Solange Sa­landy, founder of SIO FIT epit­o­mis­es the mot­to of her health and fit­ness en­ter­prise—Strong In­side Out.

She ex­udes grace­ful strength and poise, from her dread­lock tress­es down to her sculpt­ed feet. Her Cop­per­tone skin ra­di­ates good health and your gaze even­tu­al­ly turns to her im­pres­sive bi­ceps. The strength in Sa­landy's taut physique is ev­i­dent, she has func­tion­ing fem­i­nine mus­cle not just for aes­thet­ics, cou­pled with in­cred­i­ble mo­bil­i­ty and agili­ty and she is poised to take fit­ness to an­oth­er lev­el.

Af­ter spend­ing more than half her life liv­ing in the US, the ACE-cer­ti­fied per­son­al train­er is back home to share her knowl­edge us­ing her fit­ness back­ground, stud­ies in nu­tri­tion and stress-re­liev­ing tech­niques learned from her trav­els in Asia to pro­mote a health­i­er lifestyle in her coun­try as lifestyle dis­eases such as heart dis­ease, obe­si­ty and di­a­betes are on the rise.

With the Car­ni­val sea­son in full swing and crunch time for some peo­ple in the gym, with less than four weeks to be ready for the road in their Car­ni­val cos­tumes, Sa­landy's ser­vices are in peak de­mand for group train­ing and per­son­al one-on-one train­ing.

She has a Car­ni­val boot camp every Wednes­day at Bush Moun­tain—Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel St Ann's, class­es at a gym in Ch­agua­nas and sev­er­al per­son­al clients in Mar­aval build­ing their bod­ies from the in­side out.

Sa­landy, 35, said she caters for a more se­nior clien­tele as well—her first four clients in Trinidad were women, the youngest was 55 and the old­est was 62.

She said all had is­sues that came with ad­vanc­ing age; wear and tear on the knees, shoul­ders, low­er back and wrists.

Sa­landy said there was one young man in his late 20s who al­so had all these con­di­tions, but they were weight and lifestyle-re­lat­ed. She can al­so tu­tor chil­dren.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at Coblentz Gar­dens, St Ann's, Sa­landy said "There is a mis­con­cep­tion that the gym and ex­er­cise are what's go­ing to give you the physique that you are look­ing for to hit the road.

"In the in­dus­try, this is ac­tu­al­ly quite well known and pop­u­lar that the for­mu­la is 80 per cent di­et and 20 per cent ex­er­cise. Think about it as a cake; di­et is the cake, ex­er­cise is the ic­ing on the cake, ex­er­cise is putting the fin­ish­ing touch­es on it.

"Tony Ce­fali, my train­er is the per­son who sparked my pas­sion for the health/fit­ness in­dus­try. To­geth­er we had gone fur­ther to de­vel­op train­ing plans you do not see every day in the gym.

"Our clients typ­i­cal­ly come to us for in­creased agili­ty, speed, mo­bil­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty like an ath­lete. To look like an ath­lete you have to train like an ath­lete, so we don't use ma­chines in gyms."

The for­mer head of Dig­i­tal at Mc­Cann Port-of-Spain said their method was un­con­ven­tion­al and in­cor­po­rat­ed some mil­i­tary train­ing, it en­tailed lots of bat­tle ropes, drag­ging and pulling ac­tions, tyre ex­er­cis­es, bear crawls, core ac­ti­va­tion, ath­let­ic move­ment, in­creas­ing speed and agili­ty and push­ing past your com­fort zone.

Sa­landy said in 1998 when she was 14 years old, she moved with her two sis­ters and moth­er to New York.

She said her moth­er passed in 2001 and that was when she fell in­to de­pres­sion for six months and she used fit­ness and dance class to bring her out of it grad­u­al­ly.

Sa­landy said the East­ern stress-re­liev­ing tech­niques com­po­nent was added af­ter her spir­i­tu­al jour­ney to Thai­land, Cam­bo­dia, Viet­nam, Bali, In­dia, Sri Lan­ka in 2018 and 2019, she spent two weeks vol­un­teer­ing with monks in Chang Mai, Thai­land.

She said she al­so stud­ied yo­ga and a breath­ing tech­nique for re­liev­ing stress called Breath Works while in Ra­jasthan, In­dia and will re­turn for ad­vanced Yo­ga stud­ies/prac­tice.

Sa­landy said many train­ers ne­glect­ed train­ing the core and con­cen­trat­ed more on the tra­di­tion­al type of strength train­ing and the "showy" mus­cles such as the chest and arms for men and legs, glutes and abs for women, of­ten us­ing mo­men­tum to lift too heavy weights set­ting them up for in­jury.

She said she worked with her clients to un­learn any "bad habits" and re­build from the in­side out, as­sess­ing what their im­bal­ances and weak­ness­es were to start their tai­lor-made pro­gramme.

Sa­landy said she liked the core to the Tro­jan wall, the spine was the king, the sol­diers were the per­son's core and team that need­ed to be strength­ened and trained to pro­tect the king.

She said many peo­ple had back in­juries be­cause their core was not con­di­tioned and they ex­pe­ri­enced lots of pain.

Sa­landy said her train­ing pro­grammes pushed her clients men­tal­ly ask­ing them to dig deep­er to un­der­stand the dis­ci­pline and grit nec­es­sary.

She said she can get them to their fit­ness goal, but they must ex­hib­it and be will­ing to put out the work be­cause the re­sults were worth it.

Sa­landy said the de­sire to change must be greater than the de­sire to stay the same.