Our Founders

I knew I could not keep flying to California every time an old injury caused me chronic pain.
Butch


After 20 years in the Marine Corps, Butch had spent the last three years of his career with chronic knee pain. He had gone through three physical therapists, two ortho surgeons and a chiropractor. The issue turned out to be easily corrected with movement. But since no one local was practicing this neurology-based approach to fitness he was inspired to create Taiso.

I don’t want my health and fitness to limit how I live. I want to be able to bike, hike, and explore without being restricted by the difficulty of the route.
Jennifer


Jennifer’s pathway to the fitness industry was through martial arts. Martial arts is an expression of movement and having a system of training that is based on neurology means we can help anyone get better at anything. Its not just about getting out of chronic pain, it is also about elite performance. This was her inspiration to create Taiso.

The Journey

To describe what Taiso is we really have to talk about us and how we got to where we are today.  Butch has practiced Japanese martial arts most of his life and always had a wish to someday open a school.  After Butch moved here from San Diego, he and Jennifer met at a Seibukan Jujutsu school here in Washington.

Our initial vision for Taiso was to create a fitness community so people would have way to connect and support each others healthy lifestyles.  And our initial training was through the National Academy of Sports Medicine. This education was foundational in that it focused a lot on anatomy and individual program design. But it was not exactly what we had in mind. We wanted people off of machines and treadmills. We wanted them to be able to perform in the real world without a giant metal exoskeleton helping them do the work.

So, the next step on our journey was the Certified Natural Trainer program from Jon Hinds of Monkeybar Gym. This was a HUGE step in the right direction. This is one of most comprehensive training programs in the industry. To graduate you have to be able to take any movement and coach it from it base yoga posture, and progress it though body weight and gymnastic exercise, suspension trainers like the TRX, and external loads like kettlebells bands and free weights.

At this point, we had the foundation of what was to become the Taiso program. Jennifer was working at LA Fitness and started tested the program with her personal training clients.

The next big component was our introduction to Z Health Performance Solutions. This incredible system is based on testing and understanding biofeedback. Limitations to movement may be influenced or caused by seemingly unrelated functions elsewhere in the body – such as vision. And unless all the causal factors are addressed a person may never get better. We see this a lot with knee and back pain.

Since then we continually update our skills through Z Health, others systems, and our independent research and experimentation. We are very much movement scientists and the Taiso program and our coaching styles continue to evolve over time.

So, have fun, move better, and stop by to discuss your goals.