[Transcript] – The Ultimate “Body Weight Only” System For Building Athletic & Resilient Bodies, With Foundation Training’s Dr. Eric Goodman and Jessie Salas

Affiliate Disclosure

Transcripts

From podcast: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/podcast/eric-goodman-jessie-salas/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:01:08] Podcast Sponsor

[00:05:42] Introduction

[00:08:21] Decompression breathing

[00:18:32] Identifying the accurate way to get into a hip hinge

[00:21:32] Five hinges

[00: 28:06] Next exercise

[00:39:23] Shoulder tracing

[00:43:43] Coach Jess leading the exercise

[00:49:31] The Evolution Of Foundation Training

[00:56:45] Podcast Sponsors

[01:03:03] Five minutes for 30 days

[01:16:26] Eight-Point Plank

[01:31:14] Daily Starter and exercise for geriatric population

[01:26:27] FT for Older Patients

[01:16:15] Flow Format

[01:45:26] How do your bodies feel?

[01:46:47] Closing the Podcast

[01:48:17] End of Podcast

Ben:  My name is Ben Greenfield. And, on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast.

Eric:  The reason this works so well for symptom relief is most symptoms that become chronic symptoms, not acute, not first time I've ever felt it, but I've had this for a while, I'm kind of sick of it. It won't go away. I think I need to get surgery. I think I need to take pills. I think I need to get an injection, whatever it might be. We say wait. Take every ounce of tension out of the joint and let's see if it's the joint or let's see if it's the muscles. If it's the joint, you might need a repair, but most likely 9 out of 10 times, if not more, it's the muscles. 

And, we go into this position where we just challenge everything and you literally pull yourself apart into accurate biomechanics. And, that's the process of foundation training. It ain't easy, but it's effective. And, once you've learn it, it's surprisingly easy.

Ben:  Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

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Hey, folks. So, this one is a doozy. I had a couple of really smart guys fly out to my home and take me and my family through what I've known about for years, this program called Foundation Training, to turn on your butt and decompress your spine and activate deep diaphragmatic breathing and train your body how to generate its own natural endocannabinoid-based pain killing chemicals, a whole lot more. These guys have decoded it.

So, obviously, this is going to be a little bit of a video-intensive show. I will put the full video over at BenGreenfieldLife.com/DrGoodman, D-R-G-O-O-D-M-A-N, DrGoodman because Eric Goodman is the main doctor who invented this movement protocol that me and my family go through. It's a real game-changer. You want to have this in your back pocket the rest of your life as a little movement snack that you can rely upon during the week. I first discovered it when I was doing Ironman Triathlon and had low back pain. It's later been something that's come up in many podcasts, this idea of Foundation Training.

Eric has a new book as well that goes into how to use heat, how to target your endocannabinoid system, how to kill pain using a lot of these movements, how to decompress your back, how to get yourself to the point where you don't need something like back surgery. And, the entire thing is designed to make your butt more balanced. And honestly, a side effect of this is that you get great glutes, your core becomes stronger, your breathwork becomes greater, and it's just you and your body, like you told me last night at dinner actually before we did this video, he said, “Look, just show up, just you, your body and your bare feet and we're going to take care of the rest.”

And so, they have a whole app that allows you to access any of their programs. They got a website that allows you to follow along with videos. Eric has three books on this topic called “Foundation,” another one called “True to Form,” another one called “Foundations of Health,” which is the new one. So, he and his coach, coach Jessie Salas came to my house. Coach Jessie works with like professional MMA fighters, special operations firefighters, strength conditioning coaches, and he is also a guy who literally travels around teaching this stuff to celebs and pro athletes. So, you're going to want to know about this movement protocol. I can guarantee you that.

So, BenGreenfieldLife.com/DrGoodman is where the shownotes reside. That's Goodman, G-O-O-D-M-A-N. Alright, enjoy this show. And again, the video version will be on YouTube. It'll be in the shownotes anywhere you need it.

Ben:  Alright, so here we are in the Greenfield Casa basement. I've got the crew with me today because they've graciously volunteered to undergo whatever crazy methods that our friends Jessie and Eric are here to teach us. We have finished our raw liver smoothies aside from these guys. They went normal traditional route and had pancakes.

Eric:  You guys had pancakes?

Jessa:  Yes.

Ben:  They do. They missed out. And so, let's cut to the chase. As you've already learned, if you listen to the intro to this show, foundation training has been something I've been aware about for a long time. This is really the first time that we've actually done a full-on video recording of what this all looks like and you're going to learn why this is something that you may want to consider for pain management, for core training, for increased athleticism and a host of other issues that it's good for.

So, that being said, you're basically going to see Eric and Jessie take me and my family through anything and everything that they want to teach us and you about foundation training.

And, before we jump in, I do have to give a shameless plug. I even brought it down here. We shipped it through my library. Eric does have a new book, “Foundations of Health.” I'll make sure that I link to this as other book in the shownotes, which are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/DrGoodman. And, in addition to that, I'll link to some older podcast episodes I have with Eric, some other video resources, some links to their app where you can get a lot of these workouts yourself, their website, et cetera.

So, that being said, I'm going to turn it over to our VIP guests. Take things away.

Eric:   Thank you, Ben. Thank you, family.

Jessa:  Absolutely.

Eric:  So, we got Jessie here. We're going to do some basic foundation training. We're going to go very gentle for the first little bit, first 10-15 minutes, we're going to practice decompression breathing, we're going to practice fundamental hip hinges, the two most primary movements of foundation training. From there, once you guys get that, we'll go further. We'll do some eight-point planks. We'll do some of the rotational movements that help you understand kind of the spiral lines in the body. We'll just go. Okay?

Jessa:  Okay.

Eric:  Spread yourselves out a little bit. I'm actually going to get low while I'm teaching you guys, so I can almost get out of the way here a little bit and just instruct.

Ben:  So, kind of sort of the space you might have for a yoga class, that type of thing?

Eric:  Yeah, exactly. So, Jessie, why don't you come up and demonstrate a little bit of decompression breathing?

Jessie:  Okay.

Eric:  Before you guys even start, just watch Jessie for a moment. He's going to go thumbs at the rib cage, pinkies at the pelvis. It seems arbitrary. It seems kind of silly, but it's such an easy measuring stick to understand how much space you have for your digestive organs, for your diaphragm, for your liver, for all these visceral tissues that are very important. You take three or four deep breaths and notice when they breathe, it's through the nose. It's not even through the nose, it's through the high portion of the nose. You're trying to almost look up through the sinuses as you inhale. And, where you put the breath is the back of your ribs and the sternum. So, you're climbing the rib cage up like it's trying to climb up a ladder every time you inhale. And then, you grab that higher rung of the ladder and you hang on as you exhale.

Ben:  When people talk about belt breathing or 360-degree breathing, is this similar to that concept?

Eric:  It's very similar, except we are very specifically filling the lungs, which are entirely within the rib cage. So, there's a huge abdominal component. You have to breathe a little bit into the abdomen naturally, but the lungs are in the rib cage and we're trying to use the lung tissue to push the rib cage out of the way physically, like a very challenging tug of war where you feel the restrictions of breathing. Do your best to push it hard out of the way.

And, let's go five deep breaths here.

Jessie:  I'll tell you guys through a drill in a second here with them. So, go ahead and [00:12:19] _____.

Eric:  One quick thing to always pay attention to is what are the shoulder joints doing. When you're in this position, are the shoulders rounding forward, or are you pulling the elbow joints apart? The goal with any of this is pull the joints apart, create space, even at the clavicles. Pull the joint so that when you take a deep breath in through the nose, the SCM, the sternocleidomastoid that goes from the back of the jaw all the way down to the front of the clavicles is engaging, lifting the chest.

Let's go three more breaths like that. Filling the back of the cage, big chest, big back of the cage. You guys are doing awesome.

Ben:  About how long do you think each breath approximately should take?

Eric:  Five to 10 seconds in, five to 10 seconds out.

Ben:  Because you heard about that resonance breathing where they say the best for the nervous system is five and a half in, five and a half out.

Eric:  I don't get quite that specific.

Ben:  Okay. I was curious.

Eric:  Ours is all about mechanics. Everything is where are you breathing? Where is the volume filling? Where is the muscle tissue activating? What's it pulling apart? Through the nose tends to help because it's smaller holes, it's harder to pull the air in. It's literally, it can be that simple.

Ben:  Nitric oxide.

Eric:  Exactly. It can be that simple. So, I'm going to let Jessie take you guys through a basic decompression drill. He does incredibly well at drilling through each thing and just go through it and then I'll kind of answer questions as you guys do.

Jessie:  So, relax, shake off for a second. So, we're going to work on bringing up tension. We're going to work on getting good at always letting that go like a kettlebell. Be tense, we shake it off. So, let's bring our feet together. We're going to go through a full-standing decompression. With the feet together, let the heels go wide. You should be able to put about a fist between both heels right out there. Nice adjustment, guys. 

Chest comes up, so we're going to set the stage for decompression breathing. Tap your clavicles, bring those up nice and high. We want that to be our high point. As you're tapping them, start to think about the top of your head is going to reach to the ceiling, so the crown of your head's reaching up, and then you'll bring those hands back to your measuring sticks. Thumb to the top of your pelvis. Sorry, pinky to the top of your pelvis, thumb to the lower ribs, and we're drawing the elbows to the side walls. So, don't think back, think out. And, the clavicles are still up. Bend your knees now enough so you can let the thighs hug together. And, everyone's sink into the knees for a minute. Let the knees just kind of sink there. 

And then, what we're going to do, we're going to squeeze the thighs together without letting them separate. You're going to pull just a little bit of bend out of the knees. Just a little bit. Try to tension up and back where you're not letting them separate but you're going to feel it tighten up to the pelvis. We lift the weight of our head. We pull the elbows wide. We squeeze the knees together.

Now, imagine your hips are wrapping in to hug the thighs. Nobody's clenching their butt. And then, we're going to focus now on the inhale in through the nose. Lift the low back ribs wide and do your best. Now, as you exhale to draw the stomach in, lengthen, try to keep that expansive rib cage.

Ben:  So, when you exhale, your ribs shouldn't collapse. I know I tend to collapse the ribs when I exhale, but I'm trying to exhale, which is tricky, and keep the ribs expanded at the same time.

Jessie:  Exactly. Keep the ribs off of your thumb as you exhale. So, big lifting inhale. When we exhale, we're going to wrap in, lengthen the abdominal and try to stay up and expansive, wide through the elbows.

Eric:  So, right where Jessie was touching just in here, that's your serratus anterior. If the serratus anterior is not firing accurately, you get this pronate protraction of the shoulder blades. You get a lot of shoulder instability. When you practice the rib cage remaining broad as the exhale, it's an eccentric contraction for the serratus anterior muscle. It creates incredible rib cage range of motion. So, we're practicing within this.

Jessie:  Two more breaths here. Everyone go ahead and float your hands out into that sphere of tension we see so often in foundation images. So, let's check-in. Thighs are wrapping in and squeezing together, hugging. Fingertips now are squeezing. We're all going to try to shrug our shoulders down away from our ears. And, as you squeeze the fingertips, your elbows wrapped towards your rib cage ever so slightly. Think about as you're wrapping in, you're looking to try to squeeze a lemon in each armpit. Squeeze down on it. As you squeeze, we get the lats firing.

Ben:  A little bit in the armpit, that draws it down.

Jessie:  Bam hammer. Thank you. Squeeze the fingertips. Lift the crown of your head off the shoulders. Three more inhales, breathing the back of the ribs for the wall behind you. As the elbows wrap.

Eric:  Will you spin in this position for a second so I can use you as a model to kind of teach this?

Jessie:  But, the hips come back just a little bit.

Ben:  I'm a model. I'm a French model from Paris.

Eric:  That's right, with cigarette.

Ben:  I'm smoking cigarette.

Eric:  So, the brachial plexus, this is important. This is a rationale for the work that we do. The brachial plexus is these nerves right here and it fires down into the limb. It controls the lats, it controls the arms, the shoulders, the fingers, everything. This is opening the brachial plexus nerve pathway and it's controlling and coordinating the C5, C6, C7 nerve roots as they pass down into the arms. Everything from elbow disorders, shoulder disorders, wrist disorders, carpal tunnel, grip strength, all of that improves through this pathway mechanistically being trained. So, foundation training is all about nerve health, nerve coordination, and muscle activation, bringing it all together. Thank you.

Ben:  I can already feel like my body's tight.

Eric:  Yeah, it's engaged. Everything is engaged.

Ben:  Kind of that way. It just feels like everything is engaged.

Jessie:  And, everyone relax, everyone, shake it off for a second. So, we generate tension, get good at letting that go, whatever you like, move the shoulders, move the body, move the legs. I love the kettlebell concept of you covered in water. Shake all the water off. So, we deliver the tension and connection and we're working on speed and agility getting loose again.

Eric:  Let's go big [00:18:25] _____. Let's take it into like a big movement. So, decompression. A lot of foundation training poses are decompression poses, standing decompression, lunge decompression, supine or prone decompression. 

Now, we're going to get into that isometric. Now, we're not going to go back and forth yet, we're just going to really identify the accurate way to get into a hip hinge, which is a very fundamental human movement. It's strongest joint of the body, just practicing, it's maneuvering. We do it from the feet and we do it from the top of the hip. And then, we take the center away from center. The first thing is three points of contact on the feet. The big toe joint, not the toe itself, but the joint where it connects to the foot. The big toe joint and the small toe joint move away from each other. And then, the heel, like you're on a tripod, the heel just sits back, so it goes heel pressure, ball joint of the pinky toe, ball joint of the big toe moving away from each other. 

That spread allows you to lift the head up at the back of the occiput, kind of lift the back of the skull right off the neck. That will give a little bit of a shake, a little tremble between the center of you. Think of a finger trap being pulled apart. You're now going to take the center of that and simply pull away the feet. Three points of contact each onto the ground, the skull lifting away from center, the hips pulling away from center as we take the arms forward into that same simple sphere of tension, which is just closing the kinetic chamber. That's all it is.

So, watch my feet. The feet, the hip angle like your pockets are trying to look at each other. So, really important thing that hip pockets right here, they're trying to roll like a scroll closing to center. Then, as you pull your hips back, you keep rolling in just a little bit. Try that. So, turn your feet in. Right there. Hold that. And now, just pull your butt away from it. Yeah, bend the knees this much and that arms like this strong. There we go. Right there. That's it. Now, hold that. When it gets tiring, which it will, try to breathe right here.

Ben:  This whole time, we're still focusing on that breathing pattern.

Jessie:  Right here. Inhale through the nose. Slow expansive exhale.

Eric:  You're training eccentric breath patterns. So, you mentioned something earlier today. The ways to build muscle volume, the ways to really strengthen the body, eccentric loading, eccentric patterning, the ability of a muscle to go under tension from a short position to a lengthening position, it's gold. That's the teacher of the body. Everything we're doing in here is training both the rib cage, the posterior chain, the serratus musculature, all of it is being trained eccentrically in an isometric hold. We can take it to dynamic movement and train that pattern, but the most important thing initially is the frame, training the frame to endure.

Jessie:  So, what I'm going to say is that shake out [00:21:14] _____ guys through because now I know low backs cooking in that one, right?

Ben:  Yeah.

Jessie:  We're doing that right when we hold the founder.

Ben:  It probably doesn't look that hard on camera, but it's like your whole body just kind of tense.

Jessie:  Bringing it all together, recruiting. So, how many muscles can we bring into the equation when we do this turning up that brain, the muscle fiber connection. So, what we're going to do together now, we're going to go through five hinges and we're going to hold the last one. So fundamentally, this is the biggest mind shift that I made from when I started Eric's work as a fireman is the fundamental human pattern we lose because of work and sit and modern life is we go to this and we stop doing this. This starts to break down.

And, really important and we're going to go through this now, everyone set up, we're going to piece this together and I'll finish the explanation. Legs go wide. Fundamental foundation training is let's pivot on the heel so each foot is a little subtle being pigeon-toed. So, just the initial point of being pigeon-toed. We want internal rotation at the hip joint. Bring the hands out off the line of the hips. Bring the chest up. Remember the clavicle bones we tapped, that's our high point. Clavicles up. We're going to look forward and lift the weight of our head off our neck. Think of lengthening the back of your neck. 

And, just for a moment here, pull your toes up. Keep the pads of your feet fine those three points of contact and see how we feel being in this expansive position. Toes are up, pads and the feet are down, clavicles are up, the back of the neck is long. Let's go for three big inhales here. Again, decompression breathing. Expand the back of the rib cage on the inhale, lengthen and engage the abdominal on the exhale.

Now, we're going to coordinate. We're going to inhale and reach the hips and hands away from each other. Exhale. Come up. Find your pace, hips back, hands forward as we inhale. Exhale back up. Reach the ends apart again. Hips back, hands forward. Now, once you think —

Ben:  Should we exhale nasally?

Jessie:  Your choice on the exhale right now, whichever helps you find the abdominal engaging. Okay. So, hips and hands reach away. Look to feel your hips initiate the movement, not your knees.

Eric:  One thing that helps on the exhale for a lot of people is just that really simple restriction. Just purse the lips and a little abdominal contraction.

Jessie:  This one, we're going to hone in and we're going to hold it. Hips and hands get to reach away, and I want you to think expansive chest. Hips are back. We're looking 8 feet out in front of us now at the ground and pulling our nose and throw it away from it, lengthening the back of our neck. We're going to reach our hips back like you're trying to find the wall behind you. And, you know you're doing it right if you feel the back of the legs engaging. Especially the hamstring. As you're in this position now, let's try to shrug our shoulders down away from our ears. Let's try to wrap our elbows in towards each other ever so slightly as we squeeze the fingertips. Let's reach our hips back a few more inches and start to think. Now, can we spread the floor apart and feel that lateral chain muscle TFL fire? That's an outward anchor for us.

Now, let's focus. Can we wrinkle the floor from the outer edge of the foot, pull towards center, and feel the up the inner thighs connect, medial chain? Can we pull an inch of bend out of the knees but not lock them out and then pull yourself up? Shake it off for a minute. So, I'm giving you guys these layers, right? 

This is the cool part when I tell you about the jiu-jitsu kids. The more you do it, the less overwhelming of things to think about and loss of connection. You naturally have that connection. Ground to fingertips, crown of the head. Breathing connects. The advanced practitioners can go inward anchor, outward anchor. I'm going back. I'm outward anchoring. I'm inward playing on muscle chain connection.

Ben:  Putting the bag of groceries in the car, picking up alfalfa for the gals, whatever. You start to activate all those same muscle.

Jessie:  Every time it comes out. And, as Eric's dear friend, longtime partner, well, ex-partner now, Peter Park, would say, “When I'm strength coaching, when I'm working with big athletes, can hyper key foundation training turn up the connection?” And, when they're on the strength training, “I don't have to monitor them like a helicopter parent. I know they're hyper-connected and the mechanics are there.”

Ben:  Right.

Eric:  It's the language. Movement is a language. That's lost on a lot of people because people anticipate life being easy. They anticipate every fix or everything they do to be sort of already ingrained. And, to a degree it is. If we never had technological influence, if we never had mimicking bad movement, the many things that lead to mimicking bad movement patterns and kind of breaking down over time, if we didn't have those, you don't need all the queuing. But, the reality of life is we are kind of going against very convergent energies, now very, very convergent. Everything's getting closer, faster, less thorough.

So, with movement, we have to go the other way. We have to go slower, more thorough. We have to remind the body, remind the nervous system what it's made for. And, it's not always easy. But, once you get past that first learning curve, it's so easy. And, the other stuff you do starts to feel substantially better because of that learning curve, because of learning the language, which takes a week or two. And then, once you get the language, your body gets the language.

Ben:  Yeah, that's right.

Jessie:  Small stuff.

Eric:  Small stuff.

Jessie:  You're speaking the details right there.

Eric:  Yeah. Foundation training is probably the most detailed movement system out there. It's very, very detailed and it can be obnoxious to some people at times until they learn it. And then, they're like, “Oh, that's why [00:27:08] _____.”

Ben:  And, basically what you're saying is once you learn it, you become unconsciously competent and it's brushing your teeth in terms of the way that you move throughout the day.

Eric:  Your body has natural counterbalance mechanisms in place. That is not something that we develop or invent, that is in our bones, in our joints. There's these counterbalanced maneuvers that work and then there's these noncounterbalanced things that compress. So, if you're always moving limbs away from center, you're probably moving reasonably well. Pandiculation, center of the body being the main driver of movement. Stretching the limbs away from that main driver. And, you can do that in a lot of different positions. So, the details are very important and sometimes they can feel overwhelming until you realize that we're kind of giving you the same details in every single pose.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  It's like the same stuff over —

Ben:  The language starts to stack.

Eric:  It settles in.

Jessie:  So, I was thinking, Eric, let's go into a unilateral for a moment and let's go lunge position. And, we're going to go left foot forward, right foot back, about a walking stride distance. So, as everyone sets up, and you guys got long legs, take advantage, stretch them out a little bit. And, we're not going to be on a balance beam. So, right away, you set up and you're kind of doing this, step the back foot over just a little bit. But, we're going to bring the back heel up and everyone's going to turn it out to their right. So, the heel turns away. And, notice as you do it, you're squaring your hips up.

I want everyone to do is now straighten out both knees, lock them out, straighten up for a minute, and then just both knees subtle knee bend. Lockout again. Subtle knee bend. That connection and awareness then bring the clavicles up. Bring the crown of your head up. Let's go into our measuring sticks, top of the pelvis. Find the low rib. Pull your elbows wide. 

Now, imagine you're standing on a compass, your lead foot on north, the back foot's on south. I want you to think about north to south drawing the feet towards each other without straightening the joints like a pair of scissors closing. You're looking for tension up the backside of the lead leg, length and activation on the front side of the back. That's our anchor. Lift the crown of your head.

Eric:  Real quick. In that position, feel that midline tensioning, that scissor contraction. Now, let it lift you. Let it take your body's weight instead of falling to the ground, lifting away from the ground. And, that is the first real sensation of foundation training. 

Jessie: So, you're scissoring your legs. We got that isometric anchor. Let's take an expansive inhale. Now, breathe the rib cage big and stay big on your exhale. Draw the stomach in. Actively work not to let your rib cage drop. Scissor in your legs towards each other. You squashed a bug with the front foot, you're dragging backwards. You squashed a bug with the back foot, you're dragging that back foot forward. Float the hands out to that sphere in front of you. Chest is still up, crown of the heads reaching. Try to lift just a little bit more from the legs as you squeeze the fingertips. And, can we maintain scissoring of the legs, squeezing of the fingertips, elbows wrapping down, and in squeezing onto your lemons. Look for that lat engagement. And then, three more expansive inhales here, really focusing on lifting, exhale lengthening the abdominal.

Now, we're going to make a subtle shift here guys. Stay with me. Start to slowly spread the floor apart. Push the feet away from each other without letting the lead leg move. It's going to hold his integrity. We're going to hinge out in over the crease of our hip. You're starting to reach and seeing, “Can we find tension up the backside of the lead leg?” And then, we're going to do here. Once we're there —

Ben:  Butt is definitely on.

Jessie:  There we go. Shrug the shoulders down. Can we pull just a little bit of bend out of the front? You let the hip pull up and back. Squeeze the fingertips. Let's focus on sensitivity. Can we feel all three points of contact on the foot? Can we feel our shoulders wrapping down? Are we breathing in through the nose? Slow engaging exhale. Push off that foot, come up nice and tall and shake it off again.

Ben:  Left booties.

Eric:  A little different side to side.

Ben:  Oh, yeah, my left foot feels like on the right is waiting in the wings.

Eric:  Most people's glutes are always contracted from long to short. Always. What you just did is you sat into an eccentric contraction of the glute for 30 seconds, 60 seconds. You told the glute, “You are a broad muscle, not a short muscle. You work best from broad so you can propel.” That's what the glute does. It hates going from short to shorter. It loves going from long to short. So, that's why you strained.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.

Jessie:  So, we flowed a lunge decompression to a woodpecker. Okay. And, what I want to do is the other side. And, unless you're thinking that, I'd love to go those and then one more time, rotation now and woodpecker with rotation.

Ben:  Got to do the other side because now the right butt is asking for it.

Jessie:  Oh, yeah. It's going to be jealous. So, let's go right foot forward, left foot back. And, we're going, again, slightly longer than a walking stride. The back heel comes up and we turn it out. We're looking to see the hip square up. Then, we bring the arms out. Let's find our measuring sticks again. Top of the pelvis, low ribs, elbows draw wide, clavicles come up. Lift the weight of your head off your neck.

Eric:  One second in here. Just as a symptom understanding. People with sciatica, people with SI joint dysfunction or lower back herniations, that little bit of internal rotation we do at the back leg there, that opens up the facet joints, opens up the attachments where the sciatic nerve begins at the lumbar spine. It's a literal opening of a nerve pathway that you're putting yourself into. And, it's an off switch, 80% plus of the time for chronic sciatic symptoms, it's a really cool position to learn.

Jessie:  So, let's grab into the front foot, grab the ground with it, straighten both knees out for a moment. So, I like playing with fine-tuning this subtle awareness, subtle unlock of the knees. We don't want locked out joints when we're doing foundation training, but we find it, then we unlock. And then, think about we're spring-loaded here. We don't want to be down like this. We don't want to be rigid, nice and springy like our muscles should be. We start to tension the elbows wide. North to south, scissor the legs towards each other. Lifting the weight of your head off your neck. Elbows are pulling wide, were expansive. Our legs are scissoring towards each other. Let's go nice big lifting inhale back in the rib cage. Slow engaging exhale. Draw the stomach in. Reach the hands out. Squeeze the fingertips. Chest is still up. We're thinking about falling up and back in this position. 

Go ahead and pull just a little bit of bend down that knee. Come up a little bit taller right there. Legs are scissoring. We're going to squeeze down onto those lemons. Squeeze your fingertips, lifting the head. Let's go three more inhales here, trying to breathe the back of the rib cage. And, as the legs scissor, they're gathering and lengthening us up and away from the floor. Eyes are up on the horizon line right now. We're keeping that sphere in our low peripheral vision. We're going to start to spread the floor apart. Push the feet away from each other. Front knee keeps its integrity as we go out and over the crease of the hip. Reach, reach, reach, reach, reach and then pull the shoulders down again. Engage that spear, pinky, ring, middle finger are wrapping from the shoulder joint. We're breathing, trying to pull a little bit of bend from the knee up and back with the hip as you reach a little bit further. Last big expansive inhale. Take your time on the exhale. Wrap the abdominal in. Push off the front foot. Come back up nice and tall and shake out.

Eric:  You rest for a moment.

Take a few steps, move the legs around. For the next one, we'll do a shoulder exercise. We'll let the legs rest a little bit. We'll go into a standing decompression and we'll just do a simple shoulder trace and we'll do a couple arm positions that play with that area. Let the legs just be a base. Okay. 

So, for shoulder tracing, the one thing to know is it's called tracing. Your hands aren't going to leave your body. They're going to trace the body. They don't leave the shirt really. Okay, you're standing just standing decompression. You did one of these already. It's an awkward position like you have to pee. It's an awkward position, but it does tension the nervous system and the spinal column beautifully. 

So, the toes are touching, the heels are separated, and the knees sink in enough to touch as you then keep the midline touching and pull the hips away from the knees. That loads the back of you. You feel the tethering at the spinal column if you do it right. Then, if you lift the back of the head, you get both ends. You have to pull apart.

Ben:  Yup.

Eric:  Keep that tension. Thumbs into the hip joint. The trochanter, not the pelvic wing, the low hip joint.

Ben:  Okay.

Eric:  Okay. Now, the elbows pull apart just like you were doing before. Exact same, but the elbows are now pulling the thumbs up the torso.

Ben:  We're still maintaining that tension in the knees.

Eric:  You're just pulling. You're just drawing a puppet string from the elbow joint, from the elbow joint. There you go. Lift as high as you can. And, if you watch, I'll come in here so you can kind of see a profile. There's no front to back, there's just straight up, straight down. Big chest, big elbow movement. That's it. When you get to the top and you're hugging the traps, pull the shoulder joints apart. That's it right there. Pull the shoulder joints apart. You got it right there. Do five or six of those. That's all. Keep it connected. Everything touches the thumbs have to touch. Good. 

On the next one, you're going to take it into a hip hinge. You trace up, up, up, up, up, up. When you get to here, the hips and hands move away from each other. Easy. Perfect. Take five deep breaths in that position. And, the only thing I want you to focus on now at the breathing is spreading the fingers apart from each other. Make the biggest wrist, palm and fingers that you can. Big as they can be. Exactly. Big as they can be. And, you just breathe. You guys are doing awesome, by the way. This stuff is so hard to learn for kids, but you can get it. You're doing amazing. Good. 

Last little maneuver. There's no movement. You're simply changing the vector of the feet. You're keeping the knees together. You're just pushing the heels and hips apart in that position. You're going to feel your IT band just go, “whoa,” and wrap the legs. Grab the IT band, lift the head away from it. Take five chest breaths in that tension. 

Just push out. Feel that unraveling of the IT band there. And then, stand tall and just let everything go. At the stand tall at the end of the these, you're standing tall. You're getting big, but you're letting everything go. You're taking advantage of the dispersion of force you just created, and you're letting everything settle into it, okay. And, just rest. Take a couple deep breaths.

Ben:  Wow. I feel like you're standing tall.

Eric:  Yeah.

Jessie:  I really harp on clavicle because what we see often is people do fall in one of two directions. They either live in here and breathing like this all the time or they're here and both of them are in my view and especially when I was in your book seeing decompression breathing at the front, more foundation training in the back is whenever I talk with people about breathing is that whatever your breath practice is, set the stage so that your diaphragm, as Eric will expand on for us, isn't being compressed on is actually opening 360 degrees. But, the really big one that I love is that we're lifting you up and off the solar plexus. So, would you give the why the solar plexus is so important?

Eric:  Yeah. So, the solar plexus is this bundle of nerves. It's governing for digestion. It's governing for heart rate. There's a lot of like ecosystem barometry. Think of the solar plexus as your inborn barometer for pressures within the torso, and it can really affect digestion. It can really affect mood, just like the vagus nerve can affect mood and digestion. They're very similar neural pathways.

Ben:  I even have people do those little singing bowls right over the solar plexus, and you just feel your whole body open up.

Eric:  It's so real and it's also the gateway to the diaphragm. Very often, we protect the solar plexus passively. We don't realize that we're actually doing like this shield over that tissue and we stay too tight there. You kind of mean looking, but it's literally the solar plexus is meant to kind of aim at the sun. Solar. We're aiming it down. It's kind of the wrong direction. So, what we do in foundation training, we're not. Then, you don't want to pitch. It's not a bucket handle. You're not pitching this way, pitching this way, you're teaching the entire frame like a bell to fill or a bucket that's kind of upside down. You're trying to fill every space of the rib cage. When you hear 360-degree breathing from the diaphragm, it's almost like a misnomer sometimes. You want 360-degree breathing above the diaphragm and you want 360-degree pressure, they're very different, pressure below the diaphragm.

Ben:  Okay.

Eric: Breathing and pressure are different. Breathing is increasing pressure into the lungs. It should also be increasing pressure into the below the diaphragm, the belly, the outer strength brace that the abdomen provides. But, I mean, plain and simple, your lungs stop here. So, if you're breathing below the lungs too far, you're sort of reversing diaphragmatic pressures. The diaphragm on a breath needs to go. It flattens on the inhale, sort of flattens, stretches on the inhale and relaxes on the exhale. If you're just doing belly breathing, if you're focusing below the rib cage on all of your breath, you're going like this. And, you're reversing the dome of the diaphragm. You're saying on the inhalation you should relax. And, on the exhalation, you should contract. But, it's the opposite. You have to pull the rib cage apart. That's 360-degree breathing. And, it's the mistake of doing that into the belly exclusively that a lot of people and a lot of athletes make.

Ben:  And, pulling the ribcage apart is the diaphragmatic contraction, right?

Eric:  So, stay in profile for one second, full profile this way.

Ben:  Okay.

Eric:  So, when you pull the rib cage apart, you're doing it from two ends. The most important pull apart is not here. The most important pull apart is the transversus abdominis that pulls the floating ribs, these low back ribs here away from center. It literally does this. Take a deep breath. It does that. It gives a little wrap. It initiates the lower abdomen and the back edges of the diaphragm.

Ben:  Got it.

Eric:  When you go into the sternum in the solar plexus, that's when you get the front edges.

Ben:  Okay.

Eric:  So, a good healthy breath, it's not taught wrong. A good healthy breath is kind of like that. That's how a lot of people are taught. But really, if you want to identify it ideally, so return profile once more, a good breath goes like this. Inhale kind of to the front, it's like an S.

Ben:  Okay, interesting.

Eric:  You have to hit the back lobes and you have to hit the top lobes.

Ben:  Yeah. Because like when we field dress a deer or an animal, it's very interesting how the diaphragm is just connected all over the ribs and all of this inspiratory and expiratory tissue to where if the diaphragm is contracting, you can imagine being possible for all this not to separate.

Eric:  It has to.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  And, if it's not, it's inaccurate.

Ben:  You're not using your diaphragm or not using it properly.

Eric:  Then it's just words.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.

Jessie:  So, to circle back around with that, when we're touching that is what we have so often is people want to thrust the rib cage out instead of actually elevate and set the stage for expansive. Because then what happens is we start to compress back here and it starts to not feel good in the low back, mid-back.

So, let's go one more time with the legs together, and then we'll go back in that single-leg position. This will let you all feel what Eric's talking about just a little bit more and open us up. So, heels wide. Knees are together. So, we unlock and we hug the thighs. Everyone put your hands on the hips here and guide them to wrap as you squeeze the thighs. Okay. We're looking for that little spiraling in of the femurs. As we squeeze the thighs without letting them separate, just pull a little bit of bend out of your knees, feel it engage up to the pelvis. Now, we're going to bring the arms out off the line of the hips. Bring those clavicles up. Lift the weight of your head away from the clavicles. So, right now, think of being the most expansive version of yourself here as you hug the thighs and wrap in. Spread your fingertips out. Take a nice big inhale between the shoulder blades, middle of the spine between your shoulders. Breathe it big and open. As you exhale, stay big.

Now, we're going to do, you're simply without locking anything out, the pinky side of your palm chop it against your hips. Right in. Push against the side of your body. The meaty part of your palm. Spread your fingers out and then try to wrap the thumbs back. And, what you're going to do, still squeezing the thighs, lifting the weight of the head, breathe as wide as you can between your shoulder blades, and don't let me pull your hands off your hips. You're wrapping, chopping in. Legs are spiraling in. Thumbs are trying to wrap for the wall behind you. And, your job now is to breathe expansively. Don't let the ribs push forward. Don't let your pelvis rock forward to compensate. Two more big inhales. And then, we're all going to bend our elbows so we got both palms facing up, and you're going to glide them out till the pinky touches, side of the palm touches, forearms touch. Wrap the elbows. Bend the elbows just a little bit. Let them come towards your chest. And then, squeeze everything together. So, we're expansive. You're holding something in each palm. Open the hands. Lift your low ribs here.

Eric:  Open your arms. Right there. Hug your bottom. Put your hands right here. Put the hands. Trace the bottom of the rib cage. Don't let the hands come off. Trace, trace, trace, trace. Keep the chest up. Right there. Now, draw the elbows. You feel a difference on that? That upward lift gets your head out of the way of it.

Ben:  Got it.

Eric:  There you go. Much better.

Jessie:  And then, everyone relax again. Shake that off for a second.

Ben:  Wow.

Jessie:  So, that's again adding layers of foundation training is. We're setting the base for decompression. We were decompressing the whole time, but what we then went into was what's called a hip hugger. Amazing for opening back-up posture. Then, we bend the elbows and went into what we call a long thoracic lever. So, we're opening up your thoracic spine, allowing the lats to wrap. 

Again, from Eric's view, I always watch him with chronic pain people and then I go, “How can I help my athletes with this?” And, all my jiu-jitsu guys want to live like this after fighting and fighting and fighting. And, all the surfers want to be like this. And, all of them have the same complaints. And, it's the same that we get when we go by Google people working at desk is the same thing we get with firefighters. And, everyone's giving us the same complaints of chronic pain. And, it seems that when we give them the same recipe, all walks of life are seeing their chronic stuff dissipate.

Ben:  Wow.

Eric:  It's a spectrum. You people go off too much flexibility or too little flexibility and that manifests itself into compensation patterns that are very familiar.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  Dominant quads, dominant calves, dominant neck, dominant traps or hyper extensive. Sway back where it's the opposite. It's locked knees. It's the lower back that's a little bit too flexible and strong and then this rigid straight arrow of a thoracic spine and neck. You can take the human frame and structurally integrate it so that the joints are basically being controlled entirely by the puppet strings that are the muscles. The reason this works so well for symptom relief is most symptoms that become chronic symptoms, not acute, not first time I've ever felt it, but I've had this for a while, I'm kind of sick of it. It won't go away. I think I need to get surgery. I think I need to take pills. I think I need to get an injection, whatever it might be.

Ben:  Right.

Eric:  We say wait. Take every ounce of tension out of the joint and let's see if it's the joint or let's see if it's the muscles. If it's the joint, you might need a repair, but most likely 9 out of 10 times, if not more, it's the muscles, it's the fascia, it's the tension, it's the pattern. And, we go into this position where we just challenge everything or we go into this position where we just challenge everything, and you literally pull yourself apart into accurate biomechanics.

Ben:  Wow.

Eric:  And, that's the process of foundation training. It ain't easy, but it's effective. And, once you've learn it, it's surprisingly easy.

Ben:  Wow.

Eric:  Yeah.

Ben:  And, when you say chronic pain, I assume you're moving beyond just something like lower back pain. We're talking about pain in a variety of, like, I don't know, what someone has like fibromyalgia.

Eric: Absolutely.

Jessie:  So, I'll give one example from my coaching perspective of all my jiu-jitsu athletes that I'm working with. They're like, “Oh, nothing's wrong with me.” And then, they're, “No, I just want to get stronger.” We start doing FT. “Man, that nagging thing in my knees is gone. This shoulder stopped doing that.” I'll go with some of my athletes and have their DOT chiro work on them is, “Oh, it's good to see that they're hyper.” This is rare with fighters but there were also surfers is they're not doing all this hyperextension or the docs said we need to work on this chronic pattern of the rib cage dumping. So, we do a lot of eight-point planks. But, the overall thing is a lot of people go, “I just need to get my back to allow me to live a life again.” That address and then this cascade of other issues start to go away, even the digestive.

Eric:  Yeah. You kind of spoke to almost the evolution of foundation training. That's really what it is. We started in back pain. And, I had a really good start in back pain. I put my first book out in 2011. And, for five or six years, we really climbed the ladder of the best thing to hit chronic back pain.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  And, this comes from my own injuries and my own problems, so I kind of always am adapting for myself as well. And then, I start seeing a lot of different patients, and all of a sudden, the patient base isn't back pain, now it's frozen shoulder, plantar fasciitis, now it's Crohn's disease, now it's multiple sclerosis, now it's fibromyalgia type symptoms, Alzheimer's, dementia. These things that people started with a structural breakdown that led to an overall metabolic breakdown and we started treating that first with just structure, just the movements, and you get through breathing exercises, through decompression breathing, through anchoring, you get stability. You get structural integrity. You get some really. But, when it comes to the metabolic symptoms, when it comes to autoimmune deficiencies, when it comes to things like that, that's where the foundations of health book came in.

Ben:  Okay.

Eric:  That's the difference.

Ben:  Got it.

Eric:  One of them is I'm a pain management doctor. That's my job is to have people that have all kinds of weird stuff come in to me and be like, “This ain't working.” What's going to work? We have to figure it out.

Ben:  Right. And, that's the book where you start talking about combining these modalities with heats, with the endocannabinoid system, with other elements help to control the pain.

Eric:  Exactly. And, the most important piece of that, in my opinion, is still the sauna. Traditional sauna will do more for chronic pain and chronic autoimmune disorders than almost anything I've seen, because it's not always what you take in, it's what you get out. You have to get bad stuff out of the body if it's not getting it out on its own. Lymphatically, whatever the mechanism —

Ben:  The best I feel is when I'm in the sauna four or five times a week.

Eric:  It's incredible.

Ben:  If I can hit it every day, I'm happy. But man, yeah, it's a game-changer.

Jessie:  Yeah, absolutely.

Eric:  And, the other one, we do use the endogenous cannabinoid system. I do talk about that at length because it's our mechanism of pain relief within the body. We literally, like Tylenol mimics the endogenous cannabinoid system. It mimics what this chemistry does. God-given, luckily, every vertebrate body has an endogenous cannabinoid system. It's a human thing. It's a vertebrate thing. It's an adaptive mechanism. And, I say this on a couple podcasts, it's named wrong. It should be called the endogenous homeostasis system. It brings us back to balance, hormonally, neurotransmitter-wise, neurologically-wise, breath and heart rate, all of those things.

Ben:  Yeah. I think one of the problems a lot of people hear the endogenous and the cannabinoid system and they associate it with cannabis, which is obviously a plant that can increase the bioavailability of those chemicals but is not necessary for your body to produce these endogenous painkillers.

Eric:  No, THC and anandamide are almost identical. Your body produces anandamide, it's the bliss molecule within the body. With enough omega 6 fatty acid, it creates that and enough glycerol. It's literally a breakdown of fat and sugar that creates anandamide.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  As long as you have the right ones.

Ben:  Or, if you go to Wellness Tree and order one of Dr. Patrick's wonderful anandamide acai bowls.

Eric:  So, they fuel it —

Ben:  Anandamide.

Eric:  But, that's the thing is your body is a factory. It's this incredible factory that makes these chemicals. And, as Joe Dispenza and other people say, “You are your own pharmacy. You can make all your own stuff.” You can make most of your own stuff.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  Environmental challenges, nutritional challenges, all of that, that's real. Those things are real. Sometimes you need to supplement your medications, of course. But, in most people, and I'm almost 14 years into my career now working with people and developing this work and just trying to figure it out, just trying to understand it. 

The people that take the time to fix their symptoms and really are willing to just explore, they usually do. The people that are looking for somebody else to fix their symptoms, they usually don't. That's the difference. And, it's across firefighters, it's across medical staff, it's across military, it's across fighters, it's across geriatric communities, older communities. If you remain autonomous in how you maintain yourself, you can remain autonomous.

Ben:  Yeah. It's that whole like, “Oh, I got injured, I got to go to the physical therapist twice a week.” And, wait until next Friday's appointment to feel better when I get in the car and drive a half hour to go see the PTs. It's like, [00:53:45] _____ wake up every morning and do most of this stuff. No disrespect physical therapists, but a lot of that stuff. It's like gifts my elastic band and some balance and a couple of balls. They can do a lot of this stuff on their own.

Eric:  Every physical therapist, every chiropractor, every orthopedist, every physiatrist, that's working in pain management needs to stay well ahead.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  Because the curve is behind you. If you're at the status quo, you're 10 years behind pain management.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  So, if you're in this, if you're practicing this, you need to stay on the rim, you need to stay at the spear at the very tip of it. And, we're at the tip of it. And, we are not the only ones, but medicine requires nature. It requires natural movement. It requires healthy breathing. If you're not doing those things, no matter what you take, your baseline is just too low, it's just too low.

Ben:  Right. Yeah. No, I mean, last thing is when I was a personal trainer and people came to me for training, they knew and they couldn't even train with me unless they knew that their session with me was just a check-in, accountability, talk, show you a few new movement patterns, and then they went home with paperwork for the entire rest of the week. 

Whereas, the prevalent model in personal training has come in, take your movement pill, and then leave and come back when you need the trainer going to do it. And instead, I was just basically writing out everything people were supposed to do the rest of the week. Then, they come in see the train or check in and leave. And, that's what people need is they need this empowerment to do it themselves.

Eric:  And, that's really the model we've set up with our certification and our teachers is that we've got all walks of life, chiros, physios, occupational therapists, coaches, you name it, that come through our course. And, really what we've designed between the course in our app is that our teachers do teach classes. They do flow style. A lot of them will also work with chronic pain, but we've set up a model where they'll make sure people are doing the work right, they check in, and they give them homework from the app. They give them workouts to do, follow these programs, get really good at these exercises. We're running into a lot of people where they have the outside view of foundation, “Oh, okay it's some hip hinging. Is this that?” They've taken other weekend courses, they're like, “Oh yeah, I can coach this.” And then, someone finds us and went, “This is not what I was doing.”

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  That wasn't a foundation instructor there. They're saying, “I got it.” And so, I tell everybody a big one is, “If you're looking to learn this is go to our website, find someone that's been through our six weeks online learning in person, hours of coaching, a test out. Make sure you're getting it from a right person, but then they should be empowering you to go, ‘Okay, I got it, I'll check in.” You do this every day because that's where you see the change is consistency not just an hour of intensity. 

I give most people five to 20 minutes very exactly kind of how you go, what I've read in your books, check-in, build the habit, build the consistency where then when you're pumping gas after a long drive, you know exactly what your body needs. Maybe you're hinging, you have your movements knock.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  But, you dial into where you just need to check in with your trainer or check in with your chiro.

Ben:  Let's talk about magnesium. You know that it is an essential mineral. It's responsible for over 300 vital functions. A lot of us are deficient and it can actually be something that you take along with some other very interesting compounds like Detox Drops, High-Dration Powder and Chill Chews, which are all made by this super unique company called HigherDOSE.

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Ben:  I didn't tell you guys this, but we are going to be doing this for 30 days after this morning. Even if it's five minutes.

Eric:  Yes. I value your team.

Ben:  Even if it's just one of the basic holds, we're going to try it for 30 days and just see what our body's doing. Little check-in every day.

Eric:  I filmed something very recently that it's a day starter. And, it was within mind for whether it's the fighter or my dad at 75 that this is what I would say is the minimum thing you do every day to start your day and it's fundamental ranges, it's a fundamental check-in, and it's a moment to give yourself a time with your body to make sure you're moving right, feeling right, and then you're setting a stage to go about your day of this as opposed to this or maybe this. And then, why is my brain everywhere but into for now.

Ben:  For me, it's when I'm in the sauna, I say like three or four minutes.

Eric:  And, get coaching from Jessie. I put this thing together and I definitely have the most vocabulary with it and the most experience with it. But, if you want bang for your buck as far as here's how to do this and get real rewards out of it and get really efficient, listen to the coach. I'm the doctor. He's the coach and there's a big difference in our skill set of teaching. Having a coach like Jessie on foundation training has completely changed the atmosphere.

Ben:  You've shown us those 19-year-old jiu-jitsu twins last night. It's obviously working for them.

Jessie:  They're hammers. Well, I want to finish them with one last exercise.

Ben:  Totally, just more movement, yeah. Video camera here. Let's show people some stuff.

Jessie:  So, let's do one more bilateral, unilateral. So, just split one together and then down to the ground.

Ben:  Okay.

Jessie:  And, this is that combo I like to give people. So, we're going to go left foot forward, right foot back. We're going to flow these now a little bit quicker because we spent some time in position.

Ben:  Okay.

Jessie:  We square the hips up. Turn the back heel out. Bring the crest up. Bring the crown of your head up. Bring the hands to your hips. Hold each side of your hip now. Spread the floor apart. We're going to hinge out and over. So, we're actually looking out and over the crease of your hip like you're trying to bow the chest to the floor but by pushing your hip back. A little bit bend in the knee here. Yeah. Look to feel tension up the back side. 

Now, looking down, bring your chest up just a little bit, lengthen through the back neck. You're looking 6 to 8 feet out in front of the floor pulling length. The lead leg holds its position, holds its integrity. Back hip, right hip is going to wrap in towards the lead knee, think of back hip wraps towards the inside of the lead leg. So, we're going to rotate, rotate. You're looking to feel the butt on the lead leg lengthen and tension.

Ben:  Okay. Yeah.

Jessie:  Hold there. Reach your hands out in front of your heart. And, imagine the right hip is wrapping and allowing you to reach and rotate the upper body ever so slightly. Good. And now, let's go three big inhales here. Squeeze the fingertips. Let's shrug the shoulders down away from the ears. Squeeze the lemons in each armpit. Try to make those lats fire. 

Lead leg is holding. Try to pull some bend out of that lead knee right there. Up and back with it. Yes, there you go. And then, hands back to the hips. Let's go five times very subtle rotate to center, so square, and then back right hip wraps in again. Then, very subtle back to center. Hip is guiding everything. Back right hip rotates. Back to center. Last time, let it wrap and rotate. Back to center. Push up and shake it out for a second.

What I love is I've always been this guy and then being around fighters, they come out and they're shadow bomb like, “I'm not tough enough to be doing that.”

Eric:  Football players or martial artists into the next one you're going to do, which is the gorilla, they come out of it like they are springs. They come out of it like their testosterone just tripled. All of a sudden. You have to like get out of the way.

Ben:  We're going to see the gorilla here [01:07:27] _____.

Jessie:  The best is a special forces guy came out turned to a heavy bag and just rib-breaking roundhouse kicks to the bag because he didn't know what to do with all of the tension with no movement.

Ben:  Wow.

Jessie:  She's and then bam, bam. One other guy came out of it and just ran away from me. Sprinting around the parking lot.

Jessa:  That's funny.

Jessie:  It was amazing.

Ben:  ARX machine after this, just crush it.

Jessie:  Yes.

Eric:  Oh, you're doing the other side.

Jessie:  We're doing the other side. They'll be circling again. Right foot forward, left foot back.

Ben:  Okay.

Jessie:  So, this is how we go. In class, it's hyper-focused and we start flowing a little bit more. So, settle in here, we're spring-loaded. Hands come to the hips, we square the hips up. Bring the chest up. Lift the weight of your head off the neck. Let's go three big inhales. Scissors the legs towards each other for a moment. Find that tractioning and gathering up to your pelvis. As you lift the weight of the head, you're in through the nose, give a nice hum out the nose on this exhale. 

How long can we draw it out? Get a little nitric oxide. One more like that. Float the hands to your spear while you're humming managing the exhale. Spread the floor apart. Big inhale. Out and over the crease to the hip. Hum on the exhale. Find the control. Hands to your hips. Let that left hip wrap in towards the lead leg. So, we're rotating from the pelvis, upper body follows the hips. When the hip stops, the upper body stops. 

Now, we're looking 6 to 8 feet out. We're hinged and wrapped. Reach the hands out in front of the heart. Squeeze the fingertips. Pull the shoulders down and in. Elbows towards each other. And, we're imagining that as we're reaching, this hip is rotating, this side is reaching. Good. Root into the big toe pad on the front foot. Don't let that leg peel open. Hands to the hips. Hold on to the hips now. We're going to rotate very subtle and then back. Very subtle. Just go for four or five, your own pace. Feel it. Lengthen and wrap.

Eric:  So, back. Yes.

Ben:  Oh, yeah.

Jessie:  And then, move here to pull yourself back to center. One more time. Wrap and rotate.

Ben:  Oh, yeah, it's different.

Jessie:  Push off that foot. Come up nice and tall and shake them out again.

Ben:  Hold on, I'll do one more. So good.

Jessie:  That's when you know you're starting to feel it. “Hold on. Not yet, bro.”

Eric:  Look, the people that understand this work the best understand their bodies the best. There's no two ways about that. When we take gifted athletes into this work and we take gifted practitioners into this work, they see something that normal people don't see. There's no question about it and it's become some of our biggest followers and believers over the years. If you can feel somatosensation, this is like somatosensation on steroids. It's the ability to really translate what's happening in the body.

Ben:  Aim for advanced soma sensation.

Jessie:  Yeah. So, it's all back up just a little bit. I might start pulling us out of frame as we move. I'm going to have Eric demo really fast. I want to show a couple details before I take you through it. So, notice, this time his toes are angled out, we're wide. He's going to go ahead and chop his hips back. So, he's sitting back and into the hips. So, his knees are being pulled up and back. He's got his fingertips. He's not resting on the fingertips. He can sway them back and forth, but we're going to focus on spreading the floor apart, that big expansive decompression breath. Notice you've got the length in the neck, so we finally we're in position to be supportive. We spread the floor apart. We're going to get the whole hip extensor complex in the game. As he reaches out, we're going to wrap from the pinky tip, focus on the breath right here. And, we don't need to worry about height as much as that wrapping leading of the pinky, but we want to be spreading the floor apart, hips reaching back.

Eric:  And, sitting into here.

Jessie:  You're going to feel that load and lengthen out the glutes.

Ben:  Okay.

Jessie:  You can play with the rainbow. You guys are all along legs, so maybe stagger just behind that, take an angle right here.

Ben:  Yeah. We can stagger, for sure.

Jessie:  Yeah.

Ben:  Like one, you can go right there, stagger behind me.

Jessie:  So, what we're going to do for the drill, I want to angle the toes out just a little bit more.

Eric:  Five degrees out.

Jessie:  We're going to play just like this. We're going to chop, sit the butt back behind us. Let the knees bend just a little bit.

Eric:  Really sit back like you're almost sitting on a high stool behind you.

Jessie:  And, come back up. Now, this one I want you to play with reach your button hands as far away as you can. Bend the knees, spread the floor, and, go ahead, try to lower down just a little bit. So, bend the knees more now and start to let your butt lower back in there. Bring the hands under your belly button. Hands towards the floor. Spear the fingertips to the ground. Bend your knees until the fingertips barely touch and then push the knees apart. Spread the floor. Right palm, you're going to scoop pinky side high up. Yeah, a little bend in the elbow. Don't worry about height. Big breath into the back of the rib cage. Good. Push your knees apart. Spread the floor. Stay right there. Push your knees out. Yup, spread the knees. Yeah, there you go. Spear your fingertips to the ground. Switch hands.

Eric:  See how high up for your dad's chin [01:12:50] _____.

Jessie:  There, you're good. Switch hands again. Spreading the floor apart. Knees are bending just enough so the fingertips touch. One more. Should be a lot of glute. Maybe inner thighs spreading. Reach up. Push these knees wide. Good. And then, I won't spread the floor apart. Take a big inhale and stand up. Bring yourself out of it. Shake it off for a second. Yeah, I love [01:13:19] _____. Hold on.

Eric:  And then, the stand-up is like a low of our back squat. You're keeping the hips driving you. There you go.

Ben:  Oh, yeah. That one feels good.

Eric:  So, these are positions that you can stay strong in.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  Yeah, extremely strong. People are like, “Oh, you guys don't lift weights?” But, kettlebells, maybe deadlifts. But really, you can stay incredibly strong with body weight work.

Ben:  Yeah, you lift babies.

Eric:  I lift babies, yeah. And, sometimes smaller people too.

Jessie:  And, as you go along, that's why I specifically start adding that hum in is that as we go and as fatigue sets in or as the nervous system starts to hit its point of, “oh.” Because we're asking you to get a lot of things in the equation, we're asking us to do a lot is that humming exhale helps bring a focus back in and draw it out. For some people, it helps them put their minds somewhere while they're doing it, but we also know the nitric oxide benefits of humming nasal inhale exhale. So, it's one more thing I'll get those people that are especially high sympathetic, my fighters, my firefighters, and we hum. Suddenly, “Oh, I can find a longer exhale.”

Ben:  Yeah.

Jessie:  So, I want to take you all through that one more time just because that is such a powerhouse move to get good at.

Ben:  I like it.

Jessie:  So, we go wide.

Eric:  And, take your time on it.

Jessie:  Yeah.

Eric:  The most important part of the exercise is that first movement into it, everything coming together to get you into it.

Jessie:  So, this way I like to drill patterns a little bit. So, if we chop, sit back behind us, so you're really trying to put your butt behind the heels and bend the knees. You're sitting into a awkward squat. Now, Ben, if you can, bend the knees, let the butt drop a little bit, and then come back up.

Eric:  Aggressively throw the arms forward.

Jessie:  Yeah.

Eric:  Where you're almost trying to use your hips to catch.

Jessie:  Going forward. So, there you go, there it is. Inhale butt back and down and come back up.

Eric:  Slippery floor.

Jessie:  Nice [01:13:19]_____ you're going to the gym just plant and plunge. It's like, oh boy. So again, chop back, spread the floor.

Eric:  Spread the floor from the hips.

Jessie:  Bring the fingertips to the floor. Let them touch the ground. Yeah, the pockets of your shorts are pushing apart. Good. Bring your hips up and back a little bit. There. Big inhale the back of the rib cage. Now, look down 6 to 8 feet out even more, even more right there. Big inhale. We're spreading the floor apart. Let's scoop one palm up.

Eric:  The big difference of gorillas and other animals is this big back of the neck and wide shoulder girdle. They don't hug their neck, they pull away from it. In this position, pull your shoulders away from your neck and away from each other. There you go. That's the move. And then, lift the back of the sole, not the front [01:16:07] _____.

Jessie:  You got the slick spot.

Ben:  I got the slippery part on the floor.

Jessie:  Big chest and then spread the floor.

Jessa:  I got you, honey.

Eric:  A little break here.

Jessie:  You guys come on up, shake it off a minute. So, since we like the intensity, you're going to love the eight-point plank.

Ben:  Okay.

Jessie:  Let's get into some good plank.

Ben: Eight-point plank. Sweet.

Jessa:  Wait, A point, eight-point?

Ben:  Eight point.

Jessie:  Eight point. And, I'm going to let Eric, when I do a broad class, what I tell people is, “This is amazing for your abs.” But, what we really get out of it in the sports world and Eric will give you that deep why is, yes, we're lengthening and strengthening your abs but we're also working on making sure your thoracic spine has the required Mobility that it should have so that we're not dumping and looking for it all from our low back. That's a big one. But, do you want me to demo it? Do you want to like —

Eric:  Yeah. I'll just do one real quick. I'll show you. So, the eight-point plank is a repositioning of the rib cage. That's by far the most important piece of it. And, it's the piece of the puzzle that we answer very well in abdominal and anterior chain exercises. The rib cage is here to here and it's also the same as the thoracic spine, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve joints. Biggest curvature of the spine. It's where you can make the most changes in the spine. Crappy small curve, crappy small curve, can't do much there. Huge curve, you can make a lot of impact.

Ben:  Okay.

Eric:  So, what we do with the eight-point plank is it's called eight points because there's two arms, two elbows, two knees and two feet. Four things on the ground. The torso is pulling away from that. So first, Jessie is going to lift his chin. Notice he's not —

Jessie:  Like this.

Eric:  He's like this gorilla style. He's then going to lift the upper back spinal column to meet it, the lower back spinal column to meet it. This is one of the hardest abdominal contractions you're going to find. Holding the cage behind you is very different.

Ben:  Yeah. Reminds me a little bit of [01:18:10] _____ work with the hard style push-up.

Eric:  Absolutely.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  Absolutely. The body strong looks a certain way and holds itself a certain way. Now, what we're doing here is we're doing a centralizing pull. People think of their belly button as the center of them, it's not. The center of you is pubic symphysis, it's low. It's the very low edge of the pelvis. So, the limbs, the knees, the hands, they're pulling to the low edge of the pelvis. And then, Jessie's been in this a while, it's hard. Everybody shakes. You get a little bit shaky.

Ben:  It's okay, [01:18:39]_____.

Eric:  He's good. Jessie's a beast. He can do it all.

Ben:  Wow.

Eric:  So, what you're doing is this. You're here and then it's very slowly just moving the cage behind you instead of in front of you.

Ben:  Okay.

Jessa:  Okay. I can do it.

Eric:  You can do it. Why don't do team of two on this one?

Jessa:  Teams of two.

Eric:  You two first. Let's go long, let's go long in the floor.

Jessie:  Yeah, go super long on the floor.

Eric:  Yeah, chest down, let the body flat. Now, slide back just a little bit. Okay. So, we're going to do that, we're going to bring our elbows under us like you're propping up to read a book. And, if your shoulders are railroad tracks, you want the forearm to be a continuation of the track right there.

Jessie:  A little further, yeah.

Eric:  So, they're in line with the shoulders.

Ben:  Okay.

Eric:  Okay. We're going to look down between our elbows and you're going to just start by pushing the elbows in the palms, the knees and toes down and you're going to simply start to, looking down, pull your nose and throw it away from the floor, chest away from the floor. And, you start breathing as big as we can to the back of the rib cage. Big lifting inhale, wrapping engaging abdominal. You want to work on?

Jessie:  Sure.

Eric:  Big breath again. Slow engaging action. We push that, elbows and knees into the ground, and we let the hips hover just a little bit. Right there. Another hand chop. Big lifting inhale again. Exhale, pull the stomach in. And, the common complaints we might hear is shoulders and neck. So, make sure we're pulling your shoulders away from the ears trying to drag your elbows towards your knees, trying to drag your knees towards your elbows. Every exhale we're engaging drawing the stomach in.

Ben:  Yeah, drawing the knees towards the elbows. That makes a difference.

Eric:  Yeah. Now, squeeze the elbows towards each other. Squeeze the knees towards each other. And then, everything gathers towards your belly button for two more big inhales. And then, try to look back between your elbows. Yeah, big breath. 

Now, really big inhale. Open, open, open. With control let the hips come back down like a wave, we bring it down with control. Remind the nervous system that it's in control especially there's a back issue that we're working on. And then, we relax, maybe a little cobra, a little lengthener the other way.

Ben:  That's a good plank. I like that.

Jessie:  It's a strong one. It's a anterior chain integrated. It teaches it where to live and then instead of just the abdomen doing it, it pulls all of the serratus muscles, all of the lats into it.

Ben:  Yeah, I like it.

Eric:  You guys ready?

Jessa:  Yes.

River/Terran:  Our team's turn.

Ben:  What's that one called again?

Eric: Eight-point plank.

Ben: Eight-point plank, alright.

Jessie:  Alright squad, here we go.

Ben:  I'm going to do it with some practice over here while you guys are doing that.

Jessie:  Okay, so we're both going to start legs about hip-width apart. You can slide your elbows back just a little bit. That's in line. Good. So, right about here. So, go ahead and put your elbows just in front of your shoulders. Yeah. So, you don't want to be way out here. Good. And then, back more towards your shoulders. 

So, let's look down between the elbows and throat. Chin and neck long. Big inhale to the back of the ribcage. Yes, big breath right here pushing my hand. Good. Exhale. Pull the stomach in. Big inhale again. Push the knees into the ground, the hips come up. Now, big exhale. Now, stomach pulls in. Pull your shoulders down away from the ears. Good. Bring your gaze out just a little bit. Right there, big breath. Exhale pull. Squeeze the elbows towards each other. Squeeze the knees towards each other. Everything gathers towards the belly button. Big active inhale. Slow exhale. And then, with control, let the hips come back down like away we come out of it. Good, hips down, belly down, chest down. Nice. How do they feel?

Jessa:  Good.

Jessie:  Good, good.

Jessa:  Did I do it right?

Jessie:  You look great. No, those look good. Those look good.

Jessa:  It's always my question.

Jessie:  Yeah. No, those look really good. They look very powerful.

Ben:  That's cool with the gorilla lifts.

Eric:  Yeah, it's a neat little spiral.

Ben:  Oh, yeah. 

Eric:  It's like the ultimate side plank without side planking.

Ben:  What do you think of that type of plank?

Jessa:  Yeah, it was good.

Ben:  Yeah.

Jessa:  Yeah, it activated for sure.

Eric:  We'll do that in a group class. I do a group Sunday donation class on Oahu. And, we'll have every age and level of athleticism in there and they all have got to a point now where they'll do a Tabata of eight-point planks. And, a lot of —

Ben: 10 seconds on, 10 seconds off.

Eric:  Oh, yeah, which we did a challenge. And, everyone starts where they're like, “Oh yeah, round three, round four.” And then, you're having conversations with your creator by around five, six, seven, and eight. But, when you're done, you're not fried, you feel great, you feel open. And, what I say is it's an ice bath.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  It's that, “Ha, I can't keep going.” You're done like, “I feel amazing.”

Ben:  Wow.

Eric:  Yeah. So, that's a great, great one to piece together is Tabata eight-point plank every day for 30 days.

Ben:  Want to try it [01:23:58] _____.

Jessie:  There's 25, 26 poses. There's a lot.

Ben:  Yeah, I know.

Jessie:  But, they all focus around these fundamentals.

Ben:  But, you have your workouts in the app or in the book, you'll basically choose a handful of them for a specific purpose.

Jessie:  Yes.

Ben:  And then, length of a tip of let's say we were going to do it 30 days minimum effective dose, could we do 8 to 10 minutes?

Eric:  So, here's a cool. We did a beta test with LA County Fire Department where they literally did 10 minutes a day for eight weeks and they did FMS screens on all these employees beforehand and after. They all start at a 14, which is just above passing. And, when they ended, we had significant shifts in everybody. Half the group couldn't touch their toes. And, their start, they could all touch their toes, no issue. But, we saw improvements in range of motion, strength, flexibility, grip strength, lung volume, pretty awesome doing 10 minutes a day. Minimal effective dose. I would say if you're chronic pain or you're nude on your health journey, three-five minute sessions throughout the day, eight-minute sessions, build up the momentum.

Ben:  Is there anything like a 30-day track in the app or something like that, like 30 days?

Jessie:  We have 112-day track.

Ben:  How long is each one in 112 days?

Jessie:  It's between 8 and 30 minutes a day.

Ben:  Okay. 

Jessie:  Yeah, on a baseline track.

Eric:  So, the one I said daily starter, I would say that's your minimum effective dose for you guys as a family challenge.

Ben:  Yeah. That's what it's called in the app, Daily Start?

Jessie:  Daily Start. I'll send it to you. But, if your goal is to truly get the benefit of the work, it's do that every day, but be working on the phase of the baseline program. We've put this into a learning phase.

Ben:  Yeah.

Jessie:  Turn up the connections in your body over the span of six phases and you learn the work in the process. And, you heal your body in the process.

Eric:  That's kind of like the spark here. If you go on the app and you see the baseline, that's where 95% of the people that start foundation training should start there.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  And, we literally walk you through every day for 14 weeks.

Ben:  Sweet.

Jessie:  Yeah. I mean, I was just with my dad and going, “Okay. Hey, you got to be able to get up and get down with ease.” And so, just working on drills of him and seeing him and seeing, again, our older populations is that most of them, it's not a strength issue, it's the brain and body connection as we turn the volume up, suddenly this —

Eric:  It's easy. Let me show you something that I use very, very often for my older patients.

Ben:  Okay.

Eric:  So, this isn't something like, “Oh, you got to be so athletic, you got to” no, no, it's quite the opposite. This is for people that are re-coordinating neural tension, sometimes literally learning to walk again, sometimes literally learning to like, “Oh, this is how these things move away from each other.” And, you realize you're actually walking.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  You're not, but you're not walking. What we're practicing is a very simple step back. You set the tone. Always set the tone. When I say set the tone in foundation training, that's three points of contact on the floor on each foot and the skull pulling away from that uniformly. As soon as you do that, it's same arm, same leg. So, right arm, right leg simply moving away from each other until the toe touches the ground. And then, pulling to each other left and left until the toe touches the ground. And, you're just play first with this and then you start going a little further and a little further. Don't fall over. A little further. Eventually, yeah, the rhythm. Dancing is just good movement, coupled. The body folds into itself beautifully.

Ben:  Yeah. You get some of that left and right hemispheric coordination.

Eric:  And, you get to be able to get down and off the ground easily without using your arms, which is one of the fundamental skills of mortality.

Ben:  Right, exactly.

Eric:  So, you're standing. The counterbalance mechanism allows you to lower yourself down and to lift yourself up.

Ben:  It is through grip strength, walking speed, and the number of limbs or time it takes for you to get from the ground up to a standing position are all heavily correlated with more than how much you can bench press.

Eric:  You have to be able to hold your weight.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  And, you have to even breath your volume.

Ben:  Yeah.

Eric:  And, you have to be able to hang.

Ben:  Exactly.

Jessie:  I love combining, so I love doing this drill here. And then, having people do it, check-in, especially it's our first time, and then going through the simple series we just did, scissoring, turning up their muscle connections, spreading, finding those connections. And, at the end of a session, go through this. And, there's a note, and that's what I say it's not strength, how often we saw with Hicks and Gracie when we were going through some stuff, he was all off balance. It was nothing more than it had been years since he had been in this position because of chronic pain.

Ben:  Yeah.

Jessie:  So, with all of it is and playing with we'll go through a kneeling series, but being able to come straight up, cool. We're working on that unilateral strength here. Can we come up scissor? Great. Come back down. Can you come up, go out and over? Great, back down. Then, can we reach our way out and building these strength patterns? And, that's the kind of ones that we're doing the foundations of youth for our parents and older population. And, that's the kind of stuff we're putting together in there with various people. Eric's got —

Eric:  We got some fun ones.

Jessie:  That's fun ones coming, but working on these combinations so that our parents, the people we love that are aging and going, “I want to stay in the game, I want to stay on it,” this is for everyone. And then, if you're the elite as we're seeing with the fighters, it's for them as well.

Ben:  Yeah.

Jessie:  So, every spectrum and you can do the same work as the fountains of youth and you're going to get a big benefit. So, how much you can recruit.

Eric:  We're trying to do our best. The spectrum of people who use this foundation training is very surprising to us. There's eight-year-olds and there's 85-year-olds. And, they do the same thing ultimately. So, we're trying to understand that. Down the line, we're trying to figure it out. But, we're making this geriatric kind of experienced population, retired population program. And, Jeff Bridges wrote the forward to that and Jeff's going to be one of the stars of that program showing older people how to get healthy.

Ben:  The dude.

Eric:  The dude. [01:30:13] _____

Jessie:  See I'm not the only one.

Eric:  No, Jeff, he was one of my first-ever patients in 2009 and we've been working together ever since many, many iterations.

Ben:  Yeah.

Jessa:  That's awesome.

Ben:  Wow.

Eric:  We're going to have our parents in there. We're trying to make it very fun with people that have been doing this work forever. They'll be the ones that people are watching on there.

Ben:  Yeah, cool.

Jessie:  Yeah, good stuff. You guys want to learn anything else? You have any questions? You have anything you'd like to identify or grasp?

Ben:  Oh, gosh, we got to do at least one more exercise.

Jessie:  Alright, I like.

Ben:  Or, maybe some kind of a flow or [01:30:54] _____. Take us through like a flow where we combine some exercises, do many workout or something.

Jessie:  I'd love to flow what they've done to —

Eric:  I love it, yeah.

Jessie:  — piece that together and feel that.

Eric:  Do it. I'll do it with you. No, you teach it, I'm going to do it.

Jessie:  Okay. Okay. So basically, we're going to do everything you guys have already done. Okay, we're just going to do it in a flow format. Welcome to class today. I'm going to cue for everybody. I'm not going to hyper focus on any one person, but do your best to follow along.

So, here we go. We're going to take the legs wide and we're going to angle the toes in ever so slightly. We're going to bring our chest up, clavicles. Tap your clavicles for a moment. Really important that we elevate the clavicles. And, as you're tapping, try to lift the weight of your head off your neck. Bring the arms out off the line, the hips. Grab the earth with your toes with the weight of your head lifting. Close your eyes and take three expansive inhales here. In through the nose. Slow controlling exhale. And, as you're breathing and expanding, I want you to think about the rib cage is opening up your posture, your position is powerful. We're going to open our eyes and we're going to go five times, hips and hands reach away from each other, butt reaches back, hands reach forward, and pull yourself up. Reach the ends apart for four and up. For three, inhale out, exhale up. For two, inhale back, exhale up. 

This one we're going to hold. Reach the ends apart. Squeeze the fingertips. Try to pull as much bend out of your knees as you can without locking them out. Feel your hips tension up and back. As you squeeze the fingertips, can we pull the shoulders down away from our ears and lengthen the back neck. And, we're going to play with a little bit of connection. We're breathing into the nose now expanding the back of the rib cage. Every exhale you're working to maintain the space, drawing the stomach in. Think about grabbing the earth with both feet. And, from the outer edges of your feet, you're trying to gather the floor together, you're trying to wrinkle the floor between your feet. See if you can feel that pull up into your pelvis. 

Float the hands up off the line of your forehead. Feet are gathering towards center. Hips are reaching back. Start to spread the floor apart. We're going to outward anchor. Feel your heels drive wide away from each other as you slowly pull yourself up nice and tall and shake off your tension. Wiggle it around and we're going to bring the left foot forward, the right foot back. We're going to square the hips up. Turn the back heel out as you elevate and float it. Straighten both knees. Bring the hands out to that spear in front of your heart. Both knees are straight and we give a little knee bend and we settle into where we're spring loaded here. Squeeze the fingertips. Spread the floor apart and you're going to hinge out and over the crease of the hip. Butt back, hands forward. Don't let the front knee travel. Pull up and back with the hip. 

And then, come back to center. Right back to that center starting point, squeezing the fingertips. We're going to hinge out and over the crease of the hip. Push off the front foot. Come up nice and tall. We're going to hinge out and over and hold. We're going to let the back right hip rotate towards the inside of the left knee. Hip rotates, hands come out. We're wrapping in. We're squeezing the fingertips. Chest is up. Neck is long. Two big inhales into the back of the rib cage. Then, rotate back to center. Push off the front foot. Come up nice and tall. Switch sides. We're going right foot forward, left foot back. Find that shakiness spring loaded here. Comfortable. We're loose right now. We don't want to be living rigid. We shake it off and then we square the hips up. 

Back heel is elevated. We've got it turned out to our left. We bring the hands out in front of the heart. Chest up. Clavicles are high, neck is long. Let's take an expansive inhale here. Slow engaging exhale. Squeeze in the fingertips. Big inhale. We start to hinge out and over the crease of the hip.

At that front knee, bend a little bit. Longer stride. Yes. Now, hold right there. Reach the hip. Yay, perfect.

Jessa:  Yay.

Jessie:  Oh, I feel it now. Fingertips squeeze, shoulders down, hands come to your hips. Stay in the hinge. Back left hip wraps towards the inside the right knee. Let it rotate and wrap. Reach the hands out in front of the heart. Feel that load the lever even more. Try to pull. Good. Hold right there. Chest up. Hinge up and back. Pull away from my hand. Right there. Let this hip drop. Pull this shoulder down. Shrug down, shrug down the ass. Wrap back to center. Push off that foot. Come up nice and tall. Shake them out. I got the art of subtle —

Ben:  Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's even up a little bit.

Jessie:  Yes, toes together, heels apart. I want to see when you do it with the BFR bands on.

Ben:  Yeah, I'm thinking of that.

Jessie:  Unlock the knees, hug the inside thighs together. So, we hug in and squeeze. Without letting them separate, pull a little bit of bend out. Feel that tension lock up to the pelvis. Everyone pull your toes up. Find the pads of both feet as you squeeze the thighs. Guide them. Let them wrap in and let your hips shift back to the heels. 

Arms out off the line the hips. Clavicles are up. Gripping with the toes. Squeeze the thighs. Lifting the weight to head off the neck. Punch straight down. Bring the side of your fist against your hips. Push in. Spread the fingertips out till you're chopping into your hips now. Bend the elbows just an inch and then three big inhales between the shoulder blades. Through the nose. Hips are wrapping in. Hips are back towards the heels. Fingertips are spreading. Thumbs are wrapping for the wall. You're breathing wide between the shoulder blades. 

The art now is being able to breathe and coordinate and connect. Bend the elbows. Slowly going to glide, pinky, side of the palm together, forearm together. Squeeze. Lift the weight of your head. You got that nice platter of food out in front of you, you're pulling your nose and throat up and away from it. Two more big inhales to the back of the rib cage. Slow engaging exhale. And then, let the hands come down. Shake off again. And, we're going to practice now.

We're going to go same side, right leg, right hand. We're going to reach them as far apart and lower down. And then, we're going to reach and come up.

Eric:  Like you're grabbing a tree.

Jessie:  Switch sides, left hand, left leg. Reach lower down.

Eric:  Grab the tree.

Jessie:  Reach out and come back up, same side, switch legs. Now, we're going to coordinate. Reaching lower, reach and come up. Switch left and left, lower, and back up. Now, we're going to see how well everyone coordinates. Reach the two ends apart. Come to a tall kneeling position. Switch knees. Switch hands and reach your way up. Reaching back. Bring it down. Bring the knees side by side, about a hip distance apart. Toes are under your heels. You guys haven't done this one yet. Squeeze the knees towards each other. Heels are turning out wider than the feet. Yeah, wider than the knees. Let's go measuring sticks. Top of your pelvis, low ribs. Pull the elbows wide to the sides. Lift the weight of your head off your neck. Your knees are drawing towards center like you're squeezing a ball. Take a nice big inhale. Big inhale, keeping the weight on your knees. You can let your hips hinge back a couple inches.

Eric:  No toes.

Jessie:  You're all in the knees. Let the hands come to a low floating sphere. We're looking for the moment that we might fall forward. Squeeze the knees. Staying all weight on your knees. Hinge back, hands forward, and look where you might fall over. Squeeze the knees towards each other and you're hinging and reaching.

Eric:  You want a teeter. Get to that reactive.

Jessie:  Big inhale. Elbows wrapped down through towards each other. You're squeezing the lemon. You're looking at that sphere. Lengthen the back of your neck here. Squeeze the knees towards each other. And now, what we're going to simply do is hinge the butt back, bring the hands to the legs, push against your legs. Still in the knees. We're going to hinge a little bit deeper until the fingertips come on the ground. You're going to walk out. You're going to lay your body flat. And, everyone can slide back an inch or two.

Eric:  Oh, I know what's coming.

Jessie:  So, elbows are under the shoulders right now in line with the shoulders. Pushing both hands into the ground. Toes are under the heels and try to turn your heels out wide again. Toes out. Sorry, heels out. Look down between your elbows. Pull your nose and throat away from the earth. Pushing the elbows into the ground. Take a big expansive inhale to the back of the rib cage. Five inhales. You're going to start to reach the ribs for the ceiling. Every inhale you're trying to breathe and expand to the lowest ribs start to reach for the ceiling. You push the knees and elbows into the ground. Hip start to hover. 

And, we're going to focus now. Breathing expanding the back of the rib cage on the inhale. Every exhale, stomach wraps and pulls in. Elbows are pulling towards your knees. Knees are pulling towards your elbows. Inhale. Gather elbows towards each other. Knees towards each other. Everything tensioning towards center for three more inhales. Gather the earth towards center. Use your breath to push away from center. Last big inhale. Remind your body how strong it is. Big powerful inhale and blowing out hard with your teeth touching. Engage the abdominal as much as you can. And then, with control, let the hips come back down. Let everything flatten out.

And then, we're simply going to come up and do a quadruped. Bring the knees towards each other. Squeeze them. Knees gather in, so they're right under the hips. Heels are wide. And, we're going to start to walk back. Try to keep the weight in your knees. Squeeze in the knees towards each other. Slide the hands back to the knees. Push. So, in that hinge where you could fall, let the hands float together in that low sphere. Squeeze them. Float them up. Squeeze the fingertips. Knees squeeze towards each other. Chin in, neck long. Let's go three big inhales here. Expand and elevate the ribs. Squeeze the knees. Pull the hips up. Step the left foot forward. Right palm is going to reach out and up. And then, no workouts complete without a big gorilla.

Ben:  Oh, yeah.

Jessie:  Legs wide. [01:42:47] _____ both sides. So, toes out wide. We're going to chop, butt back and reach. Bend the knees. Let your butt start to lower back and down behind you. You're trying to find a box that you can drop your butt onto, maybe a toilet because being able to sit down and use, it's important. Fingertips touch the ground. We don't rest on them, spear them to the ground. Spread the floor apart. Knees apart. Pockets of your shorts are pushing wide. Hips are just up and back above the knees. And, we scoop right palm up. Two big inhales here. I want you all think your hips are above your knees but below your shoulders.

Jessa, try to pull your hips up and back a little bit. Yes.

Switch hands. If we're doing it right, we should be able to pull our toes up and all the weights back behind the heels. Switch hands one more time. Not resting on the fingertips. Chest is up. Knees are spreading. Pinky sides wrapping high. One more. Big spread, spread the floor apart. Everybody stand up nice and tall. Shake it out. And then —

Eric:  That's what I like to hear.

Jessie:  We're going to finish just like we started. Legs wide, toes in, chest up. And, everyone check in. Spread the palms out. Bring your chest up. Lift the weight of your head off your neck. Close the eyes. Control your inhale. Slow controlled exhale. 

And, just check in right now again on how we're feeling. Can we connect the dots? Pull your toes up. Find the pads of both feet. If you're palming something with each hand, you're holding on to it. If I try to push down on your head, you're reaching up into my hand. We're going to start to spread the floor apart with the feet. We can open the eyes last time to reach the butt back. Hands out. Gather your space here. Squeeze the fingertips. Hips are pulling up and back behind us. Shrug your shoulders down. Squeeze in the fingertips. I want everyone to look at their sphere. Pull your nose and throw it away from it. Chin in, neck long. 

And lastly, two more powerful inhales here. Start to try to gather towards center with your feet. Use that tensioning up the inner thighs to slowly pull your hips forward up, out of the hinge, and then shake all that off. Let it all go. That would be a little bit of a flow style.

Eric:  Not to even more expect on the app and while doing the workouts. Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah, you guys feel how you got to put some moves together. I want to hear from you guys. How do your bodies feel just doing those moves? You feel different, different muscles, what do you feel?

Jessa:  Taller.

Ben:  Taller.

Jessie:  Prouder.

Ben:  Prouder. How about you guys?

River/Terran:  Yeah, I guess taller.

Ben:  Taller. Feel anything down in here, in your hips, in your butt area?

River/Terran:  A little. Yes, definitely my butt.

Ben:  Yeah.

Jessa:  Definitely the butt.

Ben:  Alright, cool.

Jessie:  And, you guys will get better at it. It takes time.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. We're going to do some practice. We're going to do some practice. And, we'll get this. Greenfields are good at practicing stuff.

Jessie:  See that details.

Ben:  Sweet.

Jessie:  The story last night, that is one thing I will say with this as you go along is the gathering the details. And, the more you gather and the more you give them focus, the more it becomes that subconscious habit.

Ben:  Right.

Jessie:  It just comes out in everyday life where you're doing, “Oh, in the shower, I'm doing this” instead of you'll pick something.

Ben:  You guys know that they'll say you're unconsciously competent, you're not very good at some, you don't even know you're not very good at it. Consciously and confident, you know you're not good at something, but you're still not good at it. Consciously confident, you start to get good at something but you still have to think about it. And then, unconsciously confident, it just becomes part of life, you don't have to think about that competency that you've attained best practice.

Eric:  I love it.

Jessie:  Practice makes you not perfect, practice makes you —

Ben:  So, I know we do have viewers, we have some flies on the wall stalking us here in our living room, I will, like I mentioned in the beginning of this recording, at BenGreenfieldLife.com/DrGoodman, put links to gosh a podcast there, but I did way back in the day just in case you want to hear me back when my voice was high like a chipmunk on my podcast.

Jessa:  Hi, everybody.

Ben:  And then, I'll also link to the app, which is super handy. I have it on my phone. You can download the videos. It's all right there. Eric's books and then, of course, we love questions, we love comments, we love feedback. So, if you go and you ask your questions and you say, “This hurt when I was doing this, what about this, which book do I read first, what program do you recommend?” Anything like that, I really to take care of you guys, you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/DrGoodman. Sorry, Jessie, I planned that out before you even showed up. So, BenGreenfieldLife.com/DrGoodman. You can ask your questions for Jessie, for Eric, for me. And, I would challenge you and I'm not BSing, I'm going to do this for 30 days, I'm going to loop my family into the mix even if it's just five minutes a day, I would challenge you to try it, 30 days, five minutes. I mean, you can do it right after you brush your teeth or when you're in the sauna, or as a cool-down warmup for your workout. So, try it out. Let me know what you think. That's my challenge for you for 30 days. Eric, Jessie, thank you so much, you guys.

Jessa:  Thank you.

Eric:  Thank you. This is a lot of fun. Thank you, guys.

Jessa:  That was fun.

Eric:  Yeah.

Ben:  Alright. Thanks for watching everybody.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh entertaining, well-informed, and often outside-the-box approach to discovering the health, and happiness, and hope that we all crave. So, I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And, if you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel wherever that might be and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. It means a lot.

 

 

Join me and my family for a special episode where you can move through Foundation Training with two special guests. 

 

In the articles “How I “Turned On” My Butt: Why My Posture Completely Sucked And How I Fixed It Fast” and “How To Turn On Your Butt, Activate Deep Breathing & Decompress Your Spine (And Why I’ve Completely Changed My Morning Routine)” and also throughout my book Boundless, I describe how I have for several years now sprinkled into my daily movement snacks a very effective way to “turn on” my butt, decompress my spine, activate deep diaphragmatic breathing, and much more.

It all starts with gravity.

Just think about all the different things that happen when gravity hits your body: specifically when it comes to the ability of gravity to adversely affect processes in some or all of the following physiological systems:

  • Your respiratory system. A compressed rib cage limits the lungs' ability to expand and diminishes your breathing capacity.
  • Your digestive system. Squashed organs don't function nearly as well as they should, and that burdens the body's ability to gain nourishment from food.
  • Your circulatory system. Constricted blood vessels are not as efficient or as effective as they ought to be transporting nutrients, oxygen, carbon dioxide, hormones, and blood cells to where they need to be in order for your body to perform or fight disease.
  • Your nervous system. A compressed spinal cord and pinched neural pathways slow the progress of all those neurotransmitters trying to communicate from the periphery to the central nervous system–and back again–and can undermine the brain's ability to coordinate and influence all the activities of your body.

Hunching all day at a keyboard, tilting your headsforward over your phone, commuting long hours, and slouching on the couch simply magnify and aggravate these problems, resulting in poor posture that throws your body out of balance, causing unnecessary stress and strain that compromises your joints, restricts organ function, and weakens your force output.

So the reasoning goes something like this: if you can wake up in the morning and do something that fights all the effects of gravity and restores your body to a decompressed state that theoretically allows you to feel better and stands taller all day long, with better digestion, no low back pain, and enhanced circulation……why not try it?

My guest on today's podcast, Dr. Eric Goodman–founder of Foundation Training–has taught me and millions of others how to do just that.

I interviewed Dr. Goodman way back in 2011 in the episode “Episode #172: Why Your Back Is The Most Important Part Of Your Core Workout, And What You Can Do About It.”, but a lot has obviously happened with his practice and techniques since then, so he recently flew up to my house (along with his guest expert and coach Jessie Salas) to take me through his latest training modalities, discuss his new book Foundations of Health: Harnessing the Restorative Power of Movement, Heat, Breath, and the Endocannabinoid System to Heal Pain and Actively Adapt for a Healthy Life and teach you how to banish low back pain and build a bulletproof core forever.

Dr. Eric Goodman's work is focused on pain management, patient advocacy, and athlete development. It's known as Foundation Training, and it's creating a sea change in injury rehabilitation and breathing protocols around the world. Eric has published three books on the subject: FoundationTrue To Form, and Foundations Of Health. He is also the lead instructor of the FT Certification Course. Eric shares his love for healthy living with his wife Jen and their two daughters.

Coach Jessie Salas operates as the Program Director of Foundation Training. He left a 17 year career as a Special Operations firefighter to focus on bringing FT to the world. Jessie has a background in strength and conditioning and now blends FT for both injury correction, prevention, as well as optimizing strength and performance. Jessie has worked closely with varying injuries, performers, and athletes, from the likes of martial arts Icon Rickson Gracie to the pop artist icon Madonna.

 

During our discussion, you'll discover:

-What is Foundation Training?…05:42

-Decompression breathing…08:26  

  • Eric and Jessie teach Ben and his family about Foundation Training 
  • Decompression breathing explained 
  • Coach Jessie leads through the basic decompression drill

-Identifying the right way to get into a hip hinge…18:32 

  • Dr. Eric explains the hip hinge
  • Eccentric training 
    • The most important thing is to train the frame to endure 

-Five hinges…21:32

  • Movement is a language 
  • Mimicking bad movement patterns 
  • Once you learn the movement language, it becomes easy 
    • Foundation training is the most detailed movement system 
    • Details can feel overwhelming but are very important 

-How to open your nerve pathway…28:06

  • Opening of a nerve pathway 
    • Great for people with sciatica, people with SI joint dysfunction, or lower back herniations 

-Shoulder tracing…35:21

  • The importance of the solar plexus 
  • 360-degree breathing 

-Adding layers of foundation training…43:43 

  • Setting the base for decompression 
  • It’s important to see if the pain comes from joints or muscles 
  • You have to pull yourself apart into accurate biomechanics 

-The evolution of foundation training…49:38 

  • Dr. Eric started with back pain 
  • Foundation by Dr. Eric Goodman
  • People start with structural breakdown and end with metabolic breakdown 
  • Through treating the structure, patients get stability and structural integrity 
  • Traditional sauna great for chronic pain 
  • Endogenous cannabinoid system 
    • Brings back the balance 
  • The body is a factory that makes chemicals
    • Your body is a pharmacy 
  • Medicine requires nature 
    • Natural movement 
    • Natural breathing
  • Make sure to get foundational training at the right place 
  • Wellness Tree

-8 Point Plank…1:16:29

  • Somatic sensation on steroids 
  • Humming nasal inhale-exhale 
  • 8 Point Plank – the repositioning of a ribcage 
  • Test with LA County Fire Department 
    • 10 minutes a day 
    • Improvements in strength, flexibility, grip strength, lung volume 

-Daily Starter and exercise for geriatric population…1:31:14 

  • Basic training for beginners on the app 
  • Exercise for older patients 
    • Making connections and building the strength patterns 

-Flow format to conclude routine…1:30:41 

  • Details about the flow format
  • Gather details, give them focus, make it a subconscious habit 
  • ARX

-And much more…

  • Foundation Training Assorted Workouts

Upcoming Events:

  • Six Senses Retreat: February 27, 2023 – March 3, 2023

Join me for my “Boundless Retreat” at Six Senses from February 27th, 2023 to March 3rd, 2023, to improve your functional fitness, nutrition, longevity, and the delicate balance between productivity and wellness. Complete with a healthy farmhouse breakfast, yoga spa sessions, and sound healing, you will learn how to live a boundless life just like me, and I'd love to see you there. Learn more here.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

– Dr. Eric Goodman:

– Jessie Salas:

– Podcasts And Articles:

– Other Resources:

Episode sponsors:

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Essentia: Essentia organic mattresses are the only mattress to score best on eliminating all sleep-interrupting stimulants. Experience Essentia for yourself and save an additional $100 on your mattress purchase using code BENVIP at myessentia.com/bengreenfield. 

HigherDOSE: Get your own Infrared Sauna Blanket or Infrared PEMF Mat at HigherDOSE.com today and use my exclusive Promo Code: BEN at check out to save 15% off! 

Kion Aminos: Aminos are building blocks for muscle recovery, reduced cravings, better cognition, immunity, and more. Go to getkion.com/ben to receive 20% off on monthly deliveries and 10% on one-time purchases. 

Ben Greenfield CoachingPersonally vetted and trained by Ben Greenfield, these coaches will personalize your diet and lifestyle, and get you looking and feeling your best. Visit BenGreenfieldCoaching.com to learn more about which plan might be right for you. 

Ask Ben a Podcast Question

One thought on “[Transcript] – The Ultimate “Body Weight Only” System For Building Athletic & Resilient Bodies, With Foundation Training’s Dr. Eric Goodman and Jessie Salas

  1. Robyn says:

    Which book is best to start with if you are in pain from 2 bulging discs-lumbar & cervical? Also where is the video Coach Salas is referring to as a morning starter to do each day. I have the app but don’t see this or in the show notes?
    Thanks so much for the help.

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