Square One Fitness

Square One Fitness: Getting Albuquerque Moving Again

For most people, it’s not motivation that keeps them from getting stronger. It's the guy grunting in the corner. It's the fluorescent lights and the thumping music and the vague sense that everyone else already knows what they're doing.

Square One Fitness, Dr. Emily Blair's small-group training and movement studio in Albuquerque, was built for “people who know they want to move more, but just get overwhelmed by it… we want to give them the building blocks so they're not getting injured and then discouraged, because that happens so much, especially as we age."

Blair is also the founder of Blue Sky Therapeutics, the chiropractic and manual therapy practice that operates out of the same address. The two businesses were always meant to go together, and the philosophy is identical: understand how the body actually works, build real strength and stability, and give people the tools to stay active for life.

Born Out of a Bigger Vision

"The brain learns through movement. You can do great stuff with bodywork, life-changing stuff. But the brain is going to maintain it longer if it relearns how to move with that new movement."

Square One started about seven or eight years ago in a 170-square-foot room at Blair's former downtown office. Small, she admits, but it worked. Chiropractic patients would finish their treatment and step into that room to start rebuilding movement patterns their bodies had forgotten. The studio has grown steadily ever since.

The Space Makes the Difference

When Blair moved to her current location, she put the gym up front, near the entrance, on purpose. Someone coming in for chiropractic work or a quiet massage in the back of the suite might walk past and see a 70-year-old woman deadlifting a kettlebell, and she'd like that person to think: what the heck’s going on here? I need to check this out!

"A lot of people are intimidated by the "bro factor", the crowds, the noise. If you're a little neurodivergent, or you have sensitivity to lights or sound, a traditional gym is just too overstimulating."

What you get at Square One instead is a clean, calm, focused space where the attention is on the individual and the class stays small. The focus is on movement and coaching. Limiting classes to 3 to 4 people guarantees personal attention and easier motivation.

The Ideal Client

Blair's clientele skews toward people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s who know they need to keep moving but have had bad experiences trying. Maybe they jumped into a boot camp and got hurt. Maybe they walked into a big box gym and had no idea where to start.

"In your 20s and 30s, you can get away with a lot," Blair says. "But in your 40s and 50s, people are coming in saying, I don't want to turn into my parents. I know I need to move. But it hurts when I move."

Square One is also priced to compete with personal training while offering something closer to a coached class experience in a better environment. Blair is direct about the value: "I think what we offer, it's cheaper than personal training, but it is like personal training, and it's in a really nice environment for people."

"The Menopause Squad"

Blair's most recent initiative brings Square One's strength-building work into a broader collaboration she calls the Menopause Squad. Alongside a nurse practitioner and a psychiatric nurse, she's assembled a team that can address the full picture of what women going through menopause actually need: structural strength, hormonal support, and mental health resources, all in one place.

The strength side is where Square One comes in. As estrogen declines, bone density becomes a real concern, and kettlebell training is one of the most effective tools available for building and maintaining it. But the typical options, crowded gyms, trainers without relevant expertise, programs that weren't designed with this population in mind, aren't good enough.

"You're not going to go do heavy lifting somewhere where you don't know what you're doing, or where you feel out of place, or the trainer doesn't know what they're doing, which is sadly quite common."

Movement for the Long Game

Blair's whole approach, at Blue Sky and at Square One, comes down to one thing: she wants people to stay active consistently, for the rest of their lives. The fitness side of the practice is her way of making sure the work done in the treatment room actually sticks.

"Even if someone comes to just five of our classes, gets the movements in their body, and then goes to whatever they want to do, that's fine. People need to do whatever activity works for them. We just want to give them the building blocks - empower them to heal and strengthen themselves."

That's Square One Fitness. Not a gym trying to lock you in - a starting point designed to send you somewhere better.

Square One Fitness also shares its home with Blue Sky Body Therapeutics, Blair's chiropractic and wellness studio. [Check out that story here.]