Allen and I enjoyed our weekend in Philadelphia at the Maplezone Sports Institute with the staff from the Training Room PT, who hosted PRI Integration for Baseball. Thank you to Rob Rabena and Jon Herting for sharing such a great facility with us and for being such great hosts. It was great to get to spend some time with an old friend Navin Hettiarachchi, and to enjoy the evening with him and Allen after the first day of the course. We took a tour of the new Philadelphia Mormon Temple and we all agreed it was a very beautiful building. Near the end of our tour we got to take our picture next to Thorvaldsen's "Christus" statue. The original stands in Copenhagen Denmark, but the statue we saw was an impressive replica and made for a great picture. Allen and Navin could not get over the fact that Jesus was standing in left AFIR with a lot of right chest wall expansion. We laughed because the most memorable part of our tour was getting our picture taken with "Left AFIR Jesus". Notre Dame and the Catholics have Touchdown Jesus and BYU and the Mormons have Left AFIR Jesus. Too funny. The second day of the baseball course was focused mostly on testing and treatment. The biggest ah-ha's seemed to come during the Quadriped TS-ST Stability Test lab. The combination of assessing lateralization, pelvic elevation and proper weight shift across the pelvis while in AFIR with contralateral trunk rotation helped attendees recognize tri planar performance deficits across the lumbo-pelvic and thoraco-abdominal core on one side of the body compared to the other. All in all, it was a great weekend of PRI principles, baseball throwing mechanics, tri-planer movement assessments and both treatment and training techniques for the baseball athlete. Thank you Philadelphia for all the fun memories.

Kristen Neisler, PT, ATC and the staff at Novacare were great hosts for a great weekend in Chicago. Sue Walsh, DN, Med, ATC, EMT, PRT from DePaul University joined me in presenting PRI’s flagship course, the one and only Postural Respiration. Sue’s experience incorporating PRI into athletic performance and sports medicine made her a valuable resource to the course attendees working in similar environments.
As a group, we worked to keep our focus on two or three key themes throughout the weekend. First, it was made clear that balanced rib movement in all three planes is the key to unlocking the power of the respiration system. Second, we discussed the role the respiratory system played in unlocking the obviously powerful and always relevant nervous system. And then we discussed the relationship between diaphragm posture and core lumbar spine alignment and the value of keeping the diaphragm properly positioned as the rib cage above the diaphragm counter-rotated in the other direction for rotational performance.
Thank you Josh Hostetler, HKC, BS for coming all the way from Cincinnati to help “keep it real”. Your description of left Zone of Apposition and left posterior mediastinal expansion while attempting right trunk rotation was about as straight forward and good as it gets. “Just dive down and in on the left below the diaphragm (with good breathing) as you bring the cage around to the right above the diaphragm”. Love the simplicity. And thank you Avis Leung, PT for helping us all see human scoliosis when we looked closely at the Left AIC/Right BC pattern. You were a great addition to a very interesting and fun group of professionals. It has been fun to watch the growing enthusiasm for PRI in and around Chicago over the last 3-5 years. 

What a great weekend in one of my favorite states, North Carolina teaching the PRI Integration for the Home course! I can't decide if it was the beautiful fall weather or just the beautiful people and that Carolina hospitality that make coming to this area so special. Thank you Craig Kerbo for all your tireless efforts making this course happen and for being such a gracious host. And thank you to my good friend and PRI faculty member, Jen Poulin, PT, PRC for joining me as the lab assistant. We were blessed with a great mix of brand new clinicians and also PRI experienced therapists, including 4 PRC's! The focus was on breathing and alternating reciprocal gait, with special attention given to inhibiting the Left AIC to maximize left stance time and to improve balance to decrease risk of falling. Saturday evening several of us enjoyed a nice evening in downtown Greensboro and were happy to find the statue of General Nathan Greene, because he is likewise focused on maintaining Left AIC inhibition longer in late left stance to optimize his gait.