What is Foundation Training?
The strength of a human body lies in its foundation. That foundation exists to hold up our body's structure and keep it upright, and when it's well built, it keeps us strong and healthy. But daily life in the 21st century works against it: hunching over keyboards, bending over phones, commuting for hours behind the wheel, or slouching on the couch all cause the body to break down and weaken important core stability. Foundation Training (FT) was created to counter exactly that.
Foundation Training was born from Dr. Eric Goodman's belief that corrective movement could resolve his own back pain and restore his mobility, health, and life. It uses a series of isometric poses, postures, and breathing exercises to strengthen and elongate the body's core, activate the posterior muscle chain, and decompress the spine. The movements are simple and require no equipment, generating power, flexibility, and endurance through pattern rather than machinery.
The three key principles of Foundation Training
Decompression. Decompression breathing, when done well, acts like a pulley system that increases tension along the posterior chain. It's used throughout every FT exercise to re-educate the axial skeleton to use the pulley systems around the ribcage, lengthening and decompressing the torso and awakening the deep core muscles needed to pull the body upward against gravity. Done consistently, it leaves the spine more decompressed, stable, and expansive.
Anchoring. The muscles of the pelvis, glutes, hamstrings, adductors, and iliacus create an equal downward pull on the pelvis, an anchor. To create the space and tension that supports the entire body, we need something to pull upward from, and that anchor is what keeps posture expansive rather than collapsed.
Integration and hip hinging. Foundation Training never isolates a single muscle. Every exercise re-educates the body to share muscular work, so no one muscle becomes overactive, tight, or dysfunctional. Hip hinging is the clearest example: it teaches the muscles of the posterior chain to work together to perform the same task, and it's the foundation of proper movement, since the hips act as the body's central hinge. Modern life rarely lets us practice using them that way, which leaves us hunching or leaning on other muscles that end up causing pain.
Exercises you can build into your day
Seated decompression (for your desk, your commute, or the dinner table): Slide to the end of your chair and sit as tall as you can. Bring your ankles under your knees and squeeze your feet and knees together. Take several forceful decompression breaths, then bring your arms up to chest height into a sphere of tension, take another decompression breath, and repeat as needed.
The Founder (for brushing your teeth, waiting in line, or watering the garden): Stand with your legs wider than shoulder width, feet parallel. Place your hands in the measuring-stick position, thumbs at the bottom of your ribcage, little fingers at the top of your hips. Anchor by grabbing the ground with your feet and pulling your weight into your heels, then take a decompression breath, increasing the distance between your thumbs and little fingers as you pull your hips back behind your heels. Keep your spine stable and knees unlocked, bring your arms to your sides with thumbs turned away from your body in a long wing-arm position, and continue decompression breathing.
Integrated hinges and anchoring (for vacuuming, ironing, raking, or moving laundry): Begin in a strong standing decompression position, feet shoulder width apart and parallel. Shift your weight into your heels, anchor by grabbing the ground with your feet, and take a big decompression breath, expanding and elevating your ribcage. Bring your arms into the long wing-arm position, then hinge at the hips as you scoop your arms forward with palms up into a sphere of tension in front of your chest, feeling tension build along the back of your body and the inner line of your legs. Release like a spring unloading as your hips return to center and you come back to standing. Repeat the motion 8 to 10 times, working to stay decompressed and anchored throughout.
Why our team teaches it
Our co-founders, Dr. Kristian Marcial and Dr. Monica Saliu, completed Foundation certification and have incorporated Foundation Training into their therapeutic and wellness treatments ever since. Many of their patients have used this approach to avoid unnecessary surgeries, learn proper body mechanics, and build efficient movement routines to start, break up, and end their days.
If you're dealing with back pain, recovering from an injury, or wondering whether there's an answer for you, our team is here to help.