by

Tim Ferriss

Dr. Kelly Starrett — The Magic of Movement and Mobility, Training for Range of Motion, Breathing for Back Pain, Improving Your Balance, and More (#664)

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Artist's rendering of Dr. Kelly Starrett.
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“Be consistent before you’re heroic.”

— Kelly Starrett

Kelly Starrett, DPT (@thereadystate) is one of my favorite performance coaches. When I have problems other people can’t solve, I call Kelly. He’s also a treasure trove of one-liners.

He is, along with his wife Juliet, co-founder of The Ready State. The Ready State began as MobilityWOD in 2008 and has gone on to transform the field of performance therapy and self-care.

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, professional ballet dancers, elite military personnel, and more.

Kelly is the author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers Becoming A Supple Leopard and Ready to Run. His new book is Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully, co-written with Juliet Starrett.

Juliet was the U.S. National Champion in extreme whitewater racing from 1997 to 2000 and World Champion from 1997 to 1998. She returned to the sport in 2018 to become World Champion in the Masters Division.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Brought to you by Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating, Athletic Greens’s AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement, and Shopify global commerce platform providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business. 

The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

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#664: Dr. Kelly Starrett — The Magic of Movement and Mobility, Training for Range of Motion, Breathing for Back Pain, Improving Your Balance, and More

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Want to hear the first time Kelly was on this podcast? Check out my conversation with him and Dr. Justin Mager where we discussed the difference between being well and thriving, the fringes of physiology, exceeding “optimal” performance, correcting circadian rhythms while traveling, pattern recognition and “chunking” for improved talent acquisition, Kelly’s mattress selection, rebooting the parasympathetic nervous system, and much more.

#3: Kelly Starrett and Dr. Justin Mager

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

  • Find The Ready State Online:

Website | Twitter | Instagram

SHOW NOTES

  • [08:05] Where in the world are Kelly and Tim?
  • [13:34] A lesson in how our environment shapes us.
  • [19:12] Optimizing vital signs and range of motion as we age.
  • [30:31] Walk and fidget more for better sleep and body maintenance.
  • [40:37] Balance training: not just for “old” people.
  • [50:51] Extending the end range of motion.
  • [54:58] The old man shoe-on game.
  • [59:50] The airport scanner shoulder test.
  • [1:05:55] Simple corrective exercises.
  • [1:09:44] Tower of London.
  • [1:12:41] Breath as a mobilization device.
  • [1:19:13] A reasonable amount of daily protein.
  • [1:23:09] 800 grams of fruits and vegetables.
  • [1:32:27] Never do nothing. But my something doesn’t have to be your something.
  • [1:43:23] Cultivating cross-cultural, timeless movement in a busy world.
  • [1:53:43] Who is Built To Move for?
  • [1:58:54] Parting thoughts.

MORE KELLY STARRETT QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“We want to more tightly conjoin our day-to-day processes with understanding who we are.”
— Kelly Starrett

“Joseph Pilates was not messing about.”
— Kelly Starrett

“In the Tower of London there was a torture device where you were kneeling. You put your chest on your legs, and then someone would screw a vice over your back, basically like a wishbone, and compress your back until you couldn’t breathe anymore. But I was like, that’s a clever way to get into the upper back. I’m going to try that. . . . And I discovered [it] was a really wonderful way to help get this global flexion of my back.”
— Kelly Starrett

“If you’re on your Peloton bike and you think you’re killing it, ask yourself, ‘Is there a position on this Peloton bike where I can take a bigger breath?’ And you’ll start to organize your body, and guess what? You’ll power more effectively. Because if we see better function of the body, we see better output of the body.”
— Kelly Starrett

“I didn’t even say, ‘Eat organic bananas.’ I just said, ‘Whatever you can afford, whatever works in your socioeconomic system, is going to be a better health outcome than not getting enough protein and fruits and vegetables.’”
— Kelly Starrett

“The objective measurements—obesity, diabetes, chronic pain, persistent pain, injuries, surgery, depression—what we see is that those things are trending in negative ways. If fitness is a trillion-dollar industry, and we’re not making people fitter and expanding their fitness besides “I look great on Instagram with my abs,” just expanding that definition a little bit, then we have to start asking a different set of questions around this.”
— Kelly Starrett

“Be consistent before you’re heroic.”
— Kelly Starrett

“The glacial pace is the breakneck pace.”
— Kelly Starrett

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