The Art of Manliness - #213： Undoing the Damage of Chronic Sitting

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so if you're like

00:00:18.420 most men who work a nine-to-five job at an office you're probably spending a lot of that time sitting

00:00:22.220 down at a desk and then when you get home you might be a little active but then you're probably

00:00:26.000 sitting down at your desk at your home office to surf the web or you're sitting on the couch

00:00:30.180 watching tv well all that sitting is not good for your body and some doctors actually say that

00:00:35.480 it's doing just as much damage to your body as smoking does uh well my guest today has put out

00:00:40.980 a book that highlights all this research about the the dangers of sitting too much and what you

00:00:45.960 can do to counteract that his name is kelly starrett he is the founder of mobilitywatt.com he's the kind

00:00:51.880 of the been the big guy behind the whole mobility movement in the fitness world anyways his new book

00:00:57.200 is called desk bound standing up to a sitting world and today on the show kelly and i discuss the dangers

00:01:02.240 of sitting and what you can do to undo the damage of constant chronic sitting a lot of great actionable

00:01:08.940 steps you can use right away when you're done listening to show make sure to check out the show

00:01:12.720 notes at aom.is slash stand up and stand up is all one word kelly starrett welcome to the show

00:01:21.800 oh thanks so much man i am i'm stoked to be here i mean i i can't wait to tell you about my knife

00:01:28.340 fetish i mean the whole thing well i'm stoked to have you because i'm a big fan of your work

00:01:32.680 uh supple leopard it's helped me out a lot uh but before we get to your you got a new book out

00:01:37.440 desk bound standing up to a sitting world which i love because we've written a lot about the perils

00:01:42.560 of sitting and what it can do to your body and how to undo the damage of sitting um but before we get

00:01:48.180 to the book let's talk about your career for those who aren't familiar with you uh how did you become

00:01:53.100 this mobile you know this mobility guru that people athletes go to we're talking nfl you know

00:02:00.000 major league baseball players how did this happen uh you know i i am very uncomfortable with the word

00:02:05.560 guru i know but yeah and it's the word but i will say level 10 dance master level 10 dance master

00:02:11.680 all right um well you know i had a serious career as um in you know uh synchronized swimming people

00:02:18.000 don't really know uh i was an athlete i was a broken athlete i discovered you know i've always been

00:02:25.060 obsessed with pattern recognition and um i think that if you know if you had just if i was an x-man

00:02:30.660 pattern recognition would be my skill like i can you know see large data sets or see patterns and just

00:02:36.380 pick them up right i get the big gestalt piece fast and that really worked for me when i was you

00:02:42.180 know became a was an athlete it worked for me when i was a you know young physio and when i was first

00:02:47.540 semester of physio school i discovered crossfit which was really uh a profound experience in terms

00:02:53.460 of a crash course i mean i was on the national team i was a national champion uh you know i had

00:02:57.040 paddling world championships and literally i couldn't do a handstand well you know i i you know my front

00:03:04.360 squatting was dubious at best and um what crossfit really did was forced me to confront the fact that

00:03:10.680 i wasn't as physically literate as i thought i was you know and i'm not just talking about metabolically

00:03:16.000 literate like you know can i out suffer everyone because the world has changed in the last 10 years

00:03:20.960 people are much are working harder than we did 10 years ago unequivocally but i just wasn't as

00:03:27.680 fluent in things that look like gymnastics or olympic lifting and and intrinsically i knew some

00:03:33.700 some i knew that i needed to seek these things out i mean i remember having a serious like a

00:03:38.420 serious conversation with my mom where i was like mom she was a single parent i'm a single child and

00:03:42.900 i was like mom how come i wasn't in ballet like did you not love me and she was like i tried but

00:03:46.880 we were so poor and i couldn't get you in ballet where we were and i remember being like she was kind

00:03:51.420 of like i was i was trying to be a good mom and i was like mom i'm just kind of kidding kind of but

00:03:54.860 you really like you you screwed me i wasn't in ballet gymnastics like i was supposed to pick

00:03:58.980 this stuff up you know automatically and and sort of that's that's how we got here because

00:04:05.480 if you were lucky enough to be in a movement tradition martial arts gymnastics um you know

00:04:11.540 dance maybe you had some formalized training on what your spine is supposed to do and how you

00:04:16.000 how you maintain your spinal position and jump and land and i didn't get any of that and what we

00:04:20.220 have been saying to kids and adults and humans is that as long as the your life is sufficiently

00:04:27.140 diversified you'll be able to cultivate these skills right that's what we tell kids like and

00:04:33.260 parents have your kids play lots of sports and we're like we're not sure why that works but just

00:04:37.480 lots of sports is better and and if you're lucky enough to have some serious movement training in

00:04:43.720 one of those sports maybe it helps but most of us just played sports and worked harder and then all

00:04:47.580 of a sudden something goes wrong with us or we realize that we're not as fit as we were or we do the

00:04:52.780 spartan race fall on our faces or you know we can't deadlift or hip hinge or you know we tear

00:04:57.880 an achilles playing basketball and it's because our movement practice the things that we were doing

00:05:03.140 to get ready for playing sports wasn't sufficient what we did was we were substituting playing sports

00:05:08.960 for a movement practice and and if you were lucky enough to like stumbled into yoga or pilates man

00:05:15.040 you were nailing it early but i didn't i was like yoga and pilates who's got time for yoga

00:05:19.360 pilates i'm gonna go ride my bike and go crush this river and maybe lift some weights you know

00:05:23.660 on the cybex machine you know and you know so we got here we opened a gym you know 13 years ago you

00:05:30.700 know was when we started our gym and and pretty soon we start to see the same patterns over and over

00:05:35.620 again like why is that foot turning out when you're squatting you know why can't you get into a pistol

00:05:39.580 position hey i noticed that you're slouching all day at work probably because you're at work and now you

00:05:45.880 can't put your arms over your head effectively and and that we were able to sort of derive cause

00:05:51.340 and effect and then go from effect back to cause because we could see it in people's movement

00:05:56.580 practices and and because the the model that we were using crossfit was really predicated on

00:06:03.300 making sure that people could do a handstand and push up and pull up they had the fundamentals of

00:06:09.440 these human positions these archetypal shapes that we that i talk about and it was became very clear

00:06:15.360 that we you know our movement practices weren't getting us there unless you were you know again

00:06:20.740 when some kind of formal movement training you know if you're if you grew up in china part of the

00:06:25.000 national china development program for olympic lifting you move pretty well the rest of us sort of

00:06:29.820 cobble it together and what ends up happening then is that it puts us into a really interesting

00:06:35.100 dynamic later on because when we're young we can buffer a lot of mechanical silliness and but then

00:06:43.080 all of a sudden you know things start to break down or we start to become impinged or we have these

00:06:47.820 these flare-ups that really pull us out of our roles as physical beings and we're left sort of

00:06:53.100 wandering and then you go into the sports medicine hole and it's a sports medicine rabbit hole this

00:06:56.680 for-profit sports medicine thing is it basically is predicated on the idea and look there are really

00:07:01.820 talented physicians out there and physios and chiros but the whole thing is predicated on the idea that

00:07:06.320 everyone is going to break let's just wait around till they break and that's nonsense and you know

00:07:11.640 because some people don't break and some people you know you know what we saw was that the same language

00:07:17.500 we were using to improve the performance of our elite athletes and moms and dads and we get to go

00:07:23.440 behind the scenes of every professional sport every military unit we see everyone's dirty laundry

00:07:28.540 those techniques to improve performance were the same techniques we're using to ameliorate mechanical

00:07:34.080 dysfunction and pain and that's where we're able to really drive some consilience some you know to to

00:07:40.860 really understand some of the processes and positions underneath this so you know if your knee hurts after

00:07:46.120 a run you know that's not you're not injured that's called an incident and you should have a plan to be

00:07:51.460 able to deal with that and part of I think what the revolution of where we are right now as humans

00:07:55.880 is that we are handing more responsibility back to the person back to the athlete and and this is

00:08:02.320 completely in line with the art of manliness let's be totally honest because what we're saying is you

00:08:08.140 know that that quote by Robert Heinlein you know a man should be able to like change a diaper

00:08:12.940 plan an aria you know set a bone you know right you know and like that's what we need we need to become

00:08:19.180 generalists again and we have become hyper specialists what do I do I work on the social interface

00:08:24.980 analog for this internet startup I mean you are an expert in your job but it turns out like you

00:08:30.200 don't know how to cook a steak or deal with your knee pain and that's what we're trying to do is

00:08:34.440 let's just let's just take all this low-hanging fruit off the table right so you guys are basically

00:08:38.180 helping people reconnect themselves with their body or even like just making the introduction in the

00:08:42.860 first place I don't think I've noticed when I started working on mobility and movement really

00:08:47.640 focusing like how disconnected my brain is from my body when you have to go through these sequences of

00:08:53.060 like okay activate your glutes or like rotate your knees or like put your shoulders and like

00:08:58.180 like my brain is like I don't know how to do that like it has like this brain fart because I don't

00:09:03.220 yeah like I didn't I never practiced that so I had to like really work hard to develop that skill

00:09:07.720 well and what it's okay to make this about skill and that's that's the thing that I think there's two

00:09:14.780 things in there that really make people uncomfortable it makes the the medical professionals the

00:09:18.840 for-profit you know rehab sports medicine specialists uncomfortable because I'm saying hey look none of

00:09:23.180 this is skilled let's let's get it out of behind this paywall and put it into the hands of people

00:09:28.680 you know why because they're sophisticated enough to figure out what's going to work not going to work

00:09:32.660 and and and the the injury risk is very very low and the injury risk is higher if they just go out

00:09:39.700 and run like jerks you know with missing hip extension and no ankle range and their calves are stiff

00:09:43.800 right I mean like come on right but you know the idea here is that we have decoupled skill from

00:09:50.080 training skill from exercise you know and the the highest expression of that is like go to um you

00:09:56.380 know a soul cycle class and you are going to die you're going to suffer through the eyes I mean you're

00:10:00.940 going to melt you know go go jump into some boot camp where you just do a million burpees and um you

00:10:05.780 know you can work really hard and not be skilled not jump and land in a good position you know

00:10:10.800 collapse your ankle overextend your back every single time

00:10:13.800 and the problem is we you know there's not this immediate immediate kickback that you're in a bad

00:10:20.700 position it doesn't express itself for like months or maybe years you know or until you're under stress

00:10:25.220 you know until you're under threat and you'll default to your just your your lowest base most practiced

00:10:30.240 pattern and that's that's what's really interesting here is that you know practice doesn't make perfect

00:10:36.140 practice makes permanent and we have somehow you know taken all of the practice out of the

00:10:42.160 physicality of being human you know and if you work with uh you know japanese swordman or you know

00:10:48.000 a russian tennis instructor man you're going to do these same drills over and over and over until you

00:10:53.180 just get it down right we say practice is uh you know it's the currency of like you know of of like

00:10:59.240 adult education like repetition is the mother of learning and and we can expand those definitions and

00:11:05.540 say hey look why don't you be skilled you know and and clearly there's a degree you don't have to pick

00:11:11.420 up your child the same way you're dead lifting 500 pounds but the principles are the same and the

00:11:18.220 failure to see the unification in those movements and to apply the same sets of principles is nonsense

00:11:24.480 you wouldn't just walk up to 500 pounds and just like grip and rip it and that's what we do when we pick

00:11:29.240 up our kit and then we're like one day you you sneeze and you're like oh my back you know and you're like

00:11:33.960 whoa whoa whoa like you just sneezed you know like this is you know we've gotten really far away from

00:11:39.600 the robust sense of self and we don't have to be perfect we just have to work towards perfect

00:11:45.260 gotcha all right so uh let's talk about desk bound it's about sitting how it's terrible for us right

00:11:52.180 i guess this is probably one of the biggest source of the problems that you see with your clients is

00:11:57.640 that and everyone whether they're an athlete or stay-at-home mom or stay-at-home dad or whatever

00:12:01.920 is like sitting just jacks everything up so why i mean tell us walks through the details why is

00:12:07.180 sitting so terrible for us well how about this it's not that sitting is terrible for you i mean it has

00:12:13.200 it has its problems i mean you know look at your like jump into a ballet class jump into a pilates

00:12:18.960 class jump into yoga class come lift some weights with me and then look at the same spinal shapes

00:12:24.540 across all of those right now let's just go into any office or any classroom and let's look at the

00:12:30.420 spinal shapes and tell me that you're okay with that rounded you're sitting on your sacrum shoulders

00:12:37.080 forward neck crank back and you're going to be there for 12 to 14 hours a day no big deal right

00:12:41.360 totally week after week after week and then all of a sudden you know you wake up one day and you're

00:12:46.740 like wow i have shoulder pain or neck pain you know or back pain or i got slow or you know why is

00:12:52.740 that guy kicking my butt or i mean just choose a stinking problem the adult diaper industry

00:12:57.100 is a 1.2 billion dollar problem in the united states we have an athlete at our gym who was a

00:13:03.320 high-level gymnast and when she and she's had a couple kids and when she double unders or jump ropes

00:13:11.480 with her pelvis spilled forward an anterior pelvic tilt like her pelvic bowl is like tipping forward

00:13:17.080 when she does that she pees herself you can just see pee come right out right and when she's in a good

00:13:22.180 position the same position we talk about when we're dead lifting running jumping right all the the

00:13:27.060 athletic shape the base position sitting tadasana all that stuff right all these movement traditions

00:13:33.040 that have arrived at the same spinal shape you know nothing happens she doesn't pee herself and imagine if

00:13:38.680 we had that feedback like if because the problem is we're we're leveraging the fact that it's german

00:13:43.700 engineering it's this machine has evolved for what two and a half million years i mean it is a pretty

00:13:49.540 stinking robust machine you can lose a lung don't worry you can still climb everest how do we know

00:13:54.220 because there's a guy with one lung who climbed everest no i don't think we we sort of confuse this

00:13:59.760 robustness with the fact that oh anything i do my body will tolerate and that's that's not the case and

00:14:06.020 so when we when we pan back because we don't have this immediate feedback loop when we pan back

00:14:11.080 and start to take a big picture we can start to have some this this thing called induction which is

00:14:17.520 where we see lots of information right the heart of the scientific processes of induction and what

00:14:22.680 we're seeing is in the united states there are now more obese americans than non-obese americans that

00:14:27.120 in the last 10 years diabetes has gone up 400 percent that the study that came out two years ago or just

00:14:33.660 like two weeks ago excuse me says that for the first time or not for the first time but we have not

00:14:38.800 stopped the avalanche of childhood obesity in america like you know acl rates in women still up six to

00:14:46.100 eight times the rate of men kids tearing their acls at literally 400 increase over 10 years ago your

00:14:52.900 children run a mile a minute and 20 seconds slower than you do i mean choose something that matters to

00:14:58.080 you right i want to burn more calories you know a big piece of research that came out that said that

00:15:02.260 at a call center people who stood were 45 more productive that means they closed 45 more business

00:15:09.820 i mean it turns out then when we kind of go back in that we ask the fundamental question that one thing

00:15:15.900 we started with what does it mean to be a human being and what is you know what does that mean and

00:15:21.040 what it means is that i'm not ever supposed to be sedentary that's not how the human physiology was

00:15:27.360 evolved and so you're like well i'm not sedentary i exercise i'm like well do you sit more than six

00:15:32.220 hours a day because by definition that is the sedentary you're a sedentary person and so that we have is

00:15:38.260 this this tug of war between being sedentary and non-sedentary right or sedentary it's like smoking

00:15:44.200 and jogging you know yeah i'm a lead athlete here pass me the little chocolate donuts and what you're

00:15:49.260 seeing is that you know we negate a lot of the good effects and and it's it's about first principles

00:15:55.040 you know if you can eat like a ninja you can train hard but if you don't sleep i guarantee you're going

00:16:00.580 to fall apart and you know and it turns out that putting more movement in and avoiding positions

00:16:06.400 that just challenge your soft tissues without any activation right we want to use your musculature

00:16:13.080 about 10 years ago maybe 15 years ago we we gave all the guys who worked in warehouses we gave them

00:16:19.960 belts remember that phenomenon right yeah you still see them on home like at home depot yeah but they

00:16:23.900 don't wear them right they just wear them they turn them on and turn them off right oh lifting something

00:16:27.080 heavy but for a while they just put them on like it was no one's no one's business because everyone's

00:16:31.100 like this is great it's like having an extra spine we know that anything that gets habitually

00:16:37.620 braced over the long haul becomes what we call and this is a technical term and jargon weak you become

00:16:43.720 weak sauce and so what happened was the injury rates of spines in warehouse workers went through

00:16:49.120 the roof why they didn't ever use their spines they use the belt as as a set of spines as a set of

00:16:55.660 muscular sort of soft tissues well the same thing happens when you sit down in a chair you literally

00:17:00.120 your trunk turns off and what you end up using is the chair or you use the end range of your soft

00:17:05.900 tissues it's like you know standing there hyper extending your knee you can do it but over the

00:17:11.280 long haul that's going to cause some grief and that's really ultimately the problem with sitting

00:17:16.200 is that we're not moving and that those sitting positions cause us problems when we go stand up and

00:17:23.460 and if you are just going to go from the chair to the elliptical machine to the you know to the exercise

00:17:29.080 bike you might not ever notice that your hips don't actually work like hips anymore you know and that

00:17:33.400 may be okay with you you know if you're never going to squat down on the ground you know then that may

00:17:38.440 be okay with you but it turns out that again when we look at you know the greater picture you know

00:17:43.980 there was a good piece of research that came out that correlated your ability to get up and down off

00:17:48.460 the ground remember that you saw it on dr oz right yeah right yeah that correlates to more early

00:17:54.020 mortality well it turns out if you don't have the hip range of motion or the strength to get up and down

00:17:58.440 off the ground you're more likely to fall and and if i have you squat down right now put your feet

00:18:03.620 together squat all the way to the ground your heels should stay on the ground and that should be an

00:18:08.440 effortless position like i'm up on my stool and i'm doing it now as i talk to you and i can sit in this

00:18:13.460 position because this would be the position i would take a poon in the woods or i'd make a campfire

00:18:18.080 right these are the fundamental end ranges of the hip and the ankle but because we don't necessarily

00:18:24.220 expose ourselves to some of these end range positions regularly we don't know that they go

00:18:30.240 away or become stiff until it's too late and and all of a sudden now we can just see that hey there's

00:18:35.600 this gigantic adaptation error going on in our day-to-day lives and that's called sitting too

00:18:42.000 much and you know the the leading researcher in obesity is james levine from the mayo clinic who he's the

00:18:48.140 guy who coined sitting is the new smoking and he says you really should limit your sitting to two

00:18:52.440 hours a day that's how that's how toxic it is that's crazy so yeah there's a lot going on there

00:18:57.960 with sitting so your metabolism slows down dramatically basically shuts off it basically

00:19:02.400 shuts off your body's like i'm we're not we're not burning fats it's all good right and then you're

00:19:06.280 putting yourself in these positions because you're probably sitting incorrectly so that you're relying

00:19:09.700 more on soft tissue like one of my friends uh calls it hanging on the meat you know he's he's a

00:19:16.240 navy seal he's like you mean i'm just hanging on the meat i was like exactly you're hanging on the

00:19:19.620 meat don't hang on your meat and so this causes this is this is going to cause tightness in your

00:19:24.360 hips your glutes your and then what's amazing that like it not only affects like your lower half but

00:19:28.880 like it goes upstream as well affects tightness in the shoulders your chest and that causes problem

00:19:34.560 if you're working out you know you want to do a shoulder press you might not be able to do it

00:19:39.140 because you're so stinking tight might not i guarantee you won't because your your t-spine is too tight

00:19:44.020 and it affects all these things your your ability to breathe you know when you sit down and fold

00:19:49.320 forward you're going to breathe up in your neck you're not going to breathe in diaphragm and your

00:19:52.520 your whole rib cage pelvis you know trunk system really becomes um you know it you compromise your

00:20:01.600 pelvic floor and you compromise your diaphragm function so we've just taken that beautiful

00:20:05.220 ventilation machine right and we just bent the tube work the framework that holds the ventilation

00:20:10.540 mechanism and guess what you end up with really crappy vo2 max so if you're if your sport is

00:20:15.700 running or biking man good luck we just we just smoked you right and that that shallow breathing

00:20:19.720 too like you said in the book it induces the fighter flighter response like you're not it stresses you

00:20:24.420 out and you know all you have to do is go to that ted talk where that guy talks about you know posture

00:20:28.520 and like testosterone you know and then like you know i mean your brain is wired for these positions

00:20:34.320 and movements it knows that these slouch rounded behaviors are like yeah i'm cowering and uh you know

00:20:39.700 it's like that thing when you smile when you're feeling pissed off eventually you're like you

00:20:44.660 know what i'm pissed off but i kind of feel happy and pissed off and it's because your brain recognizes

00:20:48.640 the smile is associated with these shapes and positions and and the fact that we can't draw

00:20:54.240 these connections for people you know we're not doing a good enough job you know we're going to

00:20:59.100 become that that guy in wally we just float around you know we just are really removing our our

00:21:04.380 humanity and you know what we've seen is sort of the ongoing creep because i know what you're saying

00:21:09.180 you know i was born in the 70s like i sat didn't you know it was fine but you also walk to school

00:21:14.000 both ways in the snow uphill you know you didn't watch that much tv because there's only three channels

00:21:18.720 you either watch gilligan's island right or you watched uh you know mash with your parents there

00:21:24.520 was just nothing no flipper there wasn't much on and there wasn't a screen and you know the screen

00:21:29.240 is this sort of insidious load on us so what we're seeing is that the kaiser family foundation did a study

00:21:35.620 that said that looked at kids from across all socioeconomic cohorts and kids from age 8 to 18

00:21:42.340 were spending an average of seven and a half hours a day in front of the screen and so what we can say

00:21:47.620 definitively is hey technology is not going away so what are we going to do instead well instead of

00:21:53.240 making our bodies conform to the environment let's go ahead and make the environment fit the bodies i

00:21:59.260 mean that's why we have a stinking opposable thumb in the first place that cortex allowed us to shape

00:22:04.400 our environments you know and we can just expand that definition a little further and say hey look

00:22:08.280 let's adopt positions and shapes that our our body should be in you know our kids are at the first

00:22:15.260 all-standing school in the world and let me tell you how many problems we have with that zero no one

00:22:21.160 complains no one kvetchis right the research shows that you can actually reverse childhood obesity by

00:22:25.840 standing how about that right i mean just choose again choose something that that matters to you

00:22:31.240 uh our our our project standupkids.org to date we have over 27 000 kids in the u.s standing now most of

00:22:38.860 those kids are in in um you know poverty school areas right and what we're you know our our non-profit

00:22:46.060 was just curated by the obama administration and kind of chosen as the you know just move that's

00:22:51.560 michelle obama's childhood obesity you know platform what we see is that this is a really simple

00:22:56.140 intervention and and anyone who's standing in the way of this you know is a part of the problem like

00:23:03.160 they are part of the chair industrial complex and you should see the kickback i get on it's from some

00:23:08.320 physical therapists for example they're like there's no proof and i'm like it's because you are an ass and

00:23:13.780 are part of the problem and no and i'm just going to hand off the diabetes bills to you guys this is such

00:23:19.040 a solvable problem that yeah it's been staring us in the face and it's just so easy you don't need a

00:23:25.060 doctor's note to stand up and be human again you need an amazon box to put your computer on right

00:23:29.120 that's it so your your solution is just instead of sitting all the time that if even if you're in

00:23:33.220 an office or at home you just stand up move more right and so you can utilize certain tools like a

00:23:38.260 standing desk for example yeah you know and our kids can sit down on the ground anytime they want

00:23:43.480 at school you know they and which is a fine place it turns out that cultures that toilet on the ground

00:23:47.960 sleep on the ground they don't fall their fall risk and their elderly drops to zero right you

00:23:51.560 talk about in the book in japan like in the nursing homes the old people sleep on the floor

00:23:55.740 and they can like get up and go to the bathroom by themselves take care of themselves because they

00:24:00.380 have to get up off the floor and their hip disease and lumbar disease also drops to like zero

00:24:04.120 right it's not weird yeah you know it's it's use or lose it's it's look one some of our fancy

00:24:09.140 physician friends say this they're like look you're designed to be 110 years old i mean you're going to

00:24:12.860 outlive your gonads that's the real problem you know you know you just we outlive our gonads

00:24:17.660 but we can fix that now and uh but you know what we're seeing is you know we have to ask this

00:24:22.700 thing you know you know when we the first the first idea is you know are we moving enough

00:24:29.280 good now we're moving great now let's have the next conversation let's move well you know and that

00:24:34.100 means that we don't have to be we don't have to be perfect but this is a practice that we can work

00:24:38.440 towards for the rest of our life it turns out that you never become too skilled it turns out that you

00:24:44.300 know you know you can continue to practice and develop a practice around your movement efficiency

00:24:50.000 the rest of your life and this is this is the heart and soul of the matter so i mean let's talk

00:24:54.500 about transitioning from sitting to standing because i imagine it's not something you want to like is it

00:24:59.440 something you can do just like the next day oh totally yeah you don't you don't you don't have to

00:25:03.460 like work your way into it yeah you should just get a pack of cigarettes and smoke the whole one

00:25:07.180 right yeah yeah we're gonna yeah great hey we're running a marathon great this afternoon fine

00:25:11.720 you'll be fine right um no you you need to you know look what does it say about you that you have

00:25:17.160 a hard time being upright all day what does that say about you it's your week and you maybe have some

00:25:24.140 handbrakes on the system yeah why because you were part of someone's system you came from somewhere this

00:25:29.560 isn't a value statement about your abilities this is hey you were forced to sit as a kid too and you

00:25:36.200 know i just did an interview with a with a newspaper and the guy's like hey one of the guys in my office

00:25:40.280 blew out his back standing and i was like wow that guy was he like mr glass in that like movie you know

00:25:46.380 with with bruce willis i mean like he sneezes and he fractures i mean something is really wrong if you

00:25:52.180 are standing and moving and it hurts you you know and you have to go lay down and but with that being

00:25:59.680 said we we find that we should probably put ourselves on a shaping gradient stand for just an hour at your

00:26:05.880 desk this week if that felt good up into two hours hang out there for a couple weeks you know and what

00:26:11.840 you'll find is that pretty soon it's automatic to stand and here's another idea right it's okay to sit

00:26:18.140 down and take a break that's totally okay no one's going to judge you the other thing is you know if

00:26:23.180 you've ever been to a bar there are these places called pubs where you can get alcohol served to you

00:26:27.940 it's amazing and um you'll notice that there's a rail at the bottom of the bar well the bartenders

00:26:33.040 figured out that you made things the right height so people could lean and keep their torso upright

00:26:37.160 you gave them a place to put their foot so they could swing or you know they could they prop their

00:26:41.620 foot up to cap their morgan pose and all of a sudden you could you could take all the loads out of

00:26:46.380 your spine and you could stand all day long nice so yeah it's not you're not just standing there

00:26:52.100 you're you're you're actually encouraging dynamic movement like so while you're standing do some

00:26:57.060 other stuff as well well i since i'm standing during this talk i am too i have changed my position

00:27:03.280 30 times right it's called fidgeting and uh you know fidgeting is your brain actually being connected

00:27:10.480 to your body and recognizing your body's like hey you need to change your shape and so you just

00:27:14.500 change your shape and it's an automatic process but when you sit down you go from kind of compromised

00:27:19.920 shape to slouch to other slouch you know you don't breathe well you know you're just not

00:27:25.300 ventilating i mean it's just it's a disaster but as soon as you create this standing environment we

00:27:31.240 get what we call a movement rich environment and that gives us movement options and you know i love

00:27:37.260 having a stool not that i sit on the stool but sometimes i lean against the stool but i use the

00:27:41.540 stools as a platform i mean we have some stools like amazon for like eight bucks and i put my foot on

00:27:47.700 it like you know in a high lunge you know i'll lay across it in like pigeon pose you know i mean i just i

00:27:53.260 just i try to keep noodling around and one of the things that we find is that the stiffer you are

00:27:59.160 and the more poorly you move the more time you have to restore your positions and tissues and the more

00:28:04.920 efficient you are and the more you move the less actual you know mobilization work that you actually

00:28:10.420 have to do and that's that's nice you know what it means is that i'm always kind of working on my

00:28:15.060 positions and shapes you know i got a ball at the desk and i can roll out my feet and you know it means

00:28:20.060 that when i answer emails i i collect 10 minutes in the bottom position of my squat you know like

00:28:25.400 the end of your martial arts you know where the the coaches you know the instructor sensei is talking

00:28:29.900 to you and you're kneeling you know that's an important position for your knees and your ankles

00:28:33.400 you know and that can be a position where you're just you know watching tv or or or answering your

00:28:38.120 emails or talking on the phone and so we can we can back load so much of the movement and so much of

00:28:44.300 the improve the improvement of the movement into our day-to-day lives so that when we get home

00:28:49.380 or we're off work or we're done training you know we have actual time to like free associate and hang

00:28:56.320 out and read and i don't have to be layering in an hour of undoing the mess that i got in during the

00:29:02.980 day right so put it throughout the day and i mean what do you what's the response for people who think

00:29:07.100 oh man if i'm standing while i'm working i can't focus or concentrate uh is there anything to that or

00:29:11.880 can you actually concentrate better when you're standing well it turns out that if you look at

00:29:15.980 all the the functional mris of people sitting their brains actually turn off and the research

00:29:20.860 is showing that kids who take the like the sats score an average about 200 points you know higher

00:29:26.020 so i think that's bull i'm calling bull on that and um when you ask all the kids at school right and i

00:29:32.560 know it's not hard science but there is hard science around it out of texas a&m done by uh mark

00:29:38.080 benden who says that kids you know the engagement in classrooms is up like 12 14 over the course of

00:29:43.680 a day which aggregates into a lot of time and when we ask all our kids you know because they've been

00:29:49.180 a lot of our kids have been saying that for two years they're like uh we never go back i can't you

00:29:52.660 know they work standing up they do homework standing up they test standing up it's it's remarkable

00:29:56.720 that's awesome i think i think you know what what's confusing is if you ever tried a

00:30:01.420 a treadmill desk yeah i've got one i i am personally not a fan because it doesn't scale

00:30:07.920 yeah but also sometimes you have to walk so slowly it's hard to focus for a while

00:30:11.940 but but you know i'm like caveat emptor i mean like i want you to move and if that's if that makes

00:30:18.040 you feel like you can move better i'm down with it you know we have a our favorite thing is this

00:30:22.340 thing called the fidget bar and all of our kids desks have a bar that swings underneath there it's

00:30:28.060 like a skinner bar i mean they get up top and then their foot swings back and forth on a little

00:30:32.500 pendulum and uh we actually made one on rogue fitness um so if you anyway i'm not trying to

00:30:38.680 sell but the idea is you can just be swinging away and get all that small motion in and it's

00:30:44.200 automatically programmed you know because it's already it's the bottom of your desk you put your

00:30:47.820 foot up and your swing and that's the same thing we're getting on an anti fatigue mat or doing a

00:30:51.800 little walking it's just you know initially because it's a new pattern it may take you a while

00:30:58.420 but just you know one of my one of my coaches carl powley says hey just because it's harder doesn't

00:31:03.060 mean it's not you know better and you know what what we're pointing out is it's okay that it took

00:31:09.500 you a while it shouldn't necessarily be automatic but uh you know it is better for you in the long

00:31:14.840 haul right you know what's interesting is that you know it's people think like this is like

00:31:18.280 something new but there's like people long time ago kind of discovered this stuff intuitively

00:31:22.780 this is kind of something people don't know about teddy roosevelt i'm a big fan of teddy

00:31:26.040 roosevelt if you've read the site you know that but the guy ever since he was a little kid whenever

00:31:30.760 he would read uh he would read oftentimes standing but he would like put his leg up his foot up by his

00:31:37.480 knee so he looked like a crane so he's like standing on one foot and he would just like sit there and

00:31:42.360 then he would switch and like go to the other leg and that was kind of his way of being able to

00:31:48.020 stand for long periods of time yeah that's like stork pose or something right it was a stork pose

00:31:52.080 he looked like a stork i mean that's what that's how he described it and that's what you're doing

00:31:55.980 is when you're when you take the second leg out you're basically getting out out of extension

00:32:00.380 and uh you're taking the extension load out of your back and that's why you know when you see people

00:32:05.500 standing around you know our athletic stance you know we say make your combat stance your everyday

00:32:10.440 stance but like you should stand on both feet with your feet underneath your lungs and what you'll see is

00:32:15.260 that people's feet are pointed in different directions they cocked one hip out they're

00:32:19.400 overextended they're standing in like weird middle splits they're standing in the oh no you didn't

00:32:23.760 position and um what you're seeing is that they are trying to solve a mechanical problem and dumping

00:32:29.720 into these wretched shapes and that's that single post you know if if teddy roosevelt had a place to

00:32:35.740 put his foot oh he did he had a place to put his foot it was his other leg he did the same thing as

00:32:39.540 the captain morgan post right and and you're right you know um a lot of you know well-known people

00:32:44.620 worked and functioned upright you know from from eames to uh hemingway i mean yeah i mean a lot of

00:32:51.580 people just turns out you know uh winston churchill focused you know better you know i mean talk i mean

00:32:56.680 if you're really looking for allegory i mean take a bullet to the chest go back out and make another

00:33:01.140 speech you know maybe standing is you know go conquer a river in amazon and then you know maybe uh maybe

00:33:06.760 that is you should be like what is that guy doing oh he's standing all right so if when you do sit um

00:33:12.400 what how should we sit and i got a question here there's a question too about ergonomic chairs that's

00:33:17.300 like really big in office world um i got it at one of those aaron chairs but like lately it's been i

00:33:23.560 don't know just like it hurts my back whenever i sit in it so i mean what's the best like what's the

00:33:28.520 best chair we should get how should we sit if we when we do sit down sure well the here's the here's

00:33:32.660 the deal divide all your all your potential sitting into optional and non-optional sitting

00:33:37.220 so here's an example um chevron you know recognized and this is consistent with the research and we say

00:33:43.440 it in the book but the the highest number the the the cohort of people who have the highest number of

00:33:49.040 musculoskeletal injuries are the office workers office workers have more musculoskeletal injuries than

00:33:54.100 any other group of people workers like i mean you can be like a dynamite juggler you're safer than an

00:33:59.360 office worker and the guys at chevron figured out the men and women chevron figured out that they

00:34:04.660 would start locking out the computers every 55 minutes and then that forced everyone to get up

00:34:08.760 and walk around so they felt like that was a simple compromise but during their actual meetings because

00:34:13.140 remember they've invested in all this infrastructure right their conference rooms they're not just going

00:34:17.060 to take that out so during the conference meeting a little gong goes off every 20 minutes and

00:34:20.920 people keep talking and they stand up during the gong because the gong's just gong they keep talking and

00:34:26.720 they all kind of stretch and they move around a little then they sit back down and so immediately

00:34:30.240 what you've done is one is that you've built in this notion that hey if i'm going to sit and i have

00:34:36.460 to sit then every 20 minutes or so get up and move around for two minutes so 20 minutes move two minutes

00:34:41.860 just walk around squeeze your butt put your arms over your head breathe a little bit that has to be

00:34:46.020 non-specific just we need you to move that'll help second is you know if if you can make the choice to

00:34:53.420 stand stand and and when we say stand what we're really saying is move right so if you if you have

00:34:58.700 a choice of moving instead of just sitting like on the bus or walking or you know i mean there's just

00:35:04.820 so many options where you can you know you can be in the back like last night when my my oldest daughter

00:35:10.420 plays the cello and i'm in a you know middle school um you know elementary school you know orchestra

00:35:18.120 concert it's an hour and a half and i just didn't sit in one of those little chairs because you know

00:35:21.880 those little chairs are designed for they're designed to be stacked by the janitorial staff

00:35:25.300 it has zero zero input into my ergonomics or my size and so i can either compress myself or i just

00:35:30.720 stood in the back and then i sat down cross-legged and then i stood some more and i can make little

00:35:34.740 choices like that because it feels better to my body you know the other thing is that as you pointed

00:35:39.920 out you know that aaron chair you know that material was designed to help people with for with bed

00:35:44.960 sores you know so it was designed for people with wheelchairs so we could get more circulation so the

00:35:49.480 tissues didn't break down that should tell you a lot about the the robustness of the chair the chair

00:35:54.840 you're designing you know was you know the material was so that but people in wheelchairs wouldn't die

00:36:00.100 of of of compression ulcers and tissue ulcers like that's how serious sitting is right if you're if

00:36:04.780 you're in a wheelchair it's a real problem and one of the issues is that you know hey we put in all of

00:36:09.880 this support in the back it's ergonomic well remember when you see support you should think to

00:36:15.560 yourself i'm becoming weaker the structure is doing it for me and so one of the things that

00:36:21.500 happens that people sit back and once again you just turn your trunk musculature off you don't

00:36:26.360 support the even the systems that make it more efficient for you to breathe and then in order to

00:36:31.540 actual work you can't lean back you have to lean forward away from the backs and now you're slouched

00:36:36.180 right you're sitting on your femurs these are the non you know the backs of your hamstrings are

00:36:41.800 non-weight-bearing surfaces you may have noticed otherwise they would look like the the butts of

00:36:46.440 like gibbons it would be it'd be like the balls of your feet and the palms of your hands you know

00:36:51.060 you're you're you do have weight-bearing surfaces in your hips those are your ischial tuberosis or what

00:36:56.080 people call your sit bones and so if you're gonna sit sit at the edge of the chair right sit find

00:37:02.100 find those sit bones find those ischial tuberosis your pelvis that's not your femurs your femurs will be

00:37:07.200 dangling off and then sit up make your trunk work and and what you'll find is automatically

00:37:12.840 you're going to be feeling better and and fidgeting more and that's going to be an automatic better

00:37:18.120 shape all right so ditch the air on chair get a stool well and yeah a stool would be great and you

00:37:24.300 may need a little pad like i'm not expecting you to be some kind of you know monk from the you know

00:37:28.540 the turn of the century this is the art of manliness here of course i'm going to do that i'm a

00:37:31.580 masochist right i think or you could um you know i mean all our stools i'm not going to say that

00:37:37.600 we're we're manly or well manly around here but uh we don't have pads on our stools but remember

00:37:42.640 that if you're forced to sit for long periods of time you know it's okay to put a pad in there

00:37:47.640 right because that allows us to actually move a little bit more efficiently and see less compression

00:37:52.080 so like my fighter pilots there'll be a little pad in the chair the fighter pilots right when i i flew

00:37:58.080 with the blue angels because i work with those pilots and there's a little there's a little thin

00:38:01.980 pad just a little piece of foam that really takes the edge off that seat at seven g's gotcha

00:38:06.860 well hey kelly this has been a great conversation we haven't even gotten into the the maintenance but

00:38:11.520 we can send people to your site where they can find out about information about that because

00:38:14.920 you got a lot of great videos and content out there so and the basket desk mound we really tried

00:38:19.680 to strip it down so hey here are the basics this is what we think every human being every mom

00:38:24.480 and dad should know and we gave you some basic routines you know take a crack at fixing yourself

00:38:29.800 before you i mean can you check your oil in your car or do you have to call the doctor to check the

00:38:35.740 oil in your car that's what we're talking about gotcha well hey kelly where can people learn more

00:38:39.580 about the book and your work um you can get desk bound on amazon barnes and noble um we're really proud

00:38:46.000 of this um it's it's we're having great conversations with like governments about the implications and the

00:38:53.360 social change and then you know we're at at mobility wad and um which is wod workout of the day and then

00:39:00.320 the real issue is uh where we should direct people standupkids.org because you know you have you know

00:39:05.840 a child you have you know someone who has a child and all we're doing is the model we partner with

00:39:12.160 donors choose and our models are flipping one classroom at a time and in 10 years we'll get

00:39:15.960 everyone that's awesome well kelly starrett thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure

00:39:19.080 brett thank you my guest today was kelly starrett he is the author of desk bound you can find that

00:39:24.380 on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere and also make sure to check out kelly's website at mobility

00:39:28.580 wad.com and for show notes for this podcast go to aom.is slash stand up

00:39:34.600 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:39:50.540 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com and if you enjoy

00:39:54.140 this show and have gotten something out of it i'd appreciate if you give us a review on itunes or

00:39:57.720 stitcher or whatever else you use this in your podcast as that helps spread the word about the

00:40:01.040 show as always i appreciate your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you

00:40:05.220 to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#213： Undoing the Damage of Chronic Sitting

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