SolCore Fitness on Being Strong
What is being strong? Watch this video to learn more.
Find out more @
Holistic Exercise And Fitness
For People In Santa Fe: The Amazing Benefits of Keeping Fit!
For People In Santa Fe: The Amazing Benefits of Keeping Fit!
Ekemba Sooh | December 26, 2016
Eight trusted benefits of keeping fit, even at old age
Keeping fit is a great way to stay healthy. Exercising on a regular basis has countless positive effects on the body and the mind. A study done on 25,000 volunteers has shown that physical exercising is more important to health than just losing weight. Overweight people who are fit have lower chances of developing heart problems, diabetes, or osteoporosis. Who can practice fitness? Is fitness for you? The good news is that anybody, regardless of age, can benefit from fitness. Fitness exercises range from developing flexibility to building up strength and losing extra pounds.
- Keep a healthier heart – Fitness makes the heart work faster and it helps increase and strengthen the muscle of the heart.
- Develop stronger muscles and bones – Fitness exercises that work the muscles, such as weight lifting, develop the muscles and increase bone density. This translates into a body that is more resistant to fractures and injuries. People over 40, who have higher risks of developing osteoporosis and arthritis, can maintain a younger body for a longer time through fitness.
- Helps in weight loss – Fitness burns calories and reduces body fat. If you exercise on a regular basis, you will not only burn calories while you’re at the gym, but you will also burn calories while you’re resting. If you join fitness with a healthy diet, you will have a fit and excellent looking body.
- Helps in stress reduction – You have outnumbered stress factors in your life, stress is very dangerous to your health, and it can give you a general state of crankiness and anxiety. Exercising relieves stress and triggers the secretion of endorphins in the body. Endorphins, also called “the happiness hormone” create a state of relaxation. There is something called “a runner’s high”. This basically means that people feel happier after exercising.
- A more restful sleep – Stress and health problems sometime cause insomnia and other sleep disturbances. Fitness will give you a deep and restful sleep, which is important for the body to be able to recover and function normally.
- Increased ability to focus – Research shows that people who exercise think faster and clearer. Fitness does not only do wonders for the body, but it also benefits the mind, through improving circulation in the brain and taking away the stress that sometimes clouds our judgment.
Long-term benefits of fitness:
- Reduced blood pressure – High blood pressure can lead to strokes and heart attacks. Heart problems are the leading cause of death in the world. Fitness means a stronger heart, which pumps blood more efficiently through the body and the force put on the arteries decreases. Regular exercising is one of the drug-free methods to treat hypertension.
- Improved posture – Fitness helps maintain a strong backbone with a healthy posture. It helps with back problems and back pain that are often associated with a sedentary life.
Find out more @
Why Stretch or Warm Up Santa Fe?
Personal Training Success Story Santa Fe
Personal Training Success Story Santa Fe- Janette
Being in this field it is impossible to not get attached to the people you work with. Some of my greatest joys are to get to know each person personally and to hear the amazing stories that come from their mouths. It is an amazing treat. And when you are able to help them it is an extra special bonus knowing where they have come from and what they had to go through to get there. Janette extremely epitomizes this process. I have a real place in my heart for who she is and what she had to go through to get where she is now. Even though it completely makes sense to me that she could do it through the SolCore Fitness program, her journey is truly inspiring to me.
Janette is approximately my age, 40-ish, but she came to us with the body and spine of a 90 year-old. She was in constant semi-debilitating pain. The only thing that kept her going was a sense of duty to her family and hope that she could get out of this situation.
This situation was one to where she had gone from a thriving young woman with a husband and two kids to a woman that was just trying to get through her day. Her sole goal each day was to not get in any more pain and make it back home, to where she promptly collapsed not able to interact with her family. She sought help form chiros, massage therapists and PT’s but the pain in her back and neck was getting worse. It got so bad she was not even able to give her daughters a bath because she couldn’t reach over the tub.
To make matters worse she couldn’t use pain meds, and she knew that all the doctors wanted to do was to fuse her spine. Luckily, she found a DOM that was able to subside her pain somewhat and she reached out to us to “put her back together.” When I talked to her before starting, I told her that what she had wasn’t that difficult to fix, it just wouldn’t feel that great doing it and would take awhile.
Being the focused person that she is, she committed herself to try it for six months. My main direction to her was to go slow.
Let me tell you how committed Janette is. On her initial session when she did the wall stretch she was brought to tears because of the tissue being pulled back into place.
You see when tissue heals after an injury without it being put back into place properly it heals “out of order.” So when you start correcting, it doesn’t feel so nice.
This pain happened to her whenever she did a class or while she did her stretching homework at home, but she persisted. At one point her husband asked her why she kept going back and she said, “Because this has to work.”
I can’t tell you how many times I walked over to her during a class and saw her struggling just to stay in the posture on the verge. But I am glad that she kept with it because she now has pretty much no pain, has gotten back into lifting and running but more importantly she is a participant in her family’s life again.
It is my absolute pleasure to introduce Janette as the December Member of the Month.
1) What made you decide you wanted/needed to start a program?
I was sick and tired of being in so much pain and I had to try one more time to get rid of it. I knew that there had to be a way out of it. Your program spoke to me and I dove in.
2) What did you do before?
I used to workout a ton. Lifting weights, running and just being active. I go to an acupuncturist and I was seeing a PT before this but was given up on and told there was nothing that could be done.
3) What results have you achieved since starting your program that you are proud of?
My pain has gone from unbearable to almost gone and I am now able to be present in my family’s life. I can play with my kids. I can workout again. I feel like myself again.
4) Do you have a favorite exercise? Least? What do you like or don’t like about them?
I love lifting weights! It feels so good to be able to move like that again. The lower to mid thoracic ELDOA’s are murder for me. I know that they are exactly what I need, but they are tough.
5) What are some challenges or goals you are currently working on?
I would like to continue to be able to keep correcting my posture and to lose the 10-20 lbs I put on when I couldn’t move.
6) What do you like best about our program/ having a trainer?
That it works! I love the personal attention. The way the program is put together and is taught just makes sense.
7) What advice would you give to the other SolCore Fitness members?
Keep going! You have got to take it one class at a time and do what you can. When you don’t feel like going…go anyway! Do your homework. Even a little bit is going to dramatically help you.
8) What would you say to someone on the fence about joining our program?
Do it! But if you do give yourself some time to work it. You should be in it for a minimum of three months to even start to feel where it is going. If this program can work for me it can work for anybody.
Find out more @
ELDOA In Santa Fe For Less Shoulder And Neck Pain
How ELDOA’s Increase Spinal Mobility And Get Rid Of Neck And Shoulder Pain
- Do your shoulders slump and round when you walk, sit, or stand?
- Do you have trouble keeping your chest up when squatting?
- Do you get lower back or neck pain when doing twisting or rotational movements?
- Does it hurt lifting heavy things off the ground?
- Have you resigned yourself to living with that nagging rotator cuff pain that flares up during workouts and in bed?
If you answered “yes” to any of those (and most people will answer yes to at least one), you may have poor thoracic spine mobility. Even if you don’t notice any of the symptoms leaping out at you, it never hurts to get more mobility, especially in the thoracic spine. And establishing good habits by actively maintaining and training mobility, as opposed to being content with what you have (even if it’s not optimum), is always a good move.
After the hips, thoracic spine mobility is probably the most crucial aspect of mobility. At least with the hips, though, people can identify them and grasp the concept of hip mobility just by reading text on the computer. Sticking your hips back is pretty self-explanatory. What about the thoracic spine? It’s a bit more nebulous.
Do you know how to use your thoracic spine? Are you even aware that it exists? It’s not that people ignore the thoracic spine willfully; it’s that they’re unaware of any distinctions between spinal and lumbar vertebrae. They know about the spine, and imagine it to be a uniform vertebral column, equally capable of bending, twisting, and rotating along its length. This is totally understandable. “Spine” is what we hear, not “thoracic spine” or “lumbar spine” or “cervical spine,” but it’s much more than that.
The human spinal column is composed of five segments: the cervical spine, which extends up the neck to the base of the skull; the thoracic spine, which encompasses the shoulder and chest area; the lumbar spine, also known as the lower back; the sacrum; and, finally, the coccyx, or tail bone. Each performs a different role. Each has different capabilities, different functions. Most importantly, each segment of the spine is designed for a certain range of motion.
The thoracic spine is built for rotation, flexion, and extension. It is highly mobile – or, rather, it has the potential for lots of mobility. Because of its mobility, the thoracic spine must be used, must be moved. But it has to be known. If people are unable to visualize and feel the movement of the thoracic spine, or if they’re unable to even grasp the concept of its existence, they’ll just attempt to twist, rotate, flex, and bend with something familiar to them: the lumbar spine. That’s bad news.
The lumbar spine is built for stability. It’s supposed to support the weight of the body (plus any added weights) and resist excessive rotation and twisting. It remains stable and acts as a conduit for power generated by the hips and fed to the mobile thoracic spine. It is not meant to twist and bend. It can move, obviously, but it’s not meant to be wildly mobile. It’s meant to be solid, reliable.
You’ll find that an immobile thoracic spine isn’t just bad for the vertebrae themselves. It’s bad for your lower back and your shoulders, too. In fact, you’ll rarely feel actual pain along the twelve vertebrae that comprise your thoracic spine. Instead, your lower back will take over work for which it’s really not designed, getting chronic pain for its troubles, and your scapula (shoulder blades) will compensate by moving away from the spine, making overhead shoulder work difficult, dangerous, and painful, and a rotator cuff injury nearly inevitable. Everything in the body is linked, remember, and you can’t remove a major player from the equation without seriously affecting the balance.
Benefits of improved thoracic mobility are: Lack of kyphosis, a less painful, more stable lower back, more lung volume, Healthier shoulders, Greater range of motion …
Do use thoracic mobility to:
a. Lengthen and straighten your thoracic spine with ELDOA’s
b. Breathe more deeply
c. Enable your shoulders to roll further back without swaying the low back
Don’t use thoracic mobility to:
a. Hunch your thoracic spine
b. Hyper-extend your thoracic ligaments creating laxity in the ligaments and hyper-mobility in the thoracic spine.
So, it is important to develop thoracic mobility in a precise way that allows healthy spinal architecture and movement and not in a way that threatens your skeletal integrity or scaffolding. Loosening up the thoracic spine and then using that extra mobility to round or distort the spine further while sitting or standing is in some ways worse than being inflexible. It is therefore crucial to be conscious of posture as well, so that your whole spine is well-aligned throughout your day, and any extra mobility you create in your thoracic spine works to your advantage and towards making you straighter and taller.
In sum … do your ELDOAs!!!
Find out more @
