Apr 4, 2023
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.