Basketball is a physically demanding sport. Players are in continual motion, including jumps, sprints and twisting to avoid or get around other players, and take many hits and body slams. No question players like James have to work hard at staying emotionally and physically fit, but they also need to develop the skills that allow them to recover quickly from some very tough setbacks.

The key is developing and practicing a holistic approach to wellness — an approach that Andrea Henkel Burke and Katie Brennan have created to help people who have experienced long COVID and other chronic health issues — a wellness approach that can benefit anyone wishing to live a healthy life.

As a former world champion (eight golds, six silvers and two bronzes) and Olympic biathlete (two golds, a silver and a bronze), Henkel Burke knows a lot about maintaining health and recovery.

Brennen, a Lake Placid native who has worked for over a decade in the National Health Service in England and for many years in the U.S., knows a lot about developing an evidence-based approach to wellness. As a result, their combined life experiences and skill sets made them a perfect pair to take on COVID recovery, a disease both have experienced.

Like many who contracted COVID early in the pandemic, Brennan was struck, this at a time when little was known about the disease and basic prevention measures like masking were not widespread.

“I had COVID three times,” said Brennan. “I was in London the first time. At the start of the pandemic, I was working for the health service. I was doing a lot of contracting on data-based health improvement. We pivoted on a dime to figure out how many beds and how much oxygen we’d need. In early March 2020, everybody was getting sick, at a time when people didn’t know what it was, and the strain was very intense.”

Brennan, then married with a young daughter, isolated herself in a spare room and hunkered down for about three weeks, but she never fully recovered.

“Now it’s the textbook thing we name as long COVID,” she said. “I kept getting heart rate spikes, my breathing was difficult and my energy levels were very low. I never lost my sense of taste or smell as some do. It was all so disorienting. I slowly got a little better, but I had that brain fog that many talk about. I was functional, able to work, but I didn’t feel like myself. I was definitely feeling diminished.”

After 17 years of working in London, like many a tuberculosis patient before her, Brennan decided to move back to the healing environment of the nature-infused Adirondacks with her family.

“Luckily, I was here in the Adirondacks when I got COVID,” said Henkel Burke. “The first time I got COVID was when traveling to Germany at the end of 2021, probably on the airplane. At the time, I was studying online psychoneuroimmunology — basically how the body systems work and function together. Fortunately, I did not have long COVID or a strain as intense as Katie’s. As I was already doing many of the things that we later put into our program, I was already more resilient, more prepared to fight and recover from COVID.”

When in England, COVID provided Brennan a crash course on how the body-mind works. Back in the Adirondacks, she had a strong desire to learn how to protect others from the disease, fully recover from COVID and other chronic diseases, and help others do the same.

“The golden thread was the nervous system, and doing things that supported the nervous system,” said Brennan.

Feeling better, she attended a highly recommended exercise class led by Henkel Burke, another person on a similar quest, approaching the challenge from another angle. This class vastly enhanced her recovery. Comparing what they learned, Henkel Burke and Brennan realized that by pooling their skills, they could help others succeed and, by establishing an online program, they could assist people no matter where they live. They named their new program ThriveNinety.

“In biathlon, you learn a little thing like pulling on the trigger too hard can affect everything else,” said Henkel Burke. “A key aspect of our program is helping people achieve those little steps that can make a big difference. It’s all about practical neurological things, the body-mind connection, because they influence each other. It’s taking those little steps to support different systems in the body; they accumulate, and they all work better together.”

The ThriveNinety system is based on five pillars: Pace, Exercise/Activity, Diet, Align and Loosen. Under Diet, they shared how critical caring for our gut is to all aspects of our body, mind, and emotions, underscoring how everything is connected and that one small step taken correctly can enhance our well-being on multiple levels.

People who have experienced ThriveNinety rave about the outcomes; the impact of the duo’s advice, research and work has made in their lives in relatively short order.

Shereen Raucci of North Carolina, who has experienced COVID three times, said that her experience with Henkel Burke and Brennan has been “incredible.”

“I was at a point where I could barely get out of bed,” said Raucci. “When I did, my balance was off – it was a struggle even to take a shower and feel human. Their program helped me so much. The two of them are such a great matchup. Using videos, Andrea taught me different exercises, ways to improve my balance, and how to push and give myself time to recover. I learned from them how your brain and the mind connect with your gut. I learned so much about what foods I can eat without having negative side effects. For me, it’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle. Andrea and Katie changed my life. I tend to push myself to the limit, and then I’d be down for days. Now I have one day of recovery.”

“The results made such a huge positive impact on me within a week or so,” said another client. “When you haven’t been feeling good for over a year, a week or two feels immediate. They are both so knowledgeable and such a great team because if one says something you don’t quite understand, the other can explain it in a different way that makes sense.”

(Naj Wikoff lives in Keene Valley and has been writing his column for the Lake Placid News since 2005.)