Steve Carver: Colitis Journey & JumpSport (E94)

Crohn’s Fitness Food

Enjoy this interview with Steve Carver, an IBD warrior, a personal trainer with over 30 years of experience, and the business and product development director at JumpSport. He shares his journey with colitis and dives deep into one of my favorite topics and activities: rebounding!

Summary

Steve Carver shares his journey with colitis and how he found recovery through a holistic approach. He discusses the benefits of rebounding and how it has helped him maintain his health. Steve also provides advice on getting started with rebounding and emphasizes the importance of consistency and discipline in managing IBD. In this conversation, Steve discusses the benefits of rebounding. He shares options for trying rebounding, including gyms and online platforms. Steve emphasizes the fun and versatility of rebounding, highlighting that it is not a boring workout! Steve encourages listeners to put in the work to overcome health challenges and live a peaceful lifestyle. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining a positive attitude and learning from setbacks. Steve provides information about JumpSport and invites listeners to reach out with any questions.

Takeaways:

• Rebounding on a trampoline can provide numerous health benefits, including increased lymphatic flow, improved mental health, and enhanced balance and stability.
• Getting started with rebounding can be as simple as purchasing a personal fitness trampoline or finding a gym that offers rebounding classes. You can use the JumpSport club finder to find a gym near you with classes: www.jumpsport.com/jumpsport-club-studio-locator/
• Rebounding is a fun and versatile workout.
• Consistency and discipline are keys in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
• Putting in the work and having a positive attitude can help overcome health challenges.

Topics covered in the interview:

• Steve Carver's Journey
• Holistic Approach to Treatment
• Transition to Rebounding
• Health Benefits of Rebounding
• Time Spent on the Trampoline
• Getting Started with Rebounding
• Options for Trying Rebounding
• The Fun and Versatility of Rebounding
• Accessing Rebounding Programming
• Maintaining a Positive Attitude
• Finding Information about JumpSport
• Additional Questions and Contact Information

From the show:

Stephanie: What are some of the things that you have found to help control stress levels?

Steve Carver: Here's the thing about stress, I think it's really important that you have other tools at your disposal to help you de-stress yourself. Whenever a stress happens in your life…there’s about a 90 second chemical reaction that happens in your brain. So it's okay to be angry, it's okay to be sad, it's okay to be upset, scared, whatever caused the stress in the first place. That chemical reaction lasts about 90 seconds. Anything longer than that is you staying on the hamster wheel and continuing to perpetuate those feelings.

So how do I stop that? So some people say, well, I can't get off the hamster wheel. So I need to distract my mind. For me, I'll do 10 deep breaths. And the first five, I'm like, doesn't seem to be doing anything, right? And then I get deeper and I exhale more and by number 10, I'm thinking only about breathing. And then I realized that I'm not as at DEFCON 5 anymore. I'm still trying to deal with whatever it was that caused me to be stressed, but now I have a clearer mind to come up with a solution that's going to be beneficial to solve the problem or if it's something that I just can't control and there's nothing I can do about it at this moment, me being worked up about it is not helping the problem. So find a way that works for you to distract your mind from the thing that caused you to be stressed in the moment.

I know that there are some monumental things that happen in life and in the moment it's very upsetting. But I always take a moment and think, okay, what can I do about it right here, right now in this moment? And too many of us regress to some other trauma in our life where we were a child and we didn't really have good coping skills; so we have a very childlike reaction to that stress. Whereas if we can understand that that's what we're doing and we're no longer there, then we can replace those reactions or those coping mechanisms with something that's more beneficial to you — and again, this takes a little bit of work and it doesn't happen overnight.

One of the coping mechanisms I have is a JumpSport trampoline. When I'm at work and something frustrates me or maybe I didn't get good sleep, I go down the trampoline and I run as fast as I can or I put on my headphones and I listen to really loud music and I bounce for about three to five minutes and sure enough, all of a sudden I'm not that stressed anymore and I'm not that upset anymore. Now, the problem didn't go away, I just stopped making it worse than it was, like pouring gasoline on a fire. And I think that is helpful for people — if they can find something for them, and certainly the trampoline is a vehicle and is a fun thing, that distracts you, it lets you get all that energy out.

Stephanie: I've heard that there are mental health benefits to rebounding. Is that something that you can talk about?

Steve Carver: Sure, let's talk about the health benefits. So I primarily got into this because of the physical aspect of it. So you go from zero gravity when you're at the top of the stroke, where you barely even just barely leave the surface — you don't even have to jump high on it — and then you push down into the trampoline surface and can create exponential gravity. The beauty of that is, on a health level, is that your lymphatic system does not have a pump, so to move lymph through your body, you need two things do that, gravity and movement…doing the fitness trampoline from JumpSport will give you up to five G's of force, so as you compress yourself down to five G's and release to zero gravity, it creates a natural pumping action…10 minutes of exercise will actually move the lymph through your system and detoxify your body while you're working out. So what does that do? What does that mean, really?

Well, if I remove all the toxins out of my body very efficiently and I help my body do that, that helps everything else be more efficient. So now my immune system is stronger because it's not bogged down by toxins. My heart, my lungs, anything that has fluid is going to be assisted by that pumping action as well. So you're going to get benefits to your endocrine system and all of all of the other ones that I mentioned. Not to mention that you're going to actually help your heart in this process so it doesn't have to work nearly as hard. So there's just a small list of just the physical health benefits.

We have our product in the UCLA Medical Center…they've realized that it produces a lot of your happy hormones. So oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins all get released into your brain while you're bouncing on the trampoline. So as a result of that, you smile and you're happy. So I always tell people, three minutes on the JumpSport is like a cup of coffee. So if you're feeling a little down, your energy is a little low, you get on the trampoline, you bounce on it for three minutes. All of a sudden you're like, I'm wide awake and I have lots of energy and I’m happy again.

Links from the show:

• JumpSport - www.jumpsport.com
• Rebounding Benefits - www.jumpsport.com/fitness/benefits-of-rebounding/
• ACE Study - www.jumpsport.com/blog/ace-study-proves-exercise-trampoline-benefits/
• Workouts - www.jumpsport.com/fitness-trampoline-workouts/
• YouTube Channel - www.youtube.com/@JumpSportFitness/videos
• Instagram JumpSport - www.instagram.com/jumpsportfitness
• Instagram Steve Carver - www.instagram.com/carvercompletefitness

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