The PRI Fitness and Movement Course continues to make progressive leaps and bounds in its development. This course is dedicated to the potential to advance PRI application in various settings related to fitness and movement, as well as help the discussions progress beyond just using PRI as correctives, warm ups, or cool downs.

I believe the strategic partnerships and interdisciplinary teams will most effectively meet today’s fitness, performance and healthcare challenges. Advanced PRI application is a key ingredient needed to conquer these challenges and its groups like we had this past weekend that will continue to progress the discussions involving PRI and keep us all moving forward. PRI really is not just another “tool” in a clinician, coach, or trainer’s toolbox. Its only a tool when you use or know parts and limited pieces of the system. When you understand all the pieces and parts, the PRI science provides us all a framework for which we can optimize various anatomical relationships to enhance human performance.

We devote a lot of time in this course to understanding the thorax and components of pillar core strength. Fitness and movement application has a lot of limitations in core strengthening if respiratory and neurological factors are not respected. We highlight those factors and teach people how to respect them in ways which are functional and easy to implement. For many high level performance athletes as well as any of your fitness clients with chronic pain, its not in strengthening and stretching that they will feel significant improvements in their stability; instead through strategic breath work and inhibiting hyperactive chains of muscles they will be able to synchronize the thoracic-acetabular abduction which is crucial for core stability and it’s that synchronized stability which must proceed the mobility that so many people crave. Let’s rethink mobilizing --- and start synchronizing.

Thanks to all that came out to Performance Gains in Palo Alto! PG Thank you for hosting and it was awesome to see the new beautiful facility! Caleb thank you for lab assisting and helping us out throughout the weekend!

James and I recently got back from traveling across the Atlantic! The PRI Integration for Fitness and Movement Course had its debut in the UK to a stunning group in London. It was a great mix of Personal Trainers, Yoga and Pilates’ Instructors, Strength Coaches, Physiotherapists, Osteopaths, and even an emergency room Medical Doctor! Besides the UK, other countries were represented including Ireland, Switzerland, Spain, Poland, and Australia. It was a privilege and honor to spend the weekend with this awesome group and I’m looking forward to hearing success stories spread across Europe and learn how they integrate it all with their clients.

A very large percent of our attendees had never been to a PRI course before. We introduced the respiratory and neurological principles taught in the PRI science, as well as focused on rib mobility, thoracic posture, and concepts around managing gravity. There were a lot of stiff ribcages in this course--- which we made sure we got moving! I made it my personal mission to make sure unexhaled air was mobilized and misuse of the abdominals patterns were identified. Ab bracing a ribcage that is hyperinflated, stiff, and rigid contributes to hyperactivity of rib elevators, back extensors, over firing of a rectus abdominis, compensatory movement strategies and poor neuromuscular balance between the two halves of the body.

Parachutes and pancakes were hot topics this weekend. We learned with every breath you take and every move you make…the diaphragm will orient you Thanks to Monica, James really did make it to the Sting concert. Thanks to Luke Worthington and Third Space for graciously hosting the course. Luke we appreciate all the pre-arrangements you did prepping for the large group and printing the manuals. The Third Space staff were all awesome and so friendly. We could have not asked for a better host site!

 Thank you Danielle Berger from Zurick Switzerland for the comments on her course eval. She says “Course manual: excellent, you've really helped fast forward our learning with this manual. Thank you so much. Loved the reinforcement on breathing, loved the breakdown on three planes of motion, loved the application to the fitness industry. Thank you James and Julie, you are both an inspiration. Thank you for your authenticity and integrity”.  

Thanks to Moiz for sharing his craftsmanship and presenting us with a handmade BC+AIC key chain, so thoughtful and creative! We loved it!

This was my first trip over to Europe, and I hope the first of many more abroad. Sharing this information is dear to my heart and I love helping people understand the simplicity and practicality that can be found in one of the most complex and effective sciences we have to learn. PRI helps us all understand patterns of human movement and how various body segments are linked. Next course is in Palo Alto, CA in June! Check out the affiliate course link to learn more!

Video Highlight

So grateful for the wonderful weekend in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona at the Diamondback’s facility. The course was jammed packed with 55 Fitness and Movement Professionals. Ken and Ryan have an amazing staff and I would like to thank them and all their guys for their hospitality and participation. We had some great side dialogue promoting key discussion points and ideas to benefit and better further develop the course which was greatly appreciated. The affiliate course material was well received as it focuses on components of gait, biological foundations of posture and movement, and reminds us how to respect our asymmetrical axial design when upright working against gravity and external loads. One thing I continue to love about this course, is how we break down the basics of thoraco-abdominal mechanics and emphasis the value in integrating both ab walls and the frontal plane in fitness based movement patterns. Lets face it, if you can’t achieve some functional symmetry in your frontal plane when upright and integrate your thorax with your hips rotationally, your biological system will suffer. Our fitness training and conditioning programs only become as strong as our weakest link! I look forward to changing things up in the PRI Fitness course for 2017. We will be adding new activities, more videos, and strategically adding in more lab break-out sessions. It's going to be great! --- so don’t wait too long to sign up! Every course was sold out this past year and with the improvements we make I’m super excited for teaching in 2017 :) Happy Holidays to all!!

This weekend, James and I traveled outside of Dallas to teach the PRI Fitness and Movement course for the 5th time. Thank you to Trey, Charles, and Jonathon for their gracious hospitality and welcoming us into the awesome EXOS facility in Frisco, Texas. It is exciting to be apart of the evolution of the PRI Fitness & Movement course. It continues to come together and surpass people’s expectations. I am so grateful for those that shared their appreciation and thoughts with me after course. We are receiving very positive feedback from both PRCs, experienced PRI practitioners, as well as from the attendees who are new to the PRI science. The course does deliver a lot of content, so much so, we’ve had two attendees repeating the course for the second time already this year! Another 2 this weekend told me that the material blew their mind, and they can’t wait to take it again next year! I think this is great. Each time we take a PRI course we learn more application of PRI and fine tune our understanding of a complex and integrated science. This course brings us back to the basics and reminds us how powerful getting really good with the basics can be! I do believe this is one of those courses you can and should repeat to enhance your understanding, as well as find inspiration and new stuff to integrate!

 For this review I thought readers may be more interested in hearing from actual participants:

Josh Ogden, Collegiate Athletic Training: “First of all, I want to thank you for putting together a great course and an excellent presentation this past weekend. In athletic training, at least in my setting, we don’t usually deal in either pure rehabilitation cases or pure performance settings, but in bridging the gap between those two domains.  Your course this past weekend was excellent for me because it really helped me see how to integrate all of the information and techniques I’ve learned in all of my previous PRI courses and immediately apply it in the athletic training room to transition my rehab cases into more functional, sport performance work.  Prior to this, the patterns, repositioning techniques, etc. all made perfect sense to me, but I had no clue how to get my patients up off of the table and into more performance based rehabilitation; by Sunday afternoon, I was already redesigning programs based on what I learned this weekend and was able to immediately apply the course on Monday morning.  This course makes the others all make sense and is seamlessly integrable with all of the techniques I was already doing. After one day with the changes I implemented this past Monday after the course, the only patient I’ve got in town right now sent me a text as soon as he woke up today asking for an off or light day because he was so sore in the muscle groups we’d targeted.”

John Glenn, Personal Training Fitness: “What a great course!!!! You have done a great job putting this together. I really appreciate how open and honest you were telling about your past experiences, success and "failures". I am going to pursue the study of PRI, this was my first course.”

Navin Hettiarachchi, Professional Athletics: “Thank you very much for a great seminar! First seminar was good, but this one was Great!! This time around the content and the presentation was taken to another level. I loved it!!“

James Anderson – Professional PRI extraordinaire: “I have really enjoyed the evolution of the PRI Integration for Fitness and Movement course, with Julie getting better each time she has the opportunity to present. Her confidence levels are high, and I consistently hear people experienced and even certified in PRI say that her presentation expanded their overall view of thoracic movement dynamics, tri-planer ground-based performance, and integrated movement sequence. They say this material has really helped to bridge the gap between PRI sidelying rehab programs that they would like to get up into standing and having success with dynamic standing training techniques. Well done Julie!”

Thanks Guys! I am definitely looking forward to teaching our remaining courses for 2016 – Boston next month (which is already sold out) and Phoenix in November. If you have any interest in going, don't hesitate to sign up! You won't be disappointed! Hope to see you there!