Jorge Lopes: Ready for Whatever Life Throws at Him

INDO BOARD Influencer Jorge Lopes, now 40, played organized sports when he was younger. He’s in great shape now, and not only because he wants to look good. 

“It's not as easy as people make it look. It is definitely a struggle sometimes, but it's all about knowing why you're doing it. It has to be a deeper thing than just looking good,” said Lopes about his fitness journey. “I'm doing it so that I can have a good quality of life. I want to be able to do whatever life requires of me and not have to worry about the physical aspect of it.” 

Balance is Everything 

Instability training came into play for Lopes fifteen or sixteen years ago when a personal training client of his – a snowboarder – invited him to try a balance board, explaining it would be a good way to prep for a snowboard outing. Lopes immediately observed the benefits, and recognized that they would carry over into many areas beyond readiness for a particular sport. He researched balance board options and landed on INDO BOARD as his favorite.

“Balance is one of those tricky things because your body only does what you ask of it. If you don't do anything that requires balance, your body will not strengthen the stability muscles or activate them because it doesn't feel like it has to,” he said. “Then when you run into a situation where you need your balance, your body's not equipped for that. And chances are you're going to fall.” 

Lopes lives in New England, where opportunities to fall are guaranteed given their icy winter. Instability training on his Indo Board prepares him for simple things like that. 

Yeah. So I live, I live in Connecticut, so New England has winter <laugh>, you know, and then there will be ice. “INDO BOARD is very beneficial to your stability and core system. You're training your body to deal with this instability. If you slip on ice or a wet floor, your body kind of takes over and stabilizes yourself before you even know that you're slipping,” continued Lopes. “That's an important thing because you're not gonna have time to say, ‘oh my gosh, I'm slipping. What do I do now? Let me engage my core.’ It doesn't work that way.” 

Purposeful Fitness 

Lopes is a personal trainer who incorporates INDO BOARD into his own workouts and workouts with clients. His personal goals inspire him to help his clients in the ways he has used INDO BOARD to bring fullness to his own lifestyle. Shop INDO BOARD Now “I have three children. I want to be able to go outside and run around and play soccer with my son when he practices, play basketball with my other son and flip around with my daughter when she's doing gymnastics. To be able to pick up my mother if she falls,” he said. “I'm just using these random examples because these are things that me and my clients have had to do, and that we're capable of doing because of the way we train. You know you hear how a big strong person threw their back out because they reached into the trunk and picked up a jug of milk.” 

Real world Fitness 

Based in Connecticut, Lopes attracts all kinds of clients to Lopes Eternal Fitness. 

He trains in all different planes of motion and what he calls different weird positions so that he can do whatever he wants and “not have to worry about injury. Because like they say, the best ability is availability. And yes, you can be as strong as you want, but if you injure yourself doing some random movement, then what good is squatting 300 pounds?” 

Lopes has an eye toward aging and a vision of his future self. “It's all about readiness for life and whatever it throws at you, and longevity. I'm playing soccer with my son now, and when he has a son or daughter, I would like to be able to run around and play with them as well.” 

His workouts today represent a total transformation from the early days, when he describes himself as being stuck in isolation, “chest one day, back the next. It's the Arnold Schwarzenegger pain and gain thing that we've been beaten over the head with for so many years,” he said. “But I always had this little itch that, ‘This is not right.’ But I kind of didn't have a path of what to do differently. Every certification was five steps forward, five steps back. So I used to do circus stuff. I'd take the bicep curl, but then I'd like to kneel on a ball and do one arm and then hold this over my head. I was really trying to find something different.” 

His quest for “the different” is founded in real life. As he puts it, you’ll never do a chest press out in the real world. You’ll never do a hack squat. There will always be more planes of motion and more rotation. Getting on the INDO BOARD was an important part of the solution. 

“It felt a little more functional, and then I started to evolve it into more of a gate cycle, or really basic human movements: running, jumping, throwing, stuff like that. And I brought that evolution of my training together with the Indo Board and put it all together. I know it works much better than isolating muscles when you don't really isolate muscles out in the world.” 

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