Welcome to Salopia
Welcome to Salopia Health & Performance!
This is me ⬅️ (Ash)
I’m a health & performance coach with more than 10 years in the industry. I have worked with some of the world’s best athletes, typical gym goer’s, and youth athletes during this time.
I have a Masters Degree in Applied Sport & Exercise Science and am Accredited with the United Kingdom Strength & Conditioning Association.
In the last 4.5 years I have helped Team GB athletes win over 60 World and European Medals.
Our aim is to become the obvious choice for health & fitness, youth athletic development and strength & conditioning for sports performance in Shropshire. We aim to provide a range of packages to suit people’s financial and personal needs, whether that’s a monthly training program or 1:1 coaching.
We are serious about providing our clients with the very best information available and to cut out all the poor quality information which is regularly put out online. We study the science in detail and then provide it within our packages in a simple and effective way for our clients.
For example when it comes to health and fat loss, we don’t just provide you with a basic nutrition plan which “estimates” your energy expenditure, then put you in an “estimated” calorie deficit and prescribe daily cardio. Instead, we provide you with strategies that are more effective over the long term and improve your overall health simultaneously.
For our face-to-face clients we use robust scientific testing methods to measure where you are at currently and re-test periodically to measure progress. We do this in multiple ways depending on your goals, but can include things like:
Body Composition Analysis (body fat, body fat %, muscle mass, hydration, cell health, risk of heart disease etc)
Movement Screen (functional movement - mobility, stability & strength)
Global Strength Testing (we do this with a range of clients when competent to assess current strength levels)
Isolated Strength Testing (we use this with rehab and sports performance clients to assess injury risk or progress)
Sports Performance Testing (we use a range of testing including accelerometers to measure jump height, plyometrics and strength profiling, as well as other methods mentioned above)
If you’re not assessing, you’re guessing
As well as testing, we incorporate reviews and reflective tasks for our clients to make sure they are staying on track and helping them fine tune the process to improve their results. We use a range of online forms to physical documents to monitor habits, nutrition, training, recovery, mood, progress, and as a way to improve our services.
This part it vital to making progress, if you just try to turn up at the gym without a training plan, nutrition plan, without setting goals and habits that you want to build and achieve, you’ll very quickly drop off the bandwagon as bad or mediocre weeks can start to snowball in the wrong direction without plans and reviews.
Below is an example of some velocity based profiling we use with our highly competent performance athletes, this absolutely isn’t relevant to our general health clients and is bespoke for specific performance athletes. The graph shows three time points (and looks complicated to the untrained eye…), you can see the weight at the bottom e.g. 80kg, and velocity (speed) on the left. Ultimately we were looking for increased velocity at the same weight over time, showing improvement in strength/power which is relevant to their sporting performance.
Body composition analysis is something we regularly use with our general health clients to monitor improvements in muscle mass and body fat depending on their specific goals. This is a great way to understand where our clients starting point is, set goals to aim for, put a plan in place to achieve this and then check in on a regular basis to see how we’re getting on. It also provides accountability as we will be measuring progress and the numbers don’t lie :)
Well the numbers do lie on the scales… for example if you’ve eaten or drank a lot and its just stored energy or water, or you have built muscle and lost body fat but the scales haven’t changed and you think you’ve made no progress. BUT you might have made great progress within your body composition, which is very important to keep you motivated and on track. I’ll prove this below ⬇️
This is a snapshot of one of our clients body composition results. We had put a plan in place with this client and used our body composition analysis machine to measure a baseline and then check-in and review progress over time. As you can see their “Fat Mass” reduced from 19.60kg to 17.53kg, a loss of 2.4% body fat. While simultaneously increasing their muscle mass from 32.23kg to 33.17kg, which is significant in the timeframe. If this client just used the scales, they would think they made zero progress in 2 months as their bodyweight stayed the same, but they actually lost a significant amount of fat and built muscle which is the ultimate goal.
We provide a very friendly and supportive environment, there are no ego’s or meatheads at our facility so you can train in a great community and feel at ease while achieving your goals!
We also deliver youth strength & conditioning sessions to help young people develop their strength, speed, power, and robustness against injury while learning to enjoy training in the gym to encourage lifelong health & fitness. This is really important for young people as there is a big drop off at 16 years old in physical activity.
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If you are interested in our services then please don’t hesitate to contact us :)
Ash
Salopia Health & Performance
