FOUNDATIONS OF FITNESS
In Foundations of Fitness Class you’ll learn how to...
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Elongate and stabilize your spine
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Strengthen your true core
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Centrate your shoulders for less pain and better efficiency
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Centrate your hips for better mobility and strength
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Get up from the floor in a fluid motion
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Obtain strong posture that feels effortless and sustainable
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Reconnect with your body, and gain confidence in movement
Foundations of Fitness comes from the Prague School of Rehabilitation and is a unique and fun way to reintroduce your body to movement. This fitness class starts from the beginning and takes your through the developmental patterns you were born with. This gym class is great for beginners, as well as seasoned athletes looking to strengthen their abilities.
“I like the fact that you target how people move. It's not about how many sit-ups or push-ups a person can do. It's about whether they can get up off the floor, keep their balance, and just move better overall”
Want more details? Then, please, read on…
With our Foundations of Fitness classes, we truly start at the beginning.
The first step is proper breathing. Although we generally breathe 22,000 times per day, most of us aren’t very good at it! We tend to breathe shallowly and into our upper chest (which isn’t particularly efficient) and which also overuses our neck and shoulder muscles (shoulder tension anyone?).
Even belly breathing isn’t quite what we are looking for. We want to learn to breathe down to our pelvic floor. Why? This gives us good IAP (Intra-Abdominal Pressure).
Why do we want good IAP? In a word, stability.
Your brain is interested in two things :
Safety and Stability.
If your body isn’t achieving efficient stability (with good IAP), then it is suffering with tight muscles and compressed joints. Ouch!
With this fitness class, you should expect to spend most of your first sessions working on breathing. After stabilizing your breathing, you will notice an immediate difference.
After we have stabilized your breathing, we will progress you through the developmental patterns that you were born with. This is known as "Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization" and draws from the work of Vaclav Vojta, Karel Lewit, Vladimir Janda, and the Prague School of Rehabilitation. While the name is clunky, the technique is quite elegant.
No matter where in the world you are born, you are born pre-programmed with these developmental patterns. Babies do not need to be taught how to roll, or to crawl, or to walk.
However, you do have to teach adults!
As we get older, our bodies suffer direct trauma great and small, including sitting at our desks and in cars, causing us to lose our agility and increase the need to relearn how to move.
Reconnecting with developing movement patterns can help return you to a smooth coordination of movement. Although these workouts may be a challenge at first, they are certainly fun and you'll be impressed by your strength progress.
You will want to do your homework. We promise.
Another important aspect of this technique is that we work within your comfort zone. All too often, when individuals start a fitness program, they are thrown into the deep end, they panic, and the nervous system goes into high alert. This is not a good environment for your brain to fine-tune movement patterns. With our fitness classes, our personal trainers will be working with you on the floor for the first few sessions (don’t worry, we keep our area spotless).
Groundwork is an excellent way for you to explore movements while feeling safe and stable. This is an efficient way to train, since your brain isn't distracted by staying upright and can focus on doing one or more things efficiently.
Despite the seeming simplicity of these progressions, they can be quite challenging! When you don't have the momentum to muscle through a movement, and can't rely on old compensation patterns to achieve the movement, your brain becomes very focused and muscles that haven't worked in a while, are forced to spring to life. It's an eye-opening experience!
Many people also notice how well the progressions work and they then include them in current activities to help with both posture and body awareness.
It may take 4-10 sessions to truly own each of these progressions. Some individuals can move from a 3-month-old to a 12-month-old in a few sessions. For others, it takes a bit longer. You work at YOUR own pace, this hour journey!
Once you have worked your way through the progressions, what is next?
From there, we will start adding weight to your movement, including body weight, traditional weights, bands, or kettlebells. This is where our Smart Strength fitness class comes in. You can read more about that right here.
Where many traditional gyms go wrong is by adding weight to poor movement patterns. This is a recipe for injury.
Our personal trainers first teach you how to move - then add in the challenge.
There are infinite options for challenges, so you never get bored!
