Foundation Training
Take control of your posture
Everything we do is either building us up or breaking us down.
Our daily life creates pressures on our posture and we make adaptations over time which can lead to joint pain, injury, or just a body that is stiff and numb. Foundation Training works to counteract these patterns by teaching movement from the ground up, from the inside out.
What is Foundation Training?
Foundation Training is a movement practice developed by chiropractor Dr. Eric Goodman to reduce pain, restore natural posture, and decompress the spine.
Foundation Training uses a combination of powerful movements, intentional poses, and conscious breathing work to activate the muscles in your posterior chain. When practiced regularly, your pain diminishes, your resistance to injury increases, and your body comes to life.
🍑 Your torso, pelvis, and backside strengthen
🍐Your hips reclaim their intended role as the epicenter of movement
🦴 Your spine decompresses and space opens throughout your torso
🫁 Your breathing capacity and oxygen levels increase
💪 Your muscles learn to correctly support your structure and posture improves
🌈 Your whole body becomes integrated and moves more efficiently
When these things happen, a cascade of healthful changes happen in your body and your life. This program is not a temporary remedy, but a systematic solution that creates long-term health.
My Story
In the fall of 2023, I crashed my mountain bike hard after overshooting a jump at Killington. I was lucky — I walked away with no broken bones, just a bruised rib and a lot of road rash — but what came next was harder. After a month of rest, I was left with chronic back pain that just wouldn’t go away.
Massage, stretching, strength work—nothing gave me lasting relief. I felt disconnected from my body, frustrated, and I didn’t know what to do.
Then I discovered Foundation Training, and everything changed.
Even just a few minutes a day started to make a noticeable difference. My posture shifted. My spine felt more spacious. I could breathe deeper. I felt stronger and more connected to my body from the inside out.
What’s different about this practice is that it’s not about doing something “right.” It’s about learning to move from the inside out, letting the breath do the work of decompressing the body. This leads to an awakening of sensation in places that have gone numb, and re-patterning the way your body supports itself. The process is deeply empowering—and surprisingly simple.
Now, I have no chronic back pain (as long as I keep up my practice of Foundation Training!). This work has become one of the most powerful tools I’ve ever encountered—not just for healing, but for performance, longevity, and resilience.
That’s why I got certified to teach — I’d love to share these techniques with you.
Norm Jones, Ph.D
“Hakim has shown me how important foundation training is to the way I literally move in the world. I'm still a novice but I already feel more aligned in my body, more agile in my meditative and strenuous movements, and I even have more cognitive energy.”
Ok, but what actually is it?
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Foundation Training is comprised of a series of powerful postures utilizing isometric holds and eccentric contractions to load the posterior chain of the body (glutes, hamstrings) to shift pressures away from the joints and into the muscles and fascia.
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Foundation Training is built around a special breathing technique called the Decompression Breath. You will learn how to breathe into all 360º of your torso, using the proper alignment and musculature to decompress the spine and open the fascia.
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Next you will learn to activate the muscular pathways that pull up and connect to the hip joints (adductors) to create a stable foundation from which you can breathe your torso up and away, creating space at the low back ribs and lumbar fascia which is where a lot of compression and injury can occur.
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Integration is the process of becoming more whole — where the entire fascial and muscular system begins to work together within functional chains, rather than dysfunctional separated parts. This happens by maximizing the way muscles assist each other by placing them in an effective, facilitative length during a gross chain contraction.
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A term coined by Buckminster Fuller, Tensegrity is a structural principle where isolated components under compression are stabilized by a network of continuous tension, creating a self-supporting, lightweight, stable structure. In its natural, healthy form, the human body IS a tensegrity structure, where forces are distributed away from joints and into the fascia. Foundation Training re-trains this pattern by using the large muscle groups of the body to find expansive, lightweight postures that decompress the body from the effects of gravity and our modern lifestyle.
How you can learn with me
Join a course
The most cost-effective way to learn is by joining one of my 6 or 8 week series. The next one begins May 5.
One-On-One Sessions
1:1 is the best way to do a deep dive into Foundation Training and assess your individual movement patterns from the ground up.
FAQs
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Athletes
Work smarter, not just harder, by priming movement patterns that maximize the utilization of the most efficient muscles with a comprehensive focus on concentric, eccentric, and isometric training of those muscles.
Longevity / Graceful Aging
These postures are safe, effective, and powerful at pain relief. In addition, this work is concentrated around your center of gravity, improving balance and coordination. FT aids in proprioception (the body’s ability to sense itself in space), which builds a steady and resilient body less prone to falls and injuries.
Pain Relief / Injury Recovery
Foundation Training was created to relieve pain and avoid surgery. Regular practice can not only help you get out of pain, but prevent future injuries from happening by addressing the compensatory patterns that create them in the first place.
Desk Jobs / Modern Lifestyle
FT unwinds the compression patterns caused by too much sitting and looking down at our computers/phones. By going into an exaggerated opposite pattern, breathing large and expansive, and creating space, we then return to a “new normal” where overall posture is greatly improved without as much effort.
Anyone With a Body
FT works with all bodies to counteract the daily grind, participate in life without pain, and empower yourself to live a healthy lifestyle and move the way you want to.
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Nope! This course is beginner-friendly and accessible to all levels. I’ll guide you step-by-step.
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Foundation Training is unique. It revolves around a special breathing technique called the Decompression Breath, and builds from there to create a new foundation for movement of all types. It’s not flowy like yoga, and it goes deeper than typical PT. It requires commitment and effort, but it’s worth it.
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Foundation Training is for all bodies — from athletes to elders looking to age gracefully. It is both preventative and also corrective. This work is incredible for injury prevention, performance, and long-term strength. It’s for anyone who wants to feel more at home in their body.
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Foundation Training requires a total rebuild of your body’s movement patterns from the ground up. Most people need 1:1 feedback time to make sure they are grasping the material. This gives you a chance to ask questions, and gives me a chance to offer adjustments to your form as well as see where you are at with the material and how I can better assist you. All of my courses come with 1 hour of 1:1 time built in to the price — you can choose whether to do this session before the class starts, in the middle, or after it ends. To make my courses more accessible, I offer the option to take out the 1:1 time, but it is highly recommended.
Ready to move differently?
Foundation Training is for anyone ready to feel more supported, aligned, and strong in their body—whether you’re healing from pain or simply want to move with more confidence.
If this speaks to you, I’d love to have you in a course or for a 1:1 session.