Friend & colleague, Dr. Eric Goodman, founder of Foundation Training, drops some knowledge about how we humans have begun to move in recent history and what we can do to reverse the trend. This philosophy has heavily influenced how we help our athletes and people reconnect with themselves through movement. 
Check out www.foundationtraining.com for more information, videos, and certifications.

Have you ever wondered why we look the way we look or move the way we move? From our first moments in utero through our movement milestones of childhood, and even now as we write and read this post, we are shaped, moved, and grounded by the ever-present force of gravity. Typically, we are introduced to gravity with imagery like an apple falling on the figurehead of Newtonian science and perhaps further grasp the gravity concept when we see astronauts floating in space and realize that there is something on Earth that keeps us from doing the same. More often than praised, gravity is cursed as it limits the vertical jump of athletes who quest for flight, consumes the lives of countless cell phone screens, and makes some of our most attractive anatomy dive like kamikazes toward the center of the Earth. If you share in the disdain for the G-forces that make hill workouts what they are and literally brings us to our knees when emotion caves our support, you may want to check out the work of Joan Vernikos, former Life Sciences Director at NASA, and her book “Sitting Kills, Moving Heals”. Her perspective may just flip 
                                                               your concept of gravity and its purpose for form and function downside up.  

The following is a list of symptoms that Vernikos identified in post space astronauts as well as sedentary individuals:

• Atrophy and fatty infiltration of the multifidi (stabilizers of the spine), 
  
• Incoordination of movement patterns
  
• Decreased balance
  
• Increased blood pressure
  
• Decreased endurance

• Decreased strength
• Balance problems
• Stooped posture (lack of use atrophies stabilizer muscles that support spine)
• Sluggish gut
• Urinary incontinence (even in young women)
• Increased fatigability
• Decreased testosterone, decreased growth hormone
• Aching joints

Look familiar?

Despite decades of increasing popularity of exercise and fitness as well as the inundation of diet and nutrition information via the internet, these correlations are made and the likelihood of obesity and lifestyle related disease is increasing annually. According to Dr. Vernikos:

“The key to lifelong health is not going to the gym 2-3 times per week for 30 minutes; it’s low-intensity non-exercise movements throughout the day.” See a few tips below to bring this into practice." 

The following links comprise a three part interview I gave at Crossfit One World in Union City, CA with Crossfit B.A., Freddy Camacho. (Freddy has a great blog at www.crossfitoneworld.com). The purpose of this interview was to address a common limitation in the overhead squat; overactive (hypertonic) shoulder internal rotators / extensors and underactive (hypotonic) shoulder external rotators & scapular depressors. I chose to address the fascia (spider web-like connective tissue) that encases the pecs and lats because it can become very restrictive when putting one's hands overhead. Fascia...meet foam roller. 
Part 1: http://vimeo.com/38675504 
Part 2: http://vimeo.com/38675675
Part 3: http://vimeo.com/38675850 

At 1:11pm on 11/11/11 (for pneumonic's sake), I was half-awake and knuckle deep in an unidentifiable foramen of a plastic skull in skeletal anatomy class.  It was Friday, I was a week and a half from Thanksgiving break, and the reason I had chosen to go "back to  school" was already a fuzzy blur at only week 7 of 11 in quarter 1 of 13 in chiropractic school. I swear I was about conjure up the name of that foramen when I suddenly felt an all-too-familiar vibration in my front right jeans pocket. With the new schedule including 28 units, my phone had filled with such constant alerts and messages that I felt phantom phone vibrations even in the shower. I felt my Pavlovian response, sans drool, take over before I could even think about trying to resist looking.  I slid the phone out quietly, carefully maintaining it in the imaginary shadows cast by the professor at the front of the lab. This was a much welcomed brain break. It was from Rett Larson, a good friend and although I didn't know it at the time, the Project Manager for Athletes' Performance in China. It wasn't until halfway through the text that my sympathetic nervous system kicked on; 

"I'm at AP (Athletes' Performance) brainstorming my dream team to take to China and your name came up."

<cue dilated pupils & increased heart rate> 

"Any chance you want to pause school and come on this 10-month adventure with Joshua and me?"

I thought something like, "Foramenrotundumforamenlacerumholycrapforamenovaleforamenmagnum." Fight or flight indeed.  

I responded, "I'm going to call you ASAP, my friend. I'm smiling right now."

And thus began my adventure with the Chinese Olympic Team.