh yeah- TO FEEL GOOD!

This “Boot Camp” will not wreck your body…just the opposite.

Through the utilization of this philosophy, I learned of Biotensegerity (balanced body) and the techniques to “educate” your body to be balanced and maintain it. I had an “Ah-Ha moment” about three years ago- I could very easily take this information and apply it to a three month program in a groups class, that could start laying the foundation for people to get out of pain, improve their posture, increase their strength and body awareness. So, about a year ago (after diligently experimenting with the structure of the program) I started these group classes, and I can happily say that it was a success.

I recently just had my monthly consults with my group class members and the feed back has been amazing. I had one member who came to me because she couldn’t even sit at her desk anymore because of the intense hip, upper back, and neck pain. And now in her words she is “significantly better than she was a year ago.”

I talked to another member who is just now finishing her first three month cycle and she is reporting that her posture is significantly better than when she started and that her body is so much more “aware” than before.

There are a lot of stories such as this from my members. If you are looking to get ride of back pain and improve your posture then this is the class for you, I GUARANTEE IT!

Don’t wait! The quicker you start the quicker you realize that you DON’T have to live with pain and you CAN keep doing the activities that you enjoy.  Use this link to request a free consult for the classes. https://fo176.infusionsoft.com/app/page/class-landing-page.

Registration ends November 14th and class size is LIMITED to ensure that individual attention can be given to each member.

If you are currently in my classes now or have gotten great results for consistently being in my classes, tell people about it in the comments section below. I’m just a biased business owner…. YOUR story may inspire somebody to commit and change their life. Thank you!

 

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How 1 Hour And 17 Minuets in Santa Fe Put Me In My Place…

A couple weeks back I competed in and finished the Santa Fe Triathlon, and boy did it teach me a lesson.

I think of myself a pretty good athlete. Picking up sports and learning new physical activities has never been that difficult for me. We all have our talents, and that is one of mine. Wanting to be fit and healthy has led me to be a personal trainer and to start a personal training company  here in Santa Fe, New Mexico so I can help others achieve their health goals also.

Ever since college I have thought it would be a good challenge to do a triathlon. That year I incorporated it into my program and went for it. Problem was I didn’t have a bike and there weren’t any near me. “Oh well” I told myself “I tried.” Then about 6 years ago in LA the Malibu triathlon was coming around and I caught the need to do it again. Again I trained and raised funds for it, but right before the race, I hurt my knee. Nothing serious, but there was no way I could run long distances on it. “I tried” I told myself, but I was annoyed I again couldn’t do it.

The Santa Fe Triathlon provided me a way to get that monkey off my back.

I have always used visualization to propel me toward my goals.  I have been doing it so long it wasn’t called making a “vision board” it was putting pictures on the wall of things you strived for.  About a year before I moved to Santa Fe I made a “vision board,” putting all things I wanted in my life on it. And of course I put all the usual suspects on the board: career goals, family, individual goals, and within all this, something was right in the forefront: “Try a Triathlon.” I stuck it in there not knowing when it might happen.

When we moved to Santa Fe we were unpacking the boxes and my wife came in and asked if I still wanted to have my vision board up. At first my feeling was “Ah that was a long time ago, I need new goals.” And I was about to tell her to throw it away, but something stopped me. So I told her I would put it up. And after that I really didn’t look at it to much until….

Sticking to your goals will help you do the Santa Fe Triathlon…or any other goal for that matter.

I was at a Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce event talking to a group of people when all of a sudden somebody mentioned they were doing the Santa Fe Triathlon and immediately I perked up. It was the same feeling I had had the previous two times, but this time everything was lining up. It was three months away, I had a road bike, and I know how to train to keep my body in balance so I wouldn’t get hurt. Oh it was on!

I set my program and was off! And then something funny started happening to me. Negative thoughts and feeling. It didn’t make sense to me. I was SUPER ATHLETE! I could do anything! But the thoughts and the feelings stayed. And even worse they got more significant as the race got closer. And it still didn’t make sense because I had really progressed in my training. I was down 20 lbs, I had knocked off a minute per mile in my run, and I could make the 400m swim now. Demons were in my head, but I persisted.

Three fourths through my training both my wife and I noticed something on my vision board.

Santa Fe Triathlon

I had totally forgotten about this! This gave my confidence that I could do this even though I felt like my stomach was going to crawl out at any point.

It all came to a head the day of. Of course I hardly slept and my stomach resisted the food I was trying to give it. I always get a little “ancy” before anything athletic and especially before a competition, but this was way overboard. I had to make a conscious choice to go slower than I wanted. Had I gone out the way I wanted I would have destroyed my nervous system and once you push your nervous system too far, the only way to “get it back” is to rest. Resting is not the best way to compete in a race.

Then it was time for the race. I went at the pace that I felt was appropriate concentrating only on what I was doing at that time. Pretty soon I noticed that “what I was doing at the time” was passing people. I was actually kind of in shock, but I tried not to think to much about it because in the Santa Fe Triathlon the swim is last and I didn’t want to drown.

I finally go to the swim portion and I had no idea where I was in the race, so I continued along my pace. I just cleared my head and dove in. I am a very good swimmer, but I did not know if I could run, bike, and THEN swim.

Again, I stayed at my pace and swam. Once again, to my amazement, I started passing people. At fist I didn’t want to because I thought that I would get in people’s way, but once I started I really started gaining confidence. Half way though I was so stoked because I realized that this wasn’t that hard for me and that I should go faster!!! It was awesome!!!

Here I was, the big bad athlete who thought he could do just about anything athletic, being “taught a lesson” by the Santa Fe Triathlon.

My fear tried to prevent me from participating and winning, but through focusing on my goals, and win. I am getting all emotional about it right now just thinking about it!

This is not something just I can do. I’m sharing this so you’ll know that if you set your goals and focus on the task at hand you’ll know that what you are doing is winning!

CLYDESDALE DIVISION RESULTS

356 EKEMBA SOOH TOTAL PLACE  #1      SANTA FE

RUN    #1   23:57   1:55.4 transition                

BIKE    #1   39:23.0   3:00.0  transition                   

SWIM   #2   9:18.5        

 1:17:33.3  

Santa Fe Triathlon         

 

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You don’t have to work out like an NFL player.

By the time this blog is posted, the NFL season will be on its way. YEAH! I love NFL football, and since moving to Santa Fe, I miss living close to NFL action.

But don’t think I’m going to ask you to work out like an NFL player. I know what an NFL exercise program is like and I know it’s not complete. But there is something to be said about the NFL player’s exercise routine, which includes consistency and pushing yourself a little beyond what you can do each time to get a little bit better each day.

Consistency, pushing yourself, and trying to get a little better each day — these are the keys to any exercise program. And that last part is something you will hear NFL players and coaches say all the time: “We’re just trying to get a little bit better each day.” It is cliché, but it is absolutely true.

How to put a little NFL and a little kaizen in your exercise program.

Kaizen is a Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement in all areas of business practices and personal development. I preach similar principles to all my clients and the people I work with here in Santa Fe. Gradual, steady improvement is the only way to approach a long-term goal without driving yourself crazy. I wanted everything now, so this was a big, uncomfortable pill for me to swallow, and I still choke on it now and then. But the alternative — the highs and lows and the stress that it produces — is not worth it.

You need a laid-out, realistic exercise program in which you push yourself a little further than you are comfortable with. And uncomfortable comes in many different flavors — physical, mental, and emotional. For any success to happen you have to be OK with the uncomfortableness.

  • This means your muscles may burn a little more than you’d like, or if you live in a high altitude as we have in Santa Fe, you may be huffing and puffing more than you’d like.
  • This means you may have to put away your ego and what you think is right, trust in the program you have chosen, and do it.
  • This also means you will have to be OK with the feelings that come to you before and during your exercise program. Nothing comes for free; you’ve got to work it.

Say yes to your inner NFL player.

Scene: You standing at the mirror looking at yourself in the morning. “I’m just trying to get a little bit better today.”

Sounds hokey, doesn’t it? It feels even hokier when you actually do it…at the start. It gets easier and easier each time you say it. You don’t have to use that exact sentence. Keep the idea and find your own words.

From Washington, DC, to North Carolina to Los Angeles to Santa Fe I have used this with varying levels of consistency and with my own words. When I am more consistent in saying those words, they come true. Now combine that with a thought-out program and being OK with the uncomfortableness that goes along with it, and what do you have? Success. Meaning you are a success. Now go stand in front of the mirror and make yourself uncomfortable.
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