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In this episode of the Dr. JJ Thomas Podcast, Dr. JJ Thomas engages in a deeply insightful conversation with Dr. Goodman, the founder of Foundations Training. They delve into the transformative impact of Foundations Training on movement patterns, offering both clinicians and patients a new perspective on managing pain and improving physical function. This episode is a must-watch for clinicians and patients alike, offering insightful perspectives on enhancing physical wellness and managing chronic pain. Join us for an enlightening conversation that bridges the gap between clinical expertise and practical health solutions.
Get A Free Copy Of My Book:5 Things You MUST Do to Build a Successful Cash-Based PT Practice: This quick, easy-to-read guide is your no-BS steps to what really works in building a Cash-Based Physical Therapy business.👉 https://bit.ly/CashPTebook
For more on our in person Physical Therapy continuing education classes, check out our Primal University 🎓 https://bit.ly/primaluniversityeducation
In this episode of the Dr. JJ Thomas Podcast, Dr. JJ Thomas engages in a deeply insightful conversation with Dr. Goodman, the founder of Foundations Training. They delve into the transformative impact of Foundations Training on movement patterns, offering both clinicians and patients a new perspective on managing pain and improving physical function. This episode is a must-watch for clinicians and patients alike, offering insightful perspectives on enhancing physical wellness and managing chronic pain. Join us for an enlightening conversation that bridges the gap between clinical expertise and practical health solutions.
Get A Free Copy Of My Book:
5 Things You MUST Do to Build a Successful Cash-Based PT Practice: This quick, easy-to-read guide is your no-BS steps to what really works in building a Cash-Based Physical Therapy business.
👉 https://bit.ly/CashPTebook
For more on our in person Physical Therapy continuing education classes, check out our Primal University 🎓 https://bit.ly/primaluniversityeducation
Welcome to The Dr. JJ Thomas Podcast! Here I'll be talking all things physical therapy, raw and unplugged, giving you the unfiltered insights you've been searching for in your cash-based physical therapy business. If you're caught in the grind of the traditional model, swamped with paperwork, or feeling like you're not reaching your full potential as a physical therapist, this podcast was created just for you.
Just get people better. Like, just do. Just right? Like, just get the result. Figure out how to get the results.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Feet is a great adding you know, add Feet to your practice. Add other things to your practice. I also love that you said it's not a stand alone thing. Like, you're not you're not saying it's the only way. You're saying this is an important piece of the puzzle.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Welcome to the doctor JJ Thomas podcast.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Hey, everybody. Welcome to the doctor JJ Thomas podcast. I'm JJ Thomas. Very happy to have you here and especially with our our very special guest doctor Goodman. I feel hi, doctor Goodman.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Very lucky to have him. Doctor Goodman is the creator and founder of Foundations Training. If you're already familiar with Foundations Training, then you know that he is an authority on movement patterns and helping people restore healthy movement patterns. And if you don't already know that, then you need to listen to this episode because he's a true pioneer, in terms of really just breaking really breaking open a huge thought content that, that will change your practice both as a clinician. And if you're just a patient listening, it would change your practice as well.
Dr. JJ Thomas:So thank you, doctor Goodman, for being here.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Thank you. That was a really nice introduction. Thanks for the
Dr. Eric Goodman:kind words. I appreciate it.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah. Well, meant from my heart. I mean, there is a reason I wanna do on here, and and you're one of my first guests on here. It's it's true Everything, your product is amazing. Your, your work is amazing.
Dr. JJ Thomas:And, I'm just I I'm really looking forward to hearing all different avenues of Feet and Sure. Both from a clinical side and from a business side. But if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to for the listeners first to hear a little bit about your background and story and and kinda what how Feet came to be.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Sure. I'll give the I'll give kind of the important parts and do my best not to bore. So I'm I'll start here. I'm 43 now and I've been practicing foundation training every single day since I was 27. And that's approximately a 16 year span.
Dr. Eric Goodman:So from the 10,000 stand 10000 hours standpoint, I promise I paid my dues. You know?
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:But what it is, is it it's what I have to do for my back. That's what foundation training is. When I was about 19, 20, 21, I was in college. I was weightlifting a lot, and I was playing water polo. Before that, I had played ice hockey, and I just had this kind of stemming back pain that was getting pretty unmanageable.
Dr. Eric Goodman:By the time I was 20, 21, it was it was painful. I would I would really get nervous of my back going out, and it started to stop me from doing the physical stuff to a degree. So then fast forward a couple of years, I'm in chiropractic school. I'm a doctor of chiropractic now. But when I was in school, I was sitting a lot getting adjusted.
Dr. Eric Goodman:It's like, you know, you're getting adjusted by people that are learning how to adjust and that's part of how to that's part of school. Yeah. So let's just say it wasn't always the best for my my steadily increasing degenerative processes in my lower spine and hips. Although my hips, even to this date, my hip joints are strong and healthy with very mild, if any, degeneration. It's my it's my spine that got me and continues to.
Dr. Eric Goodman:So my back went out to the point, 26, 27 years old, that I was I was really strongly considering, fusion surgery. That was recommended by the doctor at Osteopath that I was going to in Orange County. I was in chiropractic school, like, 80% of the way done with chiropractic school, and it just it got to the point where I would I'd kinda get into a position to adjust a patient, and I'd hurt my back.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Mhmm.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And it was and it didn't look like it from the outside looking in. I was very fit and strong, and I was a big guy, but it was an increasingly problematic situation. And I was really not sure I was in the right profession. And that was its own kind of emotional process as
Dr. JJ Thomas:as Sure.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Austin experience of getting through that to that point. Luckily, I don't know what your listeners are into or not, but I just tell my story as it happened. And I started smoking a little bit of pot, maybe a lot of pot, for pain relief, and it it did something interestingly that that enhanced what's called somatosensation in my body. I it does it for everybody, mind you. I'm not special.
Dr. Eric Goodman:That's one of the benefits of cannabis is at low dosages, a heightened awareness of somatic processes within Interesting. I got the benefit of that very early on. And I would literally be laying in my room on the floor just trying to get myself into comfortable positions.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And there was one very distinct experience that changed how I thought about my back forever. And that was being in a yoga class, which I did a lot of yoga to try to get out of pain. And usually, to be honest with you, it worked pretty good. You know, a couple days of yoga, I'd be feeling a good bit better. I I still practice some.
Dr. Eric Goodman:I was in a yoga class and they were having us in a chair pose and I it hurt because I didn't quite know how to do it and I was rounded and I just extended my lower back really hard, but I didn't do it. This was the thing. I didn't do it by pulling up. I did it by trying to lengthen my hamstrings, taking my tailbone further behind me and up. That proximal hamstring yank and contraction that
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Levers, as I've learned now, levers the torso up really nicely like a crane. And that lever turned my sensation off of pain immediately. I mean, boom. In it. What is happening?
Dr. Eric Goodman:Okay.
Dr. JJ Thomas:So cool.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And I still I can experience it. I can still feel it. I still get really excited, and and it's my favorite thing to show people that need it, which I have found out is not everybody, but it's a lot of people. But that's kind of my story. That that starting point, that launch ramp of understanding that extending the lumbar spine in my personal experience was very, very important.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Even though in all of my rehabilitative studies prior to that point, I was told to avoid that. I next started playing with internal rotation, not because I'm smart, I promise. But because when I would do it, it it turned off the pain pathway
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Of, in my experience, the sciatic nerve, the piriformis, the extensor or the I'm sorry. The external rotators of the hips. I could turn my hips away from each other behind me, like I was trying to turn my back pockets out away from each other.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And it would further eliminate the pain. This was not day 1, day 2. This was year 1 to maybe year 4. Mhmm. Year 5.
Dr. Eric Goodman:I'm already graduated chiropractic school. I'm starting to play a lot with proximal hamstring contractions. I've created some exercises like the founder and the woodpecker that were very deliberate proximal hamstring contractions, turned into sort of more advanced exercises over the years. And my favorite exercise I ever created is not the founder. It's the anchored back extension, which was the first pose that I could do daily to repeat the pain benefits in my own body, and it squeezed my adductors together really hard to traction my pelvis toward my knees.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And that would buy me just enough elimination of compression to be able to extend my back and strengthen the muscles of extension. That was my baby for years for years. It was like it was literally, I would picture in my head an anchor line from my arches of my feet to my groin muscles, to my pelvis, to to my pubic symphysis. And as I squeeze it out, imagine that anchor line pulling away from my disc herniations and compressions to the point that I could really feel it.
Dr. JJ Thomas:That is so cool.
Dr. Eric Goodman:That that system, that equation, I don't know how else to say it.
Dr. Eric Goodman:That chronology of events.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Right?
Dr. Eric Goodman:That process is
Dr. Eric Goodman:the greatest thing that has ever happened to me by far by far. And it hurt, but it it would not nearly as much as it helped. And that strengthening process gave me an understanding of what I call the anchoring line and decompression breathing. Mhmm. And again, it was a years long every single day study.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Getting myself out of pain and then kind of I had some really trusting friends and patients that just let me play a little bit with them. I got I got them good enough results that they let me keep going. And Yeah. So anyways, that's my that's why I said I was gonna try to keep it short. That's my story up to now is I just No.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Trying to make it better.
Dr. JJ Thomas:And you can't keep it short because it's not a short process. I think that's important. Like, I don't wanna neglect that. It's it's I think one of the things you said from the very beginning just now that that struck me as important for our listeners is how many patients have we had if we're clinicians and and how many people have felt the situation where they feel hopeless in terms of, like, they're given a diagnosis. They believe that diagnosis is dooming and their their their back is never gonna be better unless they have surgery.
Dr. JJ Thomas:And, and you had the confidence, number 1, confidence in your body and confidence in your own exploration to be able to say, no. You know what? I'm not gonna accept that. Like, my back may not be the best, but I have all this this entire system that I can work with to make it better. So that that's really cool to hear that.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And to be clear, that that confidence in my body wasn't random. When I was 18 years old, I became a personal trainer. I was one of the with what's called the nationals I think it was the National Strength and Fitness Association or the National Strength and Think of Strength and Fitness because And it's okay. Conditioning is the bigger one, and it wasn't that one.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Okay.
Dr. Eric Goodman:It was pre NSCA.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Got it.
Dr. Eric Goodman:This was 1998.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Okay.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And I became a personal trainer online because I was just interested in the body. I was training all the in the gym all the time. I was I was fascinated by both bodybuilding and strong man, and just kind of the processes of the body. And so I I I was kind of naturally leaning in the way of exercise very, very much so. And had and by the time I was playing with my own spine, I really trusted my understanding of the body to that point.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Mhmm. What I understand you know, I wouldn't trust it now with what I know. I would wanna have somebody much more advanced, but it was working.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah. But you trusted the process too of, like, okay. If I move this way, what happens? If I move this way, what happens? I think people aren't patient enough with that.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Like, I feel like people want that quick answer. Right? They're like, oh, that didn't work. I'm doomed. You know?
Dr. Eric Goodman:I I honestly and now this wasn't this wasn't something like I wasn't going into this as a very meticulous person saying I'm gonna test this for a 100 days. And I'll Yeah. But but I if I had to sort of average out honestly, how long kind of an adaptation of a pose or a process or or or or the correlation of what, k, what I'm feeling and what the movement is, and then, okay, if we slip this way a little too far, then, you you know, those those were, those were half a year to a year each in the making. Like, you have to go through the sensation over and over and over until you you're you're it's first nature. It's not second nature.
Dr. Eric Goodman:It's first nature. It's a 100% your prime language. And that's what somatic sensation can become for anybody. Prime language. You can really understand.
Dr. JJ Thomas:So is that so I would love to. I I talk about Feet quite a bit. You know, one of our, we one of our staff has trained through you guys, and and she's eating it up. And our patients are eating it up. We love it.
Dr. JJ Thomas:And we're using it more and more. Everyone else is, like, you know, watching and listening and trying to, adapt it. So I think you and I were talking earlier about our entire staff being trained. But but when I try to describe it, I feel like I probably don't I probably don't do it enough justice. So I would love if you could give me, you know, your elevator speech on on what what it is and how it's different from traditional training methods.
Dr. Eric Goodman:I'll try.
Dr. JJ Thomas:I know. I'm
Dr. Eric Goodman:sorry. Describe this. I've been trying to describe foundation training for 15 years. I know. I still don't think I do a good I'll try.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Okay. Okay. Okay. I have one I have one base description that is Yeah. What I call like, sort of the doctoral level.
Dr. Eric Goodman:If you're a practic that's if you're a practitioner that pays attention to things going on, and you're not just status quo, you're not just going through it, you'll understand exactly what I mean when I say this. And it's in it's in my true to form book. This is kind of my thesis. The body will get better in general at both holding itself, at feeling itself, at feeling better and experiencing less pain if we focus very heavily on a reeducation of the axial skeleton towards expansion, the result of that is an appendicular skeleton that tries to hang on a little harder against that expansion. And that intertwined tensegrity is what the fascia is kinda there for.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Not just from a muscular standpoint, but with that expansion comes better tension of the inter operations of the viscera, of the blood vessels, of the lymph tissue, of Perry Nicholson's whole world, you know?
Dr. JJ Thomas:Like Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:I love Perry. He's amazing. What a brilliant man. Like, he's he's helped so many people because he he correlates systems within an aquarium, not Mhmm. A system within itself.
Dr. Eric Goodman:He's he's not to not I mean, I I love he he deserves every accolade he gets. But that style of thinking, all of it improves with axial expansion. And that's kind of why I teach that. That's what decompression breathing is. The other thing is that if the hips and the pelvis are taught to lead the way accurately, meaning any movement that the body does is originated at the center of gravity.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Meaning, if you rotate to the right, your hips just drive you a little bit that way as you rotate left, versus what a lot of people do is squeeze the glutes, and that is anti rotation. It stops. Mhmm. So your spine has to twist in those directions and the spine can twist. No problem.
Dr. Eric Goodman:This is a long elevator ride.
Dr. JJ Thomas:This No. I has no problem. This is good. I need this.
Dr. Eric Goodman:We're in the Empire State Building. We're coming we're going up.
Dr. Eric Goodman:We're on a gondola.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Yeah. Anyways, that the the ability of the hip joints to become the primary movers, like, I mean, happy Gilmore man. It's all in the hips, baby. That's that's the truth. If your hips can become primary movers muscularly, not passively, but muscularly, you're gonna experience a lot less pain, a lot more quality of life, a lot more powerful movement, a lot more spring in your movement into a much older age.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And it's the kind of thing that all trainers and coaches and doctors that are musculoskeletal want their patients to experience and regain. And it's not just a hormonal thing. It's not just a dietary thing. It's it's those things, but it's also a very specific sequence of movements that the body has to train, and a very specific sequence of sensations that cater stability in those movement.
Dr. JJ Thomas:I love it. That's, I would say a a couple of the key points that you said that I I and so, you know, help me if I'm I'm gonna tell you some of the highlights I tell my patients. One of them is a little bit
Dr. Eric Goodman:of a summary of what you were saying
Dr. JJ Thomas:about the hips and that and that one of the things I love about what I feel when I do Feet myself and what I've seen happen through our patients working specifically with Jess because really, Jess is the expert in in our company right now. So I have most of them training Feet with her, the ones that I know really, everyone can use it. We know that. But the ones that I know really, really need it. And what I explained to them is that a lot of times, breakdown happens because of compensation because we don't have that foundational stability.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Right? We don't have that that as you described, I liked how you described that. It's hard to it's hard to have a word for this. Right? This, like, intrinsic and extrinsic stability that that's a balance of each other.
Dr. JJ Thomas:But but that when when we can refind that that then our hips allow us to move. Everything allows us to move. So that's one of the things I say. The other thing that I I think you're touching on that I don't think is a it's not a very commonly talked about thing in our in, concept in our in either of our professions. But that the entire to me, the entire purpose of the musculoskeletal system is to protect our organs.
Dr. JJ Thomas:You know, the the skull protects our brain. The the spine protects our spinal cord. The pelvis protects our our reproductive organs. And what I explain to patients is we don't have a bony structure to protect the internal the abdominal contents really. And so what I feel from Feet is that a lot of the, intra abdominal pressure that we need for true abdominal stability is regained through these patterns that you encourage in all of your movements and poses.
Dr. Eric Goodman:It certainly can be. It's certainly because what we do so yes and no. And I and I I wanna be so upfront and clear with exactly
Dr. JJ Thomas:That's why I'm asking. Bring it.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Ever in my system. The system that that we teach, our instructors teach, that Jess teaches, that you're interested in, it could never stand alone.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Because it's scaffolding. What that training delivers is is a broad expansive scaffolding that the musculoskeletal system will adapt to and strengthen, and the result of that scaffolding is improved posture and more space for the abdominal muscles to contract accurately. But if you really wanna teach breathing into the abdomen that's very, very good, very strong, look at DNS.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yes.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Look at look at power lifting and Olympic weight lifting, and and Yeah. Or listen to Pavel Sapsilien talk about breathing. What we do in foundation training is we make sure that when your body learns that, it's learning it in the right places with the right space. And most people can't go from where they are into those breathing exercises unless, or at least not without pain and without kind of really having to learn it deeply, unless you learn to create room. Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And you levers in your body that create room, the SCM muscles, the lat muscles, the serratus muscles, the adductor muscles, the shin muscles. Those levers pull the body in such a fashion that it leverages space and more important, density, a front to back space and width at the torso without that that pull apart, which DNS teaches very well.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Which power lifting requires, which Yeah. The McGill 34, whatever that guy says now. Whatever those are, they're phenomenal exercises, but only done in a body that can maintain space.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And that's where foundation training weasels its way in to all of these different systems as we create space better than anybody.
Dr. JJ Thomas:It's awesome. It's so funny because that's the exact manner in which I found you guys is that I was using DNS with my patients and they were looking at me like, what? You want me to get in a baby posture? They they were like, a paw. Yeah.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Exactly. And I Some of them bought into it and some of them didn't. Then I found GMB. And GMB allowed me to have sort of pseudo baby postures without patients feeling like they were weird. They were okay with animal locomotion weird.
Dr. JJ Thomas:And then Ride introduced me to you guys. So, it's really cool to hear that that full circle. Now you're sending us back to DNS, which is right.
Dr. Eric Goodman:The the body needs all these systems and there's a reason that all of them create. I will say, and I I guess I'm biased, but I'm also pretty pretty damn experienced. And this statement is made a lot more by other people than it is by me. So I'm at this stage more echoing than than stating. But our our work tends to serve as a bit of a missing link among these systems.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Yeah. Without that posterior chain integration and the capacity of the serratus and lap muscles to intertwine as we teach in decompression breathing, your body just doesn't have the room that it had when it was younger and more athletic. And my patient population, the the foundation training population spans all ages to a degree, but, really, the people that the work is for are in that older category. They're they're forties and up. And they're people that are willing to do the work and are active and are they're they're already or at least pretty serious about doing things for themselves, but there's something missing.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And we're very often that that missing link for people that wanna keep doing what they like to do, but need the extra strength, the extra posture, the extra hip range of motion, the extra lung volume. That's what we tend to offer.
Dr. JJ Thomas:It's perfect. I love it. Thank you so much. That, that clears up a lot of things for me on the clinical side of things. I would love to hear a little bit more on on actually building.
Dr. JJ Thomas:So some of the a lot of this podcast is helping, other clinicians grow their their practices. And so I'm curious. You and I were talking before this start we we started recording how, you know, this has been a 15 year process for you. And I'd love to hear a little bit of the business side of what challenges you had when in the earlier stages when you decided to, you know, bring this to the public and
Dr. Eric Goodman:Sure. The first so my my process was I started teaching public classes off of the advice of some really interesting people that I interacted with. And this was back in 2,009. I was living in Santa Barbara. I hadn't written a book yet.
Dr. Eric Goodman:I was still naming the system, still putting it together, still trying to figure out. But I had like 8 or 9 poses that I I had on repeat. I had them down. They were there. They were strong.
Dr. Eric Goodman:So I started holding back pain classes. That's literally what I called them. Back pain classes. Then maybe 2 or 3 months into it, they started being called foundation roots classes. It's because we were playing with names, we were playing with all of that.
Dr. Eric Goodman:When I say we, it was me and my my closest friend since we were 14, doctor Dustin Duricki.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Cool.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Went went to chiropractic school with me. We graduated. Neither of us ever practiced chiropractic. We just went right in. I by the time I graduated, I was already pretty full on with with what I was doing.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Dustin graduated like 6 months after me, and at that point, I had been testing it for 6 months pretty much.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Awesome.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And we just went full on. We're like, well, I don't know what we're gonna do, but we're gonna do something. And we started
Dr. JJ Thomas:But the world needs this. Right? You're like, this is Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Dustin and Dustin's the most important person in this whole picture. I came up with the idea and continue to do that at a very painstaking process, and Dustin's now helped me a lot. And Jesse, who's the main coach that people will see has helped me for many, many years, especially bringing a more strength focused, lat focused power pose type situation to this. Yeah. And other people, Brian King helped me over the years.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Peter Park helped me write the first book and really got he gave me a Rolodex that helped incredibly. He he believes in the work. He still uses it heavily to this day with all of his clientele. He is a co author of the first book with me, and he introduced me to everybody that got us to the ability to write that book.
Dr. JJ Thomas:So cool.
Dr. Eric Goodman:So there was a lot of connection, a lot of serendipity in the sense of people coming into the picture that could help me get the word out once they successfully improved themselves with it. That's the root of every story that has helped me in business. Nobody came here because they liked me.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Everybody came here, they're like, I'm in a lot of pain, x, y, or z. And I said, are you willing to try something? And they tried it, and for whatever reason, it really worked in their body in a way like it worked in mine. And they helped me grow it in their way since that point. So now, you asked about business.
Dr. Eric Goodman:We we didn't know anything about business. We lost a lot of money for the 1st several years. There was this was not a successful business. This was not a successful business for the 1st several years. Not at all.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And in learning a lot of lessons and kind of screwing up on taxes and having to pay a bunch of fees and paying people wrong and then having to pay them right and just making mistakes. I learned how to run a business with some people. Yeah. That's awesome. And we've all we've all sort of gotten a degree in business accidentally over the past decade now.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And we're decent at it. We've we've we've brought foundation training to a pretty powerful place now with a very small team. My my business team, my the people that run foundation training is me, doctor Dustin Duriecki, Jesse Salas, and Paul Matthew. And we have a wonderful customer service person.
Dr. JJ Thomas:I love it. You call them the cooks in the kitchen on your website. Right? I love that.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And and the recipe is pretty screwed up, but it's really fun. A lot it's a good kid.
Dr. JJ Thomas:It's a family recipe.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Yeah. It's family. It's it's family. You
Dr. JJ Thomas:know? That's cool. No. It's That's awesome.
Dr. Eric Goodman:An ongoing learning curve in business. We have a lot we have 14 no. I'm sorry. I'll I'll say 1300, so it's at least pretty accurate. We have Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Approximately 1300, foundation training instructors around the world.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Wow. I did not know that.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Yeah. We're we're doing okay in that regard. And we're That's
Dr. JJ Thomas:so cool.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And that's including basically 2 I think a year and a half, 2 years off during COVID. But we've been certifying instructors since 2012.
Dr. JJ Thomas:That is awesome. I I mean, I will say, I know you and I I forget when we first connected. We connected for for a patient that I had
Dr. Eric Goodman:Probably that was a year. I think 2 years.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Or or more. I don't know. But I, I ever since then, you know, I've definitely been following, and I'm so happy to hear more. You you were I think it was more with
Dr. Eric Goodman:Ryan, like, 5, 6 years ago.
Dr. JJ Thomas:I wanna say it was, like, 4 3, 4 years ago, maybe. But but I remember thinking, like, PTs, we need we clinicians need this. I don't I'm so I'm glad. I wonder, do you happen to know the breakdown of how many, like, clinicians versus trainers?
Dr. Eric Goodman:Oh, I'm sure. I I mean, I I I'll give you an approximate break.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah. Yeah. I won't hold you to it.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Yeah. I would break our I would let let me do it in 2 categories. The clinicians, the vast majority of clinicians that have come through our course are physical therapists, chiropractors. And then I'll sprinkle in a handful of osteopaths and medical doctors, and I'll sprinkle in a handful of occupational therapists.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Cool.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Now that probably makes up 65%
Dr. JJ Thomas:Awesome.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Of our entire clinical or our entire instructor base. The others are Pilates instructors, athletes, yoga instructors, individuals who came through just for a better knowledge for their own pain management. 10% of every maybe 20% of every course. 10 to 20% of every course is people that are just there for themselves, their retirees, and just they just wanna understand it. I I love they always bring a pretty fun energy because most people are clinical, and then there's just these other people, like, what?
Dr. Eric Goodman:They're just totally different focus. Right? They're just in the poses. The other people are, like, taking notes
Dr. Eric Goodman:Yeah.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Studying the muscles. Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:I'll get I'll get I'll have talked about something for 30 minutes and I'll get a hand up and they're, like, could you point to the serratus anterior? I'm like, oh, shit. I don't know that made sense to you at all. Okay.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Oh, that's so funny. I love it. That's good though.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Oh, well, I'm happy to hear. I didn't expect you to say 65%. That's awesome because I I think Brooklyn. Like you said, missing link was a perfect way of saying it because I will I I will say I've had patients with chronic pain that that we got, like, 80, 85% without it, and then FT's just really brought them
Dr. Eric Goodman:Yeah.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Over the top. So,
Dr. Eric Goodman:We've got a lot of success stories, and and the people that have built this business are our instructors at this stage. Have expanded our reach in ways we never could have, ever.
Dr. JJ Thomas:It's cool.
Dr. Eric Goodman:There's, like, there's a lot of Australians that do found there's a lot of New Zealanders. There's a lot
Dr. Eric Goodman:of people in China. There's it's it's pretty wild. Like
Dr. JJ Thomas:That's really cool.
Dr. Eric Goodman:That's been the neatest that's been the the the the neatest process of just learning how to how to kind of not run a community, but how to be a part of a community by basically my job is to give to the community. Mhmm. It's the way that they wanna keep giving to our community and keep spreading it. So when I give them something new, it's gotta be legit. I can't give them BS.
Dr. Eric Goodman:I can't give them something that doesn't work. They have to be able to go test it with their patient base or their client base or their selves.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And that's been the growth opportunity and cost of foundation training. Not everything makes it. I've probably pulled 5 or 6 or 7 or 8, probably probably 7 or 8 poses off the list just they're not there anymore because one of 2 things happened. A, couple people got hurt doing them. I've definitely done that before.
Dr. Eric Goodman:I hate that some of the work has done that, but that's just the reality of having a bottom over.
Dr. JJ Thomas:You don't know until you try.
Dr. Eric Goodman:So crossovers, cross unders, lunge stretch. A few of my earlier, they're just not there anymore. We don't teach them. Brought in some newer things, understood it a little bit better. And then there's a couple, I think I'm trying to remember I think this is why I stopped teaching the cross under is I was watching, Feldenkrais video from, like, 30 years ago.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Oh my god. They didn't go into a cross under, but or crossover, but they went damn close. I was like, oh, that's a, the body only moves in certain ways.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:B, I can't I can't claim that. That's not Oh.
Dr. JJ Thomas:That's not Wow. That's not
Dr. Eric Goodman:so I we just took it off and, you know
Dr. JJ Thomas:See, I think that's really respectable of you. I I feel
Dr. Eric Goodman:like Our work is original. Like, our work is original. It has to I have to be able to, like I have the one thing people will ever come at me with is, oh, I've seen this. This is this is there's nothing new. There's nothing new.
Dr. Eric Goodman:I'm like, you show me where you've seen my work before. No. Never. I'll take that. No.
Dr. JJ Thomas:I agree. Yeah. I think that's awesome. But I think it's interesting because if I think, like, I could have easily justified that for you because the body like, you can't own the body if the body wants to move a certain way. Of course.
Dr. JJ Thomas:How could people fault you for for honoring the body's movement systems? But I know I'm not everyone. So
Dr. Eric Goodman:And what we're trying to do, I I want people going through my my app, my books, things like that. Just being like, okay. Okay. Interesting. Okay.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And then and then they try it and it's just like, woah.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Yeah. If I have other people's work on there, it's not foundation training. It's foundation and then some other stuff.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah.
Dr. Eric Goodman:What we have, we have a strength program that Jesse is creating. We have one version of it, but we're doing a bunch of a bigger updated one for the app. And that strength program is foundation training a little bit into power lifts, kettlebell work, very important, almost diagnostic level strength work. And his his capacity is huge. Before he ever got into foundation training a decade ago, he was really into the CrossFit world, the power lifting world.
Dr. Eric Goodman:He has certifications from starting strength, from strong first, from, he's gone to a mall, and he was able to bring that to Feet.
Dr. Eric Goodman:It's
Dr. Eric Goodman:awesome. Has to stand. That is a strength program based in foundation training. Whereas, anything we're teaching clinically, that kinda has that namesake has to be based on 2 principles completely, which is anchoring and decompression. And you have to at any moment of the exercise, be able to see and feel those principles at play, then that's what makes artwork very unique.
Dr. JJ Thomas:It's awesome. And the simplicity of I mean, it's it's like it's simplistic complex. It's like so simplistic it's complex.
Dr. Eric Goodman:That's a good description.
Dr. JJ Thomas:That's awesome.
Dr. Eric Goodman:It's like it's like the whole puzzle looks so hard. You're looking at it. It's like, what? What? And then you see the puzzle.
Dr. Eric Goodman:You see that last piece that comes in and you can no longer see the puzzle pieces. You just see the image.
Dr. JJ Thomas:And Yes.
Dr. Eric Goodman:You've ever seen. And the rest of your whole life, you only see that image. You're never looking for the puzzle pieces anymore.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Yeah. It's funny because I I see that we have a pretty open open floor, plan here in my office. And it's funny because I've seen that look in patients in patients who haven't been exposed to Feet yet. When they see Jess working with with other patients doing Feet And they look at them like, what are they actually do are they doing anything? Like, I I feel like they give this look of, like, pass like, passing over it.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Like, it's They're just
Dr. Eric Goodman:standing there like this.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Yeah. Yeah. Like like, well, boy, that's easy. I should do that. Right?
Dr. Eric Goodman:And then when they actually
Dr. JJ Thomas:do it, they're, like, submitting. Hopefully. Yeah. Oh, it's
Dr. Eric Goodman:it's happening.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Yeah. It's it's so funny.
Dr. JJ Thomas:So anyway, thank you so much. This has been awesome. I think for final last question, I just wanna leave our listeners with if there's any, you know, any words of advice as business owners or as clinicians, if there's, you know, one pearl you could have told yourself 15 years ago when you were starting this journey? Is there anything that comes to mind? Any advice?
Dr. Eric Goodman:Just don't get stuck in in in a protocol. Or or if you are in a protocol, look for really interesting ways to adapt it and move it forward. Whether that's a a way that you treat individual patients or the way you treat a symptom or the way you view how that symptom occurs, which is a really nice one. One thing I love to tell practitioners, especially chronic pain practitioners, especially people that are very often treating things like tennis elbow, or sciatica, or plantar fasciitis. Just remember that a nerve is nothing more than a cord with 2 ends.
Dr. Eric Goodman:And that that tension can be held, and and the culprit of that tension can be anywhere along that pathway, but it's very likely going to be felt at the most common places people feel that nerve, like the piriformis area, like the hip, like the plantar fascia. Even though the tension can occur anywhere on the chain, it's gonna feet be felt at the proximal or distal end most of the
Dr. JJ Thomas:That's really good advice.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Integrations.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Thank you. I I'm I'm with you on that. I feel like that's great. That's great advice. Thank you so much.
Dr. Eric Goodman:I've just I I mean, my first place to go for sciatica is like the lateral band of the foot and then, you know, the shin muscle and the peroneus. You know, just like let loosen up the tibiala the tibia, that whole area, and all of a sudden there's a little more rotation and there's just more room for those upper leg muscles and the nerves around it. That can happen anywhere in the body really easily. Really easily.
Dr. JJ Thomas:That's awesome. Yeah. I I noticed for myself clinically when I stopped, like, focusing on where they're feeling it and looking more at movement and where I see the breakdown happening. That opened up a whole world of success. And that's what you said earlier was, like, you said Feet has to work.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Like, the only reason anyone helped you build the company is because it worked for them. And and that was something that resonated with me and my my hope for listeners too is that, like, just get people better. Like, just do. Just right? Like, just get the result.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Figure out how to get the results. Feet is a great adding you know, add Feet to your practice. Add other things to your practice. I also love that you said it's not a standalone thing. Like, you're not you're not saying it's the only way.
Dr. JJ Thomas:You're saying this is an important piece of the puzzle.
Dr. Eric Goodman:What I So lines is and I've said this so many times to a lot of different people and eventually maybe somebody will listen in the movement world. Our our competitor in the movement world, regardless of what we teach, strength, pain relief, whatever, our competitor is in no way shape or form each other. Our competitor is surgery, injections, Advil, Tylenol. That's our our competitor is is people that are looking at the body differently than we are. If we try to make every movement we do better than every movement, some
Dr. Eric Goodman:other very intelligent person taught that person, we're both screwed up. Where the person's person's confused that no, dude. We're on
Dr. Eric Goodman:the same page. We're all on the same team. I love that foundation training works for a lot of people. I hope my business grows forever and my family can become wealthy and and beyond our wildest dreams But if that doesn't happen, I love teaching foundation training, and I want more people to understand that, like, we are one thing in a giant sea of people trying to come up with their best advice for your pain and your health, and just pay attention. Just just pay attention.
Dr. Eric Goodman:There's a lot of people doing it.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Awesome. Awesome stuff. You are as authentic as I, pictured, and I loved having all this time with you. I'm sure our listeners did too. Thank you
Dr. Eric Goodman:so much.
Dr. JJ Thomas:And, I'm looking forward to go ahead. I'm sorry. No.
Dr. Eric Goodman:I was just saying thank you. I appreciate the support. Thanks for inviting me on your podcast. And and, you know, not just paying attention to somebody with some new thing in your clinic, but being like, oh, that's that's actually really interesting what they're doing. I appreciate that.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Oh, listen. Oh, you don't know the story of Jess? I told her she could work here if she trained in Feet.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Oh.
Dr. JJ Thomas:I literally she came looking for a job, and I was like, I love your energy. Yeah. I was like, I wasn't really planning on hiring, but you've got got great energy. She was a brand new PT, which we know is, you know, a little bit I wasn't planning on definitely hiring a brand new PT. But she's passionate and she's energetic.
Dr. JJ Thomas:And and I was like, look. You're a find. And I really have been wanting to train in Feet and I just don't have the time right now. So if you train in Feet, I'll hire you. And then she got into it, and she was like, oh, this is amazing.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Thank you for introducing me to this. But
Dr. Eric Goodman:That's the coolest thing I've heard in a while. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna we're gonna clip that.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Give me that clip.
Dr. JJ Thomas:You got it. It's yours. That's that's my part of my thank you for, introducing us to this world and for coming on the podcast. And for listeners, FYI, we are gonna, doctor Goodman and his staff, at some point we're going to host, foundations training here at Primal. So keep your eyes peeled on both foundations trainings, Instagram, social media, everything that you can, and on our Instagram social media and, subscribe to our podcast because I'm sure we'll be announcing it there too.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Alright. Talk soon. Thank you so much.
Dr. Eric Goodman:Thank you.
Dr. JJ Thomas:Bye.