Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully - Hardcover

Starrett, Kelly; Starrett, Juliet

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593534808 ISBN 13: 9780593534809

Publisher: Knopf, 2023

Synopsis

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • Simple but powerful physical practices to dramatically improve the way your body feels and prolong your lifespan, no matter how you spend your time • From the innovators behind The Ready State and the movement bible Becoming a Supple Leopard, an accessible longevity guide perfect for anyone who wants to optimize their mobility and age the healthy way

“The definitive guide for building an all-around healthy and high-performing body and mind.” —Andrew Huberman, Professor of Neurobiology, Stanford University & Host of The Huberman Lab Podcast

Ready to boost your overall quality of life without overhauling your daily routine and spending thousands? Start here – with Built to Move. Not only a book, but your new secret weapon for a more durable body and thriving health. No matter your financial background, age, or occupation, Built to Move is designed to be your lifelong companion and your guide to optimal wellness.

After decades spent working with professional athletes, Olympians, and Navy Seals, mobility pioneers Kelly and Juliet Starrett began thinking about the physical well-being of the rest of us. What makes a durable human? How do we continue to feel great and function well as we age? And how do we counteract the effects of technology-dependence, sedentary living, and other modern ways of life on our body’s natural need for activity?  

The answers lie in an easy-to-use formula for basic mobility maintenance: 10 tests + 10 physical practices = 10 ways to make your body work better for a healthier, longer, and more joyful life!

Built to Move teaches you: 

•  Easy mobilization practices to increase range of motion and avoid injury to prepare your body for  whatever comes its way
•  Brand-new vital sign tests to predict your likely lifespan
•  Simple hacks to integrate more movement into your daily life, escape sedentary habits, and  reclaim your vitality
•  Longevity-promoting nutrition and sleep tips
•  Targeted breathing exercises for stress and pain management
•  A proven roadmap to healthy aging in the age of unhealthy conveniences

Whether you’re 20, 50, or 70, completely new to mobility work or a professional athlete, a self-proclaimed health nut or just diving into the world of performance optimization for the first time – these practices will work for you. And the best part? They are so simple, and so easy to fit into any schedule or budget, that anyone can start at any time, no preparation needed!
 
If you want greater ease of movement, better health, and a happier life doing the things you love to do—and the things you want to continue doing as long as you live, what are you waiting for? This book is your game plan for the long game.

“Juliet and Kelly Starrett have given you a detailed, accessible road map to help you move through life feeling better, stronger, and more confident than you ever imagined, no matter where you’re starting from. There is no body this book will not revolutionize.”—Melissa Urban, cofounder of Whole30
 
 




 
 
 
 

About this title

About the Author

DR. KELLY STARRETT is the coauthor of the New York Times best sellers Becoming a Supple Leopard, Ready to Run, and the Wall Street Journal best seller Deskbound. He is also the cofounder of The Ready State, and the cofounder of San Francisco CrossFit. He consults with athletes and coaches from the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB, the US Olympic Team, elite Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard forces, and consults with corporations on employee health and wellbeing. He lives in California.

JULIET STARRETT, J.D. is an entrepreneaur, attorney, author, and podcaster. She is the cofounder and CEO of The Ready State, the former cofounder and CEO of San Francisco CrossFit. She is coauthor of the Wall Street Journal best seller Deskbound, and was a professional whitewater paddler, winning three world championships and five national titles. She lives in California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Built to Move is our life jacket, handed to you, with instructions on how to prepare your body for whatever comes its way, be it aging, injury, or just the physical aches and pains that can come from living in this chairbound, technology-loving, caffeine-fueled world of ours. With this book as your guide, you’ll stop “throwing” your back out when you make the bed. You’ll no longer find yourself uncomfortably bent over when you get up from a chair after a long session at your desk. Your shoulders will relax. You’ll lose weight and become less susceptible to related diseases like diabetes. Your spine will become more stable, your energy renewed, your mind clear. If you’re an athlete or devoted exerciser, you’ll be faster, stronger, and less prone to wrecking a shoulder or hamstring. Knee aches will fade. What you’ll essentially be doing is building yourself one hell of a durable body. And you’ll be doing it in some very unexpected ways.

To see what we mean, take off your shoes. That’s right: shoes off. Now follow these instructions:

In an area free of debris, stand with one foot crossed in front of the other. Without holding on to anything (unless you feel very unsteady), bend your knees and lower yourself to the floor until you’re sitting in a cross-legged position. Now, from the same cross-legged position, lean forward with your hands outstretched in front of you for balance, and rise off the floor—if possible, without placing your hands or knees on the floor or using anything else for support.

You have now just taken what’s called the Sit-and-Rise Test. So, how’d you do? Don’t worry if you didn’t ace it. There’s no public service message on TV telling you that you need to practice getting up and down off the floor. Doctors never mention it. Fitness trainers have other fish to fry. But being able to sit and rise without support is a singular way to tell if you’ve got a body that’s dynamic and able to move in ways that will make you feel alive—and even help you stay alive longer. Same goes for hitting all the other usually overlooked benchmarks you’ll encounter in this book.

The reason we hit you with the Sit-and-Rise Test so soon (we’ll revisit it in full starting on page 30) is because we wanted to get you thinking about what being able to get up and down off the floor represents: mobility. “Mobility” is a kind of wonky term that refers to something quite beautiful: the harmonious convergence of all the elements that allow you to move freely and effortlessly through space and life. Everything is in sync—your joints, muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia, nerves, brain, and the vasculature that runs through the body. The program in this book—and our life’s work—addresses this whole network of movement components. Harnessing its power will help you achieve agility, ease, and quickness of step while vanquishing restriction, rigidity, and pain.

And, contrary to what you might expect, achieving good mobility doesn’t call for exercise. No cardio. No strength training. Instead, it’s a series of simple activities that enhance your capacity for free and easy movement, and in doing so also improve all the systems in your body (digestive, circulatory, immune, lymphatic) that are impacted by putting yourself in motion. You use your body’s infrastructure, so you don’t lose your body’s infrastructure. Mobility also primes the body for exercise, if that’s what you want to do. But more important, it primes the body for life.

The premise of Built to Move is simple: 10 tests + 10 physical practices = 10 ways to make your body work better. It introduces elements of well-being that most people have never heard of before, weaving them into a plan that everyone can accomplish in one form or another. Like the Sit-and-Rise activity you just did, the tests are markers of what we call Vital Signs, indicators of how well you move, how much you move, or how well some of your other lifestyle activities support movement. You’re about to find out things like whether you can raise your arms overhead without restriction, if you can balance on one leg, how high (or low) your daily micronutrient intake is, and how many hours of sleep you’re getting per night. These aren’t things that are traditionally known as Vital Signs, but we’d argue that it’s just as important to gather information on these aspects of health as it is to chart your pulse, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels. These Vital Signs provide clues to why you may have aches, pains, and fatigue; they foretell whether you’ll be able to recover well from illness or injury; and they serve as a harbinger of how active you’ll be as you age.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593534808
• ISBN 13: 9780593534809
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336