MOVE OUTSIDE THE BOX.

For optimum performance you need to think - and move - outside the box. While showing you how best to leverage your body's systems, MANDLA NKOSI OPTIMUM PERFORMANCE employs cutting-edge training modalities to allow you meet and exceed your goals.

NUTRITIONAL COACHING

“Mandla materially improved my diet, which reduced my weight and also reduced inflammation – which helped my back. Second, he gave me a series of counter-intuitive exercises that you'd never get from the fitness instructor at your gym. Those two things worked. I'm straight as an exclamation point these days.”

- Brian Halligan. CEO, Hubspot

 

 

 

 

 

When taking on any fitness, weight-loss and/or athletic performance goals, it is essential to make informed food choices. Most people underestimate how important it is to reduce inflammation through nutrition. Conventional food consumption habits promote a chronic state of inflammation, which manifests in aches, pain, disease and obesity. We provide expert nutritional assessment and coaching to help clients develop an approach to food that encourages healing and provides enjoyment.* 

While exercise has beneficial de-inflaming effects, it still produces some inflammation in the body. This is especially true if an athlete or training client does not consume the nutrients needed to recover fully and fuel subsequent training. If you have a nutrient deficiency, exercise will only increase the inflammation already present in your body. We will guide you in making informed food choices that promote healing and recovery.

Our nutrition coaching will assist you to:

  • Reduce or eliminate physical pain
  • Recover faster and more fully from injuries (by, among other things, aiding in tissue remodeling and repair)
  • Lose weight by building sustainable, healthy eating habits
  • Increase your body’s metabolic efficiency
  • Easily maintain appetite balance and reduce sugar cravings;
  • Restore digestive health (i.e. eliminate nausea and reflux and reduce food allergies) 
  • Improve mental clarity and overall cognitive function;
  • Increase energy, endurance and suppleness
  • Create a healthy nervous system
  • Improve overall athletic performance

*In the event that supplementation is necessary, we will use regular blood work to ensure you get what you need and only what you need.

Good vision and vestibular function (balance) are essential to coordination and general physical development. Our visual and vestibular training programs facilitate efficient movement, whether for everyday activities or sporting endeavours.   

VISION is not just about seeing; it’s a skill that can be learned. Sight allows you to see, but vision uses sight to do various things. Visual skills include (among others): 

  • tracking
  • near and far focusing
  • hand-eye and foot-eye coordination
  • peripheral awareness
  • sequencing 
  • teaming of the eyes in any of the above

When vision is properly trained, it allows the brain to better comprehend and interpret the world around us. Improved visual perception enables us to move with greater confidence and less hesitation. It allows us to sustain better balance and coordination by reducing subconscious muscular tension so we can move more in accordance with our joint function and design.

Vision training is an important part of our perceptual-motor development. It can also be a highly effective tool in pain reduction programs and athletic-skill development.  

As part of our all-systems approach, we assess our clients’ visual skills and help to improve them as part of their overall training. This is especially important for athletes, but will help anyone seeking to lead a healthier and more active life.  


THE VESTIBULAR SYSTEM allows us to maintain, regain or improve our balance. This translates into stabilisation on one or two legs, or when our bodies are in motion - whether walking, running, jumping, etc. The vestibular system allows us to work more effectively with gravity and enables us to navigate our environment more adeptly.

The day-to-day activities of most adults do little to challenge our vestibular systems. In fact the most challenging activity most people engage in is simply standing or walking upright, and, as a result, our vestibular systems atrophy continually over time and our ability to balance deteriorates. But, if challenged appropriately with balance training exercises, healthy and dynamic functioning of the vestibular system can be restored.

VISUAL AND VESTIBULAR SYSTEMS

"Mandla’s masterful training technique is ahead of any training I have ever done. His method of movement analysis and core training has a science behind it that is unparalleled. His background is extensively varied and his knowledge of his craft is impressive. Not only is he a brilliant and thoughtful human being, he is a positive and effective motivator on my path to live a healthy lifestyle."

- Greg Selkoe. Founder, Karmaloop

MOBILITY WORK

“I have increased my ranges of motion in all my joints. I have reversed the pain and stiffness in virtually all my joints. If an old injury flares up, I have learned techniques to take care of it without having to stop training, and without having to visit the doctor or chiropractor.”

- John Melley, Production Director, CBS Radio Boston

 

Restoring joint mobility (which forms the foundation of a strong, well co-ordinated body) is at the core of most of our training systems.

Our ability to move fluidly can be inhibited by a number of factors, including scar tissue, muscular tension, and general pain and stiffness. The habits of contemporary urban life (desk work, driving, time on devices, etc) combine to degrade joint function and compromise our movement fluency. 

If your joints lack mobility - due to joint compression, and lack of adequate nerve messaging, which restricts the ability to recruit the structures (muscle, tendon, ligament) - your body is unable to function in an efficient manner. With every movement you make, you expend unnecessary energy.

Mobility work allows your joints to move more freely, with greater strength, range of motion and coordination. It also helps bones to articulate better and helps the connective tissue to become healthier, stronger, and more supple.  By restoring ranges of movement that have been lost, joint mobility exercises eliminate pain associated with moving. Improving joint mobility and function helps every movement you make be more effective.

Mobility work also:

  • builds postural alignment
  • vastly reduces stress by eliminating tension
  • gives you higher energy level
  • gives you greater flexibility
  • gives you greater coordination
  • restores joint function
  • reduces or eliminates joint calcification and compression 

BODYWEIGHT EXERCISES

“Without Mandla's personal training, I would not be where I am today: running, squatting, lunging and moving pain-free. I am so thankful for his knowledge and services.”

 - Sharon Mastrogiacomo – Fit4Life, Personal Trainer Certified by the American Council on Exercise

 

 

You can achieve extraordinary levels of fitness using nothing more than your own bodyweight. 

Squats, lunges, sit-ups, leg raises, push-ups, pull-ups: by strategically linking a series of bodyweight exercises in variable circuits, we create routines of increasing complexity to give clients maximum benefit in all areas, including strength, speed, conditioning and coordination. Stringing them together into flow-based routine creates cardiovascular demands, thus building endurance and capacity for hard physical work. 

Bodyweight exercises are holistically beneficial, improving balance and strengthening joints. This has the effect of injury-proofing the body. While this is obviously beneficial in all sporting activities, better coordination and fluidity of movement is also an asset in everyday life. 

Learning to execute a variety of bodyweight exercises correctly is the ideal way to build workouts that are fun, challenging and beneficial.  And by interlinking bodyweight programs with visual and vestibular exercises, we will create all-encompassing training templates to help you reach optimum performance. 

KETTLEBELL TRAINING

“I was looking for something of a miracle in learning the intricacies of kettlebells in under a month - and Mandla Nkosi delivered. In only three weeks, he was able to bring me from a point of complete ignorance to having the confidence to snatch a 54lb kettlebell.” 

- J.D. Special Agent with a federal law enforcement agency

The beauty of the kettlebell is that it is a no-nonsense, all-in-one strength and conditioning solution as well as a great foundation (when correctly taught) for anyone learning to lift weight. 

Founder Mandla Nkosi is a vastly experienced kettlebell instructor, having formed Boston Kettlebell as far back as 2002. Though he has moved away from kettlebell-centred training, he still believes kettlebells can have a place in a well-rounded exercise programme, provided they are integrated carefully and strategically.

A kettlebell is a solid cast-iron ball with a handle and a flat bottom, and ranges in weight from 9lbs to 108lbs. As a training tool, it simultaneously builds basic functional strength (with flexibility), a physical work capacity and provides cardiovascular conditioning. It can be used to develop joint health, and can also help lay a strong foundation for coordination in lifting.

Kettlebells build connective strength by linking the body’s "core" with the extremities, eliciting power right through the body in a kinetic chain. The various lifts demand a wide range of motion and the application of both strength and endurance. Kettlebell movements demand an eccentric loading process of the body's posterior chain (or back portion), since the handle of a kettlebell is offset from its center of mass. They thus provide a novel arena in which to develop one's fitness through a challenging lifting format.

When taught in tandem with our other modalities, kettlebells result in greater strength, stronger joints, superior posture, better mechanics and overall joint health — all of which can be designed to carry over into any lifting, fitness or athletic endeavor.

Kettlebell exercises:

  • Train multiple muscle groups in a single session
  • Increase endurance and power
  • Train the body in "eccentric deceleration", which results in a stronger body for a wide range of sports as well as for any kind of physical labor.

PLYOMETRICS

"Mandla has a unique skill set in that he is able to understand people's motivations and match them with the right exercises. He is also a reliable and pleasant person to work with."

- Hardi Meybaum

Plyometrics, sometimes called plyos, help athletes generate explosive force, enabling them to increase speed and power dramatically. 

Plyometric training is designed to increase muscular contractile power and create the ability to move quickly and explosively.

Plyos rapidly stretch and shorten muscles, capitalizing on the stretching/shortening cycle to create powerful, fast, explosive movements. Correct execution of plyometric exercises builds lean powerful muscle, making them a prerequisite for any sporting endeavour. They are also an excellent way to learn how to produce force, reduce the shock of impact, and transfer force into the subsequent movement. 

When taught and practiced correctly, plyometrics are an effective injury-prevention tool. They can also be used to develop new sporting skills, as well as aid endurance and increase overall fitness levels. Plyometric exercises can also be fun– though they do require a preparatory strength and conditioning process.

Plyometric exercises:

  • Create lean, strong, injury-proofed and coordinated bodies
  • Get a lot of work done in a short amount of time
  • Create a quick calorie-burning/-drawing initiative
  • Increased levels of mobility and flexibility
  • Improve endurance
  • Develop controlled and explosive power (relative to the use of the structures involved)