Wellness Guru: Svava, Founder of The Viking Method

Its not often i 'fan-girl' over one of the people i follow on Instagram, but today is a little different because we have none other than my favourite Fitness Instagram 'Inspo' than Svava Sigbertsdottir, Founder of The Viking Method as our Wellness Guru this week.

If you want a booty that can;t be beat, then this is the girl to follow!

Anyone who follows Fitness Stars on instagram will have already heard of Svava and be a huge fan of her daily fitness videos. Svava believes her method will make your 'body become the greatest machine and you its greatest driver' and who can fault that attitude.

Even better news is Svava is coming to Dublin this weekend, May 28th and 29th for a series of Viking Method Workshops. I will definitely be joining her, so i hope you guys will come along too and bask in the glow of this fitness maniacs (her own words) truly inspiring workout method. Book here!

I was thrilled when Svava agreed to be our Wellness Guru this week, check out her story below and prepare to be inspired!!

1. Tell us about yourself Svava, and how you got to be where you are today?

I am originally from Iceland, moved to London 12 years ago to train as a dancer. After finishing my dancer degree I qualified as yoga teacher, personal trainer, sport nutritionist, fitness manager and nutritionist. I am a true lover of sports; of being active but through every different genre I did, I never found one that would give me everything that I thought it should. The power, the strength, the agility, the leanness, the right nutrition, the contentment and the inner wellbeing. Therefore in 2013, I founded my Viking Method. I was already working as a PT and after I had my clients and my daughter had gone to bed, I would use all evenings to talk to magazines and agents, PA´s and so on to get my method out there. And it has been a lot of work, setting up your own business always is, but so worth it. The Viking Method is now done by people all over the world through my online training website, I also host workshops in various countries and do personal training. The only person that flat out refuses to train with me is my teenage daughter Raven. Apparently its no fun having your mum training you. J Ha!

2. Tell us how you spend your average working day?

My days are always different which is what also makes my work so much fun. I am very busy at the moment, summer coming and people more eager to train. Tomorrow I wake up at 7.30am. Have a green smoothie : broccoli, spinach, kale, blueberries, almonds, flaxseeds and spirulina powder. Go to work at 8am and I take my lunch with me : tuna, 2 eggs, cauliflower rice with peppers,spring onions and carrots. I also have apples and avocado with me. I have 7 private clients tomorrow which some are outside and some inside. I finish work at 6pm and go straight to the gym to train myself as I have no breaks tomorrow to train ( normally I have an hour during the day that I use to train in) . After that is home time, dinner; homemade chicken burrito with beans, rice, goats cheese feta, peppers, garlic and broccoli. Hang out with my daughter and then work on the computer which will take few hours; my online training, emails, projects that I am working on. When it is this busy, I sleep about 6 hours tops, if Im lucky.. I will probably sleep through my entire summer holiday!

3. What inspires you?

People do. Music does. Books. Great achievements of people. Wonderful acts of kindness and friendship. Every day actions of care. I inspire to help as many people as I can. That is my main goal with my company. My main goal has always been to make people feel amazing about themselves. To help them realize that they are a so powerful. To help them feel content in their own skin. To be their own boss. People making themselves and their lives better, that is what inspires me.

4. What's your goal in life?

So many goals! You constantly need goals. Otherwise you will stagnate. I have both personal and professional goals as well as goals of constant soul development. In my professional life I want to keep on building my company. To make it assessable to more people, to bring more knowledge and inspiration , to be able to take it fully all over the world. In my personal life I started to learn how to play the piano and want to get good at that, learn Spanish with my daughter and do a degree in History ( love mythology and ancient civilizations ). With myself I have the goal to be better today than I was yesterday. Every day. To give more, to love more, to be more. To choose people well that I let in my life, to speak up when needed and not let things and people that do not need to matter, matter. Many goals!

5. What does Wellness mean to you?

To me, training and nutrition is not about looking a certain way. It is about feeling a certain way. Powerful. Confident. Quick. Strong. It is about setting goals and smashing them with your resilience and your lack of acknowledging limitations. It is about not caring what others think of you. It is about being your own master. It is about giving your body a purpose. To be undefeatable, with the greatest warrior controlling it. And that is what my method is all about. And that is what Wellness is to me.

6. What advice would you give to a person looking to transform their life?

A few pointers.....

• Find a genre of training that you enjoy. Training is a long term thing so you don’t want to be doing things that bring no enjoyment.

• Go to a professional in the beginning. Learn the right technique. That is crucial. Otherwise you could be actually harming yourself and you will not get the most out of your time.

• Get both the training and nutrition into your routine.

• Decide on times that you will always set aside for training.

• With nutrition, if you are doing a huge health change; do not start with changing everything as it will be hard to keep up. Start with changing your breakfast. Then a week later, change your lunch as well and so on. Get used to the change. This is how you make it last.

• Set goals in your training. Performance goals. That by the end of the month you will do 10 full press ups, or being able to do the tree in yoga perfectly or sprint at that level on the treadmill.

• Every month do a new goal.

7. Tell us all about the Viking Method and the basis behind it?

The Viking Method is a no-gimmicks functional training method. The philosophy behind my method is both physical and physiological. Being a Viking is about being super physically fit but also resilient, never giving up, being confident, and trusting your own abilities and intuitions.

I work also closely with hormones in the body, activating the fat burning, anti-aging, de-stressing, lean tissue building ones and de-activating the ones that do the opposite. This I do through both the training and the nutrition.

I time and pair the exercises in a very specific way that forces that body to switch on greater amounts of muscle fibers and utilize more energy and oxygen long after you stopped training. The exercises are highly functional. No machines. And they are designed to both make your body the leanest, fastest most powerful machine with yourself as the greatest driver.

I focus on, what I consider, the right core work. No core crunches, no core machines. I make you work your core as what it is, the centre of your body. As the connector. The glue that keeps you together. Using your core in this way will make it extremely strong. And it will improve your performance in every way. You will be tighter, more together, run faster, jump higher, your whole posture and the way you move will be completely different. The nutrition is lots of healthy protein and fat. Carbs come mostly from vegetables and fibrous fruit. Other carbs we have at certain times. In the Viking Method it is more about how the food and drinks you consume affect your body than about kcal in vs kcal out. That is an old rule that is just not true.

8. Tell us your Top 3 Tips for Wellness?

1. Do training that you enjoy.

2. Fuel properly, watch you get in all the goodness that you and your body needs. That includes cake once a week

3. Choose well the circumstances and the players in your life. Remove anything that is having a negative effect. Be kind to yourself. Stop the internal dialogue of you are not good enough or you should be this or that or look this or that way. That does nothing good for you. Set goals, assess your life , change things that need to be changed but do so without the constant self-judgement .

9. So what's next in your career/life?

Next in my career is workshops in Dublin and then in London, I am working on making my online training website even greater J and very exciting projects coming up that I cant talk about just yet but I am extremely excited about the all the amazing things that I and my method will be bringing to people. So now the only thing that is left for you to do, if you haven’t already, is to join the Viking Clan! XXX

If you want to join Svava (and myself) at her Dublin Workshops or would like to learn more about The Viking Method, visit her site here

#Wellness