Ellie has had a love for fitness and health from a young age. Her close relationship with her dad who also loves to workout led to many late nights working out at the local gym together. 

Zane, her father, is an accomplished athlete and basketball player. Many nights of basketball drills, strength training, and sprints at the track created a solid foundation for Ellie in establishing her love for fitness and health. 

Ellie and Zane would travel all over for crossfit competitions, triathlons, tennis tournaments, basketball games/tournaments, and run events from 5ks to half marathons. 

This experimentation in the gym and in sport led to an ongoing curiosity with strength, conditioning, and nutrition. 

When she was a junior in high school, she found crossfit and immediately fell in love with the intensity and community of the sport. 

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She joined the closest crossfit gym to her house and consistently showed up to the 5:00am class before school. Then she would go to school and basketball practice and head straight back to Crossfit Birmingham for the rest of the afternoon. 

Ellie has competed and coached CrossFit for 6 years, and is still currently pursuing competitive aspirations in the sport.

Throughout her early years of competing, she quickly realized the effects that poor nutrition had on her performance and lifestyle. 

She decided to focus on the aspects of performance that would give her an edge over the people who were training just as hard or harder. 

Nutrition, sleep, recovery, mindset, and stress management were the main factors. Nutrition became a deep passion of hers, and she started diving into learning as much as the topic as she could. 

In an effort to keep nutrition a passion rather than vocation, Ellie chose to pursue her undergraduate degree in Nursing rather than dietetics and nutrition.

She graduated from Samford University with her Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing and started working as a Registered Nurse in UAB’s Emergency Department. 

Ellie still works part time as a registered nurse, but focuses primarily on coaching individualized clients through Vulcan Nutrition.

Her vision is for people to be capable of doing whatever they aspire to in life without limitations from their body.

Health looks different to everyone, and her goal is to help each individual progress along their personal continuum of health goals and aspirations.

Whether their goals are to be active with their grandchildren or to become a better high school athlete, there is a place for proper nutritional coaching in everyone’s life. 

Read more about Ellie’s competitive history here:

From a young age, Geena has enjoyed working out. What first began as a fun way to socialize, eventually became a serious endeavor! Her middle and high school years were mostly spent running cross country and track. One of her biggest accomplishments was running for a year consecutively -- averaging over 5 miles per day.

When high school ended, Geena was introduced to CrossFit by her cross-country coach. This was an entirely new experience for her, and she quickly realized that she had a lot of work to do.

In the beginning, it was fun for Geena to work on new skills. Day after day she found herself being able to say she could conquer something different...pull-ups, overhead squats, double unders, box jumps.

Then it was official. Geena drank the kool-aid. The next 6 years she spent competing and training 20 hours a week with the hopes of making it to regionals.

Over those 6 years, Geena competed at Wodapalozza 3 years, Granite Games 2 years, and various other local competitions. Unfortunately, she fell 1

spot short of making it to regionals as an individual competitor 2 years in a row.

Now, while Geena still loves to workout, it has become more about longevity and health.

During the competitive CrossFit years, Geena was also pursing a Master’s degree in Exercise Science. She held a graduate assistantship position and worked with the Children’s Physical Activity and Research Group. She also aided with multiple research projects about exercise and supplementation (one is in the process of being published!)

After graduation, Geena taught Exercise Physiology at the University of South Alabama and continued as a research assistant.

Nutrition has always been one of Geena’s favorite topics of research & discussion. She has dedicated hours of study to nutrition and habit-based changes.

Geena is eager to help educate clients about nutrition and to figure out how to best help meet his or her goals.