This past weekend, the Affiliate program got presented in the southern hemisphere as the PRI  integration for Fitness and Movement was hosted in Sydney, Australia!!  I traveled over 10,220 miles (or over 16,447 km) and the very long plane ride across the south pacific was well worth it! Sydney was such a fun city, and it was a pleasure to spend some time with the PRI Australia group.

 I am beyond grateful to have had the opportunity to share the PRI science with this area of the world.  It is exciting for me to watch attendees connect to a deeper dimension of PRI because I believe it’s in those deeper dimensions of PRI that the magic happens and gaps are bridged.  Attendees from Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Georgia and various parts of Australia were all represented. Chiropractors, Osteopaths, Physiotherapists, Pilates, Yoga, and Exercise Specialists were all in attendance, with the class being about half and half. Half being exposed to PRI before and the other half were brand new to the science. Needless to say it was a diverse group --- yet all united to learn more about the diaphragm and its influence on posture.

Regardless of credentials and training, this course is enlightening to help us all remember how to program Respiration and Alternating Reciprocal Activity to enhance Tri-Planar performance patterns (i.e “Functional Fitness”)

 We hit the ZOA hard and discussed it’s role in managing hyperactivity and unnecessary muscle tension. The exercises I introduced focused on shaping the ZOA three dimensionally with respiratory abdominals, along with promoting  expansion, movement and flexibility of the ribcage.  I then emphasized the 5 steps of programming for shaping adaptation and better integration for symmetrical compound lifts.

  The 5 steps in this course are presented to help create a framework for programming and organizing how exercises are presented to clients and patients. The 5 steps also help in organizing core stability and symmetry from the diaphragm level outward.

I loved seeing the passion and ah-ha moments as attendees connected with the material and got new resources and insights to help progress their clients and patients. I think we will see PRI quickly continuing to grow in this area of the world. Thank you to Mark Obrien and Jason Thomson for hosting. Special thanks to Mark for the hospitality and opening up his brand new facility for us to use. Fit Plus Well is such great hidden gem just south of Sydney. And Jason, thank you for sharing your passion, your insights (nuts, I will always remember your nuts cue) and helping with much of the logistics of the weekend! 

My visit to Australia was fun and I hope to get to come back one day! I could definitely live in Sydney - beaches, city and mountains were all right there. Beautiful coastline. Thank you to all who helped organize the event! Cheers!!

We got to kick off the first course for PRI in 2019 at the University of Arizona in Tucson! Special thanks to Ben Crawford and the Sports Medicine Team for hosting! Amazing facilities and amenities and this was a perfect site to kick of the year. I have confidence the PRI minds are going to be growing after this course as we had a very engaged group. I’m excited to hear how they will be growing and using the material over the next year!

 The PRI Fitness and Movement Course is an advanced 2 day course geared to address the integration of dynamic thoracic posture and axial frame asymmetry. It’s a principles based course to empower fitness and performance patterns through respiration and alternating reciprocal activity. Our manual is full of exercises to get clients moving and optimizing dynamic postural relationships, so that their workouts can help them better adapt in a stressed, technology driven, and progressively changing world.

There is so much intangible value of understanding the empowering benefits of how to coach and train a diaphragm and pelvic/hip complex to work together. This knowledge is foundational for all fitness and movement professionals, including Personal Trainers, Strength and Conditioning Coaches, Athletic Trainers, and Physical Therapists. I’m excited to be entering into our 3rd year of teaching this course. This year we have some new focuses on screening and programming. Some of the “exercises” taught in this course can be used as screening techniques and/or as training techniques. A true test to an athletic body in balance is when clients can move in and out of a good diaphragmatic position and “feel” the correct family of muscles working… automatically… without excessive effort. Can the right things work together? Can relationships stay intact?

Lastly, it wouldn’t be a complete trip to Tucson, without a stop at one of James Anderson’s favorite restaurants Café Poca Cosa. Classy, delightful experience and such a yummy surprise plate of food. I have no clue what I ate, but it was good and I hope to return one day!

 Want to progress your PRI understanding or get introduced to the science of Postural Restoration? Then this is a great course for you! Hope to see you at one of our courses this year! Next month, we will be teaching at a private host site, then off to Brunswick, Maine - Syndey Australia - Boston, Massachusetts - Dublin, Ohio - and then Fort Collins, Colorado. Visit the PRI Affiliate Course section for more details.

Thanks to hurricane Florence, I got to fly into Chicago early and explore downtown. What a great city! So much to do I wish I could have stayed another 3 days! This was the second time we taught in the Chicago area, as this was one of the very first host sites to the PRI Integration for Fitness and Movement course back in 2016. It’s fun to reflect back on how far we have come and how much the course has evolved to help the PRI science progress. We were lucky to have some attendees return for a second time and their post course reviews reported great improvements and positive comments on how the labs were more integrated, practical, and helpful. Some quotes from the course evaluations were:

“This manual is a treasure. Instructors artfully simplified all 3 primary PRI courses into a clear and continuous narrative. This course helped integrate and synthesize the more abstract concepts of other PRI courses. This was an amazing course and I am so grateful!”

A Pilates Instructor says: “The instructors kept my attention the entire time! Amazing! I never found myself daydreaming. This course will help me better screen clients and create more individual focused programs for each client.”

Another Strength Coach says “Super valuable course. Powerful material to help guide fitness professionals from driving dysfunction and pathology. The details and variations of exercises will help me better work with clients with dysfunction and pain patterns”.

I am very grateful to the fabulous hosts: Mark Cibrario, Wynne Conklin, and Kyle Cibrario at The Trainers Club. Thank you for being so welcoming and gracious and we were lucky they hosted this course because the space was perfect and their passion for fitness and movement was spot on!

We had a great mix of PRI trained attendees along with first timers and it made for a fun group. PRI experienced people appreciated how we simplified complex principles, avoided rabbit holes, and taught practical application, and new attendees got exposed to the big picture and application to start using key principles and to help facilitate better retention in subsequent courses. I’ve gotten to a point in teaching where the diverse audience we tend to attract is something that excites me and I love the challenge of uniting minds and professionals and helping all attendees look at axial movements and hyperactivity patterns for trunk stability through a different lens. Every course I learn something as we can all learn from one another!

The brain reflexively searches and identifies patterns for motor learning, just as we learn components of larger movement patterns, its mastering some of these basic micromovement patterns that creates the stability and motor control many of our clients are searching for to move painfree. Motor control and instability issues are not always a problem of weakness or lack of strength. People waste time and energy trying to strengthen muscles that don’t need to be strengthened and then create misuse patterns further complicating the movement sequencing. This course is one of the only courses that breaks down three planes of movement of the axial frame into the micromovements that clients need to maximize output in larger movement patterns. This is a lab heavy course, as we break down components of foreign movements and get people practicing feeling them and coaching them right away. Organizing components of axial movement in the sagittal and frontal plane for proper loading and lateralization is so crucial for todays perception of postural health. On day 2 we discuss key neurorespiratory principles as related to larger movement patterns like the squat and deadlift, as well as single legged movements like the RDL, Bulgarian split squats and steps ups.

 If you have any interest in attending, don’t hesitate and sign up today for the Philadelphia course October 6-7. It will be our last course of this year and you don’t want to miss the distribution of this year’s course manual!! Its not too late to sign up! Sign up today to attend PRI Fitness and Movement at The Training Room Physical Therapy at Maplezone Sports Institute in Philadelphia, PA. See you there!!

James and I were outside of Charlotte, NC this past weekend teaching PRI Integration for Fitness and Movement. We started the weekend highlighting rib mobility and breathing mechanics to empower abdominals and core organization. Then we broke down key components of the frontal plane to empower mechanical position around the pelvic-hip complex and integrate upper abs with lower abs. We planned out several different labs which isolated the various components in a systematic way so that attendees could feel relationships build off one another. PRI is such a gift to us all. By understanding the patterns at which position is lost, we can train muscles and optimize functional movement in a systematic way for motor learning. This approach truly is “functional fitness” as it preserves key mechanical relationships needed for biological well-being and performance. By learning how to train each side of the body independently and optimize frontal and sagittal relationships, we can improve how the brain regulates stability and mobility. This is so important for today’s culture of fitness! Our programming recommendations incorporate building and developing movement variability, with the initial stages establishing the fundamental breathing awareness, and then subsequent stages incorporating foundational principles to improve three dimensional core control, proximal stability, and independently limb function.

I absolutely love how this course brings together great minds and diverse backgrounds. We had yoga instructors, strength coaches, personal trainers and rehab specialists all learning and working with one another. We were fortunate to have two very seasoned and experienced PRC’s attend and provide great insight to encourage others:

From Jean Masse PT, DPT, OCS, ATC, PRC: "The PRI Fitness course is a great medium for shifting into highly useful and practical applications of what we often over complicate and get bogged down by. I really like the “dosing” idea and keeping programs moving even if they’re not perfect. I noticed almost every participant in the room was far different in their bodies and changes in how they looked at fitness. Over only two days that’s huge. Imagine over a month or year and also the effects on others they are interacting with. Tremendous good done here.”

From Kyndall Boyle, PT, PhD, OCS, PRC: "The PRI Fitness course definitely exceeded my expectations! I enjoyed witnessing the ongoing evolution of PR science in both the manual documents and in James and Julie’s teaching. I love the organization of preserving the sagittal then frontal and lastly transverse planes! Fine tuning my verbal cues with patients the next day after the course made an immediate and noticeable difference to them! Thanks for a great course and all the hard work and time that went in to preparing it!"

Thank you ladies for sharing your feedback!

Also special thanks to the Precision Fitness team and Pierre Ortiz for hosting and bringing this course to Cornelius, NC. Great facility and staff there doing great things for their community!

If you haven’t attended the PRI Integration for Fitness and Movement course yet this year, sign up today! You won’t regret it! We have three PRI Fitness courses left for 2018! We will be outside of the LA area in Redondo Beach next month, followed by outside of Chicago in Northbrook in September, and finally we end the season in Philadelphia in October.

Lastly, if you know of a good facility to host this course in 2019 please email the institute directly as we are currently working to finalize the course schedule for next year!