The Art of Manliness - The Essential Habits for Becoming an Agile, Vital, and Durable Human Being

00:00:00.000 Hey, this is Brett. We are rebroadcasting episode number 885, The Essential Habits for Becoming

00:00:04.700 an Agile, Vital, and Durable Human Being with Kelly Starrett. Hope you enjoy it. We'll be

00:00:08.900 back on Wednesday with a brand new episode.

00:00:18.320 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Kelly Starrett,

00:00:23.440 a doctor of physical therapy, has trained professional athletes, Olympians, and military

00:00:27.560 special operators, helping them unlock peak performance. But as he approached his 50s,

00:00:32.360 he started to see cracks appearing in the health of the folks around him. What had worked for his

00:00:36.940 peers in their 20s and 30s wasn't working anymore. They were gaining weight, having surgeries, and

00:00:42.140 just didn't feel good. So he and his wife and fellow trainer, Juliet, decided to write a book,

00:00:47.320 Built to Move, the 10 Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully, that took all they've

00:00:52.920 learned from training elite performers and distilled it into the foundational practices that everyone,

00:00:57.560 at every age, can use to develop lasting mobility, durability, and all-around health.

00:01:03.000 Today on the show, Kelly unpacks some of those essential physical habits, sharing the vital

00:01:06.700 signs, tests that will help you assess how you're doing in that area, as well as daily practices

00:01:11.360 that will help you strengthen and improve that capacity. After the show's over, check out our

00:01:15.180 show notes at aom.is slash buildtomove.

00:01:33.460 All right, Kelly Sturette, welcome back to the show. 0.59

00:01:38.400 It is great to be here, my friend.

00:01:40.020 So you've spent your career helping professional athletes, members of the military, achieve elite

00:01:45.280 performance. And I think a lot of people, they probably know you for the book you wrote,

00:01:49.380 man, it's been almost a decade ago, Supple Leopard, which is just this Bible of different 0.57

00:01:54.540 movements and things you can do to help you move better so you can perform better. Your new book

00:01:59.680 is Built to Move, the 10 Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully. This book is

00:02:05.900 focused less on things like setting PRs and more on just what are the building blocks of feeling good

00:02:12.420 and being vital overall over your whole lifetime. And in the book, you talk about 10 physical

00:02:19.060 practices and then each practice has a test or some metrics that you call vital signs to see how

00:02:26.120 you're doing with that habit. And this book really resonated with me. And we were talking before the

00:02:29.840 podcast, I turned 40 recently. And in my 30s, I was really powerlifting. That was my thing.

00:02:36.620 And I still do it. But what's interesting is when I was 35, 36, I could just go hard all the time

00:02:44.520 and recover really fast. Yeah. About two years ago, injuries started popping up and it was like

00:02:50.140 tendon stuff, just overuse. Your knee hurts and then your hips are achy. And then in 40, it's the same

00:02:56.340 thing. And now my shift has been moving away from performance, right? Trying to deadlift more and

00:03:01.800 more and more weight to, I just want to be durable. I just don't want to hurt when I get up out of a

00:03:06.980 chair. And it's funny, I was rereading Aristotle, his book on rhetoric. And he goes on this tangent

00:03:14.160 about fitness and health and beauty. And it's really poignant. He said this, he says,

00:03:18.540 for a man in his prime. And he thought a man in his prime was like, you know, thirties to maybe

00:03:23.360 40. It says, for a man in his prime, beauty is fitness for the exertion of warfare together with

00:03:29.160 a pleasant, but at the same time, formidable appearance. And I can relate to that. When you're

00:03:33.040 in your twenties and thirties, you just want to look jacked. You want to be strong, whatever.

00:03:36.540 Then he says, for an old man, beauty and fitness is to be strong enough for such exertion as necessary 0.75

00:03:41.940 and to be free from pain through escaping the ravages of old age. And that one,

00:03:46.720 I resonate with Aristotle on that one. I want to be free from pain, but just strong enough to do what

00:03:51.980 I got to do throughout the day. Yeah. You know, here's what's really crazy about that

00:03:57.960 is that we're starting to see a generation of young athletes who, you know, follow these principles in

00:04:04.940 the book because they found that it really does enhance the short game. And what you're seeing is,

00:04:10.980 and what we're appreciating now is that when we are working with young athletes,

00:04:16.720 who are making millions of dollars, they realize if they can control their sleep and their minimum

00:04:22.120 ranges of motion, some of these pieces in here, they actually can extend their careers. So it means,

00:04:27.380 means a lot of money to them. And then what ends up happening is that universally the athletes we work

00:04:33.260 with actually were realized they can go harder and they're actually capable of more. And remember,

00:04:38.520 this is a laboratory. So what I'm transferring that to myself now is, you mean, I can get to Friday

00:04:44.760 night and feel like I'm not just smoked, that in the afternoons I can get home from my job and

00:04:50.560 actually be more present for my partner and my kids. Okay. I'm in. When my friends say,

00:04:55.480 Hey, we're going for a pickup bike ride or basketball game. I feel like I'm not going to injure myself to

00:04:59.580 do that. So these 10 behaviors, you know, we chose these 10 because they're the hinges that open the

00:05:05.240 biggest doors. And simultaneously, if you're not interested in exercise, you don't identify with

00:05:13.160 powerlifting, you don't identify with diet culture. We realized that there's a lot you can do to begin

00:05:19.200 to have a conversation with your body. So you don't end up, you know, just sort of devastated by

00:05:25.380 accident. You took a fall, you lot, you know, your, your bone densities. I mean, just realizing that

00:05:31.780 the long game is the short game. And to what your point is, you know, you don't have to feel wretched

00:05:37.740 and we really have an empower people. So if we use an example, you know, pain is a great example of

00:05:43.520 oftentimes the sort of the fulcrum or the catalyst that initiates a lot of conversations with people

00:05:50.920 about their bodies. This pain won't go away. It used to just go away. I just ignore it or take

00:05:55.200 somebody pro for a few days and it went away. And suddenly people are realizing, Hey, I'm living with

00:06:00.260 this thing all the time. Is this who I am now? Like, should your hips hurt? So a couple of things.

00:06:04.340 One is that I want everyone to hear pain is a request for change. Unless you have a clear

00:06:09.900 mechanism, mechanism of injury, or you've got something occult going on, like a fever or an

00:06:15.240 infection, something obvious, or your pain is interrupting your ability to occupy your role in

00:06:21.440 your family or do your job. Those things are medical problems. They're medical emergencies. I

00:06:25.900 want you to go get help. Everything else is typical, which means what we've said to a generation of

00:06:31.580 people is that pain is a medical problem. So until you're ready to go talk to a doctor or

00:06:37.100 a physical therapist about it, it's not, it's not serious or you should just live with it.

00:06:42.680 And what we set up people to do is just to go ahead and self-soothe it any way they want with

00:06:47.660 bourbon, with THC, with, you know, whatever they could make themselves feel better. And what we're

00:06:53.680 trying to do here is say, Hey, look, if we're going to untangle complexity around pain, we need to make

00:06:59.320 sure that you're eating enough protein and micronutrients, that you're sleeping and that

00:07:03.820 you're moving. And then we can also say, well, Hey, these, these tools that we've discovered over

00:07:09.180 the last 15 years to help restore your position and make you bench more, well, they can be redeployed

00:07:14.440 for you and your family when someone's Achilles hurts or their knee hurts. And we realize that we

00:07:20.260 have this real rich tapestry of options that I can drop into my household without having to engage with

00:07:27.140 a physician without being an expert. And I can start to make myself feel better and ultimately use

00:07:32.960 that as a catalyst to transform how I'm interacting in my world.

00:07:37.360 Okay. So these 10 essential habits, they're great for if you're a young athlete who's keyed in on

00:07:42.060 performance, they'll help you with that. But even if you're not interested in that, you just want to

00:07:45.800 feel good and vital throughout the day. It's going to work for you too. All right, let's talk about some

00:07:51.160 of these. You lay out 10 tests and then with each test or marker habits, you can do on a daily basis

00:07:57.000 to help you improve that. The first one you talk about is the sit and rise test. What is this test

00:08:02.700 and why do you think it's important? Isn't it great? So this is a test that has been well validated to

00:08:09.800 show all cause mortality and all cause morbidity. If you struggle to sit crisscross applesauce on the

00:08:17.020 floor and then stand up from that position without putting a knee down or putting a hand down,

00:08:22.620 we can't just pop up and down like every five-year-old, right? Ask your kids to do this.

00:08:26.300 They'll crush it because it's not about strength. But what you'll see is, holy moly, I'm stiff.

00:08:31.140 And that stiffness, I can't access my power. I can't access my shapes. And that means that I have

00:08:38.580 fewer movement choices. So I'm like, here, get up and down off the ground, holding this baby. And you're

00:08:42.840 like, I can't, I have to hold the baby with two hands. And now I got to put the baby down.

00:08:46.440 What you start to see is it has these follow along implications. The number one reason people end up

00:08:52.300 in nursing homes, they can't get up and down off the ground independently. And what's notable, I think,

00:08:58.500 is one of the things that we know is if we were trying to launch a business, save for retirement,

00:09:07.140 train for the world championships, we set a goal and we work backwards from that goal. But we do not

00:09:11.920 engage in that thinking towards our own health and behaviors. So if we know that we have this

00:09:16.840 simple idea that really is a nice predictor of how you're going to fare as you get older and stiffer

00:09:22.920 and weaker, theoretically, none of those things have to be true, by the way, then why don't we,

00:09:28.780 one, put it on your radar and show you that, you know, hey, if you got it, no problem, good,

00:09:33.860 keep doing what you're doing. But if this was trickier than you thought, or you couldn't do it,

00:09:38.180 let's pay attention to that. Because the first order of business for all of our interventions

00:09:43.820 is exposure. So the first thing that we're saying is if you're struggling to get up and down off the

00:09:49.340 ground, well, what we want you to do is start spending some time on the ground while you're

00:09:53.180 watching TV every night. Isn't that simple and reasonable? Sit cross-legged, sit 90-90, kneel,

00:09:58.360 it doesn't matter. But if we know that getting up and off the ground ends up being a nice predictor

00:10:03.420 of how well and affluently you can move through the world because you have more hip range of motion,

00:10:07.860 you can play better pickleball, you can deadlift better, what you'll see is if your lifestyle is

00:10:15.360 working for you, you'll ace this test. If your lifestyle is introducing what we call a session

00:10:21.380 cost, which is a concept we use when we're looking at how gnarly the session was the day before. So

00:10:27.800 you and I go and do some crazy deadlift workout, and the next day I'm crippled and you're not.

00:10:32.600 I paid a higher session cost for that, right? My force was down, things hurt, I couldn't do it

00:10:38.480 again. Well, we can start applying that session cost idea towards what's going on with my day-to-day

00:10:44.820 living, my movement fluency, the workouts I'm doing, and is that costing me in terms of this

00:10:51.860 sort of third-party validation test, which is, you know, show me you have some hip range motion.

00:10:57.880 Yeah. Okay. So you lay out the test. It's really simple. So everyone can do this right now.

00:11:00.660 They're listening to us. You just sit on the floor and then get up off the floor. And what

00:11:04.600 you do- Cross-legged. 0.56

00:11:05.440 Yeah. Cross-legged. 0.95

00:11:06.340 Cross-legged. Right. And you start off, you give yourself a score of 10, and then you subtract a

00:11:11.320 point if you do one of the following. Brace yourself with your hand or the wall, place a hand on the

00:11:16.240 ground, touching your knee to the floor, supporting yourself on the side of your legs, losing your

00:11:20.940 balance. And if you do that, you subtract. If you have a low score, it means like, well, you got room for

00:11:25.300 improvement.

00:11:26.160 That's right. And that's the right word.

00:11:27.860 Yeah.

00:11:28.000 You got room for improvement. It's not bad.

00:11:29.900 No. Room for improvement.

00:11:30.940 I think that's a good point you made about, you know, most people go to nursing homes because

00:11:35.000 they can't get up off the ground, right? Because like, as soon as you can't move independently,

00:11:39.960 you're going to need 24-7 support care there. And it just usually starts going downhill from

00:11:44.940 there. And you hear about, I mean, like when you hear about like an older elderly person,

00:11:48.820 they fall down, they break a hip. You think, oh man, this is, this is bad. They're probably

00:11:53.500 not going to be around much longer.

00:11:54.800 Sure. You know, not to be macabre here, but one of the greatest predictors of the gnarliest

00:11:59.280 things that can happen to you is to break a hip after 70. Like the research is like,

00:12:03.900 you die within five. I mean, it's so bad. And you have to understand exactly what you're

00:12:08.320 saying. I suddenly lost my mobility. I can't feed myself. I can't move. I'm bedridden.

00:12:13.480 I lose my muscle mass. I lose my conditioning. I lose my bone density. I lose my, and then

00:12:18.660 my brain starts to go and my social connections start to go. You know, one of the things that

00:12:23.580 we're, I think, obsessed with in this culture is like all the hard science, like deadlift

00:12:28.720 more wattage poundage, but all of the ancillary things that happen by being in a community

00:12:34.180 start to go away. If your world gets smaller, one of the things that's nice about a lot of

00:12:40.660 these behaviors in the book, like eating as a family is that we're trying to strengthen

00:12:45.320 our social bonds. What we found in COVID was that, holy moly, the brain is a social organ.

00:12:52.300 It needs other brains to actually work and be a brain. And what we know is that we need

00:12:57.960 stronger families, stronger households that are more connected to each other and more connected

00:13:04.240 to their neighbors and their community writ large. And some of those easy ways are to eat

00:13:08.140 together and to go walk around and, you know, nod your head at your jerk neighbor. I mean, 1.00

00:13:12.460 really it's transformative. So what you're seeing is when we start making inadvertent choices from

00:13:19.840 lack of choice, because we don't realize we're doing certain things, it starts to take away a lot

00:13:25.080 of our movement choice, which ultimately has implications in the kinds of society we find

00:13:31.020 ourselves in, in our fifties, sixties, and seventies, eighties, a hundred, you're going to be a hundred

00:13:34.340 years old. Fifty-four percent of kids who are in the fifth grade right now are going to be 105.

00:13:39.640 And so there's, as you said, to improve on this test, the thing you got to do is just sit on the

00:13:43.600 floor more. And there's no- That'd be a great start.

00:13:45.880 Yeah. Yeah. And there's no specific way you have to sit, you do crisscross applesauce. I like,

00:13:50.840 my favorite one is the 90-90 scene where you kind of put your hips to the side. That feels really

00:13:55.620 good. Yeah. You're working on internal rotation there. And, you know, there's a great writer,

00:14:00.900 osteopath, I think. And his name is Philip Beach. And he wrote a book called Muscles and Meridians.

00:14:06.600 And it really is like functional embryology. Just, you know, I just want to throw it out there

00:14:10.860 because I'm a physio and I had to have a bunch of embryology. And if I'd had this book, I'd been

00:14:15.340 stoked on it. I would have understood it more effectively. But he believes that one of the

00:14:19.300 ways the body tunes itself is that we spend time on the floor. It actually opens up our pelvic floors.

00:14:25.320 It restores motion in your low back. It loads tissues. It loads your hamstrings. It keeps your

00:14:31.340 hip range of motion good. So you have more movement choice. It's one of the ways that our bodies have

00:14:37.540 engaged with the environment for two and a half million years. Look, I'm not pint- Like I live in

00:14:42.480 a cool mid-century modern house. I love it. But we have to appreciate that just a few, you know,

00:14:49.040 a hundred years ago. We did a lot more sitting on the ground, toileting on the ground, eating on the

00:14:55.240 ground, building fires and hanging on the ground. So it's almost like we know intuitively that, okay,

00:15:02.300 if this is one of the things that actually helps the body work better, well, it's pretty easy for

00:15:08.360 you to watch TV at night and sit on the ground for 30 minutes. Just sit on the ground for a little bit.

00:15:12.100 And you'll see that you're like, oh, there's my roller. Maybe I'll roll my calves out.

00:15:14.840 But exposing yourself to these bigger ranges of motion and fidgeting around, you'll see

00:15:21.180 aggregates. And we start to stack these behaviors. These behaviors start to compound. And if you get

00:15:26.740 30 minutes of sitting on the ground seven days a week, you're starting to spend a lot of time

00:15:32.100 in these fundamental positions that do things like improve your squat, improve your ability to run up

00:15:37.340 the hill, right? Make your back feel better, make your knees feel better, et cetera, et cetera.

00:15:41.280 All right. Let's talk about the next vital sign, which is breathing. When you have an

00:15:44.480 assessment, the breathe pull test, what's going on there?

00:15:47.600 The body oxygen level test. So I think breathing has had its moment, right? It's, you know,

00:15:52.480 Wim Hof gets everyone going, Laird Hamilton. We have Patrick McCune of oxygen advantage. There's so

00:15:59.400 many great systems. And it's not like the yogis have been talking about this forever.

00:16:04.000 But what we discovered was there was a lot of low hanging fruit in terms of improving

00:16:09.520 people's VO two max and mechanical ventilation. So this is why this matters. If you come to me as a

00:16:16.420 physical therapist, you're like Kelly, I've back pain. There's three things we're going to talk

00:16:20.560 about day one, no matter what. We're going to talk about your sleep, because if you're not sleeping

00:16:25.720 that eight hours, it's really difficult for me to figure out, is it your brain or is it your body?

00:16:30.760 What's happening here? Number two, I'm going to make you walk a lot because I need you to decongest 0.99

00:16:36.460 your system, your lymphatic system, which is the sewage of your body is built into your

00:16:41.660 musculature. And if you move your musculature, you move your sewers. If you don't move your

00:16:46.120 musculature, the drains block up. And if you've ever seen a gross sink, that's your body. If you

00:16:51.020 don't move that, that backed up sink, you have to flush that stuff. And that's all done through

00:16:55.780 movement. So moving, and then we're going to talk about breathing. And what we're going to see is

00:17:00.940 if the first motion of the trunk, everyone is obsessed with, it's okay to round your back when

00:17:06.260 you deadlift. Of course, your spine is supposed to flex and rotate and twist, but the first movement

00:17:10.680 of the spine is breathing. And what we find is that it's a nice indicator of sort of vitality in

00:17:19.300 terms of you can find positions that allow you to ventilate more. So it improves your VO2 max,

00:17:25.540 but breathing more effectively does things like opens up your upper backs and put your arms over

00:17:30.000 your head, makes your low back feel better, allows you to create more intra-abdominal pressure when you

00:17:34.380 lift. And as we found out in the last 10 years of really monkeying with breathing,

00:17:40.480 that when we got people more CO2 tolerant, which is what the body oxygen level test does,

00:17:46.840 it allows people to access more hemoglobin. So one of the things we found, believe it or not,

00:17:54.220 is that people who had COVID and smoked, that was a bad deal to have those things, but they were more

00:18:00.180 comfortable with lower body oxygen levels in their body. And the reason was, is that they were smoking

00:18:07.260 so much that their CO2 levels were really high and had set their brains at being very comfortable with

00:18:13.260 these lower oxygen levels. Obviously that's a problem if you can't breathe. But from a performance

00:18:19.120 standpoint, what we found is people whose brains were more comfortable running higher CO2 levels,

00:18:26.120 those people are actually able to strip off more oxygen off the hemoglobin. So the body oxygen level

00:18:32.620 test, this is a simple way of you being aware of how good you are at utilizing what's available to you.

00:18:39.960 And so you just hold your breath for as long as you can. You want to, I guess you aim for 30 to 40 seconds.

00:18:44.680 You exhale.

00:18:45.640 Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exhale.

00:18:47.280 Just take a breath, exhale, and then see how long you can go. Because it turns out you've got plenty of

00:18:52.820 oxygen on board to hold your breath for two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, five minutes.

00:18:56.360 What you don't have is a brain that is going to tolerate the skyrocketing CO2 level. So

00:19:02.160 your drive to breathe is actually the rising CO2 level. And what we find is now, because we've been

00:19:08.960 doing this long enough with our athletes, is that now we're seeing athletes be able to breathe nose

00:19:13.660 only, push 90% of their max heart rate. They're much more efficient. They don't have to burn the sugar.

00:19:19.560 But also what we find is, man, if we're going to talk about your neck pain and your jaw pain,

00:19:25.960 we need to talk about your breathing and getting you to breathe through your nose,

00:19:29.980 getting you to not breathe only up in your neck, like you're, you know, being chased by cocaine bear.

00:19:35.460 Those things really end up making a difference in terms of how your brain perceives you and your

00:19:40.300 environment and the effectiveness of not yanking on your neck every single time you take a breath.

00:19:46.100 So, you know, imagine this, you're on the Peloton bike and you're around it and you want to go

00:19:52.180 faster. If I say, get into a position where you can take a bigger breath, you'll automatically

00:19:56.620 organize your body in a way where you have better access to your ventilation and better access to

00:20:02.180 your diaphragm. And those shapes can be applied to work, to holding my kid, to rucking, to whatever

00:20:07.420 I want to do.

00:20:08.600 And yeah, the practice that you recommend, you just said it there, just start breathing through

00:20:12.240 your nose only throughout the day.

00:20:13.600 Yeah. That's one of the practices. Super simple. Tape your mouth shut at night. That's become very

00:20:17.900 common, but we also have some breathing drills you can do. And here's one of the things that I

00:20:23.200 want people to understand is that I think we've become habituated to thinking about all of our

00:20:29.320 health behaviors have to occur in these one hour blocks. That's weird. No one has time to go to a

00:20:35.240 one hour balance class or one hour breathing class or one hour mobility class. If you do anything,

00:20:40.080 I want you to go to the gym. I want you to go to your garage and lift heavy weights. That's what I

00:20:43.200 want you to do. But I want you to bury and hide the reps and everything else. So we do a lot of this

00:20:48.000 breathing stuff on our warmups, on our daily walks, during while we're spinning up on the bike. It's so

00:20:53.740 easy to integrate these things into your life.

00:20:56.120 So the next vital sign is about your hips. And this one, this one really spoke to me because my hips have

00:21:02.100 been really achy lately. And so the assessment you have for this is the couch stretch. So tell us about

00:21:07.680 this test and what is the couch stretch. You know, if you had to pin me down and say,

00:21:12.120 Kelly, what is the one thing I should do from one mobilization? I am obsessed with you being able to

00:21:18.780 take your hip into extension. So if you imagine a lunge position, lunge shape, that's hip extension.

00:21:25.780 So standing up from a squat is extending your hip, but actually taking your hip into extension

00:21:32.460 is the magic. And what we find is that the way we train the session cost of our day-to-day lives,

00:21:40.340 we see that people are pretty ineffective at having good full hip extension and having control in that

00:21:48.480 hip extension. So what we're seeing here is that there's a lot of knee pain and a lot of back pain

00:21:52.820 that's a symptom of not being able to extend your spine or extend your hip. So your knee behind butt is

00:21:59.540 really the magic. It's not knees over toes. It's can you get this knee behind your butt and the couch

00:22:05.140 stretch? If you've never done it before, you can just Google couch stretch. We invented it so that 0.90

00:22:09.540 we could get people doing it while they're watching TV. And basically you start on the ground. This is

00:22:15.280 the full couch. You put your knees up against the wall. Your back is away from the wall and you put

00:22:20.920 your shin in the corner where the wall meets the floor. So your foot is pointing towards the ceiling

00:22:26.460 and you're kneeling away from the wall. And then you bring your other foot up into a lunge. So it looks

00:22:31.280 like sort of an exaggerated run shape, except your leg is bent up. Then I want you to do a squeeze your

00:22:36.940 butt, take five breaths. Can you raise yourself higher and get yourself more torso upright? Take 0.98

00:22:41.820 five breaths and squeeze your butt. And then ultimately, can you go straight up and down? And what we find is 0.99

00:22:47.140 people really struggle because their quads are so stiff, hip is so stiff, their butts turn off.

00:22:53.060 That's one of the reasons now why you're running and it's wobbling your back and your hamstrings are

00:22:57.940 stiff all the time because they're doing all the work that your glute should be doing.

00:23:01.120 So if we can get people to improve this, it's amazing how many things start to feel better.

00:23:06.240 And then the daily practice for that test, you just do the test. Like you just do the couch stretch

00:23:09.460 every day.

00:23:10.520 You could. We also throw in some isometrics, show you where you can spend some time

00:23:14.900 the end of your day or during the day, just put your hip into extension a little bit. You know,

00:23:19.560 while you're washing dishes, while you're hanging out, squeeze your butt, 0.97

00:23:22.080 just do some isometrics, hold that for 30 seconds. We also realized that this is a great place to do 0.92

00:23:27.140 some soft tissue mobilization. So you can get on the ground while you're watching TV,

00:23:31.220 roll out your quads, roll out your hips, and you'll see that those systems start to improve.

00:23:36.760 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:23:44.020 And now back to the show. Let's talk about shoulders. Another problem that a lot of

00:23:48.000 guys experience as they get older. Shoulders are weird, a weird thing. It's incredible. It's got

00:23:53.040 this amazing range of motion, but it can get jacked up really bad. What are the most common

00:23:59.700 shoulder problems you see in, you know, the regular Joe athletes you come across?

00:24:04.360 Well, you know, what's interesting is think about it this way. You have the brain, which is the most

00:24:09.880 complex structure in the known universe. Seriously, it is attached to a structure that is equally as

00:24:17.520 sophisticated. So this brain body thing we'll walk around in is the most extraordinary structure in

00:24:23.000 the known universe. And your shoulder, let's just start by saying is designed to last a hundred years

00:24:28.440 easily. So when you suddenly throw an air signal and your shoulder hurts, we want you to understand

00:24:34.800 that, you know, A, that's not typical. It's a request for change. Well, what change are we

00:24:40.000 talking about? Well, no one on the planet connects range of motion to pain. And there can be a lot of

00:24:47.140 things. Nothing could change. You could have incomplete range of motion. Shoulders don't hurt.

00:24:50.580 All of a sudden you have a baby. You're sleep deprived. You have a deadline at work. You smash a

00:24:56.460 bunch of pizza. You drink some beer. It doesn't matter whatever the stressors are. And your shoulder

00:25:00.720 starts hurting. And you're like, what happened? Nothing happened except your brain became

00:25:04.780 much more sensitive to your lack of tissue quality or your inability to express normal range of

00:25:12.660 motion. So what we have here is a really important system. I think most people can recognize or wrap

00:25:19.020 their heads around that if we were going to talk about your low back health, we really should be

00:25:23.300 talking about what's going on with your pelvis and your leg too, right? It's weird how you have big

00:25:27.860 muscles that attach from your spine to your leg and no one looks at how well your leg moves. So if your

00:25:32.380 leg doesn't move well on your body, it can be yanking, it can be tensioning, it can just be putting

00:25:37.980 mechanical input into your lower spine. So that's why we look at the spine, the pelvis, and the leg

00:25:43.540 as a system. Well, there's the same system upstream. It's your neck, it's your thoracic spine,

00:25:49.640 your chest, and your shoulder. They make a trifecta of positions. So if I want to improve your neck pain,

00:25:55.260 I got to look at your shoulder range of motion. If I want to look at your shoulder range of motion,

00:25:58.880 I also need to look at how well your thoracic spine works. Remember I told you already we're

00:26:02.600 moving in that direction because we're getting you to take big breaths and breathe in your upper back?

00:26:06.800 Well, what we're doing here is we've got some simple tests for you around some key range of

00:26:13.480 motion positions and some isometrics that are easy to get you started on untangling what feels like a

00:26:20.020 complicated system. It's not that complicated. Yeah, you got two tests. My favorite was the one where you

00:26:24.220 lay on the floor on your back and then you see how far you can get your arm back basically.

00:26:31.100 Yeah, basically it's an I, Y, and T. But really in that situation where if your just elbows are out

00:26:36.900 to your side at 90 degrees and you flex the back of your hand to the ground, we're looking at how

00:26:40.840 much force you can create there. And what you see is if you're struggling to get to that position,

00:26:45.520 you're weak in that position. Well, welcome to your rotator cuff. And a lot of times your rotator cuff,

00:26:51.140 or rotator cuff, depending on which patient is telling you about their shoulder pain,

00:26:56.840 the rotator cuff is this sort of non-specific idea that I have muscles that help rotate my shoulders.

00:27:02.680 Well, we look at a lot of rotation capacity with our athletes and what we see is that when you lack

00:27:09.160 fundamental range of motion in your body, specifically in your shoulders, can't put my arms over my head,

00:27:14.920 can't, you know, achieve some of these fundamental shapes, your force production starts to go down,

00:27:22.080 which means that when you approach some of these positions at high speed, like playing golf,

00:27:26.900 that can be a problem because you see a lot of inhibited musculature, a lot of

00:27:31.760 force production that gets taken away. And now you're just hanging on your tissues.

00:27:37.000 Any daily practices that people can do to help their shoulder health?

00:27:40.920 There's a lot, but like, I mean, what's one or two that you'd recommend, right? Like do these

00:27:45.200 and you'll be good. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. If we look at our movement traditions,

00:27:49.760 you know, if you've, everyone listening has probably gone to a yoga class once. And when

00:27:53.160 you're in there, you're like, holy crap, these people love downward dog. Why is downward dog so 0.96

00:27:58.120 important? And I mean, you do so much downward dog, downward dog, downward dog. Well, downward dog is

00:28:04.220 an overhead position. So if there's one thing you could do is at least once a day, put your arms over

00:28:10.260 your head, hang from a door jam, put your arms over your head, take some breaths. If you have a pull-up

00:28:14.560 bar, which you should have in your house, hang from your pull-up bar. I cannot tell you how hanging

00:28:19.840 will fundamentally change your life. Hang with different grips. You don't even have to hang

00:28:24.000 with your feet all the way off the ground. Put a pull-up bar in your kid's doorway, but it's secretly

00:28:29.640 for you. We have a pegboard in our garage. We've got pull-up bars all over the outside inside the

00:28:35.300 house, in our garage. And just hanging will transform your shoulder function, transform

00:28:41.280 your upper back. If you're getting that hump in your upper back and neck, hanging is the

00:28:44.840 solution. What I would direct you to is some kind of shoulder motion every day. And if you

00:28:52.800 did something like sun salutation, cool, that would cover it. But also, if you're really interested

00:28:58.000 in taking the next step on our site, we have something. And even if you Google Kelly Starrett

00:29:03.280 that shoulder spin-up, you will come up. And it's a quick five-minute routine that touches

00:29:08.440 a whole lot of spine-shoulder positions. You don't need any equipment. I use it for all

00:29:12.720 my elite athletes. I teach it to all our teams. And it's just like daily vitamins for your

00:29:17.240 shoulder, even if you're not going to load your shoulder, even if it's a lower leg day.

00:29:20.400 Right. So you're a big fan of the squat, and that's one of your tests. Why is being able

00:29:24.180 to get down into a full squat important for human durability?

00:29:28.920 Isn't that interesting? You know, we look at squatting as exercise, not squatting

00:29:33.040 as movement choice. Lower yourself down off a cliff or a ledge. You're going to have

00:29:38.600 to squat all the way down. You know, one of the things that happens is obviously getting

00:29:43.300 up and down off the ground is useful there. But it's one of the ways where we can start

00:29:48.220 to expose the tissues of the body to their full range. So taking the knee and flexing it

00:29:55.240 all the way. Taking the ankle and flexing it all the way. Letting your back round in that

00:30:00.100 bottom position is really important to normalize the motion of the back. In yoga, for example,

00:30:06.760 they call it malasana. And they're like, it's a pelvic floor mobilization. Well, it turns out

00:30:12.020 your pelvis and your femurs are connected directly to the connective tissue of your pelvis. This

00:30:18.300 is why when you get kicked in the nuts, you feel a stomach ache. So what we're seeing here

00:30:23.260 is that when we restore how people's hips move, it changes the connective tissue muscular systems

00:30:30.000 and restores it to, again, native range. But also what we start to see is, man, you're going to have

00:30:36.180 better choice. You're going to be able to move more effectively. And you'll see things like your

00:30:40.980 wattage improve on the bike. And the test is simple. Get down to a full squat. You want ass to grass.

00:30:46.140 That's right. That's it. I want ass to grass. Ideally, you can do that with your feet straight, 1.00

00:30:49.860 but you can even turn your feet out to do that because you may not have the ankle range. But if

00:30:54.200 you fall over and can't get into a full squat, man, that says a lot about you not having full

00:31:00.980 access to the miracles of your body. Again, we're not arguing about squat technique. I'm talking about

00:31:05.640 getting up and down off the ground or taking a poo or waiting for a bus. So this is very much one of

00:31:11.160 those use it or lose it shapes. But the research is clear that people that toilet on the ground sleep

00:31:17.980 on the ground engage in a lot more squatting-like behaviors. And lo and behold, we see less

00:31:23.300 osteoarthritis. We see less hip disease. We see less lumbar disease. It's almost like if we just

00:31:29.360 use our bodies and just touch the ranges once in a while, tell our brains it's safe to be here,

00:31:34.600 we see things like skiing or snowboarding improve.

00:31:37.320 In the practice of that, just squat more. That's something you can do throughout the day. I do that.

00:31:41.100 After I read that chapter, I'm going to start squatting more. I've been squatting

00:31:43.940 during this interview. When you were talking, I was squatting.

00:31:46.600 Oh, I love it. That's what I think is remarkable. There's a lot of opportunities for you to move

00:31:52.200 in a more complete way. And this is what every physical therapist, surgeon, orthopedist on the

00:31:59.580 planet says your hips should be able to do. And if you take all of the range of motion books and

00:32:04.040 you're like, what should the ankle be able to do? It should flex this much. How much should the knee

00:32:07.760 flex? How much should the hip flex? What should happen to the lumbar spine? And then you put them in a

00:32:12.400 blender and shake it up. All those things together end up being a squat.

00:32:16.460 Yeah. My goal is to be like one of those 80-year-old ladies in Southeast Asia. 1.00

00:32:20.900 Yes.

00:32:21.060 They're just still squatting. I want to be doing that.

00:32:24.160 What's so cool about that is actually it's a really reasonable goal. So anyone who's starting

00:32:28.700 this, for some people, it's going to be a brutal awakening, right? You're like,

00:32:32.000 I thought I was super fit. I'm doing Peloton and I do my quarter squats and I look good naked,

00:32:36.600 but I don't, I can't move very well. And we've certainly seen a hinge move towards movement

00:32:42.080 culture, right? And one of the things that we want everyone to hear is that muscles and tissues

00:32:47.280 are like obedient dogs. And there's no reason. Yes, it's going to be harder to maintain your muscle

00:32:52.880 mass as you get older, but there's no reason you have to lose your range of motion ever at any age.

00:32:59.940 So one of the things you can absolutely do your whole life is actually have access to your range

00:33:06.420 of motion. Cause you can imagine if your elbows got stiff all of a sudden, you're like, well,

00:33:10.020 it's not a big deal. I just can't feed myself anymore. You know what I mean? Like that's crazy.

00:33:14.380 If your life depended on getting up and down, then you would be really good at getting up and down.

00:33:19.200 I was just in Japan with some friends and we were staying at this cool mountain hotel as we were

00:33:23.620 doing some backcountry skiing. And one of our friends got sick and I was like, Hey, I really should not

00:33:28.600 spend a few days in this room with this sick guy. Do you guys have any other rooms? And they were

00:33:33.140 like, we don't. And then we were like, this hotel is huge. We don't have any rooms. They didn't have

00:33:37.680 any white person rooms, Western rooms. What they had was traditional Japanese rooms, but the Americans 1.00

00:33:43.380 who've been there before haven't been able to use those rooms because you sleep on the ground on a

00:33:49.200 futon because the table is set for you to kneel and sit cross-legged because the shower is built for

00:33:54.820 you to squat and sit in. The whole thing was organized around a person being able to move

00:34:00.640 through the environment. Even the controls for the room were set up at sitting height. So I was like,

00:34:06.300 Oh, no problem. I got it. And they were like, really? You can do it. Like, look at you. You're

00:34:08.940 a huge guy. And I was like, it's no problem. Trust me. I can, I can squat.

00:34:12.500 Okay. So squatting is one. The next test you talk about is the old man balance test. What is this one?

00:34:17.440 We have this friend named Chris Hinshaw, who is an incredible coach. And he tried to come up with a

00:34:24.140 test where he could beat his kids at. And what this challenge is all about balance. And one of the

00:34:30.800 things that we know is that fall risk in the elderly is gnarly. But when we started working

00:34:37.440 on foot strength and foot capacity and balance in our athletes, worked it into games, made them spend

00:34:44.400 more time on one leg, pressing single leg deadlifts, things like that, man, their athleticism went

00:34:50.040 through the roof. And so what we realized is that we need some better ways to challenge people's range

00:34:55.820 of motion and their balance and control just day to day, little micro balances. Because think about

00:35:00.860 it. Someone falls in your family, like go to this balance class because your balance got so bad.

00:35:05.260 Now you have to go get formal training. That's crazy. Look, here's a simple test for everyone.

00:35:10.080 It's called the SOLEC. Ready for it? Standing one leg, eyes closed. Stand on one leg. Don't put

00:35:16.900 your foot down for 20 seconds. I bet you're going to be shocked at what happens when I take away your

00:35:21.280 eyes. And what turns out is that if your feet are stiff, if your feet are always in foot coffins,

00:35:27.900 shoes, if your feet aren't strong, you're really going to struggle. If you don't have good ankle

00:35:32.480 range of motion, this is going to be difficult for you. And what we're trying to do is just bring this

00:35:36.340 awareness of balance and play should be happening in sports. So if you're riding mountain bikes and

00:35:42.360 playing soccer and pickleball and you're moving your body, chances are this will not be a problem

00:35:47.200 for you. But for a lot of people who are not doing those things, you're going to be shocked at how bad

00:35:52.220 your balance is. And it's only going to get worse unless we play with it. So the old man balance test

00:35:57.020 is really simple. Every time you put your shoes and socks on, do it one leg at a time. So stand on your

00:36:02.440 left leg, put your right sock on, don't put your foot down, put your shoe on, tie it, don't put

00:36:06.880 your foot down. You're going to have to reach down and grab it. You're going to have to balance. And

00:36:10.160 so every single time you put your shoes and socks on, you can practice a little bit of one or two

00:36:15.060 minutes of balance. And I guarantee it's going to kick your butt. Yeah. And then you talk about at 0.99

00:36:18.220 your house, you have different just balance things you can do. Like maybe you put like, you just could

00:36:22.880 put like a two by four in your house and just nailed it. How about that? You can put a broomstick down

00:36:27.360 and just balance on the broomstick. But you know, I'm a huge fan of having a, like a dynamic work

00:36:35.400 environment where I want choice. I want to be able to perch against a bar stool. I want to stand. I

00:36:39.700 want to, but on the ground, I have a bunch of balance stuff. So I just do this while I'm at work.

00:36:44.160 If I'm on calls, I'm standing on a thing called a slack block, which is like a portable slack line in

00:36:50.500 your house. It's tiny. It doesn't take up any space. I'm standing on one leg balancing on the slack

00:36:56.120 block while I'm talking on the phone. And so I get so many hours every week of working on my

00:37:01.380 balance. Does it improve my biking? Yes. Does it improve my skiing? Yes. Does it improve my lifting?

00:37:05.640 Yes. Another practice you talk about is just standing more, walking more, moving more throughout

00:37:11.580 the day. If you have a desk job, it doesn't have to be that you're in a chair eight hours. There's

00:37:17.640 different ways you can work, right? Yes. And if you look, I don't talk about this much, but

00:37:22.960 I had the great pleasure of working with a former US president. I've worked with and supported a

00:37:29.440 couple of presidents. And this one president was pretty prolific book writer, but could not write

00:37:35.540 at a standing desk. So what we had to do is create an environment for this former president

00:37:41.080 to get more movement at the desk because he felt like his best writing happened when he was still.

00:37:47.840 And so that meant we needed to make sure that we were introducing a place to put his foot and a

00:37:52.340 chair that wiggled more. And what I want you to realize is that we didn't come up with this

00:37:58.360 arbitrarily. Harvard defines sedentary lifestyle as sitting more than six hours a day. That's an

00:38:04.500 aggregate. That's all you're sitting. That means driving in the car, picking up your kids, all of

00:38:09.500 that. So what we're trying to do is not battle our physiology, but it turns out, so right now I'm

00:38:15.620 talking to you at a standing desk, but I'm actually perching on a bar stool. So I've got my foot on the

00:38:22.100 ground, I got one foot up. And in this position, because I'm perching and I'm not sitting, I'm

00:38:27.100 actually above this thing called one and a half metabolic equivalents, which is how much energy my

00:38:33.160 body is using to just function in the background. But the sedentariness is that falling below that

00:38:39.540 one and a half. So sitting in most chairs, you fall below one and a half. And that's what we're

00:38:45.280 trying to not do. I need you to accumulate enough non-exercise activity that you actually fall asleep.

00:38:52.060 One of the things that we found was that a lot of people were working out, weren't actually moving,

00:38:56.940 still didn't actually get enough sleep or find they had enough sleep pressure. What we found was that

00:39:03.360 working with Delta Force, of all the technology that they had access to, they had their guys walk

00:39:10.260 12,000 to 15,000 steps a day in addition to their training, and it knocked down all their insomnia

00:39:15.540 problems. It really started to make everything better. So if you want to adapt better to your

00:39:19.540 training, you want to fall asleep faster, you want to feel better, we need to look at how much your total

00:39:24.680 movement is and conversely, how to limit your total sedentary time. And this does a lot of things. It's

00:39:30.820 going to clear out your systems. You talked about that earlier. Motions, lotions, so you're going to move

00:39:34.840 and not feel achy. And then, yeah, I think the sleep component is really important. I've noticed

00:39:39.660 that as well. When I move more, I have the best sleep. Like the best sleep of my life was when Kate

00:39:45.000 and I went to Italy for, I don't know, she was doing some sort of school thing. Went to Italy. You walk

00:39:50.800 around Rome all day. You walk 20,000, 30,000 steps a day. Probably, yeah. It was like, it was insane the amount

00:39:55.700 we walked. And I remember we got to the hotel, just laid down. We were like, oh, we're taking a nap.

00:39:59.820 And we were, it was like 15 hours later. You know, kids come back from summer camp and they're

00:40:04.980 just exhausted and sunburned. That's the game, but for adults. And you just really nailed it.

00:40:10.580 And what I want people to understand is we can come at this any way you want. But one of the ways

00:40:16.320 that's important to me is that it's a hidden calorie burner in my day. So I love dessert. I love ice

00:40:23.120 cream. I love cookies. I'm never going to turn those things down ever. If they're combined, it's even

00:40:28.160 better. But when we wrote Deskbound, my wife found a little like conversion, a little calculator. And

00:40:34.620 if she just stood and didn't sit at her, just during her workday, in the course of a year was

00:40:40.560 a hundred thousand calories. I outweigh her by almost a hundred pounds. That's 170,000 extra calories 0.60

00:40:47.540 I burn every year. That's like 35 marathons. And all I have to do is just not sit while I'm working.

00:40:53.540 I'm talking about perching, fidget, messing around, walk a little bit. And notice that we

00:40:59.120 didn't say you have to get 10,000 steps. We saw that all of the benefits really start to kick in

00:41:03.500 at six to 8,000 steps, which is really reasonable. If you just start throwing in short walks after your

00:41:09.260 meals, you take a call, you go for a little stroll in your neighborhood. It's easy to get six to 8,000

00:41:14.280 steps, but the average adult gets less than three. So it's difficult for me to be sensitive to your foot

00:41:20.580 pain and your Achilles and your junky tissues. If you're not moving more during the day, which

00:41:25.440 means you just have to be more conscious of it. And this is important. This daily movement is

00:41:29.320 important, particularly for those who are, I just said, exercising regularly. Because they're

00:41:32.380 thinking, well, I'm good. I got my hour of cardio in. I got my hour of weight training in, but you're

00:41:36.380 probably still sedentary. That's right. Yeah. And if you've ever flown on an airplane and look down,

00:41:43.160 you're like, why do my ankles? I have cankles. What's up? My ankles are swollen. That's what

00:41:47.280 we're talking about. Your lymphatic system is backing up. Because you didn't move your muscles,

00:41:54.380 you ended up collecting fluid in your ankles. That is edema. But really what's happening there

00:42:00.980 is that it's failure of, that's why they're, you know, if you ever go in the hospital, they're like,

00:42:04.720 pump your legs, do calf pumps. Here are these things. We don't want you to get a DVT. That deep

00:42:09.560 vein thrombrosis happens because people are sedentary in the hospital and they're so freaked out about it.

00:42:14.780 They hire a physical therapist to come in and tell you to wiggle your feet.

00:42:18.980 Okay. So we talked about movement. Can you get your steps in? Don't sit down all day. Don't

00:42:22.980 have to stand up all day, but just move around. You've mentioned sleep. If you're having problems

00:42:26.880 with sleeping, moving a lot will help you sleep. Nutrition. What role does nutrition,

00:42:30.860 you're a physical therapist, and one of the first things you ask is, what are you eating?

00:42:34.280 What role does nutrition play in recovery and just our ability to move well?

00:42:38.040 You know, nutrition for better, for worse has become identity politics for so many people and

00:42:45.200 it's identity and it's a hobby and it's a sport and it's a full contact sport. If you get on the

00:42:49.560 internet and talk about your diet universally, what we can start to say is everyone on the planet has

00:42:57.400 protein minimums. You should get this amount of protein and it really reasonable amount for everyone

00:43:03.960 is 0.7 grams per pound of body weight, which turns out if you're sedentary, that's probably enough.

00:43:11.180 But if you're over 50 or you're exercising or trying to change your body composition,

00:43:15.800 it probably is a little bit closer to one gram per pound body weight. So your keto, cool. Your

00:43:22.000 carnivore, cool. Your paleo, cool. Your whole 30, cool. Your vegan or vegetarian, cool. Just show me you

00:43:26.540 get this much protein. And what we find is if you're trying to change your body composition or you're

00:43:31.080 trying to recover, but you don't have the building blocks on hand to do that, you're not going to see

00:43:36.960 the gains you want either way for body composition or otherwise. But the other part of that is that

00:43:43.320 based on some really good data, we find that people don't get enough micronutrients. There is not a

00:43:48.760 single study in the world that says improving your fiber intake doesn't improve your health.

00:43:53.440 Well, the easiest way to do that is actually eat fruits and vegetables. And so what we found is based

00:43:57.360 on one of our friends, EC Sinkowski, her company is at Optimize Me Nutrition. She has something called

00:44:03.300 the 800 gram challenge. And every single day she challenges people to eat 800 grams of fruits and

00:44:09.280 vegetables. And you're like, I don't like vegetables. Cool. Eat it in fruits. I don't eat apples. Cool.

00:44:13.200 You do it in berries and rutabaga. I don't really care. But it turns out when we get more micronutrients

00:44:18.880 in, all the polyphenols, all the vitamins, all the minerals, you can do that with four big apples a day.

00:44:24.560 But when we get into people's diets and we're trying to talk about soft tissue health and

00:44:29.540 connective tissue health and brain health, whatever it is, low gut health, turns out fiber

00:44:35.760 and micronutrients and protein make the basis. For people who are trying to lose weight,

00:44:40.960 when we ask them to eat more and expand their choices, it's the first time in their life they're 0.85

00:44:46.340 like, holy shit, I had to eat so much to meet these minimums. We're like, yeah, welcome to it. 0.91

00:44:53.120 A pound of cherries is 230 calories. Go ahead and OD. Let me know what happens. What you're

00:44:57.820 going to see is there's so much food available to you. We don't want to be restrictive anymore.

00:45:02.420 We want people to hit this baseline.

00:45:04.200 If you had a pound of cherries, I think you'd be on the toilet. 0.54

00:45:07.260 It's an illustrative point. Eat a pound of melon. Eat four apples. You know what I mean?

00:45:11.040 It really is. And you're suddenly, I'm like, yeah. You know, the other day I went to one

00:45:14.620 Trader Joe's, got myself a flat of blackberries. They're just gorgeous. And I ate the entire

00:45:18.960 thing. It was like 400 grams, 350, 400 grams, like almost half of my micronutrients for the

00:45:23.540 day. And it was 230 calories.

00:45:26.100 Yeah.

00:45:26.540 You know, I was like, I love cookies. One cookie from Starbucks is like 350 calories.

00:45:31.620 Oh, yeah.

00:45:31.960 So what we get is all of this benefit where I'm full, I'm getting all these nutrients.

00:45:38.380 Somehow we demonize fruit. That was ridiculous. We're like, fruit is sugar. What a bunch of horse 0.88

00:45:42.720 crap that is. It's not the bananas and apples that are the problem. If you eat more micronutrients 1.00

00:45:47.320 and fruits and vegetables and get enough protein, your body will start to turn the lights back

00:45:51.660 on.

00:45:52.240 So this is great. And then at the end of the book, you have this schedule for people to

00:45:55.420 follow if they're trying to figure out how can I incorporate all this stuff into my day

00:45:58.540 to day. And as you said, like, you don't have to like make time. Like I'm going to do an

00:46:02.200 hour of my built to move routine. No, it's like, yeah, no, just you wake up. I'm going to

00:46:06.680 do this thing. I'm going to get my steps in whenever I'm taking a break or on the phone.

00:46:11.980 I'm going to walk around. I'm going to get down in a squat. You can just do this stuff

00:46:15.780 as like health, health shouldn't be a block on your schedule. It should just be a part

00:46:20.160 of your day.

00:46:21.360 Yeah. And you know, what we found is when we handed this thing to our world champion

00:46:26.760 athletes, they were always viewing it through the lens of, I want to go faster. I don't

00:46:30.740 want to do it more often. And they found blind spots that enable them to work harder. And

00:46:35.120 when we applied it and gave this to non-exercisers, like we have some publishers who work with us

00:46:39.860 in the UK who are not exercisers and who like love pork pies, like they don't, they were

00:46:46.520 like, just reading this changed my framework and how I perceived the world around me. And

00:46:52.360 it changed me in making different subtle choices that all compound over time to really make radical

00:46:59.520 changes where you can feel better. And again, work harder and show up and feel fresher. That's

00:47:05.120 really the game.

00:47:06.420 Well, Kelly, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book

00:47:09.320 and your work?

00:47:10.380 Go to builttomove.com. We've got actually, when the book comes out, we've got a 21 day

00:47:17.700 built to move challenge. It's free. And it's basically a video a day, just kind of supporting

00:47:23.200 some of these ideas, just to bring you through. You can aim your friends at it. You know, we

00:47:27.600 are at the ready state on all the socials, you know, and if you want interested in more about

00:47:33.380 how to assess your body more completely, we've got the app and everything else.

00:47:38.040 Fantastic. Well, Kelly Starrett, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:47:41.500 Always a pleasure. Keep putting out the good word, my friend.

00:47:44.280 Thank you, sir.

00:47:45.260 My guest name is Kelly Starrett. He's the coauthor of the book Built to Move. It's available

00:47:48.500 on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at

00:47:51.960 his website, thereadystate.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash builttomove,

00:47:57.360 where you find links to resources where we delve deeper into this topic.

00:47:59.780 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website

00:48:10.680 at artofmanless.com. We find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles written over

00:48:14.720 the years about pretty much anything you can think of. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free

00:48:18.100 episodes of the AOM podcast, you can do so on Stitcher Premium. Head over to stitcherpremium.com,

00:48:22.500 sign up, use code MANLESS at checkout for a free month's trial. Once you're signed up, download the

00:48:26.740 Stitcher app on Android iOS, and you start enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM podcast.

00:48:30.820 And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on

00:48:33.620 Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please

00:48:37.960 consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who would think would get something out

00:48:41.080 of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay,

00:48:45.140 reminding you to not only listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:48:56.740 AOM podcast is brought to you by the AOM podcast.

The Art of Manliness - April 05, 2023

The Essential Habits for Becoming an Agile, Vital, and Durable Human Being

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