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If You Care About Fitness, You Should Work On Your Mobility | Get Fit Sanely Listener Picks: Kelly and Juliet Starrett
00:15:34
We asked listeners to tell us about some of their favorite episodes from our Get Fit Sanely series, and we’ll be bringing you some excerpts of those episodes on Fridays this month. Today, we’re hearing from listener Abby, who experienced a...
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- [00:00]
Abby
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Dan Harris
This is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Happy Friday, everybody. How we doing? A lot of us exercise to boost our muscle strength or our cardiovascular fitness. But how much do you focus on mobility and flexibility? Mobility and flexibility are incredibly important, especially as you get older. And to my listeners who are in your 20s, just to say you're getting older too. So you need to listen to this. Like I said, mobility and flexibility, super important. And today we've got a brief nugget of wisdom about how to train mobility. Specifically, as you may know, we're in the midst of our month long Get Fit Sanely series where we talk about how to take care of your body without losing your mind. And on Fridays during the series, we are revisiting some gems of wisdom from past Get Fit Sanely episodes. And these gems are introduced by listeners. In other words, we asked you, our listeners, to tell us about past episodes that made you think differently about something or even change something in your life. So, so today you're going to hear from a listener who got some new perspective on how to think about health as she gets older. And so we're going to share her comment. And the comment comes from a listener named Abby, who's a stalwart supporter of my work and a friend and somebody I really appreciate. So you'll hear from Abby right after this. And then after you hear from Abby, you'll hear from the experts who changed Abby's mind and life. So we'll be right back for that. I always love it when a company that my family and I are already supporting decides to become a supporter of this show. We have been owners of a Defender for many, many years. I think four or five years. It's the car my wife drives. It makes me very comfortable knowing that she and our son are moving around in a sturdy, reliable vehicle like the Defender. And it looks really, really cool. It's just a great looking car. It really suits my wife, Bill, better than it does me, given that she's just cooler than I am. And one of the things that the folks who make the Defender want you to know is that it's really about the spirit of adventure and healthy risk taking. There's a meetup of people who are in this category. It's called Destination Defender. It's an incredible weekend festival in Port Jervis, New York, and it was created for people who embrace the impossible and includes a lot of outdoor activities, live music, chef tastings and more. Sounds really fun. Join the adventure at Destination Defender May 16th through 18th to learn more, please visit DestinationDefenderUSA.com a couple months ago, my family and I went to Nosara, which is a cool little town on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, and really loved the place, although we didn't get to spend enough time there. So we're going to go back with some friends of ours, the Strausses. We love this family. They've got a kid who's exactly our son's age, so the parents have a great time hanging out and the kids get along really well. And so we are going to get an Air Airbnb. There are lots of great Airbnb offerings in Nosara and as you've heard me say before, for many of the most important travel plans, especially if we're going to stay with another family, I really do prefer an Airbnb because you get to spend more time together. You've got common spaces where you can cook meals together. You're not siloed off into separate rooms. Of course, you do have privacy, but there's plenty of space for unscripted, unplanned hangout sessions. You don't have to be texting each other all the time to figure out when and how and where you're going to hang out. You just bump into each other. It's just a great way to travel and to get to know your friends and to spend time with your friends and deepen those relationships. And as you may know, one of the great things about Airbnb is that you can find great places to stay on there, but you can also be a provider of a great place to stay. You can put your home on Airbnb and make a little extra dough while you're traveling. You get paid to take a vacation, which seems like a smart thing to do. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host.
- [04:22]
Abby
My name is Abby, I live in Kansas City and I wanted to share a story about the interview that Dan did with Kelly and Juliet Starrett about their book Built to Move and why that had such a positive impact on me. In early June of 2023, I was playing tennis and suffered an injury on my right calf muscle and because I didn't want to be bound to a boot for the next six weeks, promptly found myself a physical therapist. Shout out to Rehab All Star Aaron Borgman here in Kansas City. He's an amazing guy. Ex NFL physical therapist recommend him wholeheartedly. We started working on repairing my calf and it was about a week later that I heard Dan's Interview with the Starrettes. The section of the interview where Juliet is talking about how as time goes on and as we age, the window of our physical abilities starts to narrow really resonated with me. I tore this calf muscle about six months before my 50th birthday, and I was starting to worry that maybe I wouldn't be able to do the things that I really enjoyed doing in terms of physical fitness. And I guess I realized I had always taken that for granted. So listening to the book and then talking about it with my physical therapist made me realize, wait a second, there are things we can do here to maintain our mobility over a longer period of time, and that we really don't have to stress out about an injury or stress out about something that might be a setback, because there are always exercises and things that you can do that will have a big impact on you. Had it not been for the interview that Dan did on his podcast, I don't know that I would have had that rich of a conversation with my physical therapist. Probably would've been a little bit more transactional, became a little bit more relationship oriented. So thank you to the team at 10% happier, and thank you for putting great content out into the world. I know. I appreciate it.
- [06:21]
Dan Harris
Thank you so much, Abby. Really appreciate you taking the time to send in that voice note. Okay, so now let's hear the part of the interview with Kelly and Juliet Starrett where we started talking about some of the tests and exercises in their book, which is called Built to Move. All right, so let's dive in. Where should we start with the tests?
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Kelly Starrett
I say we start with the first one, which is the sit and rise test.
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Dan Harris
Okay. I tried that this morning, just sitting in the ground.
- [06:46]
Kelly Starrett
How did you fare? How did you.
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Juliet Starrett
You're a Buddhist. You're meditating. This was easy, right?
- [06:50]
Dan Harris
Well, I'm a Buddhist who's not particularly limber, so I meditate in chairs. The full lotus is not available to me, at least not yet. So I just hurled myself on the ground and tried to get up without using my arms. Is that the right way to do it?
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Kelly Starrett
Exactly.
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Juliet Starrett
Arms. And you're not supposed to put your knee down either. Just from a crisscross applesauce position. Can you lower yourself to the ground and then are you able to stand back up from that crisscross applesauce position?
- [07:14]
Dan Harris
I was, but I did need a little momentum. I kind of had to lean my back up, engage my core, and get up that way.
- [07:20]
Kelly Starrett
That still counts. I often have to do that, too, especially If I've had a big training session or some kind of more serious physical load the day before, I have to do a little rocking to make it.
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Juliet Starrett
So what people might imagine is that, wow, children can do this. Sitting on the ground is endemic to every culture that we used to toilet on the ground, sleep on the ground, work on the ground, hang it on the ground. And the number one reason you might end up in a nursing home is your inability to get up and down off the ground independently. And that's actually true. So here we have a simple test, well validated, that shows that, hey, this is an easy sort of snapshot into how well you're going to move or how well you're going to move into the future. It doesn't require full hip range of motion. It doesn't require ankle range of motion. You don't have to be very strong because you're a human being and you've been doing this and practicing this from kindergarten on beyond. So what is it that suddenly has diminished your capacity to move as freely? If I hand you a baby and ask you to get up off the ground, you're like, I can't do it.
- [08:22]
Dan Harris
So once we do the test, what's the practice that's associated with it? What should we do about it?
- [08:28]
Kelly Starrett
Sure. And I just was going to back up for a second and say, one of the reasons we love this test and wanted to start the book with it is that it is so ultimately scalable. Anybody can do it. It's actually fun to try with your family and friends. And it's also scalable. So if you're worried about falling down onto the ground, you can first practice by going down to a chair, to a coffee table, and, you know, slowly work your way into seeing if you can achieve that position. And it also does really quickly and easily give you some basic information about your overall hip range of motion and movement capacity. And the second reason that we wanted to start the book with this is that the way that you can get better at this is so ultimately also accessible. And that is by first doing the thing which is actually practicing getting up and going off the floor exposure. And then secondarily, it's spending time sitting on the floor in a variety of positions. And we recommend that people do this while they're doing something we know they're already doing, which is watching TV in the evenings. And what we found, especially because we haven't become as accustomed to sitting on the floor as a culture anymore, is that it's often uncomfortable, especially to begin with. And people naturally move from position to position to position. So they'll start in crisscross applesauce, but move to long sit or 90, 90 or even kneeling. And that naturally, in order to sort of buffer sitting on the ground, their body is, is sort of cueing them to move into different positions. But ultimately that's actually great because you're exposing your hips and your body to these different positions, which is ultimately help you in your overall hip range of motion and ultimately help you get better at this test. And we've seen people who really struggled at the beginning with this test and just implemented some practice getting up and down off the floor, 30 minutes of sitting a day, whether that's in front of the TV at night, or if you're someone who happens to work from home, maybe you spend 30 minutes or an hour of your workday actually sitting on your living room floor with your laptop on your coffee table. And so the practice is ultimately something that really, again, doesn't require you to put on your running shoes and get in your car and drive to a class. The practice to get better at this is actually just something you can do while you're doing something you're already doing and at home.
- [10:38]
Juliet Starrett
And there's a key concept here that I think everyone should put in their back pockets. Something I learned in physio school from our pediatric instructor. Muscles and tissues are like obedient dogs. So the first order of business is exposure. Just go ahead and begin to sit and if you can manage five minutes, fine. If you need to sit on a cushion, fine, doesn't matter. You'll figure out how to scale this. Not only does it just load the aspects of the body, the hip capsules, the connective tissue, the muscles, your joints, they all have to move in this way, which is the most important thing, but also signals to your brain that this is a safe position, that this is a position we value. And so your brain starts to open up its control and starts to view those positions as non threatening.
- [11:20]
Dan Harris
So when I'm sitting on the ground, I can't lean my back against anything.
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Juliet Starrett
Sure you can.
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Kelly Starrett
Oh, you can. Yes. Yeah. My choice position is I sit on the ground on a little, very thin, like meditation cushion and often with my back leaned against the couch, or if I'm choosing to work at my laptop in that position on the floor, I tend to be leaning more forward because I have to reach my laptop. But yeah, I mean, really, anything goes. You can lean against your couch or.
- [11:47]
Juliet Starrett
Anything and you can see suddenly the sort of slippery slope you ask, is it okay? Yes, explore. I think what we've been conditioned to do is, look, I've got to do this right way and this wrong way, or am I doing this correctly? Sitting on the ground should be a non political conversation. We're just asking you to do and expose your body. Very fundamental positions and shapes, and those fundamental position shapes over time start to do things like make your back feel better, make your hips feel better. We have to ask ourselves, when and where can people begin to access these essential behaviors and start to explore and restore and own their body's capacities and abilities? And that can start as easy as in front of your TV tonight.
- [12:32]
Dan Harris
I don't know that I've spent much time thinking about my hips. Why is hip range of motion so important?
- [12:39]
Kelly Starrett
I would just like to start and just sort of define the word mobility if I could, because we're often associated with that. People are like, you guys are the mobility experts, but nobody knows what that means. And so to us, what mobility means is can you move your body freely through your environment without pain, and can you do the things you want to do physically? And that's very personal and wide ranging for people from being able to garden, to meditate, to ride your mountain bike, to ski. I mean, you name it, you know that physical capacity is very individual, but turns out everybody desires to have that. And the way that I like to think about your physical capacity in this way is sort of this visual that is helpful to me. If you think about the things you want to do with your body as this sort of wide hallway. And when you're young, your hallway is like so wide. You have the widest hallway because you can really do whatever you want with your body. But as we age, people start to feel that hallway, start to constrict a little bit. And the things that they were able to do at 20 and then 30, they start to slowly constrict. Well, the goal here is for all of us, especially as we age, to do our level best to keep that hallway as wide open as possible so that we can continue doing the things we want to do physically. And it turns out having hip range of motion is a key part of that. And I'll let Kelly sort of elaborate on the why. Why you should care.
- [13:57]
Juliet Starrett
Well, I think it's interesting to see, for example, if we take that 30,000 foot view in cultures that toilet on the ground, sleep on the ground, spend more time and value things that look like squatting. The truth is that in those cultures where there's a Lot more range of motion required to engage in the sort of demands of society. We see lower lumbar disease, we see less hip arthritis, fewer joint replacements. Fall risk starts to approach zero in the elderly because they have to get up and down and practice these skills every day oftentimes. Remember, I'm classically trained as a physical therapist. People really don't make an association between losing their range of motion and the stiffness demands that that imparts on the body. And how suddenly, oftentimes, when we restore people's ability to move more effortlessly, we restore them toward more natural, normative ranges that every physician, every orthopedic surgeon, every physical therapist thinks that everyone should have. And by the way, doesn't have to change through your life. We often see an associated reduction in pain, that people improve their function and suddenly they start to feel better. So suddenly you can say things like, well, as I'm able to get up and down off the ground, that's ultimately an expression of how my hips move through a functional range of motion. The problem is it's easy to get out of bed, sit at the table, sit at the car, sit at the desk, sit on the couch, and never actually touch any, any of these full ranges of motion unless you're conscious about doing it, unless you go to a yoga class or Pilates class, or unless you're front squatting or doing some of these practices that traditionally have exposed the tissues to their normal full range of motion positions.
- [15:46]
Kelly Starrett
Kelly is one of the most sought after physical therapists there is. And so he obviously, over his career, has seen a ton of people with low back pain, which is a huge problem for many people. And I think people would be surprised to learn that his prescription for people who come to see him with low back pain isn't some, you know, secret, amazing, you know, manual physical therapy procedure he's doing on their bodies. He teaches them how to breathe, he prescribes them to walk a lot more than they are, and he teaches them how to mobilize their hips. And those are kind of the three key pillars of his strategy of working with people with low back pain, which I'm sure many of your listeners either have or have had and can be very debilitating. And, you know, having range of motion in your body is one of the key things that is going to help keep that physical corridor wide open as you age. And so it's just something that you've got to put a little input into and be mindful of. And so we find that these tests in this book give you a little bit of information about where you are and some pretty simple practices to do what we call care and feeding of the body so you can make sure you're keeping an eye on maintaining that range of motion for no other reason than that you want to be able to keep doing the things you want to do physically, whether that's playing with your grandchildren when you're older or, you know, if you're in your 30s and you're trying to train for a triathlon. It's universally useful for all those things.
- [17:13]
Dan Harris
Thanks again to Juliet and Kelly Starrett, and thanks again to our listener and my friend Abby for suggesting that excerpt. We'll put a link to the full episode in the show notes if you want more. And don't forget that this year's version of Get Fit Sailing includes bespoke meditations that go with every full length episode. Those meditations are led by my friend Cara Lai and they're available to paying subscribers over@danharris.com so get over there and sign up if you haven't already done that. Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
- [18:12]
Juliet Starrett
Hi Zoe Saldana. Welcome to T Mobile. Here's your new iPhone 16 Pro on us.
- [18:16]
Abby
Thanks. And here's my old phone to trade in.
- [18:19]
Juliet Starrett
You don't need a trade in when you switch to T Mobile. We'll give you a new iPhone 16 Pro. Plus we'll help you pay off your old Phone up to 800 bucks and you still get to keep it.
- [18:28]
Abby
There's always a trade in.
- [18:29]
Dan Harris
Not right now.
- [18:29]
Juliet Starrett
At T Mobile.
- [18:30]
Dan Harris
I feel like I have to give.
- [18:31]
Abby
You something in return for karma.
- [18:32]
Juliet Starrett
That's okay.
- [18:34]
Abby
I don't really have much in my purse. Oh, let's see. Hand sanitizer. It's lavender.
- [18:38]
Juliet Starrett
I'm good. Seriously.
- [18:40]
Abby
Let me check this pocket.
- [18:41]
Kelly Starrett
Oh, mints.
- [18:42]
Juliet Starrett
Really, I'm fine.
- [18:43]
Abby
Oh, I have raisins. I'm a mom. Wait, wait one sec. I've got cupcakes in the car.
- [18:47]
Juliet Starrett
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- [19:08]
Kelly Starrett
Allow 15 days credits end in balance.
- [19:10]
Juliet Starrett
Due if you pay off early or cancel.
- [19:11]
Kelly Starrett
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