January 2021 Newsletter
Welcome to 2021. A year that is full of opportunities, adventures, and a clearer drive toward priorities. We are excited to give you a preview of what’s to come over the course of this year.
We are starting off 2021 with a challenge to provide some fun motivation to create daily habits that move you towards your health goals. All the details are below. We are excited to share in these next 6 weeks of morning Decompression Breathing with you and see who wins the 1:1 sessions with Dr. Goodman and Coach Salas.
Another round of instructor mentoring will be rolled out in late winter with changes made from all the amazing feedback we received.
Streaming is going to get a makeover. This will include better organization and written lists of the exercises in the workouts. There will be more workouts than ever before and a deeper dive into specialty applications. We’re also excited to introduce Core Educator channels with regular workouts from our top instructors.
Our new certification process will be rolled out this Spring. A 6-week online education portion will allow in-depth study of topics to preface the in-person part of instructor certifications. With a profound understanding of the anatomy, concepts, and applications, instructors will be more prepared and confident to move forward with the work.
Dr. Goodman has a new book being published this summer. His innovative approaches are expanded into narratives discussing how we’ve adapted out of pain. Built around the primary thesis on the remarkable endogenous cannaboid system. He delves into its omnipresent role in our homeostasis. This book provides low tech yet effective solutions for health improvement using heat, movement, and cannabinoids.
Foundation Training’s Childhood Development Director, Jen Goodman, takes Foundation Training into the first year of life with “Shaping Your Baby’s Foundation.” A fundamental resource for new parents, the skills learned in this book create resilience for future development, dramatically affecting the long term of your child’s development. The book guides you through the year as an opportunity to grow with your child, building complexity from the simplicity of the first stages of life.
We are excited to spend this next year with our amazing community.
Instructor Highlights
We have instructors all over the world integrating Foundation Training into their practice and finding innovative ways to reach their audiences. Each month we bring you a little snapshot of what they’ve done recently.
Ananda Staudenmann is a Level 1 certified FT Instructor and body therapist in Switzerland. Ananda had the recent privilege of translating Foundation Training videos into German, allowing the work to reach a wider audience. The integration of Foundation Training into her practice has not only improved her clients’ health but has made them stronger and more resilient. She encourages her students to find the fun in movement with Foundation Training. “It thrills me to see my clients building strength, feeling better and having fun with the trainings.”
Elijah Sacra is a L2 certified FT instructor, US Marine Corps Veteran, Exercise Physiologist, and Functional Medicine Health Coach with a private practice based in Durham, NC. Recently, he remotely trained an active-duty US Navy SEAL who was deployed in a remote location overseas. “In just a few sessions he was out of knee and back pain and possessed the knowledge to be able to implement Foundation Training as an instrument of self-care for the remainder of his deployment. This experience was an outstanding reminder that Foundation Training is a simple sustainable system that works in any environment to deliver tools for self-preservation and longevity.”
6 Week Challenge
Daily Decompression Breathing
Start 2021 with habits that make you stronger, healthier, and feeling great. The Daily Decompression Breathing Challenge kicks off on January 1st. This 6-week challenge is an opportunity to set up a routine that will become a habit to improve your life. Decompression Breathing practice changes your movement patterns and teaches you how to take notice of the engagement within your body. Establish a conscious practice to improve your unconscious movements.
The details of the challenge are simple. Do (at least) 2 minutes of FT Decompression Breathing every day for 6 weeks. Ideally, in the morning to set up your day. But anytime is the right time as long as you do it. Take a video/picture and tag @foundationtraining with the included hashtags #DecompressionBreath and #MorningInspiration. Every week a winner will be randomly selected who will get a month of free streaming. At the end of the challenge, a grand prize winner will get an hour long 1:1 FT zoom session with Dr. Eric Goodman AND a followup training session with Coach Jessie Salas.
If you’re new to FT or want a refresher, you can check out the quick tutorial here from our Baseline Program.
- Concept Corner -
Decompression breathing is integral to Foundation Training. The inhalation focus is on 360° expansion of ribcage. The ribs expand to let the lungs fill up so that we can give oxygen to our body. But because the ribs on your back of your body attach to the spine, they have less freedom to move than the ribs in the front of your body. Years of poor posture and movements patterns have limited this movement even more. And when these tissues don’t move at all it creates a new “normal” of stiffness in the thoracic spine. This lack of movement cascades into more than just decreased oxygenation, which is reason enough to practice regular decompression breathing.
But in addition, when these tissues are tight, the body then looks for other areas to expand for breathing and uses the small accessory muscles; which then gets overworked and painful. In addition, when these stiff tissues can no longer slide easily over each other it causes nearby joints (i.e. neck/shoulders) to reduce their movement, compressing the nerves and blood flow to important areas like your head and arms.
So even though your thoracic ribcage doesn’t move a lot, it NEEDS to move. With a healthy thoracic spine & ribcage, the lungs get more oxygen and the neck & shoulders are free to move properly, allowing your body to function better.
Workout of the Month
Every month we provide you with a new workout from the FT team. This month you get two. The first is a groundwork focused flow providing the perfect warm up or mid day reminder of expansive breath with length under tension. In the second video, the Gorilla Lift and the Surfer Squat are broken down, working on and teaching the details of these challenging poses. Expansion with Decompression Breathing remains key in every exercise from the simple groundwork to the intensity of the squat based poses.
Speciality Application: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, or BJJ, is the most popular form of martial arts in the world right now. Described by some as chess in the form of combat. BJJ includes grappling and submission wrestling. It is an aggressive sport, so the injuries often associated with it are intense and seem unavoidable. But these injuries are not always a result of the sport itself, but rather the nature of the activity highlighting the breakdowns and poor patterns that are already happening in the body. They are simply causing the injuries to happen sooner.
When the body hits a breaking point, it’s not the external demands but the internal adaption (or lack thereof) that causes the injury. Essentially, it is no different than those moments when someone throws their back out when they bend down to pick up a piece of paper. The final straw just happened much less dramatically in that case. Just like the parent carrying their kids, the desk worker completing their day’s work, or the athlete competing against an opponent, if we are not able to adapt to the forces introduced, we get hurt. The importance of preventative rehabilitation (“prehab”) is even more relevant in an intensive sport.
Before a BJJ session Foundation Training prepares the body as a structure connected, expansive strength. It sets ups freedom to move and establishes patterns to protect. After a BJJ session Foundation Training addresses the compression that likely occurred from positions the body is forced into, allowing a return to alignment patterns and providing the space to appropriately recover.
Feed the Wolf
A monthly mental snack to feed personal development.
Goals are a great way to see where you want to go and motivate that initial burst of energy to prepare. But often goals get overcome by the monotony of daily life and/or the inevitable need to adapt to the bigger picture. This doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t want it enough or have some lack of willpower. Life is unpredictable and change is really freaking hard. Try another approach this year. Formulate small action steps that will move you towards your goal. Start small. Something you will do every single day. Ideally, have it connected to something you already do and enjoy. Prioritize this seemingly small habit. Don’t find the time, make the time. You will always have time for the things you put first. The habits we cultivate are the driving forces for what tomorrow brings. Routine is key.