You have worked in the health and wellness field for 18 years. How have you pivoted during the pandemic?
I am glad to say that I was doing online training and coaching even before it was trendy :).
I had started offering Skype training when I moved from New York to San Diego to my East Coast clients and my focus has been to continue growing my business virtually here on the West Coast.
I still had a few clients that I saw in person and, most of them were willing to try it out and committed to the virtual workouts.
The fact that I already had a system and a process that worked, made this transition a lot easier for me.
You discovered a particular type of exercise called Super Slow. Tell us about it.
SuperSlow is a safe, effective, and efficient method of training that was created after amazing positive results in a study on women with osteoporosis. The women’s osteoporosis diagnosis went to osteopenia (which means just the beginning of it) and, in some cases, it disappeared completely. The main goal is to move slowly through the repetitions but intensely (with enough resistance to fatigue the muscles completely) and without allowing the muscles to rest, so they are the ones doing all the work and there is no impact on the joints. Breathing and deeper connection with the muscles exercised are also important aspects of this method of training.
Share your background and how it led you to Volar, Transformational Mentorship & Coaching.
From a young age, I always knew I wanted to help people. I started out wanting to become a physical therapist and ended up studying nursing in Spain, my country of origin. What I discovered as a nurse is while I loved making a difference in my patients’ lives, I was disappointed with the approach of conventional health care. I felt frustrated, as I experienced conventional medicine treating only the symptoms, but not the body as a whole.
When I arrived in New York City in my early 20s, I discovered this particular type of exercise called Super Slow. Using this method, I worked out once a week for half an hour. Within three months, I went from a size 8 to a size 6! I made no changes to my diet. I was thrilled to discover this technique, which required only a minimal commitment of 1-2 times per week, and I noticed that I kept losing fat and gaining muscle. Plus, after training in this method for a few months, the low back pain I had from childhood scoliosis disappeared! For the first time, I was able to beat my father at tennis. My mother wondered what I had done to improve my posture so dramatically because as of the tallest girls among my friends in Spain, I was always slouching.
With my new 30-minute per week workout I (1) lost fat; (2) gained muscle and (3) improved my posture and athletic performance.
My passion was ignited, which compelled me to start my own personal training business. With two partners, I opened the Manhattan studio Transform Fitness, where we trained accountants, advertising execs, and entrepreneurs to yoga moms, high-performance athletes, and certified couch potatoes—and everything in between. That was almost 20 years ago. Now, a higher calling has been urging me to fulfill the next level in my evolution toward complete health and happiness and to share my gifts with even more people. That’s how Volar, Transformational Mentorship & Coaching was born.
My new business model incorporates more than personal training, and it’s geared toward helping you transform not only how you look and feel, but also to transform how you relate to life itself. Volar means “to fly” in Spanish. To me, flying means freedom, exhilaration, excitement, and living life to the fullest. These are the qualities I want clients to feel as a result of our transformational work together.
You are the creator of the Mindful Online Workouts. What are some of your special offerings for clients?
Since March, we have been offering free workouts as a way to help people move and stay mentally sane. You can sign up for a free workout at www.mindfulonlineworkouts.com. And, for this month, we have a 50% discount when you sign up for the Mindful Online Workouts as a way to continue helping people to move and get in their best shape of their life without leaving their home.
Results are fast: increased muscle tone, fat loss, decreased stress, better sleep, increased energy, reduced cholesterol, elimination of diabetes type II, improved cardiovascular issues, elimination of low back pain, and sometimes knees and shoulders. There are also very specific results depending on what the person’s goals are.
What do you enjoy most about working with clients?
I really enjoy seeing my clients succeed in their goals. It still surprises me, after practicing this method for all these years, that people report so many amazing results so fast. I also love to see them finding the awareness of struggles they have had for a long time and figure out ways in which they can master them. I enjoy being a sounding board for them, a place where they can express thoughts, feelings, and desires that they don’t share with many people and find solutions to their problems.
As a trained nurse, personal trainer, and nutrition specialist, what areas are of concern for clients today?
We live unprecedented times that have forced people to create new lifestyles and self- care practices. At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a big need to get the body moving to prevent the negative results from the inactivity we were putting our bodies through due to expending more time at the house and in front of the computer. The other thing I noticed was that people taking extra trips to the kitchen and snacking constantly due to the availability of it from again being home more often. I think there was also an increase in drinking as a way to escape the current situation and the almost unavoidable feelings of isolation and almost despair in some cases.
On a positive side, I saw some people really changing their ways after self-realization of the habits that were hurting them the most.
Overall, as unfortunate as all this is, I think it has put us all in a position of deepening our inner work and some very amazing outcomes will happen after this deep work is done. I believe this is not going to just affect people individually but it will change humanity as a whole for the better.
Please share a few success stories.
Here is a link to my success story page on my website and below some of the results our clients have expressed recently:
Link to website: https://www.volarbyananieto.com/success-stories-1
-One of our clients experienced that the program is a perfect combo of workouts so that, by the end of the week, she felt that she had exercised and stretched every single muscle of her body.
-Another client figured out what her biggest struggle is with food and was able to substitute and shift it.
-One more client feels so confident, powerful, and sexy inside her body that intimacy and sex life with her husband has improved dramatically.
What are your goals for 2020?
My goals for 2020 are to continue expanding our tribe and people that benefit from our Mindful workouts and grow our team.
At this time, there are 3 other trainers working with me and we have a variety of around 15 classes per week where we offer strength training, Pilates, yoga, and stretching classes.
We launched The Quantum program in April and will be facilitating one more time this year during the month of September. This is a 21 Day Transformation program that includes daily exercise, nutrition, and group coaching and it is a Quantum Shift into getting in the best shape of your life and being able to maintain it. Our goals are to work with people long term as we believe this is the way we can help them achieve optimum health and keep it for the rest of their life.
You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbUGkI2X3yv2VRwqSXijl1A?view_as=subscriber
FB- https://www.facebook.com/Volar-1026627567451638/
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/volar_by_ana_nieto/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ananieto/
