#111 The Optimal Mobility Protocol for a Durable Body | Dr. Kelly Starrett

“can foam rolling help you work through, you know, a painful point. How do we do it? Like, what should I be doing? So let's start with that. Foam roller doesn't solve all the problems. If it solved all the problems, there'd be no problems. We've gotten that message, right? But you may need a smaller ball.”

“your quads on a roller and then contract and relax, that's a very sophisticated thing we're doing there. We're teaching your brain. It's safe to develop force in this position, but that's, that's really a sneaky version of an isometric again, right?”

“tissues that are really fibrotic and stiff. So anything we could do about that. So if we just played press and guess traps feel tight afterwards, like let's get you on a roller. Let's get you on a ball. Let's start working and see if we can restore motion to these segments. And then run our test again. Does it make us feel better? Then we could also ask, do you have full range of motion overhead?”

“watching TV. And maybe I did a little mobility work. I pulled out a roller and said, what's tight. Look at that day. It's pretty agnostic of exercise, but we put a lot of inputs into the body. And sometimes that's what we're doing.”

“which is really good. There are self tests in there. If you have a ball and a roller, we can really get you a long way in terms of making your body feel better at home. Um, and you know, way leads to way. There's so much. That's a, any one of those things, uh, are in there.”

“How about that? Yeah, there's probably a ton of really good science. Thank you for showing us all about the sauna exposure, heat exposure simultaneously. I would say that what if the sauna miracle of the sauna was just that you have to chill out and be in there with your partner and there's no phone and there's a community.”

“Thank you very much. We listened. And now we're at like 180, not 230, you know, I'm not retching in the sauna anymore, you know, cause I'm overheated. But I think if we're talking about performance, great research around sauna, we can sauna, sauna, sauna, but it's a stressor and we'll definitely smoke you.”

“And depending on the temperature and duration, you can get a more robust response, right? So like the longer you do the sauna, the more hot without going above, you know, 200 degree Fahrenheit, you're going to get a, a more robust response with growth hormone. And you know, the effects of growth hormone, particularly on like tendons, making them stronger.”

“right? It's easy to do that in sort of, I don't have to, you know, we're lucky we have a sauna, but maybe you, you have one at home and you don't have to drive. We can have lots of these little sub sort of exposures more often. And ultimately, I think it would be real fun to be like, I got into the sauna and look at my skin now.”

“I think we just, it's easy to sort of lose that. We love the sauna because we have a bunch of friends who are maniacs who work really hard. They're at the peak of their power. They're, they're families. And we find it to be the easiest e-break to yank, to, to slow them down in the evening.”

“But I don't warm up before I get on that bike and I do that. And, and what I'm hearing from you is like even that type of, you know, hyper perfusion, as you called it, like where you're getting all of a sudden you're going from nothing to boom.”

“Get on this assault bike for an hour and decongest. What? It's impossible. And so sometimes it's hard to get enough exaggerated cross-pattern motion and movement of the upper body to decongest it the way we're working.”

“But if we're just about, we have a lot of choice here to make this hard, but if it's just about capacity, then let's just give you an exercise bike and do some dumb work, but it's not, how do we become, more skilled? And I guess I think one of the critiques and a valid critique of the last 20 years of strength conditioning, it's become very capacity based.”

“When I am on the go. I am such a fan of the exercise bike. We can protect people's range of motion. It's what we call high physiology, low skill. Not many people die. Like your knee doesn't dislocate.”

“Like your knee doesn't dislocate. Like you can get a lot of work done really fast on that thing. If we had the exercise bike in every household, you're like, you know, we would see a lot of changes, comma, you know, um, I don't know if that scales or is very egalitarian or even democratizing.”

“like doing weight overhead, whether it's dumbbells or a barbell or anything that's, you know, weight and it having an, having a neck problem with it, like not while you're doing it so much, but like the next day that that's really persistent.”

“skill. I hand you a barbell, I hand you dumbbells. I flip you upside down. Now we're competing. Now there's a little psychology of, Hey, I have to do this thing and I'm not sure I can. I'm the, the imposter voice, the fear voice.”

“regular person at college, right? She's not a D1 athlete. She goes to Michigan, Southern econ, but can snatch a barbell, cook, knows how to deal with her stiff quads, knows how to sleep, right? Just has some tools. She's like, Oh, this is how I care for. And then I have a child who's five 11 is going to play a goalie at Berkeley next year.”

“And then we might say, hey, let's work on this aspect of the barbell, or we're going to teach you a kettlebell swing or basic calisthenics of pushups and lunges. And, and pull ups, but in a game.”

“right? It wasn't the Wii. It was the, the now we're not sitting and playing. So it, if we were at a bar stool working, that's still, I can focus, but now I have to do a lot more with my trunk. And now I'm above one and a half metabolic equivalents. As soon as I got my legs a little bit involved in the conversation, boom, above one and a half.”

“So you need a, like a, a stack or something. And two, I want you to have a bar stool so that you can sit down. You can perch, you can lean, you can use it as a prop. You can put your foot on it. You can do half pigeon pose on it. Right. And all of a sudden you're like, wow, there's a lot of movement choice.”

“So having that range of movements really key. And I also have a, it's a bar stool chair. Yes. That I don't use anymore, but I still have it. Yeah. And it's kind of like you sit on it like a saddle. Yes. Saddle chair. Perfect.”

“It's, it's really reasonable. Of course we love to eat the rainbow. A banana is like 80 to a hundred grams, but I'll take like, you're a rutabaga person and you're going to do this all in rutabaga. That's still better than you not doing it in rutabaga. It's a, it's a good, this is how I like to think about nutrition as well as like, what do you need?”

“You're gonna be shocked and don't worry about the fruit. Everyone. You know, you're like, oh my gosh, these bananas are gonna kill me. They're not, you know, you're a, you're not eating the bananas, but you know, one of those loaves, I was just passing Starbucks, right? And one of those little piece of lemon loaves is like 430 calories.”

“you know, I'm just kind of like, I do two minutes of just getting my heart rate up first thing. So it's either rowing or jumping rope. And then after that two minutes, then we kind of get into more range of motion. You know, if I'm doing arms, I'll do pass-throughs with the pole.”

“we're going to fight. What does our warmup look like? It does not look like I'm laying on the ground doing some foam rolling, right? Like you're jumping rope and getting hot and prepping yourself and doing some hypoxic work and breathing and activating and integrating with the people you're like, we're about to fight. Like that's a really nice sort of rubric for, am I prepared”

“Curious. Was not taking enough omega-3s. You, you recently were like, Hey, probably need up that. I was taking my daily dose, my omega-3 index, not sufficient. Get on the iron, get on the omega-3s.”

“They run out the door and I now have controlled breakfast, emergency done. Omega is taken vitamin D taken. There's a fermented food than a little yogurt or kefir. There's a protein. Here's a apple cut up. I know my child leaves the house, at least with the construct, so things that look like the first meal of the day, plus some snacks later on, and we're rolling there.”

“Can you take a breath there? Um, and then can we constrain? I, I would submit that if you and I played spike ball, we would touch a thousand shapes and positions that we could not get in a formal movement practice. So more of that. And then it becomes a little bit more formal as we start to get into high school.”

“Hey, what are these fundamental skills? Maybe that's a Frisbee. Maybe we go play catch. Maybe it's spike ball. Maybe it's reaction off the wall. We probably need to figure out ways to play where the brain and the eyes are the limiter and the driver, not necessarily the physiology.”

“of the stuff that you talked about in your, your bestselling book, supple leopard desk ergonomics, and, and kind of optimizing that because I, as I mentioned to you off camera, embarrassingly have a standing desk.”

“I use it as a standing desk, like 10 years ago, got out of the practice. But before we get to the standing desk, I do want to just, just mention, you know, there's a lot of people in my, in my life that are affected by sitting at a desk that I care about.”

“And I was like, damn, why am I not doing that? Right? It's how easy to slip right in. And, and if it's not a weighted vest, wear a backpack, I would say a backpack is even easier and better for your body. But you know, you don't have to load access. Like I do that when I go to Disney world and walk, but like, that's right.”

“Jill Miller wrote a great book called body by breath, simple ways to mobilize the trunk.”

“There's so much. That's a, any one of those things, uh, are in there. Our last book, built to move, uh, we wrote as kind of a primer because a lot of us nerds aren't doing this, but we wanted to bring neighbors and family members and, and members of our athletic community along. So we kind of wrote a prequel to everything.”

“She comes home and we ate dinner at five, you know, but she had practiced late and now we've got to feed her again. And now like I'm pro cereal. Cereal is like a secret post workout, fueling panacea. Kids will eat it. My child can digest milk.”

“It's so good. Do you know how much a pound of cherries is or a pound of melons? 230 calories. So go ahead and eat a pound of cherries. Don't do it. You'll have disaster pants. It'll be a disaster. But, uh, you'll see that while you can crush the crap out of fruit and have a lot of calorie control, plus fiber plus, you know, in the background.”

“Well, suddenly we're like, oh, I understand why it's sauna and walking and compression and normatec boots. And maybe I use an NMES device or lymphatic drainage or voodoo floss.”

“eating a lot of, you know, reactive snacks. I'm starving. I eat a bag of, you know, Doritos, you know? So we have, we were not putting base nutrition on kids who have these growing body needs. And then our fueling is really, really tricky. When do we eat as a family?”

“great way to sneak it in. And the rest of the thing is, Hey, when we have the opportunity to do a better thing, fine. Sometimes I'm at the airport and I grab a fruit bucket, a $17 cup of grapes and two horrible eggs. That is really not great food, but it's going to do today. And now we'll get the rest of it tomorrow.”

“great way to sneak it in. And the rest of the thing is, Hey, when we have the opportunity to do a better thing, fine. Sometimes I'm at the airport and I grab a fruit bucket, a $17 cup of grapes and two horrible eggs. That is really not great food, but it's going to do today. And now we'll get the rest of it tomorrow.”

“I was needed to get on an iron supplement. Me, right? Isn't that interesting? Curious. Was not taking enough omega-3s. You, you recently were like, Hey, probably need up that.”

“emergency done. Omega is taken vitamin D taken. There's a fermented food than a little yogurt or kefir. There's a protein. Here's a apple cut up. I know my child leaves the house, at least with the construct, so things that look like the first meal of the day, plus some snacks later on, and we're rolling there.”

“into the right conversation. And, you know, they sell kettlebells at target now, you know, and if you just had a kettlebell at home and did some swings, you know, in your kitchen for 10 or 15 minutes, plus went to dance class, plus through a Frisbee, you're going to start to approximate some pretty good, well-balanced fitness.”

“So if you did a track and field warm-up, threw some medicine balls around, bounced and jumped, rolled, played like all of a sudden that feels like a lot of play and a lot of movement exposure.”

“fueling panacea. Kids will eat it. My child can digest milk. So she's got cow milk on there, right? You could choose whatever milk, but I need to get some calories in after that, right? That thing has a little bit of protein. It's not going to be a huge, crazy fat meal.”

“Phillip beach wrote a wonderful book called Muscles and Meridians. It's a functional embryology.”

“maybe I use an NMES device or lymphatic drainage or voodoo floss”

“Most people do have a bathtub at home. You will have to get a little pool thermometer and make sure you're at 104 degree Fahrenheit. So you might have to constantly refill the bath for 20 to stay for it to stay hot for 20 minutes.”

“Who's got his hitting all these things. And again, beans are on the menu. White potatoes are on the menu. Like those, those things count lentils were in there. So I'm agnostic about your, your family traditions, your religious cultural traditions. Show me you're getting all the fruits and vegetables.”

“protein pretzels, protein pretzels, protein chips. That's right. I mean like everything it's, it's protein cinnamon buns with no, with no sugar, but it's like allulose, but it's a cinnamon bun, but it's high protein, right? So all of it's garbage.”

“refined sugar is bad. And so it's okay to eat these processed foods that are high protein, protein pretzels, protein pretzels, protein chips. That's right. I mean like everything it's, it's protein cinnamon buns with no, with no sugar, but it's like allulose, but it's a cinnamon bun, but it's high protein, right?”

“People hang from a bar. If you can hang three minutes a day, work on, that's such a great thing to do. Why? Good for your neck. Good for your back. Good for your shoulders.”

“author of some influential books, including Becoming a Supple Leopard, Ready to Run, Deskbound, and Built to Move”

“on the to but if I say, hey, I'm going to need you to get on this rower for an hour, you're going to be like, bro, I'm not doing that. Get on this assault bike for an hour, decongest. What? It's impossible. And so sometimes it's hard to get enough exaggerated cross-pattern motion and movement of the upper body to decongest it the way we're working.”

“et cetera. And that suddenly cracks the whole thing open. So having that range of movements really key. And I also have a, it's a bar stool chair. Yes. That I don't use anymore, but I still have it. Yeah. And it's kind of like you sit on it like a saddle. Yes. Saddle chair.”

“if we can, right. Um, the sophistication that comes along with the trappings of parents feeling like their kid is getting a leg up with like sports ladders, um, we see a lot of agility training kinds of things that feel sciency, but aren't really a sciency.”

“Now is we've got to get this brain in this eye all working together. We're having to train that now. Like we do a lot of tennis ball work because I need kids to throw and catch and jump and bounce. And there's lots of great examples on the web of all the drills you can do playing around with a tennis ball.”

“Julian and I, that sport, and this is John Rainey, right? The anxious generation. He's like, for kids, we really have two solutions, church and sport. And what we feel like is sport is an opportunity to teach all of these things about recovery, nutrition, mindset as a formal framework, because we're all going to stop doing sports the way we kind of traditionally think about them.”

“We're huge fans of entertainment of your body. Michael Easter talks about the comfort crisis, just that exposure to those ends, making you a little bit more psychologically resilient. How about that? Yeah, there's probably a ton of really good science.”

“They run out the door and I now have controlled breakfast, emergency done. Omega is taken vitamin D taken. There's a fermented food than a little yogurt or kefir. There's a protein. Here's a apple cut up. I know my child leaves the house, at least with the construct, so things that look like the first meal of the day, plus some snacks later on, and we're rolling there.”

“an NMES device or lymphatic drainage or voodoo floss. There's a lot of things we could do to facilitate moving congestion, moving swelling up the chain and clearing it because a congested tissue, like, you know, someone has OA in their knee, osteoarthritis, and they haven't done knee is reacted to the loading and maybe the nutrition and the sleep and whatever.”

“Like I do that when I go to Disney world and walk, but like, that's right. That's right. What, what, like, let's say I wanted to get the weighted vest. Perfect What weight do you think I should start with? Yes. Start with some. You know, the idea is that like, let's, you know, don't go to level 12 immediately.”

“emergency done. Omega is taken vitamin D taken. There's a fermented food than a little yogurt or kefir. There's a protein. Here's a apple cut up. I know my child leaves the house, at least with the construct, so things that look like the first meal of the day, plus some snacks later on, and we're rolling there.”