I’ve spent the majority of my adult life pretty far away from where I am now. At least as far as work goes. I spent 15+ years slinging booze and fried food, watching people overindulge in both all the while complaining about how tired and bad they felt. I’ve worked in restaurants on both coasts and in the Southwest. It’s the same every where, beer o’clock rolls around and it’s time for drinking and eating too much to blow off steam from a work day filled with too much stress. Seemed to work for most people, as long as the buzz lasted, but it started to bring me down.
In an ironic twist of fate, about 3 years ago, I moved to the fitness industry. I started out answering phones at Soloflex. At the time, they had just introduced the new WBV platform. The technology had been available for decades, but was just becoming widely available for home use, with the Soloflex WBV being the most affordable version. I’ve taken on new responsibilities since then, but I still get a lot of calls and emails about WBV. Some are questions and many are customers who want to let us know about their experience with WBV. Those are my favorite. It is really nice to hear that you’ve helped make someone feel good instead of facilitating a nasty hangover. I’ve posted many of the emails and letters here.
Over the years, I’ve talked to people who tell me what whole body vibration therapy has helped them with a variety of issues, from trouble walking to incontinence. A woman called us recently and said that her bone mass density had increased by 25% in two years of using WBV!
A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from a very nice woman in Texas. We chatted a bit about whole body vibration. After a few moments, she started talking about cats and how purring, which has a frequency of about 25-50 Hz, (the Soloflex WBV operates at 28-60 Hz) is thought to be healing. I found this pretty interesting and began my own research after we got off the phone.
The idea that cats have nine lives is attributed to how rarely they are injured and how quickly they heal when they are injured. At cat can survive a fall of 5 floors and escape unscathed! They also have fewer instances of bone and muscle problems than other animals. There is a common adage among veterinarians, “Put a cat in a room full of broken bones and they will all be healed.” All of this is believed to be because of purring. Purring is believed to strengthen bones and muscles, relieve pain and stress (cats purr when injured and when giving birth) and promote healing. Mother Nature knows best, whole body vibration works!
I’m excited to share more customer experiences on our new blog. I’ll also cover topics such as stretching and yoga, as well as sharing my own experiences with WBV.
I had the pleasure of being introduced to Nordine Zouareg through a friend of mine. She had met Nordine at the Miraval Resort in Arizona, where he works with celebrities like Oprah and John Kerry. My friend gushed about how nice he was! I asked her if she had mentioned her connection to me and Soloflex, of course she hadn’t ;).
I was really curious if he had ever worked out on the Whole Body Vibration Platform; could he be training his clients on one? I decided I would just ask him so I sent him an email, and that’s how we met. His story is the Soloflex dream! He’s the scrawny kid who knew he could become Mr. Universe if he put his heart and soul into it. This is such an fabulous and inspiring story. I had no idea this guy was going to be so cool!
Molly Wilson: How did you get started in bodybuilding?
Nordine: It was back in 1982 when I decided to put an end to a very long time of abuse, low self-esteem and spiritual disconnection. I was 19, and weighing 108 lbs I was beaten daily by bullies at school and had no girlfriend – though I loved someone secretly but was too ashamed of my body to tell her. It took years of abuse and hurt for me to discover that there was a better life ahead. It was only up to me to make the decision to be, to do and have what I wanted. I went through a process I developed accidentally to create a better life for myself; a call to finding your true core desire – mine was to become Mr. Universe.
Molly Wilson: You are one of the premier celebrity fitness coaches in the world. How did you differentiate yourself from other fitness trainers in the industry?
Nordine: Years of experience and my quest for a better life taught me that if I wanted to make a difference in this world and help people better themselves, I needed to learn about all three expressions of life; the body, the mind and the spirit. Learning through the process of my own personal growth led me to work with the most incredible people on this planet. Know who you are, know what you want and how you want to live your life…..this is most crucial to one’s success in anything. Life is professional game, don’t play it as an amateur.
Molly Wilson: Explain Bodymindfullness – the physiological piece to getting and staying in shape.
Nordine: Bodymindfulness is the name of the center I developed and lead for seven years at Miraval Resort, an upscale resort in Tucson Arizona. Bodymindfulness stems from mindful fitness, a process I teach my students and clients. Mindful fitness is about closely observing your private, spiritual world, allowing you to discover deep and true feelings about how to live your life.
It’s about soul building. By soul building, I mean the careful cultivation of self-control, self-esteem, goals, attitudes, faith, emotions, intuition and willpower. Without the soul, the body and the mind cannot exist. Going through this process allows one to have a better vision of peak mental, physical and spiritual health.
Molly Wilson: How did you become familiar with Soloflex, and do you remember the early influence that Soloflex had on the weight lifting and the fitness industry?
Nordine: Absolutely! The Russians were always at the forefront of weight lifting and were certainly on the lookout for innovations. Soloflex revolutionized the way we worked out. People ask me if I only had 20 minutes a day to work out, what will I do? My answer is always “why would you complicate your life? Use Soloflex!“. There were many other modalities and gadgets invented back then and still now, but Soloflex is the real deal.
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I can’t thank Nordine enough for his time, energy and the credibility he lends to our products!
Over the years Soloflex has worked with other well known fitness experts including Arnold Schwarzenegger (Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia, who endorsed Soloflex from 1981-1985) and Frank Zane ( another Mr. Olympia ) . Nordine has been one of the most responsive and easy people I have ever talked to. You can really sense his energy and enthusiasm for life, how refreshing!
To learn more about Nordine, visit his website.
Something I’d actually do. No equipment, no machine, no matter how good, does you any good if you won’t use it.
I’ve been using the Soloflex Rockit for several years. The Rockit is for doing squats, the most perfect of all exercises because it works so many muscles. I would have never been able to do 50 or 60 squats every other day without this incredible, simple to use, machine.
You should warm up before lifting weights and the Rockit is great for warming up. I start out with very shallow squats, do 12 reps, then slide down the bench a bit and do a deeper squat. After 12 reps I slide down further then further until I’m doing deep squats. I then slowly slide up, doing sets of squats on the way up. I started doing this when I found myself dreading that first deep squat. This routine has kept me on my Rockit.
Recently I added Soloflex vibration to my Rockit. The whole body vibration has added impressive improvements to my muscle tone etc. I am now getting even more bang for my buck!
It’s obviously hard to break from the crowd if you’re stuck in the middle of it. Seeking that uncharted path is where it’s at. Soloflex was the first company to broadly use 800 numbers in advertising. We were the first company to use infomercials. Both of these things were available to advertisers long before I tried them. Why ad agencies weren’t using them still baffles me. We did our own advertising, in-house. Not knowing what we couldn’t do, we just did it.
Social media on the web is today’s new marketing opportunity. Complicated to implement, yes, but it offers something no other prior form of advertising has allowed; a giant focus group from which to learn. It is the customer after all who buys your stuff. Learning where they’re coming from certainly seems worth the effort.
So, here Soloflex is on a new journey. The last thirty years has taught some lessons, like don’t get complacent & don’t presume to know what customers are really thinking. This should be interesting.
The idea that cats have nine lives is attributed to how rarely they are injured and how quickly they heal when they are injured. At cat can survive a fall of 5 floors and escape unscathed! They also have fewer instances of bone and muscle problems than other animals. There is a common adage among veterinarians, “Put a cat in a room full of broken bones and they will all be healed.” All of this is believed to be because of purring. Purring is believed to strengthen bones and muscles, relieve pain and stress (cats purr when injured and when giving birth) and promote healing. Mother Nature knows best, whole body vibration works!
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