Ignite your health with One Spark
Sisters offer holistic approach at Phoenixville fitness studio
One of the main motivations behind sisters Jolie Martinez and Ramona “Rae” Leap establishing their fitness studio, One Spark Fitness in Phoenixville, was to offer a supportive community.
Ever since they opened their doors in 2019, they have been creating support systems to meet the specific needs of their members.
“If they come into our studio we support them on a daily basis,” said Martinez, who lives in Pottstown. “When they struggle there is a support system specifically for that — we are doing it together.”
“Ignite Your Health” is one of their more recent program offerings that aims to help get people’s lives back in order and their good health on track. Open to members and non-members the program is a support group centered on food and fitness.
“The whole point was to make it a healthy group about improving your health and your eating habits,” said Leap, who lives in Barto, Berks County.
The six-week program includes live meal prep sessions via Facebook Live, one-on-one check-in sessions, group meetings and a private Facebook group.
“We sent out the menu the week before so that everyone had their groceries shopped and the food prepped,” Leap said.
The approximate two-hour weekly cooking sessions were devoted to making a snack and main dish that could then be partitioned out into containers to last for the week.
“It was enough for lunch for the week or dinner for the week,” Leap said. “Some doubled the recipe for families.”
Snacks included hummus with whole wheat pita chips, granola sweetened with honey, energy bites and apple almond butter bars. Main dishes included Thai chicken bowls, a pasta dish centered on ground turkey and lowfat cheese, a tomato-basil chicken dish made in a crockpot, and zucchini turkey burgers with a side of sweet and spicy rainbow slaw sweetened with honey or maple syrup.
The program was adaptable to those with dietary preferences whether vegetarian, vegan or on the Whole30 Program.
“If they were vegan or followed a special diet we would do modifications,” Leap said. “When the menu was sent out they were given directives like substituting tofu for chicken or they could do a vegetable plant-based meal.”
One of the goals of the program was to help people make better food choices.
“Eating healthy can taste good and can be easy,” Martinez said.
They didn’t choose complex menus for a reason.
“We had some novice cooks in our group who are very into processed and takeout food, so we had to pick some very easy recipes that were approachable,” Martinez said.
They discussed topics during the program such as proper portion sizes and offered tricks to use in the kitchen.
“Jolie had these samples which are fake food portion sizes,” Leap said.
Another aspect centered on mindset and more deeply exploring one’s relationship with food, such as things you may have done in the past to self-sabotage your journey to healthy eating and how you overcame it.
“We had a journaling aspect every three to four days when I would add a journaling subject,” Leap said.
At the end of every week of the program, each participant graded themselves in different areas.
“The areas were activity, diet, sleep, self-care, such as did they take a bath or read a book they have always wanted to read or meditate or paint your nails,” Martinez said. “The things you do for yourself.”
Aside from Leap and Martinez offering guidance, the participants also helped one another by sharing their own personal experiences.
“They could offer each other pointers for late-night snackers or for mindless eating,” Leap said.
“One girl had a great suggestion — she said, ‘I made a rule years ago that you don’t eat outside of the kitchen table’. They also discussed not eating in the car because it’s a common place for mindless eating.
One Spark’s next Ignite Your Health program will start in September and will offer participants the opportunity to sample different types of diet plans they might have always been curious about, but never tried, to see what works best for them. It will be a combination of in-person get-togethers and virtual cooking classes.
“We are going to sample three different diet plans for six weeks,” Leap said. “We did a survey to pick which eating plan they want to do and chose intermittent fasting, low-carb and vegan/vegetarian.”
In the meantime, when gym members are on vacation this summer, or can’t make it to the gym for some reason, there is no reason they have to skip their favorite classes because they can still stay connected.
“The pandemic made us advance streaming live classes and we stuck with it and it’s going to be a part of our normal offerings,” Leap said, adding those classes are offered in addition to their in-person class offerings.
Also this summer, One Spark will be offering “One Spark Outings” to members who want to connect outside of the fitness studio. All of the outings will take place in Pottstown at small businesses with an aim to help support them.
“We are going ax throwing at Splitting Edge Axe Throwing and playing mini-golf at The Carousel at Pottstown and pool at High Street Billiards,” Martinez said. “The whole purpose is to get together outside the fitness of the gym — what makes it special is the camaraderie and the togetherness we have — we are like family.”