The Founder of Foundation Training - Dr. Eric Goodman, DC
In this episode, Beau Beard sits down with Eric Goodman, creator of Foundation Training, to explore the origin story behind one of the most influential movement systems in rehab and performance. Eric shares how a serious back injury, years of experimentation, and a deep dive into anatomy led him to develop Foundation Training. The conversation covers decompression breathing, pelvic anchoring, posterior chain recruitment, and why so many movement systems overlap while still serving different goals. They also discuss the tension between innovation and imitation in the movement world, how to think critically about exercise trends, and why no single method can solve every problem. Eric explains why he sees Foundation Training as an accessory to better movement, not a cure-all, and how he continues to expand the method through education, research, and new tools like wearable footwear. If you’re interested in back pain, breath mechanics, movement education, or the future of rehab and performance, this conversation is packed with insights.
Full Transcript
Beau Beard (01:24.952)
For those that are listening that maybe, you know, are not familiar with you or in particular work, can you just give us a brief background on, you know, who you are, how you got into chiropractic, and then we'll obviously dive into foundation training and all all of that as we go through the rest of the conversation.
Eric Goodman (01:39.737)
Sure. My entry into chiropractic feels like a lifetime ago at this stage. That was, it was 22 years ago that I started chiropractic school, something like that, 2000, yeah, 2004. So quite some time ago at this stage. And I graduated in in April of 2008. and I've never had a chiropractic practice. I I've I've always enjoyed the education. I I love what we learn.
in chiropractic school, I became a doctor of chiropractic. I even got my boards done. But by the time I was like three quarters of the way through school, my own back injuries had sort of designated a different path in my life. and I had started very deliberately trying to make my back stronger because my other option was fusion surgery, which at at that age I was 26, 27 years old, was just no, no.
every other part of me is strong, that's obviously not the fix my body needed. So to make a very long, very complex story short, I got into chiropractic to help people feel better. And ultimately I think we get into things that help us to to help myself feel better. what I did not realize was that my pain came from a weakness and and
Sort of a structural instability in certain areas and hyper-rigidity at my L4, L5, S1. They were just smashed together. But without strength, that can happen. And I went through a very long process now of creating circumferential strength around that injury, teaching my own movement patterns through first a very deep.
physical introspection, dive into where my weaknesses were, a very clear, not thoughtful, but but sensation of being able to get better, feeling better with certain positions, feeling worse with certain positions, trusting that I could mimic the positions that help me feel better, and taking my chiropractic education and anatomy education and physiology education and starting to really smash those together.
Eric Goodman (04:00.032)
For many, many, many years on end now. I mean, I've been I've been teaching foundation training since 2007. So and I I made it a public thing in 2009. And we I put the first book out on it in 2011. And I've been just really trying to ramp it up and improve it and and understand it more. The whole process I'm trying to understand. It's very interesting what you can do with your body, and and there are inherent limitations that people have too. So
Beau Beard (04:06.648)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (04:29.287)
It's been a real curious, fun, at times challenging adventure to put together a system, first for myself, then for my community, then to build a community around it.
Beau Beard (04:40.878)
So I want to dive. I like I want to dissect this whole thing because I'm I mean, the reason I wanted to have you on the show is to ask you all these questions, but I want to kind of start with obviously, you know, you had a legitimate disc injury. I think I've even seen, you know, MRIs or images you put up of your old, you know, spinal images. So, like, we know a lot of us in this field, we know, you know, some of that stuff doesn't match, you know, pain findings. But what I want to dive into, what was your first inkling of foundation training?
Like you're saying, well, I kinda you I had this introspective journey, but like what was the first thing you're like, I'm doing something? Yeah, yeah.
Eric Goodman (05:12.322)
I show you.
So it was during one of my back flare-ups. And I used to take like painkillers and muscle relaxers when I needed to, when I was in in chiropractic school, Advil, all the time, man. Many of us did. I've not seen anything like that since since 2007. So what I what I did get the sensation of though was this area was very painful and it would just really, I mean, it was to painful to the point that you can't stand up. You can't, nothing, nothing's comfortable. It lasts for several weeks.
Beau Beard (05:24.918)
Mm-hmm.
You had to hide it.
Yeah.
Eric Goodman (05:45.221)
I went to a place I believe it was called Yoga, Yoga Works, Yoga. It was on Main Street in Huntington Beach, where I was in chiropractic school in Whittier at Southern California University of Health Sciences. And they put us in this chair pose. Mind me, my back is flared up at this moment. Okay. So I'm like, I'm getting into the chair pose like this, and and it hurts. man, when my arms are in front of me, like fuck, fuck, fuck. Sorry, first thing. They've put a lot of strain, real.
Beau Beard (06:04.227)
Mm-hmm.
Beau Beard (06:12.669)
you're good.
Eric Goodman (06:14.662)
Real pressure in the back and it hurt. And I did this and I pulled my hips out of the way behind me to shift unintentionally, mind you, but I was here. And to get out of the pain, I just kind of went like this. And that load offset loaded my hamstrings. And immediately, I mean that second, it relieved that strain from my spine.
Now I also intested it.
Beau Beard (06:44.204)
And anybody that's anybody that's listening instead of watching, Eric is basically going from like sitting to get onto like a toilet kind of position to a heavy hip hinge, like hips drawn back, like you're drawing a bow and arrow. So for people that aren't watching. Yeah.
Eric Goodman (06:56.875)
Elongating the hamstrings by by not straightening the knee at the knee joint, but pulling the hips away from the knee joint to strengthen or to straighten the knees and elongate the hamstrings. And that load allowed my upper body to feel, I mean, to feel okay. It was wild. And I even tested my arms coming forward. So I literally did my first bounder unintentionally.
At this yoga works by going from here to here, and then being able to bring my arms in front of me. That opened up the first window of relief that I could I could repeat. I was like, I mean, I the excited, I was like, my god, I'm doing this all the time. I'm going to do this. I'm just going to do this because it it feels better and better and better within.
Beau Beard (07:40.535)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (07:55.332)
First couple weeks of doing that, I realized that, like, huh, there's there's something to this. And I started really looking around at because I mean I was a personal trainer at 18. I had done some remarkable rehab courses. I'd worked in the industry all through college, working for a chiropractor as their rehab therapist. I had worked then in chiropractic school as a personal trainer and was really a, I was a big
Voracious absorber of information about weightlifting, training, men's health, muscle and fitness, just everything I really wanted to know. And I had never seen these. I had never seen a body weight loaded, proximal hamstring-focused hinge. And what I started to notice very, very quickly in this window of using the hamstrings was there's several hamstrings you can spin.
The femur head, internal rotation, external rotation within the hip socket to make better and worse use of those hamstrings. So sensation of strength and sort of immediate relief met my knowledge of anatomy very quickly. And I was not a normal, I was not a normal anatomy person. I was very into anatomy.
Beau Beard (09:13.24)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (09:21.494)
Really, like from the first anatomy course I took, I took, I felt dumb my whole life until I took anatomy. And then I felt intelligent. And it was like the biggest switch in my life in college. I remember it very distinctly. It was like a confidence boost. So I had never really been taught this hip hinge pattern outside of putting the broomstick on your spine and doing this thing.
Which doesn't really teach you, it supports you without being taught. And it was the process of supporting myself accurately that actually allowed me to learn. So, no props, barefoot, I went to work. I was finishing my last year, year and a half of chiropractic school, and I really went inward to myself in many ways. I I became very angry for several years at the chiropractic system, at how much debt I was in it.
Beau Beard (09:57.679)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (10:18.273)
The fact that I almost had to get surgery based in traditional thought patterns. And that thankfully, I didn't need to practice chiropractic because I was starting to make a little bit of kind of headway with this idea that was not yet called foundation training, but was it was I was starting to show people this proximal hamstring contraction, this modified sun salutation, I would call it, this really favorite exercise of mine that was kind of the second thing I figured out.
Once I realized you could manipulate that hamstring angle with the femur heads, was your groin muscles traction your spine when they're aligned accurately. The adductors have this broad, dense connection along the inner femur. They also connect to the base of the pubic synthesis on either side at the pelvic bone. When that muscle shortens, it pulls the pelvic bone toward the femur, or vice versa.
Beau Beard (10:51.23)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (11:15.189)
When you squeeze the femurs together with internal rotation and you squeeze that adductor, you can't pull the knees closer in. You can only pull the spine at the pelvis. So I started playing and toying with this idea that the adductors are a built-in tractioning system for the spinal column. And I did this adductor-assisted Superman or spinal extension every day, over and over and over.
Beau Beard (11:27.032)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (11:44.881)
obsession is a real thing. I became very obsessed at this. Maybe a little bit of like OCD came to the surface in this process, you know, for a decade or two. So, you know, there's the I really went very deep with this. But what started to make very much more sense than anything else I'd ever learned. What started to make more sense than anything I had ever been taught about the body was that when you angle the femurs accurately, it it becomes very natural to hip hinge. And when you angle the when you
Beau Beard (11:46.677)
Eric Goodman (12:13.998)
Anger bh, sorry. When you angle the femur heads accurately and squeeze the adopters, you anchor the pelvic bones away from the spinal column, supporting the pelvic bone, supporting the hips, supporting the femur, supporting the leg musculature in a very accurate alignment, which naturally creates this opportunity of expansion at the torso. It has an anchor.
Beau Beard (12:25.453)
Mm-hmm.
Beau Beard (12:40.13)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (12:42.964)
That it can now pull away from. And what you see in foundation training, sorry, this is long-winded, I still get very excited to share this. Yeah, I get very excited to share this with people because it's a mechanism that is available to anybody. Maybe, maybe not if you're a double amputee or if you're if you're quadriplegic, but if you have most of your working parts, you can do this and you can breathe in a very specific fashion that stimulates a broad diaphragmatic.
Beau Beard (12:45.144)
Mm-hmm.
Beau Beard (12:49.35)
you good. No, that's what I'm here for. Yeah.
Eric Goodman (13:12.691)
contraction. We call it decompression breathing. It pulls the center of the rib cage. I'm sorry, it pulls the rib cage away from its center in all angles. Not just 360 degrees circumferential, but top to bottom as well. And we're looking for this parachute opening of the rib cage to broadly flatten the diaphragmatic membrane. We call it decompression breathing because it's intentionally bigger
Beau Beard (13:22.822)
Yeah.
Eric Goodman (13:42.246)
Then you should be breathing. And it's done to counterbalance and create like a collaborative restriction and resistance against those pelvic adductor anchoring muscles or tug-of-waring the two apart. And I have 31 exercises now that are barefoot, bodyweight exercises, completely original. You won't find them. Well, that's not true. Now you do see them elsewhere, but they are not foundation training, they are somebody's.
Beau Beard (13:57.839)
Yeah.
Eric Goodman (14:10.651)
kind of bastardization of the work I've put my life into. and we're seeing it a lot. We're seeing it a lot in the functional fitness world in particular. There are some people distinctly taking our principles and pretending like, look at this new thing I discovered. It's like, no, you can literally go to my app and learn everything you're talking about, which you did. anyways, that's neither here nor there. We've been working very hard on go ahead.
Beau Beard (14:33.486)
Well actually, can we can we double this is not I didn't wanna I didn't think I'd ask this question, but 'cause because you're in this space and you you're the person to ask because you didn't have a traditional route, right? You went to Cairo school, you never practiced traditionally, but you've kind of been on this development journey within a whatever you wanna call our field, right? A science based field of conservative musculoskeletal, you know. Yeah.
Eric Goodman (14:57.134)
A a health field. The way I look at it, it's a well, I'm in the health field. I see patients every day of my life. I have seen patients every day of my life since well before I graduated chiropractic school. I just don't practice chiropractic. I see patients through the lens of foundation training.
Beau Beard (15:14.158)
So one of the thoughts I've had, because obviously, like you, I'm a you know, a huge seminar nerd. I mean, I'm I teach for a couple of these methods or have. I think one of the things that gets kind of funky, and I just want to hear your take on this because of what you do, of like ownership of principles within a realm that is somewhat principled to start with, right? We're all basing things on science, right? Like you said, you got into anatomy and you're like, things clicked.
Eric Goodman (15:23.065)
Yes.
Beau Beard (15:40.505)
But anatomy in itself, yeah, somebody could have said, Hey, I discovered this muscle or I discovered the interstitium or XYZ. But when we talk about like principles, especially when it's like, I think of you know, DNS, right? Like those exercises then get basterized, right? Foundation training gets basterized. But it's like, and again, I'm I'm not arguing, I just I literally want your take of like, how do we suss out like ownership?
Eric Goodman (15:40.591)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (15:45.029)
Good. Yeah.
Eric Goodman (15:52.259)
Like that.
Eric Goodman (15:59.16)
Sure.
Beau Beard (16:02.42)
of like a movement and exercise, or is it just the concepts where you're like, hey, the conceptual framework that we look at the these things through is what we're we're kind of trying to protect in terms of IP. Is that what we're going after?
Eric Goodman (16:13.251)
It's a it's so it's a great question. And sure.
Beau Beard (16:19.96)
'Cause I wrestle with this myself where I'm like, W what what do I say I did or you know, 'cause we're always saying that we're artfully stealing, but it's like, Okay, when do you have to stop giving credit and be like, Okay, I I think I I came up with something here You know.
Eric Goodman (16:32.888)
Sure. There there is a
Eric Goodman (16:39.626)
In in art, in science, I actually don't like when people name things after themselves, personally. I I speak out about that to people a lot. People will ask me what they, hey, what do you think I should call this or that? And like they want to, I want to call it the X, Y, or Z method. I'm like, well, that's your name. Call it what it is. You know, like anyways, the way you protect things, it's all about protection. Because
If something, and all you I can only use my experience, but if something is called foundation training, it has to adhere by this principle of anchoring the body very specifically. And I'm the only one that teaches anchoring the way that I teach it. Now I have a lot of instructors that teach it that way, but they are certified in this method of teaching foundation training. The way we teach decompression breathing is a very specific protocol and process. It's distinct, it's not found anywhere.
Beau Beard (17:37.379)
Eric Goodman (17:37.45)
So when somebody is teaching this distinct process, measuring sticks from the ribs to the pelvis, aiming at a very distinct elbow to pull apart, not back, not forward, reaching the occipital, the external occipital protuberance away from that. I can't protect any of those pieces of the puzzle. Why would I? I want everybody to learn this. I want to put it out for free one day. I hope that my business becomes successful enough that I can hand over.
Every ounce of intellectual property I have to the world for free. That's a big goal of mine, actually. But right now, what happens is they don't call it foundation training. That's not the issue. You can look at some very popular people online using a their name method, their last name method of
Beau Beard (18:30.958)
Mm.
Eric Goodman (18:33.737)
Breathing up as big as you can. And the worst thing is the people that are out there literally acting like they came up with the internal rotation positions that I spent 15 years developing. The foot positions that I've been showing people distinctly for 15 years. They are facing Goada, the entire program, the primal movement program, the entire program. A lot of
Beau Beard (18:48.216)
Yeah.
Eric Goodman (19:03.486)
Some, I'm not gonna, I don't wanna create an issue, and I've already spoken to these people, sometimes publicly, sometimes not, but there are some very popular people in the movement world that are trying to make foundation training look like their stuff. And it's flattery, man. It's cool. I appreciate it. I'm very fortunate, very, very fortunate that I've got a very strong community.
Beau Beard (19:19.926)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (19:29.47)
I love my foundation training community. They love the work that I put in and they know how hard I work. They know how hard Jesse, if you guys don't know Coach Jesse Solace, he is the freaking heartbeat of foundation training, man. He works his butt off to share this with people. So when I see somebody that's like a coach or a doctor taking our work and kind of taking the shortcut to them being a higher level movement coach or expert than they really are, because they're shortcutting it.
Beau Beard (19:36.323)
Yeah.
Eric Goodman (19:59.519)
I'm not looking at how dare that person take my work. I'm saying, man, they're about to get hit with some really hard questions with people because they don't realize that they just crossed over from strength instructor to pain relief expert or chronic pain expert. And with that comes not back pain, friends and loved ones. That's easy, man. Structural modifications are easy to improve upon.
Beau Beard (20:08.878)
Mm-hmm.
Beau Beard (20:16.206)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (20:26.75)
Structural changes are easy to improve upon most of the time. But the hard stuff is the visceral, the autonomic, the the my body is revolting against itself. And I need movements to clear my lymphatic channels. My circulation needs to improve. My muscles don't need to get stronger, man. They need to learn to be more efficient so that my body can finally calm down. And these new experts.
That have very little real-world experience with patients, especially challenging patients, are going to be found out so quickly. And their students, even worse, is they are putting themselves up as experts and teaching students. So their students are learning a system with holes in it. We don't have holes. We have spent years, years not filling the holes.
Smoothing them out and sanding this down to where the entire thing is flush. All right. Everything is flush in foundation training. We we can't help everything, and we know that, thankfully. But the things we can help, which have spanned from major diabetic neuropathies to paraplegia, not quadriplegia, paraplegias, even with quadriplegias, we've helped deficiencies and what they can access has improved. You don't
Beau Beard (21:31.79)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (21:48.881)
Get that by mimicking somebody else's system at a base level. So the way you protect intellectual property in our field is not with lawyers, it's not with threats, it's by being better at what you know. It's by when somebody is like, look at this amazing program that looks just like foundation training. I'm like, yeah, but look at the second half of foundation training that we've been working on since.
Beau Beard (22:04.248)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Eric Goodman (22:16.092)
2011, 2012, it hasn't been made public outside of our level two instructors. Wait till you see that. And it's a compl there's a lot to protection and it's not litigious and it's not jerky. It's an an immediate, wow, flattering. Thank you for thank you for liking what I do so much that you're gonna just take it. Cool. Okay, whatever. Sorry, I get it. I get it, man. Life is hard and you gotta really up your level and you and you have to.
Beau Beard (22:32.142)
Yeah you know.
Eric Goodman (22:45.719)
It's really, really hard. And I do understand the steel, whatever that phrase is, but I don't personally adhere to it. But my path is very different. I am not trying to be an individual practitioner in a community, putting myself against other individual practitioners in a community. I have completely committed my life to being a teacher and to helping my students become better teachers than me. Plain and simple. I have my family.
Beau Beard (22:53.247)
Mm-hmm.
Beau Beard (23:13.759)
One kudos to you.
Eric Goodman (23:15.577)
And I've got my students.
Beau Beard (23:17.294)
Kudos to you for, you know, not admitting, but pointing out that they're the method or, you know, the system can't be the solution for everything because that's when it's no longer a system and it's a panacea dogmatic approach, which just fails everyone, not even the people it helps. Right. Exactly. But but you see that, right? And you you and I know within our realm, yeah, things can get a little coldish.
Eric Goodman (23:34.394)
What are we, a religion? Yeah. Yeah, of course.
We see a lot of it and we see a lot of people that instead of saying, wow, look how good that other system is. I love DNS. I point people to DNS all the time. We we point at we we point to other people on a very regular basis because we want our community to have as many tools as they can that foundation training is an accessory to. We call it the universal accessory. I I a phrase I've been using more recently is we've been a little part of a lot of big things.
And that's kind of how foundation training works. Like it goes a long way, but it can't be the standalone. It can't be the it can't be center stage.
Beau Beard (24:14.156)
Yeah. Yeah. Humans are too complex for almost any one thing solves all. But okay, so we we kind of know the genesis of how this started with you and you said you started to extrapolate, kinda, you know, it's almost like a working equation, right? As you figured it out, you started teaching and you're trying to help.
Eric Goodman (24:18.627)
Exactly.
Eric Goodman (24:33.43)
That sounds almost too I came up with it. I was experiencing my back getting stronger very specifically from proximal hamstring recruitment, from rotating my femur heads to allow more hamstring recruitment to support to better support that hip hinge process. By strengthening my shin muscles, I was so clear that once the proximal hamstrings were getting stronger.
Beau Beard (24:37.794)
Yeah.
Eric Goodman (25:01.002)
My anterior tibialis was very clearly working harder, which gave me the understanding of the shin muscle as the cornerstone of the posterior chain. So you'll see dorsiflexion as a huge piece of foundation training, but not because I knew dorsiflexion was good, because it continuously revealed itself through sensation, through improved mechanics that that just kept showing where I would get sore and in muscles I didn't.
Beau Beard (25:19.15)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (25:30.251)
really get sore until that point. So I don't no credit.
Beau Beard (25:31.874)
Yeah. So what are
Yeah. and I don't want you to feel like I'm handing you bouquet roses. I appreciate you saying, you know, hey, I was kind of stumbling upon my own solutions that I didn't find anywhere. And, you know, I'm sure you were kinda is a lot of us do a lot of times you're, you know, I tripped and fell on the trail running in Superman and had a heart extension moment. And then I know all the things to do for most of the patients, right? But then for yourself, sometimes you're like, Well, I can't do some things myself.
Eric Goodman (25:46.262)
Okay.
Beau Beard (26:00.45)
I think I know what it is, but some things aren't working. And you start kind of playing, right? You're like, well, this isn't the textbook, but let's see what happens. And then all of a sudden you're like, hey, I could try that with somebody because it's safe, because you've, you know, you can roll out red flags, you're schooled enough to kind of be creative. But what I want to know is, you know, we kind of know the the the pure underlying, you know, core exercise, right? The founder, but what are s the principles? What are the tenets of foundation training? Like if you have a bullet point, you're like, hey, these.
Eric Goodman (26:11.381)
Exactly.
Eric Goodman (26:26.533)
Yeah.
Beau Beard (26:29.58)
Are the things? Is it, you know, the biomechanic principles? Is it what is happening physiologic, you know, to the tissues, to the discs, to the neurology? Like what is it that you're like, hey, this is what we think is going on and this is what we're actually teaching, not just this exercise.
Eric Goodman (26:35.765)
My theory. So I will give you my my one or two sentence theory of foundation training. Like this is what I think. And what I'm trying to illustrate in every single exercise I have is this theory. Okay. The axial skeleton, the rib cage, the spinal column.
Pretty much that's it, and the skull. But really, what we can control is the rib cage and the spinal column using the skull. All right. So the one sentence is the axial skeleton needs to be re-educated towards expansion. Plain and simple. Hence decompression breathing. What I learned very quickly within the first year of really devoting myself to doing this constantly, not an hour constantly, like a maniac.
Beau Beard (27:23.278)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (27:34.696)
For years. Okay. Main main like the room with no the no lights on and just laying on the floor doing this for years, man. That'll figure out. Yeah. I came up with one principle: decompression breathing. The purpose of decompression breathing is to expand the surface area of the axial skeleton muscularly.
Beau Beard (27:44.856)
Freaking people out a little bit. Yeah.
Eric Goodman (28:00.261)
not only muscularly, but to teach those muscles to be able to do it themselves when they're not being focused on. So the return, I don't want people walking around like this all the time. I want you training that. So when you're walking around, you're not walking around like this all the time. You have a better balance point. But we had to match decompression breathing and that became very clear very quickly. We needed to give it an anchor, something that the torso is centered by while it pulls away.
Beau Beard (28:07.063)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (28:29.221)
Otherwise, we tend to just go into extension for the most part when we expand. So that came pelvic anchoring. What pelvic anchoring is, is the utilization of the middle chain of muscles, all the way from the big toe joint up the arch, up the posterior tibialis, up the soleus, up the gracilis, up the adductor, on either side of the center of gravity, the pubic symphysis. That's your
Anchor, your pull-down mechanism, the stabilizing platform from which decompression can occur. That's foundation training in a nutshell. Number one, we have to teach the axial skeleton to relearn expansive forces as a strength. That is done through the development of two principles.
Beau Beard (29:07.022)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (29:27.302)
Decomp the capacity to decompress the torso and the capacity to pelvic or to anchor the pelvis so that when you anchor the pelvis, I know some people are listening, there is an internal rotation from the femur head at the acetabula. That internal rotation allows an opening, a relaxation of the sacroiliac joint and the foramen, the nerve outlets.
In that region. Most of the time we're externally rotated, and this tissue is tight, shortened, and compressed for stability. That internal rotation of the femur head beautifully lines up the adductor tendons in this long centering of the pubic symphysis. And the way the adductor tendon works, the way the adductor works is as we hip hinge, we need this subtle internal rotation.
That allows the thighs to kind of let the pelvis pass through with no restriction. It's not a big internal rotation. It's subtle. It's a handful of degrees. But without it, we're restricted and we're practicing stabilizing short glutes and external rotation. So the anchoring principle remedies externally rotated glutes, hips, stuff we sit on all the time, feet turned out, duck foot, you know.
Beau Beard (30:37.195)
Mm.
Eric Goodman (30:58.851)
Decompression breathing remedies internally rotated shoulder joints and forward head carriage and the sternal pressure and abdominal pressures that come from that. With external rotation of the shoulder joints, stability of the lats, stability of the serratus, and focusing on the sternocleidomastoid muscle as a lifter with the breath to help stabilize this torso expansion. We're not teaching you to breathe through a, you know.
Beau Beard (31:09.92)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (31:28.911)
chemistry of breathing. There's a lot of breathing experts that teach that. I'm teaching you the structural manipulation you can use to strengthen your breathing patterns and widen the surface area of your torso.
Beau Beard (31:30.67)
Mm-hmm.
Beau Beard (31:43.799)
Okay. So me being a DNS instructor, where where are the overlays and where you know, where's the Venn diagram go over to the foundation training bubble and where did where are the overlaps? Just not in a a negative or positive, just where you're like, hey, these are some of the things we do agree with, some of these things, because again,
I know you've had this experience. We'll have, you know, a person that comes into the clinic and they do Pilates. And then we start, you know, going over mechanisms around DNS that seem to completely fly in the face of everything they're being taught in Pilates. And then they say, Am I doing everything wrong? And we say, No, what you're doing is a specific skill for Pilates. Like that's great for what you're doing. But it, you know, in our opinion, or my opinion, maybe, I I won't say our.
Eric Goodman (32:19.224)
No. Yeah.
Beau Beard (32:28.694)
If you adopt that strategy in times where you need a different strategy, that's where we run into problems. So like where's the overlap and where does it, you know, kind of dissipate a bit or diverge?
Eric Goodman (32:42.464)
I want to answer this intelligently.
Beau Beard (32:45.378)
And don't feel like you're yeah, don't feel like you gotta be political or anything. I mean, I yeah. Yeah.
Eric Goodman (32:49.997)
I don't. I'm very close with the DNS. I I like those guys. I think everybody should learn both. I do not feel in any way, shape, or form competitive with other movement practices. I feel, as I've said many times, I feel competitive with painkillers, Advil surgeries. you stick with a needle, inject something. That's my competition, not other people trying to do similar things. That's my team. That makes sense. So DNS is another good player on this team. Okay.
Beau Beard (33:02.979)
Yeah.
Eric Goodman (33:20.892)
I would recommend anybody that is very serious about understanding their body, understanding movement, understanding breath, understanding athleticism to the degree of clinical practice, get both educations as thoroughly as they can. Because we're kind of two sides of the same coin, and both are required for true athleticism.
Their focus very much is on what I would consider like abdominal-centric stability in breathing that stimulates the diaphragm from below through various pressures and allows the diaphragm a sort of natural vacuum-like tension. And there is a lot of relevance to that breathing pattern. There is a lot of purpose for that breathing pattern. And it's hard.
Beau Beard (33:56.782)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (34:18.163)
It's hard for athletic people. It's harder for non-athletic people. Foundation training is a little bit more of an in-the-field at the moment fix because our postures are genuinely a little bit easier, in my opinion, than some of the DNS postures that are very difficult. They're very muscularly involved and they are mimicking positions that we haven't.
Done in since infancy most of the time. I really like that. My wife is an intelligent pediatric physical therapist that wrote a book on first-year development and she loves DNS. it's a wonderful system. There, like, why would I not like it? Because we teach different things. Well, we have different goals. While both of our goals are pain relief, we go at it from different
Beau Beard (35:11.118)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (35:16.147)
perspectives and both have a really nice I mean there's there's Porsche, there's Ferrari, there's all sorts of things out there. Some are really good, some are pretty good. I would put foundation training and DNS at the Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini level of movement practices, whereas some people are simply fans of this one or that one, but the performance of either will blow your mind and will help your will help your patients and your life, very likely.
Beau Beard (35:38.626)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (35:45.496)
One of the big differences of foundation training in DNS, foundation training is a much taller breadth. We're aiming for we're aiming to push the shoulders out of the way. We're aiming to really get all the rib cage out of the way as we can. Whereas DNS does have some nice ribcage stability and expansion, but they're really, they're really aiming for a 360 breath here.
Beau Beard (36:13.304)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (36:14.354)
Whereas foundation training, I'm aiming for a 360 breath here, directly into the thoracic spine. Our goal is thoracic spine expansion in the breath. So there are definitive differences. Again, if you want to be a really strong practitioner, learn both and practice both. No question about it. the closest pose I have to a DNS pose, I would say, is my eight-point plank.
Beau Beard (36:22.018)
Mm-hmm.
Beau Beard (36:43.117)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (36:44.909)
I don't, I'm sure there's probably a DNS pose that's somewhat in the arena of a foundation training pose. But for the most part, they're surprisingly different. It is amazing how many ways you can breathe and move and recruit and connect. Foundation training, the whole I want to recruit your posterior chain as much as possible, and I want to teach it to work together. That's a big goal of foundation training, posterior chain recruitment. It's part.
of DNS but it's it's not the focal point. So
Beau Beard (37:16.098)
Yeah. And I would actually I like that because I would say Or Rich Olm's a good friend and he taking a DNS lens on the the overall strength and conditioning world, let's just say in the Western world, he would say that we are too posterior chain dominant in what we train, but that doesn't mean that we're training people in the way that you would train them in foundation training. That just means that we're throwing people in a CrossFit or a bunch of hinging motions. You know what I mean? So we're not saying yeah, we're not saying what you're saying, but he's like
Eric Goodman (37:41.699)
sure, sure.
Beau Beard (37:44.653)
We don't really hit like this anterior approach with a DNS foundation. And then that's where we see people fall apart. Right. And he's like, that's kind of a heavy thing for him. So I love that I love that like those sound. Yeah, it's a sound bite to be like, hey, I'm trying to teach your posterior chain to work better. And, you know, I mean, that's something we can grab and a practitioner, a patient can be like, okay, I I can kind of jive if I've never heard this before of like why I would pick that up. Yeah.
Eric Goodman (38:13.165)
I'm counting in my head. I have so all of them are body weight. We don't know equipment or anything. And I prefer barefoot when people do them. But we have 31 poses. 29 of them are posterior chain recruitment poses. Two of them are anterior chain recruitment poses. Very specific. Now, does that mean we don't use the abs? We use the abs all the time. We use the anterior all the time. It's just we are positioning the body specifically to recruit posterior chain integration.
Beau Beard (38:22.062)
Mm-hmm.
Beau Beard (38:39.842)
Yeah. Well, and like you said, I mean, if God, if we could go back who know who knows how many thousands of years and all the different movement practices that still hold weight in some form or fashion, whether that's just people have a proclivity to it or it'll help certain people in certain scenarios. So, like again, humans are so complex. Everything works for everyone, just not all the time. And that's like the that's the beauty of the human and also the thing that can drive you baddie. but if
Eric Goodman (38:48.536)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (39:05.55)
There is no there is no cure all system. There never will be. I it would be what a what a terrible responsibility, mind you, for the person that comes up with that system. Like you don't you you want to help. You want to help the community. You don't want you don't want to be the God. You don't want to be the what a what a mindset. I I've met people with that mindset that like, no, but it is I'm the one delivering all this to you. And it's like, get out of here. What like you got what didn't you get as a kid? Get out of here.
Beau Beard (39:08.108)
Yeah. And there's
Beau Beard (39:33.911)
Well, here, can I ask you this question? Why? I mean, you're involved in social media, we're doing a podcast, which is a branch off that. How and why? I know there's a real estate grab within the whole movement, training, health world, but how in the world are there so many different concepts and opinions on how a human should move properly or not move that some fly completely in the face of
You know, basic sciences, some maybe jive a little bit with it, some steal from other people. Like, what is going on in this day and age? Because I know that's a lot of patients say to me is like they'll bring something in, they're like, Hey, yeah, I did your exercise, but I saw this and I started doing this. And like, you don't want to be mean, but you're like, Well, this is just complete BS. Or well, why do why are you doing this? And you know, I mean, if you just want if I scroll through my feed, because that's all it is, right? Movement, fitness, strength conditioning, and it's like,
you watch five different drills, they'll all be antithetical to each other and you're like, how's that possible? How is that possible? Like what's going on that that's the day and age we live in. And how is a practitioner and as a patient can we help kind of sift through that a little bit better?
Eric Goodman (40:30.582)
Yeah.
Eric Goodman (40:45.928)
Number one, you cannot sift through it if social media is the vessel in which people are learning. And that's okay. There is a recognition to that. You can lead a horse to water, but so can they. There is a certain degree of autonomy that just has to be there. I remember sitting on a stage once with a bunch of people that hated CrossFit so much.
And they kept blaming CrossFit for all these problems. And I'm like, guys, girls, CrossFit's not the problem. The way people do things is the problem. And yes, in CrossFit, they do things quickly, but it is still the individual humans' responsibility to learn what's good and bad for them and to practice what's good and bad for them. And and just like we, what do you do? Let's be real.
Our education does not in any way, shape, or form give us proclivity to understand exercise all that well.
It is our utilization of our knowledge of the nervous system and then our experience as human beings going through exercises, going through the process of strengthening, going through the process of getting injured, if we're lucky and repairing from that injury, if we're lucky, those moments are what make us have a better filter. So if your patient is coming you, is coming to you for physical work.
Hands-on, adjusting, manipulation, soft tissue, whatever it may be, that's where you get to be the expert. Unless your honestly, 51% or more of your treatment comes in the method of movement and breath work. In which case, now you kind of are elevating to where, yes, more of your experience is in that realm. Your patients don't get there.
Beau Beard (42:23.553)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (42:44.486)
Make sure whatever you give them is so good that they learn to really trust it. And what you'll find is those patients, clients, friends, family will start to just come to you more and will and will, it's a big gesture when somebody sends you a video and says, What do you think about this? That's them saying, Hey, I really trust you. What do you think? Should I trust them? And you are a hundred percent in your realm to say, I wouldn't focus on that.
Beau Beard (43:10.19)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (43:14.385)
It's that's that's not going to get you as far as this. You can also be one of the coolest things that I've seen people do, don't just say no, send them a better video, not of you doing it, find somebody doing it better and introduce them to another expert. Or if you happen to be the expert, you make the video for them. but how do we how do you how do you do any? There's billions of people in the world.
Beau Beard (43:35.746)
Yeah. I love that.
Eric Goodman (43:44.528)
You just keep showing up the best that you can. And what you want is to get your patient's wheels spinning so that they get a little traction and move forward on their own and come back to you for advice, for hands-on and for advice and for hands-on and for advice, because they're becoming more active in their healing. the most frustrating thing a practitioner, a practitioner can do is.
Beau Beard (44:07.982)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (44:13.07)
Is really associate their well-being with how much they're listened to by their patients versus how many patients are continuing to knock down my door because of the results that these folks are getting. They're they're not out there looking for a hundred other methods. They're really getting better from what we're giving them. again, I I I stick so hard on this and I learned it the hard way. And I and I really push myself on this.
If you're going to try to be high level at what you're doing, especially to the degree that you name the stuff you're doing, like I did, very arrogant. Like I did, you know, I'm gonna call this the founder. You know, like there's an arrogance to it, but you gotta, you can't rest on your laurels, man. You if you want to be anywhere near the top, you have to keep getting better, better, better, better, better, better, better, better, better.
Finding the hard cases, messing yourself up and making yourself better, getting better, or else you get left in the dust by the other people that maybe take a little bit from you, but make a lot out of it. I feel incredibly lucky that people love foundation training. I love Michael Rintala teaching me DNS, Chris Prosser teaching me DNS. I love
The athletes that we have all shared over the many, many years. I love when chiropractic students come and tell me, I learned foundation training. Then this DNS struct instructor came to my school. They told me everything I know about foundation training is wrong. And I was like, but what about this? Because they're critically thinking. And then they did the DNS breath and I love that. And they're like, now I'm using both. And like, that's that's fucking getting better, man. That's how it works. It's not this is my system and everything has to be this way. That doesn't make anybody better. That's dogmatic.
Beau Beard (46:01.358)
Yeah.
Eric Goodman (46:04.983)
arrogant, mean, aggressive behavior in life. and I just don't think it's meant to be that way. I think we're supposed to share a lot of information, but also be respectful when somebody puts major effort into something looking a certain way or being a certain way. You can't just take it, make it your own thing, and pretend it's just as good. You got to test it too.
Beau Beard (46:25.442)
Yeah. What's what's one way that you're currently trying to be better? Right? Stan Sharp. I I've kind of peeked at your Instagram and I've seen you in this like dartfish suit, I think in your living room or in your house, kind of moving around. But like what's what's one or two things you're working on where you're like, Hey, we're developing this within foundation or I'm trying to learn more about this. That's kind of you're like you said, you're on this continual journey towards mastery. Like what are you doing now?
Eric Goodman (46:50.499)
So from a foundation training lens, we are actively developing a significant long-term curriculum. Right now we have a level one and level two certification course. Our level one education course is unbelievable. We have this online element that is six modules long that people really like, and then they come in person. The online module was doing so well that we've decided to make that into like a probably what will become a three to four month long course that people can take. But
It's not a certification unless you want to make it a certification. It's the level of certification knowledge. And then going very deep, I'm actually filming an entire clinical protocol for it. So as a practitioner, you're gonna literally see people on the table with me, and I'm gonna show exactly how I here's the hands-on of these treatment lines. Here's how the foundation training lens looks at symptoms from a hands-on approach. Something I've been practicing with many of our practitioners for years.
But we're finally making that into an actual available, understandable thing that will be part of this online course. Like, you know, for animal reference from tip to tail. We're diving very deep into technologies that can help that, like that motion capture suit you saw me in. we just got the coolest just for lecturing, but it's like a gigantic hundred inch screen that's a touch screen. So we can put my anatomy stuff on there and move it. It's it's like, it's like it's futuristic.
So that's all gonna be on there. I just launched, I'm very lucky with this one. What a cool thing. For the past three and a half years, I've been trying to figure out how to develop a wearable orthotic, like a compression sock that also helps to manipulate the foot. And we just launched this company last month. This is our first month being a company, track groundware. And it is already getting researched at the University of Central Florida.
Our first research study showed an immediate improvement on every user in balance from not wearing the sock to wearing the sock, doing this eight movement star test that's like a gold standard rehab test. we are now doing a continuous, a 10 day continuous wear study at the same university, the University of Central Florida School of Physical Therapy. It's a very promising thing. And we just launched that the company seems to be doing well from people receiving the socks, buying them, and really being happy.
Eric Goodman (49:13.974)
Happy with, well, wow, that's doing what I thought it was going to do, which is really nice. and that's a continuous development. So the first product is a sock. We're actually building it into a shoe company with this really interesting tensioning system based on the 15 sections of tension that we built into the sock. So we're going to try to build a tensioning system that does that to your foot when you lace your shoes up. so that's something that I've actually, we just launched it. It's been in the works since the end, since November of 22.
Beau Beard (49:17.442)
Very cool. Yeah.
Beau Beard (49:36.942)
All right.
Eric Goodman (49:43.057)
2022. And that's a big project that I'm genuinely one of my patients just approached me with the idea of trying to I always helped them through their feet, like muscle chains through their feet. And they can can I do something because I'm always in boots. Can I can we create a wearable? And that's been the the process. we're gonna come out with a kids, I'm not gonna tell you the name, but we're gonna come out with a foundation training kind of kind of curriculum for children.
Beau Beard (49:54.294)
Mm-hmm.
Beau Beard (50:01.742)
Very cool.
Eric Goodman (50:10.366)
For homeschooling, for school age kids, for families. And we're gonna make that into a very distinct taught by younger people, completely separate from the from the fundamental you know, world of chronic pain foundation training. This being like a postural exercise for youth to give them developmental skills along the way that can be taught in schools.
Beau Beard (50:10.476)
Yeah.
Beau Beard (50:31.32)
So just a few things.
Eric Goodman (50:33.692)
You asked, man. And you know, look, I I I come from a very creative family. I've even I've been getting into woodworking since my father passed away. He was a very creative guy, and I just started to play with some woodworking, and I've been having some fun with that. And made myself these little live edge shells and I made a this is a sauna that I made right here. Check this out. Yeah, check this thing out. A hundred percent redwood, and it has both red light therapies and traditional heater in there.
Beau Beard (50:34.742)
Yeah.
Beau Beard (50:54.22)
Very cool. Wow.
Eric Goodman (51:02.494)
Can see like eight people. Hundred percent from scratch, baby.
Beau Beard (51:02.744)
And you made this entire thing.
Dude. Good for you. Yeah. You and I are
Eric Goodman (51:08.488)
You gotta stay you got like there's the the realities of life are that you need to have hobbies, you need to have health, and you need to keep yourself interested. I got two young daughters, I got a wife, I got a dog, I got two businesses, and I got a few really close friends. That's a lot of shit to manage. You gotta keep yourself doing stuff, you know, you really do.
Beau Beard (51:26.242)
Yeah, you and I are a lot of like, I'm sitting in front of a river and I'm dying to go fly fish and shoot some photography after we get done with this. So I'm with you. well I have two questions that I ask every guest. And you can approach them however you want, whatever domain they end up in. The first one is, what is something that you long held to be true that you've completely about faced or changed your mind on?
Eric Goodman (51:54.61)
Good question.
Beau Beard (51:54.703)
And again, can be any domain. Doesn't have to be necessarily movement and health. I mean, I have I've had people pull UFOs into this conversation, so yeah, we can go anyway.
Eric Goodman (52:04.204)
Something that I really thought to be true that is not.
Beau Beard (52:07.372)
Yeah, that you have changed your mind on whether that's evidence based or you're just like, I yep, I started going this way with this.
Eric Goodman (52:14.908)
I'll give you one that is that is very much in our field. I always told people you just can't touch the psoas. You can't hit the psoas where they teach you you can hit it. And you can. And it was proven. And I was wrong. I was for years. I was like, no, you gotta if you're gonna hit the psoas, you go in for the through the proximal edge. You can't, you can't get through all that visceral tissue. turns out you can. And yeah, little things like that that can make a big impact on people.
Beau Beard (52:40.888)
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Goodman (52:42.364)
For a lot of years, I would always say the psoas is just an in-betweener muscle. And I still kind of say that because it doesn't directly connect to the pelvis. It goes past it to the femur. But it can wreak so much havoc that it does put itself in a primary restrictive role. And they did show, I don't remember the study, but my my mentor, Dr. Tim Brown, shared this with me, and I trust him very much with everything movement and treatment.
And he just showed me the study. He's Yeah, they got in there. You can really get in there and you can get enough pressure to make an impact and you can really make a change there. And I like, That's that's cool. Noted. Delete that one.
Beau Beard (53:15.192)
Which I I love that's coming from Tim. I love that's coming from Tim because in his technique, he would never even need to do like he wouldn't approach it that way, right? So somebody looking at that being like, I probably wouldn't do that, but it's cool that we can, right? Not saying he never would, but it's like, cool. He's just paying attention, you know, it's in his purview. Yeah, I love that.
Eric Goodman (53:29.274)
Yes.
Eric Goodman (53:34.346)
And sometimes, sometimes superficial, you know, SPRT is a superficial treatment with very deep response because it can affect the neurology. And you don't necessarily have to touch the psoas at the psoas, whereas you could really maybe express some relief and and and efficiency of the surface tissue above it. But it does, it does appear to run relatively close to the surface in comparison to what I thought. long story short, it it does, it does, it's something that I thought was one way and it it ain't that way.
Beau Beard (53:38.262)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Beau Beard (54:04.226)
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Goodman (54:05.23)
Yeah. It's there's a great Mark Twain quote. It's it ain't what you I'm gonna bastardize it. It ain't what you think you know that g it ain't what you think you know that gets you. It's what you know for certain that just ain't so. Yeah.
Beau Beard (54:12.386)
I know what you're think yeah, I'm trying to get it.
Beau Beard (54:19.948)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, well I love that because that's in our field. Okay, now let's flip the question. What is something that you are just like, God, I know this is the way it is, but there is no evidence. There's not a peer reviewed article out there to prove it, but you're like, I just think this is what's happening. Whatever whatever domain that is again.
Eric Goodman (54:42.328)
I think there is significantly, significantly more back pain because of lower intestinal distress, inflammation, and tone and tension, dysbiosis, whatever it might be, than people think. And I think I would I would argue that more than fifty percent of back pains and chronic pains are digestive in nature. And I would put the same amount and same number into headaches.
Beau Beard (54:49.646)
Mm.
Eric Goodman (55:09.527)
That there is a digest more of a digestive component than a structural component in over 50% of the chronic pain patients out there that have the same recurring symptom that comes and goes.
Beau Beard (55:24.728)
God, amen. I'll tell a quick story for the audience on this to hit this home. so one of the he was the top-ranked golfer in Alabama as a youth, came to me, had recurrent low back pain, looking kind of like a spondy, but we're on the edge. and we kind of go through some testing, and you can kind of tell, like, you know, motor control around that area is not great, and we're working on all the stuff. We can get him out of pain, but then it comes back, and we're he's working with the golf coach. We're doing all the things and
We asked the question up front, you know, like what's your diet like? Well, you know, like a lot of high schoolers nowadays, especially if they're heavy participating in sports and the time is the, you know, the efficiency gap. I mean, it's Chick-fil-A on the way to practice. They rarely eat breakfast and it's school, lunch, if any, and you're like, Okay. And then you ask about, you know, skin issues and gut issues and all that, it becomes apparent. I'm like, Hey, I really think you need to think look at your diet and you know, have this conversation about these links between this. That literally drove them out of my practice.
Eric Goodman (56:04.377)
Mm-hmm.
Beau Beard (56:22.018)
They were like, this guy's a kook. He needs to get out of here. Then they go get the, you know, an image, stress reaction. Why didn't you tell, you know, and you go through this whole thing and you're like, which it's on me, you know, you learn your approach is everything, right? So you you're not gonna win over everybody, you realize how to handle people different. But I was like, wow, that was so interesting that I went after what I thought was causal, right? Like I thought that was the underpinning thing. They're like, ooh, I don't like that, I'm out. but like you, I I think that's huge from how it's messing with.
Eric Goodman (56:41.589)
Okay.
Beau Beard (56:51.2)
interoception, right? And then that challenges all these
Eric Goodman (56:54.485)
Genuinely interoception and mechanoreception, physical space occupation by swollen guts in front of the the discs are there, man. The the nerve roots are close to that. That the they share a lot of blood flow, they share a lot of neurology. And in again, in my experience with myself, with patients.
Beau Beard (56:59.522)
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Goodman (57:17.331)
I know I'm not a chiropractor in the physical sense because I don't practice manipulation, but I have probably seen more patients than most chiropractors that have been in practice for as long as I have. And I've I've genuinely probably seen some pretty weird patients that have that have sought after a specific type of care and a specific perspective over the years. And there's just too much correlation between.
Gut inflammation, migraines, and back pain. Usually not the three together, usually it's one or the other. But something happening from when digestion begins to when it ends. The just like planes, the takeoff and landing, the beginning and the ending seems to be the parts that have the most infiltration, the most problems. And there really does seem to be a lot of correlation between space occupation.
Beau Beard (57:54.254)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (58:15.177)
Localized inflammations and things like that and chronic pains and and chronic migraines.
Beau Beard (58:20.952)
Yeah. Well I again I'm biased, but I would agree. And that's again like yeah, we could connect some of the dots through some research, but I would agree that's one of those things nobody's, you know, done a you know, peer reviewed, you know, double blinded placebo study on, you know, gut inflammation or dysbiosis on back pain, as far as I know. I'll go get on
Eric Goodman (58:37.761)
On the most recent book I put out was about four years ago, and it's called Foundations of Health, and it's the one that I dive into that idea the most in. but it's not really a foundation training book. It's more of like a philosophy of of health book. whereas the first two, foundation and true to form, are very much the theory of foundation training physically expressed. Yeah.
Beau Beard (58:45.603)
Yeah.
Beau Beard (58:59.266)
Very cool. well, in addition, I mean, again, multiple time author, you've been doing foundation training for well over two decades. you got you know, a sock company coming along, a shoe company coming along, anything else that the the people listening to this show should know about that you're involved in, you're excited about anything coming up. We'll obviously put, you know, links to foundation training website and things like that in the show notes. But anything you want to let people know about before we hop off here.
Eric Goodman (59:27.976)
not me. not like about me. I have a couple instructors that have been really making really incredible headway. One of them mentored with me for like two plus years when I was living in Florida, he's a young man. He did his senior high school project on foundation training and really fell in love with the work and has now kind of devoted himself to learning it, to making this his career.
his name's Nate Whiteman. He's down in Melbourne Beach, Florida, and he's doing a bunch of stuff down there, and he's just connecting a ton of dots. This 19, nearly 20-year-old kid is training once a week in foundation training, the lead researcher for the studies at UCF. And the lead researcher is the head of the school of physical therapy at UCF. So this the head of PT school is being taught every week foundation training by Nate Whittiman, this young kid.
Beau Beard (01:00:11.662)
That's very
Eric Goodman (01:00:19.844)
And it's just a I've I've had a lot of people work with me over the years. I've had a lot of mentors, I've had a lot of that type of thing. But I just I love seeing somebody that like finds something at a young age, doesn't really know what it is, learns about it as like, wow, that's that's cooler than what I wanted to do, and just throws themselves into it entirely, has gone through many certifications with us now, is a very high-level instructor at almost 20 years old.
And and it has ushered him into this really interesting community that he wouldn't really have access to otherwise. So that's one thing I'm super excited about is I just want to see where he goes. I feel like I'm gonna get a really neat window seat for where this guy goes in his in his life. And then another thing I'm really excited for is Jesse, my my brother-in-law slash right-hand man and foundation training, Jesse Solace, is on this really interesting adventure.
Beau Beard (01:00:55.128)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Goodman (01:01:14.37)
In Japan right now. And I'm I'm seeing as he's kind of like, no, I'm he's been he he started in the fire service for 17 years. Then when he retired from that, he joined us, or we kind of pushed him and he came and joined us full time in foundation training in like 2016. He's been with us the whole time since then. He's very single handedly almost responsible for the growth of foundation training in many different communities. and now I'm seeing as he's sort of like, not only has he become extremely
Extraordinary at foundation training and at teaching. And he's also got a lot of skills in, he's got a bunch of certifications from starting strength to strong first across the board. But he's becoming this sought-after, highly respected, genuine experience-based expert in the field. And I'm watching as all these like orthopedic surgeons and high-level doctors and companies and businesses are starting to like notice the.
Beau Beard (01:02:04.46)
Yeah then.
Eric Goodman (01:02:14.34)
Capacity, the capacity, the work ethic, what he puts in. And I'm just watching as this guy is. I said to him all along, I'm like, you're gonna become a lot better at me at this stuff. You're gonna like, I'm really excited to see where you go. And I'm watching it happen. And it's really cool to see I would argue, one of my biggest goals of watching people take something that I have a certain my inherent limitations take me so far in. Then you watch people that don't have those same limitations that.
really commit to it that can go further and you're like, see, that's what I'm talking about. Like that's what could be done out of this. And you start to see that. And it's a really rewarding process on both directions. It's awesome. I'm watching as the FT community grows because of it. I'm watching as his life and expansive world grows because of it. Same with Nate, same with a lot of other people in our community. Josh out in Charlotte, Josh Brigham, guy makes more money than most doctors and he's just teaching foundation training and it's the coolest thing.
Got a community building around him. And there's a lot of those examples. I think what I'm excited for now in life is like I'm sort of transitioning to still a hundred percent committed to working on my work, but watching as as genuinely people do better at it than I did. And it's the coolest thing in the world to see. Like they're just building their communities, and it's it's awesome. It's it's I don't know how it's awesome. Yeah, it's the coolest thing. Yeah.
Beau Beard (01:03:38.914)
Yoda Yoda could still throw down, but I'm glad that you're on that that transition. So
Eric Goodman (01:03:43.061)
Yeah. Yeah, I can hold my own.
Beau Beard (01:03:45.902)
No, I I really appreciate I was having a conversation with somebody the other day that's been on the show and we were talking about just appreciating people that like to think deeply, right? We like we don't like to skim the surface. We're willing to go deep. And sometimes, like you said, that might not mean you go the furthest, right? That might be somebody that you mentor, somebody that grabs on to whatever you're doing. And but I think we need
Eric Goodman (01:04:05.899)
No.
Eric Goodman (01:04:11.859)
If you wanna go fast, go alone. If you wanna go far, go together. And it's not because you're the one taking it further, Bozo. It's because they're taking it further. Yeah, sorry. You're not the bozo. I was just speaking.
Beau Beard (01:04:20.386)
Right. No, no, no. I I need that advice more than anybody because I am definitely somebody who will just be like, give me more, I'll keep doing it, just you know, I'll do it on my own and that's not going to it's not gonna let me accomplish my personal goals, let alone let me help other people accomplish theirs. So yeah, I appreciate just ending on that note 'cause that's just an important overall theme to kind of take home for people.
Eric Goodman (01:04:43.765)
Do what you're best at and let other people do what they're best at. And sometimes what they're best at is the same thing you're the best at, but they're better than you. And that's okay. That's cool. Like it's okay.
Beau Beard (01:04:55.702)
Yeah. Very cool, man. Well, hey, I can't thank you enough for doing this. And I know I got a lot out of it. I know people listening will get a lot out of it. And as I said, we'll put links to everything about foundation training and Eric and all the good work he's doing and the products he's coming up with. And hopefully I get to see him in person sometime soon. I'll be out on the West Coast later this year. So yeah, I'll I'll catch up with you at some point, I hope. All right, man. Thank you again.
Eric Goodman (01:05:19.795)
Right on bo. Looking forward to it, man. Thanks for the opportunity.
