Episode #173 Dr Kelly Starrett on movement, mechanics, and mobility

Today’s guest is Kelly Starrett!  

Kelly is a coach, physical therapist, author, and speaker. Along with his wife Juliet, Kelly is co-founder of The Ready State. The Ready State began as Mobility|WOD in 2008 and has gone on to revolutionize the field of performance therapy and self-care. Kelly received his Doctor of Physical Therapy degree in 2007 from Samuel Merritt College in Oakland, California.

Kelly’s clients include professional athletes in the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB. He also works with Olympic gold-medalists, Tour de France cyclists, world-and national-record-holding Olympic lifting and power athletes, CrossFit Games medalists, ballet dancers, military personnel, and competitive age-division athletes.

Kelly is the author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers Becoming A Supple Leopard and Ready to Run. He is also co-author (with Juliet) of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Deskbound. His latest book, Waterman 2.0, offers water-sport athletes a comprehensive guide to optimized movement and pain-free performance.

Kelly and his work have been featured on 60 Minutes, The View, The Joe Rogan Experience, CBS Sports, Outside Magazine, Men's Health, Men's Journal and dozens of other podcasts, magazines, and books — including Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Body and Tools of Titans.

On top of co-founding The Ready State, Kelly and Juliet also started San Francisco CrossFit and StandUpKids together.

Founded in 2005, San Francisco CrossFit was the 21st CrossFit affiliate in the world. And StandUpKids is a non-profit dedicated to combating kids' sedentary lifestyles by bringing standing and moving desks to low-income public schools. To date, StandUpKids has converted 95,000 kids from sitting to standing. Earlier in their careers, Kelly and Juliet also co-founded a kayaking camp for children with HIV called Liquid.

In his athletic career, Kelly paddled whitewater slalom canoe on the US Canoe and Kayak Teams. He lead the Men’s Whitewater Rafting Team to two national titles and competed in two World Championships. In his free time, “KStar” likes to spend time with his wife, Juliet, and two daughters, Georgia and Caroline. He also loves to mountain bike, paddle, and sauna. And while Kelly claims to only “tolerate” the ice bath, according to Juliet he actually likes that, too.

The Ready State is the world's most comprehensive collection of guided movement, mechanics, and mobility instructional videos. Renowned physical therapist, strength & conditioning coach, and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Kelly Starrett and his expert staff will guide you through each routine.

TRS Virtual Mobility Coach provides users guided mobilization videos customized for your body and lifestyle, including a personal “pain prescription” to fix your aches and stiffness, guided pre and post-exercise mobilizations tailored for your training and sports schedule, and mobilizations for your “off” days to maintain your range-of-motion and reduce your risk of injury.

 

Here are some key points that I would advise you to concentrate on

• Pain is not a badge of honor, its not something that you need to live with, it can be fixed with some work on yourself. 
• Prehab is a lot less costly, in terms of all areas, compared to surgery or life-long injury. Start adding in prehab components to your training now.
• A prehab routine does not need to be ethos, identity, or a long time, you can have fun, play and enjoy the time, and make it a small part of your life. 
• Patterns learnt during training will show themselves when competing and at times of high importance, ensure the movements you are learning are the ones of a high quality and that you want to use when it matters most. 
• "...pain is not the barometer pain is not the barrier, pain is not the marker pain is your body's request for change. It's trying to get your attention and I want you to start treating pain which is not a medical problem like wattage. Like poundage, like time I want you to start using pain as an objective measure. I have pain here. It doesn't mean I'm crippled. It doesn't mean I'm injured. It's my body telling me something is up I need you to pay attention." Listen to your pain, learn from it as a feedback tool and make the necessary changes and don't self-soothe with alcohol or drugs. 
• Your body is a system and not just parts. If one part is not functioning correctly, then the system does not work as effectively as it could. 
• You are unique and your analysis and health plan should be too. Your coach should be reading the return of data from your performance and working on a fix that helps you, not a cookie cutter, 1 fit all plan that he uses for everyone.
• "Ideally, you would spend 10 minutes a night taking care of your soft tissues. What's stiff get on the ground if you just sat on the ground watching Tv for the next hour. You'd be blown away at how much more mobile your hips would be because you'd long sit for a while you'd side sit you'd Kneel, You'd be Cross-legged and you would hit all of these positions spending a ton of time in shapes that you would then have to get to use later on. So ultimately again I want you to have some benchmarks some physical vital signs for helping you understand your movement and how well you're moving. And want you to have some behavioral vital signs to also say hey I didn't need enough protein today I can do better tomorrow right? I should walk more today I can do better tomorrow."
• Your body is like a word document, always changing in real time, and your programme needs to be adaptable to the changes, understanding the feedback and being able to change to suit your needs and skill level.
• "Don't be heroic, be consistent!"
• A good coach is worth far more to an athlete than an abundance of money.
• Strength and Olympic training can be vehicles that let you learn about yourself. Strength exercises can provide a tool that shows what is working, what isn't effective and how the issues can be resolved.
• "The most important thing you can do is play your sport right? That's that's the thing you need you don't play your sport enough. You can't play your sport enough. You need more time playing your sport period Comma We know that that is not the way to win a world championship. Ultimately, you're going to have to become stronger and you're not be able to do that in your sport." 
• Your aim during training should be to become a better athlete, too many people are losing track of why you are training and instead focusing on the how and what. 
• "There's no good exercises or bad exercises but there are certain positions and shapes that lend themselves to lot more transferability" - a good coach can help you select exercises that will allow you to get the most return for your effort in life and your sport depending on your specific goals and abilities. 
• Better spatial awareness can be learnt. I find BJJ is fantastic to help you learn what your body parts are doing as separate entities and all together. It's easy to learn to know where an arm is, if it keeps getting arm barred if left out of your guard!
• "... oxygen really isn't the big master chemical. We thought it was it turns out CO2 is the master ... CO2 is the big driver of needing to breathe and one of the things we know is that your body's ability to tolerate higher CO2 levels means that you can actually take more oxygen off the hemoglobin. So if you haven't trained, you start to be really tolerant to that toxicity gnarly burn, then you feel ugly, getting that wheezy feeling. And if you haven't trained your brainstem to say that's okay, then you'll immediately stop your force production. You'll slow down you'll pant and breathe and catch up." Better breath control helps you perform better. Your legs are a limited resource, your lungs are unlimited, you just need to train them to work at in an effective manner.