Foundation Training w/ Shain Dyckman

On Tuesdays (8PM – 8:45 PM), I’ll begin teaching another Foundation class at Thrive. I hope that some of you will join me.

I lead two very different work lives. During the week I work in IT management, I spend most of my hours sitting in front of the computer, in meetings, and on conference calls. On the weekends, I teach high flying trapeze at Leap Trapeze in Athens GA of which I am a co-owner. Working at Leap is very physical; I pull safety lines to control the flyers descent to the net and I also swing upside down and catch people mid-air as they throw tricks to me. I don’t have much time to train for what I do on the weekends during the week, so I’m always searching for efficient and effective methods of training.

In November of 2013, I came across Foundation Training on the Internet. I was immediately drawn to it by the comments of some of the people who had been practicing it: many of them professional athletes, including professional surfer Kelly Slater. Despite being elite athletes and performing at the highest levels, they suffered from chronic back and neck pain. Foundation Training pulled them out of this pain and has continued to keep it at bay.

For as long as I have been an athlete, like the pros mentioned above, I’ve struggled with chronic tension in my neck and shoulders. Intrigued by what I was reading, my Foundation search took me to YouTube where I found a 12 min instructional video posted by Dr. Eric Goodman, the method’s founder. After doing the video, I felt an immediate improvement in my posture and that stayed with me for hours afterward. I think I ended up doing that video daily for three weeks. I found myself waking up in the morning feeling better, with better posture, and no tension in my neck and shoulders. I purchased additional video workouts from Foundation, and have continued a regular practice since. In 20+ years of trying just about everything from Feldenkrais to heavy partial weightlifting, Foundation has had the most significant and long lasting effect on my health and athletic performance. I believe it can help others the way it has helped me.

Earlier this summer, Foundation held an instructor certification in Atlanta. It was an opportunity for me to gain the knowledge required to share this work with others. The certification was amazing; I was surprised at how much more there was to learn beyond what I had gathered through practicing using only the videos. The moves themselves are simple to learn, but they all have layers that can be built upon.

Each day during the certification, they would take 15 min – 20 min for the participants to share their stories of what brought them to the certification. Many stories were much more compelling than mine: one participants back pain was so severe (he suffers from Ankylosing Spondylitis) that he had not had a single 8 hour stretch of sleep in 10 years. After just a few weeks of practicing Foundation, he got his first full night of sleep. Others in the program were former collegiate athletes working in the personal training industry today. Foundation has helped them and their clients overcome pain, improve performance, and move more muscularly.

 If you have any questions please email me at shain.dyckman@gmail.com. This is a donation based offering. All levels of fitness are welcome to attend. Thank you!

More information about Foundation can be found here: http://www.foundationtraining.com/about/