Built To Move: Kelly & Juliet Starrett On Functional Strength, Mobility, And Falling In Love With Movement

How do we move with ease? Maintain flexibility as we age? And how do we counteract the physical effects of technology dependence, sedentary living, and other modern ways of life? Here to help us answer these important questions are movement experts and co-authors of Built To Move Kelly & Juliet Starrett. Dr. Kelly Starett is a globally renowned physical therapist and strength coach who consults with athletes from the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB the US Olympic Team—along with elite Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard forces. Juliet is a 3-time white water rafting world champion and CEO of The Ready State, the mobility coaching company they founded together. Today we cover everything from pain management to ideal recovery and post-workout practices, the essential elements of a home gym, and easy ways to change sedentary habits and integrate more movement into your daily life. Show notes + MORE Watch on Youtube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: LMNT: drinkLMNT.com/RICHROLL BetterHelp: BetterHelp.com/RICHROLL AG1: drinkAG1.com/RICHROLL Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:14Juliet Starrett?

  Mobility is really the ability to do the things you want to be able to do with your body.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Do you have your native range of motion and can you control that native range of motion?

• 0:25Rich Roll?

  How do we move with ease? How do we maintain flexibility as we age and address issues before they become injuries?

• 0:35Juliet Starrett?

  There are ways that you can change your environment so that these are just things you do without having to rely on willpower or motivation.

• 0:43Rich Roll?

  Today, we dive deep into all things mobility with two legends of movement, Kelly and Juliette Starrett. Dr. Kelly Starrett is a globally renowned physical therapist and strength coach, and his wife Juliette is a three-time whitewater rafting world champion and CEO of The Ready State, which is the mobility coaching company they founded together. They've worked with some of the world's premier athletes as well as everyday average folks, and together, they co-wrote the recently published Built to Move, which is this sort of holy text on all things movement. Your range of motion doesn't have to change because you age. We also talk about how to future-proof your body from injury and many other fascinating and important topics.

• 1:28Rich Roll?

  And it's all coming up quick, but first...

• 1:40Rich Roll?

  Okay, Kelly and Juliette are just absolute wizards of pain-free movement and mobility. And look, we're only given one body in our lives. And this conversation really inspired me to take further ownership of my body, and I certainly hope it does the same for you. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Kelly and Juliette Starrett.

• 2:05Rich Roll?

  So nice to meet you. As I said when you walked in the door, I feel like you guys are old friends. I've been following you for so long and just appreciate all the incredible content that you share with the world so liberally. And although I probably haven't been the best student along the way, I do watch the videos and I've listened to you guys on many, many podcasts. And I'm really excited to have you here today on the occasion of Built to Move, the new book. And you know, it's like, there's so much to talk about. I don't even know where to begin.

• 2:38Juliet Starrett?

  Well, I just want to shout right back out at you because you are an OG in the space. And we were talking before the podcast, but Kelly and I have been listening to and following you for so long. And you're just, it's been such a pleasure to watch this whole thing grow. And just the library of amazing podcasts you've created is so cool.

• 2:57Rich Roll?

  I appreciate that. It's like Forget that. About time. I can't believe, it's really such a pleasure to be here. Thank you. In thinking about today, you know, it occurred to me that it must be, it must be very gratifying to see like this mainstream discourse around mobility, functional strength, stability, all these things that, that you know, you guys have been shouting from the mountaintops about for so long. It feels like culture is finally catching up to something that, you know, you guys have been steeped in forever.

• 3:33Juliet Starrett?

  I think you're right. I mean, there's actually just an article in the Wall Street Journal the other day about how to improve your hip mobility. And I was like, okay, mobility is having a moment. If there's a Wall Street Journal article about how to improve your hip mobility. So I think, yes, I think people are starting to get the message. I will say though, that I think there's still quite a bit of confusion around what mobility means and why people should care about it. And so I think that's one of the things we're trying to do in the world is continue to try to sort of clarify what that means, at least to us, and, and help people understand why they should care.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  I might just add that I've had to adopt a mantra. The glacial pace is the breakneck pace.

• 4:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I've heard you say that. I love that.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  It is really difficult to change or to influence or to give people better tools and let it permeate. You know, at risk of sounding doom and gloom, you know, fitness has done a really good job of becoming very sophisticated. And there are great trusted resources, some of the people we talked earlier about. But maybe we've left a whole lot of people behind. And if it's starting to happen where we can have these kind of bigger conversations, then it's a reflection, I think, of people recognizing that maybe what we've been doing hasn't really served them as well as we thought. And that, there's a big opportunity. There's, I think, a mismatch between the truth, and I think we really saw it in the pandemic,

• 5:00Speaker 01

  of, you know, how are people able to self-soothe or take care of themselves or feed themselves? They didn't have kettlebells at home, they didn't know how to cook. And we just sort of left people behind. So it is gratifying very much. And I'm also sorry for popularizing the word mobility, because I think it's like, it's like I invented the word core.

• 5:16Juliet Starrett?

  It's like the least sexy word ever. We're like, I can't believe we've had to say mobility this many times in our life.

• 5:20Rich Roll?

  Well, you were the first to really popularize it. And then it became part of the common vernacular. And you had to, it's so much so that you had to change the name of your company from Mobility Wood to the Ready State. But in looking at, you know, kind of telescoping up and trying to understand what has happened, the way I see it is, yes, you kind of cut your teeth working with elite athletes, Olympic athletes, special forces, first responders, all these like, kind of highly specialized people who are very performance oriented or who have like very specific goals that they're striving for. And through that process, you were able to not only help these people, but, you know, learn and get, you know, really, you know,

• 6:05Rich Roll?

  into the deepest trenches of what this is all about. But then you can take that and through this book and now kind of what your current focus is, to translate that for the mainstream audience. And I think that the time is really right for this for a couple of reasons. The first of which is, There's an explosion in interest in longevity. And certainly, you know, a core principle in trying to live, you know, your longest, best life is your functional strength and mobility. Can you get up off the ground? You know, are you able to move? Are you able to put a bag in the, you know, above your head on the airplane and all that kind of stuff?

• 6:45Rich Roll?

  And then also, this, this, this, this sort of rising interest in, in rewilding our lives, right? We, this is something you talk about in the book and, and, and refer to quite, you know, quite regularly that we have unwilded ourselves, right? And so the principles that you teach, although they're highly applicable to all of these elite scenarios, are more broadly applicable and more profoundly applicable, I think, to everybody who's thinking about, you know, what's it going to be like when I turn 80? And, and how come I don't feel so good when all I do is stare at a screen all day and then go home and watch Netflix?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Well, I think we can even go a step further and say that in the last chunk of time where we've got to go in and see everyone's dirty laundry, people's lives are on the line or professions are on the line about how their body works, it's really given us an indication of what are core essential practices off of which you can build elite performance? Because you understand that being a professional athlete is tricky. We have family and nutrition and travel and sleep and there's a lot of, you know, masters to serve in that world. And one of the things that we have come to realize is that if we could truly take sport and realize its potential, then sport was a laboratory through which we should transform society. And that was, that's really been a lens and one that we weren't, I don't think, really

• 8:05Speaker 01

  ready to adopt fully 10 years ago, but now we're realizing that that's our sort of, our, you know, our calling. And in so much that we're trying to get... And take these lessons. That way, sport can actually mean more to us. It can be a laboratory, and a place, a teaching hospital, a test kitchen, where we can really understand what happens when people are under stress in all these different situations. And simultaneously, we saw that some of those basics get missed by the best in the world. They have blind spots. And then, we find that a lot of people are confused about what a good foundational practice looks like. And we should be able to take those lessons and actually say, hey, look, we understand that you're not an elite athlete, but you're just a, you know, just

• 8:49Speaker 01

  a middle-aged dad who wants to stay up with his local mountain bike club. That's me. And what are the ways where I can do that in the context of my busy life, so I don't have to, you know, throw everything away? And I think that's, that really is an opportunity for us to make sense of all of the, you know, bright people working in this high-performance world.

• 9:08Juliet Starrett?

  And I would just add, too, that the other sort of lens through which we, I think, have evolved as humans over the last 10 years.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  You mean us?

• 9:17Juliet Starrett?

  Together.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:18Juliet Starrett?

  Both of us together. But, you know, when we wrote Supple Leopard, we were really focused, exactly like you said, on, you know, elite athletes, and how to perform better, and lift more weights, and run faster. And that was really our focus, both as individuals, and in terms of what message we wanted to put out into the world. But then, we've spent the last year, last 10 years, raising kids in this, like, really quaint suburban neighborhood, around busy professional parents, who are not in the health and fitness business at all. So while we have this whole cohort of friends, and professional colleagues who are, and they're all like us, optimizing their health, and tracking everything, and taking the right supplements, and, you know, trying whatever new exercise program is out, you know, in contrast, we were, we're also friends with a whole community of people who

• 10:02Juliet Starrett?

  are, you know, busy ad executives, and attorneys, and tech people.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Who've never exercised.

• 10:07Juliet Starrett?

  And maybe they never exercised, but, but what they, what they share universally is they actually all really do care about their health, and they are interested in durability and longevity. But ultimately, they're very confused about what to do, where to start. You know, we've really become this node in our community, where, you know, people, anytime there's some new health thing out, people are like, should I be intermittent fasting? Wait, should I switch to keto? Should I do the Whole30? You know, should I try F45? Wait, should I, should I do zone 2 cardio? How much should I lift? We've just been this source of of questions and seen the amount of confusion that just sort of everyday people who care about their health have. And they there hasn't been sort of we

• 10:49Juliet Starrett?

  wanted to be able to say, you know, hey, you know, like, how much should I sleep? Here's built to move. You know, how much should I take care of my body? Here's built to move. So it's really been this sort of 10 year evolution of, you know, spending time in a community of people who who really are focused on health and care about longevity and durability, but really have no blueprint at all.

• 11:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it really is a paradox. We've never had greater access to information, but there's this waterfall of inputs that that ultimately do nothing beyond just paralyze us, right? Because we just don't know what what to choose. Like, this is something I'm experiencing right now with a lower back issue that I have. I'm sure we're going to get into that because I'm going to make it all about me. But but yeah, you know, you think about like morning routines or any it's like, oh, it's like, oh, if you want to optimize, you know, like optimization and all of that. It's like, I don't have three hours in the morning to like, do my sauna and do my cold plunge and do my meditation and stare at the sunlight and then yeah, like and then journal and then I have to med, you know, like all these things. It's like for the normal person, they're like,

• 11:54Rich Roll?

  just, just, you know, can you just give me something that works within the construct of my life? I'm not trying to optimize or be an elite athlete. I'm not going to join the SEALs. But like, I just, you know, I just don't want to feel like crap. And it would be great if I had a little bit more energy to, you know, when I get home from work and my kids are demanding my attention.

• 12:13Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, and I think, you know, your mention of your low back pain is also sort of a very important thing that I left out when I talked about those people in our community. I mean, what we see in that in that group are people who don't really care about having shredded abs, and they don't care about optimizing at all. But a lot of them are dealing with pain and they, you know, they aren't sure how to manage that and are worried that's going to become their identity. And in many cases, Their sort of ongoing pain issues have taken them out of the things they love to do physically, which then, as you know, has all these downstream consequences because so much of what so, you know, so much of the community that many of us get revolves around some kind of physical activity.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Or personal identity.

• 12:54Juliet Starrett?

  Or personal identity.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 12:56Juliet Starrett?

  Your pickleball club or whatever it is you do. And so when people get sidelined from being able to do the things they love physically, it has all of these hardcore downstream consequences, especially in terms of their mental health. And so that's kind of the other piece we saw is that, you know, these people, again, you know, they, they want to be out of pain, they want to feel good in their body, and they want to be able to, you know, pay, play a game of pickleball on the weekends with their friends. Like, that's their, their goal. And we, I don't think in the health and fitness space have been speaking to those people. I think there's a bit of a change and a bit more of a focus on basics lately, you know, coming in from our community, but I think, you know, you're exactly right. Like, they could care less about optimizing.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Right. Sometimes we, we get to work in camps, and I was at a big camp for water polo at a big Division One university. And so all of the superstars are there, all the athletes, and then there's a hundred teenagers there. And I ask, and I do this all the time, I'm like, how many people in here are pain free? And you would think, you know, you're a 15-year-old woman, like, you know, can you have pain? And every hand doesn't go up. No one is pain free. The reality is that this pain is really an experience that is human. And one of the things I think is happening a little bit, which is great, is that we're shifting this narrative about who owns pain, because what we said for a long time, especially in the athletic community, was, pain is a medical problem. And that trickles down to, well, I don't have time to manage my pain, or my pain's not

• 14:20Speaker 01

  so bad that I can't do my job or live my life, so I'll just have this nagging thing until it gets so bad I can't occupy my role in the family, or do my, you know, occupy my role in the team, or, you know, if you, if your back hurts so bad you can't go to work, that's a medical emergency. And so, one of the things that we've been trying to shift is saying, hey, look, there's a whole lot we can do to empower people to be able to self-soothe without bourbon, without THC, or Ibuprofen, or opiates, the way we literally handled it as a medical problem. People, we left people to become feral in managing their own pain. And I think-

• 14:55Rich Roll?

  As we are getting more complicated or more complex and sophisticated about this, one of the things we know is that pain doesn't mean injury. It doesn't even mean tissue trauma or damage. It's a request for change. So part of what we're trying to say in this book is, hey, we can try to treat pain and use it just as another metric. Like if you were stiff this morning because you were a big workout yesterday, you're not thinking, you know, you've got, you know, some, you know, you didn't contract rabies, you just are sore.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:22Rich Roll?

  Right, from your run. And so if we can shift that narrative a little bit and then also empower people that, hey, there's a whole lot they can do. And some of that is sleep. And some of that is nutrition. And some of that is, is down regulation. But all, a lot of it is, there's some inputs you can do that are really safe and really easy. And then we can have the next conversation because maybe you don't want to go for a walk because your knee hurts.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:43Juliet Starrett?

  One quick thing I will add, though, is that if you want to make all of my busy working mom friends like scream at the top of their lungs to the hills, it is tell them to do those things as a morning routine and tell them that if they want to be healthy humans, like it literally, if you want to like make a bunch of like 45-year-old women real mad, it's that morning routine stuff.

• 16:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 16:06Juliet Starrett?

  Because they're like, I'm, I'm making breakfast and lunches for my kids and driving to the drop-off lane and, you know, what are you talking about? I should meditate for half an hour and journal, you know, they go crazy. So, um, you know, we definitely, we haven't done a good job of speaking to that audience.

• 16:20Rich Roll?

  Well, even beyond that, and I'm speaking from personal experience as a time-crunched person who's interested in their, their fitness, you know, I know, and who's dealing with some pain right now, I have all kinds of protocols and exercises and do that. And all of them are like, you know, kind of small little things and, you know, like just air squats and, you know, that kind of stuff. A lot of the stuff that's in your book, and I still have a mental barrier to doing that because like I just want to go throw some weights around or like get my workout in and feel like I got something done and get to the studio and I can't be bothered. And that doesn't even like account for when you're like trying to be a competitive athlete and time-crunched where it's all about your fitness and your training.

• 17:03Rich Roll?

  And the kind of stuff that you talk about in this book just feels indulgent or something that you would do, uh, you know, if you had tons of time, which you don't, or if you're in a crisis situation, right? Which obviously has led me to this place that I'm in.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  However, you want to get there is reasonable and rational, right? It's I wait till it's crisis. That's you know, I like a lot of pressure. I'm sort of a procrastinator.

• 17:30Rich Roll?

  And athletes with a high pain threshold.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  There's also that too.

• 17:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they'll dig the hole deeper.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  That's right. I mean, so you know, one of the things I think is really important that we have wrapped started really wrap our heads around is this behavior modification habit forming idea. And so Juliette points out that, you know, we can't just give people lists of things. Hey, exercise more, eat more fruits and vegetables like that seems not to be working very well as well as it could. And so some of this, I think what one of the things that I think is good in here, and we actually came up with this idea, working with the Marine Aviation Weapons Tactical Group, was looking at, okay, you're very time crunched and you're underslept. We have 24 hours. Where are we going to fit these behaviors that don't also ask you to give something else up?

• 18:15Speaker 01

  How do we expand what it is you're doing, not take away? Because if you are coping with your family and stress and management, because you need to go Peloton or run or deadlift, whatever it is, what we don't want to say is, hey, why don't you go to a, you know, a balance class or, you know, you're not, you're not gonna do that.

• 18:33Juliet Starrett?

  Go to like a one hour balance class. You're like, yeah, no, I'm not doing that.

• 18:36Rich Roll?

  And also like be bad at it and like, you know,

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Also be bad at it, right? So, you know, the real question is trying to look at what a 24 hour day's time schedules and say, where are the places we have some agency and some control? And then we start to say, well, how can we constrain the environment a little bit so that you don't have to make another heroic? Like, you know, I'm going to get up off the couch now and, you know, and juice or, you know, whatever it is that you're doing it, you know, we're, people have a finite amount of will. How can we shape the environment so you don't, you can do the right thing automatically without having to make a heroic decision?

• 19:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, that's very similar to the kind of things that Dan Buettner talks about with respect to the Blue Zones. It's sort of like looking at these cultures that have a long history of longevity and happiness and trying to deconstruct, you know, how they've arrived in this place and Then create a template for our modern world and so much of it is about making that healthy choice or that healthy behavior, the convenient and easy choice as opposed to the burdensome.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  The only choice.

• 19:41Rich Roll?

  Thing. Yeah. Otherwise, it's not, it's not going to work.

• 19:43Juliet Starrett?

  So Kelly was just, I think, as we told you, on a ski trip in Japan. And he was, he had, for most of the trip, was sharing a room with another guy. The guy got a cold, so they needed to separate rooms. And they got to the next hotel and the hotel staff was kind of freaking out because they're like, well, we don't actually have an extra room. And when their guide actually pushed a little more and got some more information from the hotel staff, it turned out that they just didn't have like a western room available. And by western room, that means the bed is high up off the ground and there's a, you know, a normal, like an American sized table and, you know, the sink and shower are at our height. But they did have plenty of Japanese style rooms where the bed is on the floor and the table's on the floor

• 20:25Juliet Starrett?

  and you shower sitting on the floor. And, you know, but in their mind, they're like, well, this American guy can't handle this. And Kelly's like, I've been waiting for this my whole life.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  This is the perfect.

• 20:34Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, like Mr. Man.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Me, me, me, choose me.

• 20:35Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, choose me, choose me. But it is, you know, Kelly took a video of this room and I was like, man, you know, we wouldn't all have so much trouble getting up and down off the floor if we got up and down off the floor to go to bed. And, you know, even things like, like the, you know, he showed me the video of the room and even things like the air conditioning controls are like at that level, like knee level, because the presumption is you're going to be sort of, you know, moving around on the ground. You're squatting on the ground.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're crawling around.

• 20:59Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:59Juliet Starrett?

  And.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  So, so your range of motion is not one more thing that you have to add in.

• 21:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  It's just built in.

• 21:04Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah. But yeah, we see in those blue zones, it's, it's, you know, people aren't making a choice every single day to do these habits that are good for them. It's just, it's their, their environment is perfectly set up, so they aren't making choice. It's just what they do.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  And, and there's inherent soft, you know, less technical, I didn't take this turmeric and do this secret school program. I had to walk to the market and I saw my neighbors. And so suddenly I feel like I live in a community, right? And, and there are all of these sort of loose connections.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  One of the things that happens is that all of those behaviors start to stack. And I think that's one of the problems. We have experts. Matt Walker's book is great. And but sometimes you you fail to kind of think about how well, my non-exercise activity during the day, the number of steps actually makes me tired enough to actually fall asleep. And, you know, I start making decisions about some of the things I'm going to do and put in my body, not put in my body because it'll affect my sleep later on. And and suddenly, what we start to see is that, man, if we get people who are rested, they start to feel better and their pain starts to diminish, or their brain becomes less sensitive, or easily sensitized, or perceiving their body as a threat. And then we start to roll a little bit, you know, and then you want to move a little bit more. You're a little bit more excited at four o'clock when you have a window of

• 22:20Speaker 01

  opportunity. So I think that's one of the magic pieces here is how do we construct a day to day that isn't crazy, that anyone can wrap their heads around, that also just begets these one plus one equals three moments?

• 22:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, just nudging you gently in the right direction, you know, repeatedly throughout the day, every single day.

• 22:40Juliet Starrett?

  And I'm like you, Rich. I want to suffer and breathe hard.

• 22:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:44Juliet Starrett?

  You know, if I and I often feel

• 22:46Rich Roll?

  It doesn't count for shit unless you got that going on.

• 22:47Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, exactly. I feel like I have

• 22:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  And Juliet can suffer.

• 22:49Juliet Starrett?

  I have one hour a day.

• 22:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm sure.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Real suffer.

• 22:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:53Juliet Starrett?

  I have, um, I have like, let's say, one hour in my time crunch schedule a day, and I'm always going to default to choosing to do some form of suffering. You know, whether that's a CrossFit workout, or mountain biking, or something like that. I'm always going to choose that. I'm never going to be the person who's like, I should probably take a recovery day, and instead, I'm going to go to a yoga class. And I enjoy yoga, but I mean, I am never going to be someone who chooses going to yoga over doing a workout if I have, if I only can choose one. And so I'm in the same boat as you, and in order for me to actually figure out ways to do some of these sort of range of motion, mobility practices, and practice things like balance, like it has to just be sort of like baked into other things I'm doing.

• 23:34Juliet Starrett?

  Otherwise, I literally won't do it because I often feel like I really have that one sacred hour a day to do what I want, and what I want is workout.

• 23:44Rich Roll?

  You mentioned earlier that there's a lot of confusion around what you mean when you talk about mobility. So let's just clarify that. And I kind of want to build on that to get into the various principles that form the framework of this book and your philosophy.

• 24:01Juliet Starrett?

  Well, I mean, I'll start and maybe tell you.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, take a swing at it. Go, girl.

• 24:04Juliet Starrett?

  Let's take a swing at this. I think.

• 24:05Rich Roll?

  I mean, at this point, you ought to be able to define it, right?

• 24:08Juliet Starrett?

  Yes, yes. To us, mobility is really the ability to be able to move freely through your environment and do the things you want to be able to do with your body, whatever those things may be. Now, we offer a lot of tools, which we call mobilizations, which are things you can do to help improve your mobility and range of motion. But to us, at the highest level, it's the ability to move freely, ideally without pain, or at least minimizing pain, and be able to do the things you love to do.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  And if I added a...

• 24:39Juliet Starrett?

  How did I do?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Pretty good. For an attorney. You've been in the game for a minute, I can tell. I would add, your body, everyone agrees that your shoulder should be able to do certain things, and that your spine should be able to do certain things, and your hips should be able to do certain things. Every physician, every orthopedic surgeon, every physical therapist, we all agree how much shoulder is normal, how much your ankle should be able to move. The problem is that we don't give people benchmarks for what is normative, or what you should be able to do. And our lives sometimes don't ask us of that. And so suddenly, when we have pain or a problem, that range of motion is never part of the conversation about, hey, I see that your steering wheel doesn't go all the way to the left. Let's just make

• 25:25Speaker 01

  sure that you can... The pilots, where they take off, they check to make sure everything's working right. So, we could also define mobility as, do you have your native range of motion, and can you control that native range of motion? So are you a skilled person?

• 25:40Rich Roll?

  And what Juliette said is, all of that is important. But really, what is it you want to do in your world and environment? And how do you want to express this body? That's the most important thing. And I think that's where we got in the weeds. You know, hip range of motion is important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if it prevents you from doing something or you're having pain, and that's also conjoined with the fact that you don't have access to that range, maybe that's the reason you should care.

• 26:04Juliet Starrett?

  Well, and like, let me just give you one example. Like, if you just asked anyone on the street, like, "Do you care about your hip range of motion?" They're gonna be like, "No, why would I care about that?" But, but as an example, we were recently talking to a friend of ours who has a four-month-old baby and has both sets of parents visiting. And their, his parents are like in their mid-60s. So, you know, not that much older than us. And they, uh, his mother is able to get up off, get up and down off the ground and sit with the baby, but his mother-in-law can't get down onto the ground or up off of the ground, and so can't sit on the floor and play with the grandchild. And that's one of those things that you don't think about until, it's like a use it or lose it kind of thing. But like, that right there is hip range of motion.

• 26:47Juliet Starrett?

  So, you may not care athletically about hip range of motion because you're not trying to run faster, lift more weights, or, you know, whatever an athlete might need to care about hip range of motion for. But, you know, most people would say, "Man, do you, you know, do you want to be able to sit on the floor and play with your grandchild when you have one?" And they'd be like, "Yes, I do." And so, you know, that's one of the reasons why people should care about their hip range of motion.

• 27:09Rich Roll?

  Right. I, I, I feel that humans are not very good at casting their gaze that far into the future, though.

• 27:16Juliet Starrett?

  So true.

• 27:16Rich Roll?

  Especially like, it's not until-

• 27:17Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, if you're 25.

• 27:18Rich Roll?

  You have, yeah. Like, you're just like, "I'll deal with that one." Or that's not gonna happen to me.

• 27:25Juliet Starrett?

  Yes.

• 27:25Rich Roll?

  Especially with an elite athlete, like, forget about it, right? So, the barrier to being able to, you know, convince somebody that these things are important has to be, it's like a high bar for you, right? To like, communicate with people like, "Hey, you know, we could talk about longevity. How long do you want to live? What is it that you want to be able to do when you're 80 and 90, et cetera? But when you're 30, even in, in your 40s, and, and you're essentially pain-free, or you're- You don't have some kind of injury. That's, you know, that's a challenge. Yeah. But it is true that like whether it's heart disease, diabetes, you know, any kind of brain degeneration, similarly with our physical bodies, like these things are progressive.

• 28:06Rich Roll?

  And if you're not working on this stuff far in advance of those aging years, you're going to have a problem. But if you do undergo, you know, you know, sort of shoulder the responsibility of doing these things that you guys talk about so much, you're taking out this insurance policy to be able to do all those things in your later years. But it's just that humans are not good. No. At like, you know, evaluating the cost benefit analysis of these sorts of things.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  And our environment gives us a lot of cues or guides us into poor decisions. I just, I think New York Times had an article just recently about how some of our foods hijack our brain chemistry. Right? Our sort of modern foods, these umamis, we just think, oh, they're so good. So here's a story. I was a young physio student watching the cardiac catheter lab. And I'm watching a really wealthy kid, a wealthy man in San Francisco, and his whole family's outside. He has three beautiful daughters, which I can start to like put myself in his shoes. Has this amazing wife, killer law practice. He's rich in every definition of the term. He's one life and he's in there having three stents put in his heart and he's overweight.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  And what I thought in that moment was if this guy has every resource and every reason to live and it's still that hard to change and to make these things to keep himself alive with his family, what recourse does an average person, mortal person without his resources have? And really that was a kind of a shocker. And I think if I'd videoed the two women, you know, putting in the catheter like chain smoking, you know, like as a matter of fact, that may have showed him that video. Maybe that would have changed his behavior. But, you know, it's really difficult to sort of untangle what seems like the biggest Gordian knot in your life. Where do I go? Especially since sometimes we don't see the results right away.

• 29:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So when, when, when talking about mobility and movement, you know, how do you diagnose somebody's mobility? Like everybody, you know, you guys have like this superpower, you could like look at somebody just sitting or standing or walking and be like, oh, I see 10 things wrong with like what's happening there. Like, most people don't have that ability and don't think about that kind of stuff. Uh, you know, the average person, if they're pain free, is gonna say, well, this is not, I can walk and I can get up and sit down and all that kind of stuff. So where does one begin to try to self diagnose and understand their own mobility capacity limitations and, and what they should be focused on working on?

• 30:36Juliet Starrett?

  Well, in this book, we, we literally identify five areas where we think that if people just kept an eye on it, like just kept an eye on it.

• 30:45Rich Roll?

  A vital sign.

• 30:46Juliet Starrett?

  Just, yeah, we, we call them vital signs because we-

• 30:48Rich Roll?

  Right, you have these 10 things.

• 30:49Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, we have these 10 vital signs, but we specifically chose the word vital sign because it, it started coming up more and more in the pandemic. Actually, everyone was like tracking all these vital signs, like their S E O two. And, you know, obviously, everybody knows that 120 over 80 is like, okay, blood pressure. And if you go over that, it's something you should keep an eye on. And so that's why we, we thought, well, if, if regular people can keep an eye on a vital sign like blood pressure, then why can't there be some movement specific or health specific vital signs? And so, um, you know, obviously, the human body is the most complicated thing in the known universe. Um, but we really tried to boil it down to a few areas of range of motion we thought people should keep an eye on, or that we consider to be vital signs. And we do have these simple tests in the book, um, that people can just do once and sort of say, okay, this is where

• 31:34Juliet Starrett?

  I'm at. You know, this is something I need to keep an eye on. This is something I'm doing great at. And, and, you know, and then the things we suggest for people to work on them, we think we've suggested, you know, things that they can literally do, like while they're watching Netflix at night, or while they're still sitting at their office. Like, we've really tried to make it so that you don't have to go to the one hour mobility balance class and, you know, journal in the morning in order to get it, in order to get these things done. Um, but, you know, I, I think they're just some simple tests. I think if everybody had a real baseline of what their range of motion was in their big movers, their hips, their shoulders, their ankles, um, and, and just literally kept an eye on it.

• 32:12Rich Roll?

  Turns out everyone has a, a universal language.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Running. Everyone knows, when I say run, everyone knows exactly what I mean. Right? This is why the running community is global. If we use yoga as a movement language, everyone has probably done yoga a little bit. Everyone knows what chaturanga and downward dog is. So we, we have some touch tones of movement that we can all agree on. If I say push up, everyone knows what a push up is. But what's nice about that is we now have this formal language of diagnostic movement that everyone has heard of or at least been exposed to. And it's not the language of rehab. I think rehab gets confusing. There's so many ways to restore position or help to activate or, or normalize.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  And, and that is like, hey, I speak Esperon too, but I speak classic Greek and this is my... But this training language is pretty ubiquitous. And one of the things that Juliette pointed out was when we can make some of these diagnostics in that normative language of squatting up and down, standing on one leg. You know, suddenly, you know, can you get into this position and squeeze your butt? Suddenly, we have a universal language that reflects the movements that we do. If I say lunge, usually everyone knows what a lunge looks like or if a push up looks like or putting your arms over your head. So that I think is a way where we can begin to cast a bigger net and have people come into understanding what it is maybe that they're limiting or what they're, we're having struggle with.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  And, you know, we set some booby traps in this book, you know? It's pretty shocking. We had, we were hanging out with one of our super strong badass athlete friends who struggled to get up off, down off the ground. And then he was like, whoa, my hips. And I was like, oh, your hips tight? Like, I didn't know. And I think when we kind of confront people with tests and, that we think are very reasonable because we've gotten to see the world a little bit and they're confronted with it, then they are knowing, hey, maybe that's something I need to work on. And I think, again, creating that, that vital sign line helps people to make decisions once they know they above or below.

• 34:26Rich Roll?

  So, early in the book, you have this test.

• 34:30Rich Roll?

  You know, it's like, "Okay, let's see what's up." Like, cross your legs, you know, lower yourself down into a cross-legged position, and now, you know, try to stand up without using your hands, or, you know, kind of using the side of your legs to like, you know, and I, so I've go, "Do it." And I was able to do it, but like, it was harder than I thought it would be. My, my back kinda hurt.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  You're Rich Roll, I mean, you're like, "Come on, I'm doing it."

• 34:53Juliet Starrett?

  You're like a legend, Rich.

• 34:55Rich Roll?

  Well, Mike, like, here's the thing, and this is kind of like what I wanted to get into, which is, just because if you're an elite athlete, or super-fit, like, these are not necessarily predictors of whether you have great range of motion, or, or mobility. And, and in fact, it could be quite the opposite, because you're so specialized at a certain subset of activities, that it makes you kind of brittle in, in terms of being like a robust overall, like, you know, mobile, functional, flexible athlete. I mean, Kelly, I know you, you grew up in Europe, and were exposed to all different kinds of sports, and became this like generalist, and that was sort of the root of like, you know, all of the work that, that you've done since,

• 35:39Rich Roll?

  and appreciating like the importance of, of, you know, having like a robust battery of different kinds of activities that you do as an athlete. But, elite athletes are just good at one thing, right? And so, actually, that makes them kind of fragile in the context of

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Potentially, yeah.

• 35:56Rich Roll?

  Overall, like, you know, kind of stability, mobility, etc.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  And how do you, in an elite population, what are our minimums? And we can, we can, for the people who are nerding out on this deep, you know, if I'm an elite sprinter, so Stuart Millen of Alta's Tracking.

• 36:12Rich Roll?

  Sure, I know, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've never met him, but like on Twitter, I love like his feed and like all this stuff.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Shout out to, he's one of the greatest coaches I've ever met.

• 36:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  But Stu and I got into this conversation about how much dorsiflexion, ankle range of motion, his elite sprinters needed, right? Where he's worked coaching Andre de Grasse, like, pretty good sprinter. And he's like, "My sprinters only need zero, they need zero degrees." And I was like, "Totally agree." That's how much they need to do their sport. But does he need more range of motion in his hips and ankles to go downstairs? And he was like, oh, wait, what? And then I was like, does he train? Do you go to the weight room? Do you need more than some ankle range of motion? Zero ankle range of motion to perform the training? So what we can start to say is, do you have enough range of motion? And as a coach, I want to make sure you have enough range of motion so that you don't kind of create alternative strategies to solving movement problems.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  And I think one of the problems with being a human being is we're so robust for a long time until something changes. Or we can't get away with a strategy that worked for us. You may even be the best in the world at using this strategy, but that strategy doesn't actually hint at the possibility or total possibility of your physiology. That if we improved your hip extension, your ability to get your knee behind your butt effectively, we actually can make you more efficient, more effective, and potentially solve or prevent weird tweaks in the system, like your low back pain or your knee pain. So on the one hand, we, with those athletes, we want to give credence to, hey, your job is to do this sport.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  What are the minimums so that we don't end up creating? And sometimes we have to use pain as a diagnostic. Oh, you're starting to get achy? Let's keep an eye on that. But for the rest of us, we have an opportunity to create a little bit more robust platform of generalism, right? And one of our tests with all of our athletes were like, oh, you think you're a good athlete? Jump into a yoga class. Let us know how you do there. Can you stand on one foot and breathe? Oh, you couldn't. Maybe your elite program isn't so elite. You can't even do downward dog and take a breath.

• 38:14Juliet Starrett?

  This is, we've been like totally against sports specialization for kids. And we've been like really trying hard not to have our own kids become specialists. They both play water polo. And we sent them this, this winter in Tahoe to a Pilates class. And they were destroyed for like four days. And these are kids who, you know, are training all the time. So, you know, we're trying to, um, this isn't really related to your question, but you know, we are always like, hey, if you think your program is so great, like go try someone else's program. If you love CrossFit, go do some other program and see how you fare, right? Especially if you're not an elite athlete. Obviously, elite athletes need to get so specialized and they have to, I think, leave a lot of things behind, right? If you look at elite cyclists, it's like, well, they have zero upper body strength on purpose. But you know, for the rest of us, it's like, hey, we should all, you know, become generalists and at

• 38:59Juliet Starrett?

  least try, try some of these other things, including our own kids.

• 39:02Rich Roll?

  It is crazy how, how untransferable some of that, like, you know, real specialized fitness can be. Like, if you're a Tour de France cyclist, you're so, like, you have zero upper body strength or whatever. Like, you're so adapted and efficient at doing this one thing, but the minute you take that person and put them into some other kind of environment, they're hapless, right? And there isn't like a robustness to all of that. And, you know, look, you have to do that to be at the highest level of that sport. And, you know, any athlete who's trying to be an elite in their specific thing is going to get really good and efficient at that one thing.

• 39:42Rich Roll?

  But there's going to be atrophies of other muscle groups and all kinds of other, you know, sort of downstream byproducts of that specialization that create physical workarounds, right? Like, so I'm, just as somebody who, you know, I love the fact that you've worked with swimmers. I come from a swimming background and then did this triathlon thing and, you know, got very efficient at that one thing, but became like really not overall, like, all that stable. Like, my, like, you know, I used to be really flexible as a swimmer and I had great balance and yoga and all that. And like, a lot of that, like, now when I try to do that, I'm like, wow. Like, I'm like, kind of messed up. Like, I have a lot of work to do and now I've got this back pain and everyone's telling me, I gotta get my glutes to fire. And I was like, I don't even know what that means.

• 40:27Juliet Starrett?

  What does that mean?

• 40:28Rich Roll?

  I know, I know. You need to hire people.

• 40:30Juliet Starrett?

  That's like one of those internet, that's like one of those internet things that people say. You're like, get your glutes to fire.

• 40:34Rich Roll?

  Well, in fairness, I have consulted with lots of bright people who've given me great advice. And, and, and, you know, there's, and, and it's been beneficial to me, but there also is that paralysis too, where it's like, you have conventional, uh, western medicine people telling you, like, you 100% need surgery and then a whole battery of, you know, alternative modalities and practitioners, all of which are really great people who've given me a lot of tools. But also, it's sort of like, there's so much, like, I just don't quite know what to do. That wasn't a question. I just like threw a ton at you about a whole bunch of different stuff, but anyway.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  If we pull that apart, the first thing is, I think we have confused people about what is a health practice. And so I think we can actually take exercise out of it. If you have any 90 year olds or 100 year olds in your family, and a lot of people listening do, how fit and jacked are they? They probably came of an age in a generation where they did not, but they were doing something. Good genetics, plus some behaviors, good relationships. They eat, they were like. They moved a ton. Moved a ton. They were always move. I just saw a world record set in the 5K by that 90 year old woman. Did you see that?

• 41:42Rich Roll?

  I did, yeah.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  I was like, she can outrun me. That's, she's amazing. So, one of the things we can do is help to pull that apart, because I think what we said was as long as you could just crush it on the Peloton, you're good, right? And, and it was easy to measure that cardio respiratory fitness, cardio metabolic fitness and get a wattage, but it doesn't speak to all the wonders and ranges. So if you look at something like Joseph Pilates and what he was trying to solve, you can really see genius in his methodology and system. If you jump into any yoga class, there are positions that are foundational to the function of the human. And that's why yoga will persist forever. Can you get into this end range position where you don't have a lot of control? Can you breathe and stabilize there? I mean, that

• 42:25Speaker 01

  is just a practice that you could do forever, layer on to anyone. And I, any of my athletes ask me, I'm like, yeah, do yoga. Whenever you want to do it, it's one of those all you can eat buffets. One of the things that we see then is, if we sold that, you know, in the season, we have this kind of competitive time, sports specialization training, sports specific training, and the only goal is to make you a better triathlete. That's the season. But we come out of the season, we're into general physical preparedness, where we can start to open up a little bit and say, hey, I see that the session cost or the sport cost caused you to specialize or miss some ranges. And that's what we're not typically doing with a lot of our seasons, especially as we go year round and our kids, you know, we, you said, we used to play all these different sports.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  We used to allow the different exposure to these positions and shapes and different things, account for all of the possibility and variability. And as that play has gone diminished, as the, as the amount of exposure has come diminished, we're realizing we're having to teach a lot of formal movement skills to kids and really good athletes because they didn't have as a child. So in season, there's only one goal, to win. And we're gonna, we're gonna burn everything we need to do on the bonfire of winning and keep you in the game and minimize. And the second the season's over, we start to expand that a little bit.

• 43:41Rich Roll?

  That makes sense.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  And that, that's an easier way to wrap your head around it. To say, it's okay that you became hyper-specialized, but we didn't have the tools and didn't prepare you to say, okay, now I'm out of season. What's essential to make me robust again?

• 43:54Juliet Starrett?

  And I would say too, that, you know, just in the broader community, and I see this a lot with parents of kids I know that are doing athletics, is I can't tell you how many times a parent has asked me, well, I really want to get my kid into a mountain bike specific strength and conditioning program. Or what

• 44:13Speaker 01

  That's called mountain biking.

• 44:13Juliet Starrett?

  ...secret strength and conditioning programs should my kid who swims be doing? And you know, our response to that is always like, well, they need to do general physical preparedness. Like every kid probably could stand to practice balance and get more agile and get a little bit stronger and, you know, work on their motor control and stability, like coordination. I think every kid and adult could stand to do all of those things. But I do think this whole idea of, you know, well, if I'm a specialized athlete, then all of everything I need to do is specialized. It's like, you know, it's, it's become part of our psyche.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Yoga, kettlebell, hill sprints, that's a pretty vicious combination. I mean, you're gonna go a long way like that.

• 44:51Rich Roll?

  How many, how many Tour de France cyclists do you, do you have like doing kettlebell workouts?

• 44:57Juliet Starrett?

  Well, during the season, during the season, though, not as much.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Well, one of the things that I think is amazing, and you know this, you've run into and have worked with so many mutants. You know, Peter Sagan could be a world champion in multiple sports. I think he's that talented. He's a beast. Levi Light Palmer is a very good family friend for a long time. You know, he grew up ski racing. He's a really good athlete. And sometimes I think we, it's easy to pull the athleticism out. You know, if you look at, you know, the best athletes in the world, they were always good athletes in athletics. They didn't necessarily just, you know, I do this one little thing. So, you know, what we're finding though, is if you want to win, you have to be durable.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  And suddenly durability comes in the form of some really simple strength training. How much strength training in season? Enough not to ruin your surfing. Enough not to ruin your sport. Enough that you, you know, and I, you know, was we, one of the things we're always asked to do is we'd come in and can you help us untangle this? We want to win, make it through the season longer. And we have to look at all of the pieces. Tell me about your sleep. Oh, my sleep is wretched. Okay, it's really hard for us to understand what's going on. We, one time we're working with a CrossFit Games champion who was having this really weird knee pain. And, you know, my friends are brilliant coaches and I'm not bad. And we were talking about all things. Ultimately, she was traveling alone without

• 46:25Speaker 01

  her partner and she slept with the TV on at night because it made her feel safe in the room. But that TV on all night long kind of messed up her sleep a little bit, right? She didn't actually recover. And that was what made her brain start to perceive her knee as a problem. So it's important that we're looking at all of the features that kind of go into making a robust person. And sometimes it is fueling, believe it or not. And sometimes it is, you don't have any range of motion here. And some of it is, you're not even, you know, strong in this position. So it's, that's why I think these single approaches don't necessarily work. We always have to take a systems approach.

• 47:03Rich Roll?

  And in the book, you have these, you know, these 10 vital signs, you go through them chapter by chapter, that begins with, you know, sort of getting up, how do you get up off the ground? I mean, it's like, basic stuff, right? But then it's like hip extension, like you're talking about.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  But to you, you nailed it.

• 47:20Rich Roll?

  Right, like I, go ahead.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  No, just that, but if I grab someone off the street and say, I got 20 bucks if you can do this, you'd be shocked at how we have set, the bar has gone away from us and has gotten very low.

• 47:32Rich Roll?

  Right, and, and in addressing that, like, back to the whole, like, we're, we've become unwilded and we need to rewild ourselves, this conversation often is, is, is rather binary. And I'm thinking about my friend Tony Riddle, I don't know if you know who Tony is? Do you know who Tony is? Like, the natural, he's this guy in the UK, and he was, he was a, you know, he was a strength coach and had a gym and, you know, had this lifestyle and, and had a, sort of an existential crisis, and, and now he's kind of like this rewilding expert who has broken some amazing records in barefoot running, like, he runs barefoot all over the UK and, and, and holds these retreats and has kids, but he's taken

• 48:17Rich Roll?

  all the furniture out of his house and there's no chairs and like, it's all like, you know, Japanese in the, you know, you're crouching and you're squatting and you're, it's all, you know, this kind of movement and breath work and a lot of the things that you talk about. But I guess the point I'm trying to make is that it's, it's rather extreme, like, you need the extremes as an example, like, here's a guy who's really doing it, you know, but for most people, the moms in your neighborhood or whatever, they're not gonna like, get rid of the chairs in their house, right? So it's like, I see you guys like, in the middle as a translator of, of what works and, you know, the principles behind kind of what Tony's doing, but, but translating it in a way that is accessible for like, the person who lives in the world.

• 48:58Juliet Starrett?

  I mean, you're exactly right. Like, nobody in our neighborhood is gonna get rid of their living room couch and, you know, furniture.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:04Juliet Starrett?

  In order to have a fully

• 49:05Speaker 01

  The mid-century modern couch, no way.

• 49:06Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, there's like, no way anybody's doing that. I agree with you. But, yeah, I mean, I think you're exactly right. I mean, I think that's, we're trying to really come at this from like, the most reasonable place we can, which are, you know, what are the things that you can do that, that can also exist within your normal environment? You know, like, we have, we have a couch and chairs in our living room, but we happen to have some mats in our living room that you can sit on, so we can sit on the floor and be comfortable as well. And so, we're just trying to really strike that balance all the time by saying, hey, it is important to take care of your body. We believe in rewilding the body, like, we're total fans of anything related to rewilding. But it's also got to fit within the context of people's lives. I mean, I think, you know,

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Inconsistency, right?

• 49:46Juliet Starrett?

  The third rail in this book, of course, is food, because everybody, you know, the food thing is, is so charged and such a part of people's identity. You know, but one of the things that people I know don't want to do is they're like, well, I'm not gonna follow anything that is not gonna allow me to go out to dinner with my friends every so often on the weekends. You know, if I have to follow a diet that means I can't enjoy a community meal with my friends, like, I'm out. Right? And, you know, so many of the, the diets and suggestions people have mean they can't eat dinner with their kids, or they can't go out to dinner on the weekends with their friends. And, you know, for most people, that trade-off and loss of community and connection just isn't worth it from a health standpoint. And so, you know, we really tried to think about, like, what can people actually do within the context of, like, being a regular person who wants to, like,

• 50:28Juliet Starrett?

  be a normal part of society and not totally on the fringes?

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Juliette has done, she is into nutrition, has done some nutrition coaching and, like, some, some studying nutrition through Precision Nutrition. I hate that stuff. It just doesn't speak to me, and I, I see all the third rail opportunities. Like, you know, the, the cuts on the internet I'm gonna get if I say something. Careful.

• 50:51Juliet Starrett?

  Get ready, get ready, Kells.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I had to back into it because we had to talk about the health of your tissues. And we had to talk about your healing properties. And I deal with people who are injured. You know, oftentimes, there's two cohorts of people who come and see us professionally at the high level. I used to win, I'm not Not winning anymore. Why am I winning? Help me. I got injured winning and I don't want to be injured because it's keeping me from winning. And it turns out micronutrients are hugely important to your healing and your body. And what I mean micronutrients, I'm talking about vitamins and minerals. And what is the revolution in performance nutrition? Food. That's what we're now backing. Alan Lim, Stacy Sims, you know. Hey, are you eating fruits and vegetables? Yes or no? One or zero? Because that, that, you know, no shade on a 900 calorie cup of coffee.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  But there's no micronutrients in that fat MCT bomb that you're having. It's not actually, I mean, it's, it's a fuel, but it's not a vitamin source. There's no nourishment. There's no nourishment. So if I'm going to try to get you to use all this collagen you're taking, you better have some vitamin C on board. Well, where does vitamin C come from? Am I just taking more pills and eating this, this ground bison? Is that my recipe for the future? And so what we've tried to do here in around the nutrition piece, because we had to in our work to be able to talk about keeping muscle mass on or leaning out our body composition or just having what you need on board. And it turns out people don't eat enough fruits and vegetables, period. Anywhere. And especially kids. Shocker.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Right? And so we could, we could start there. And what we tried to do is cast this net and saying, you're vegetarian? Cool. I respect that. But let's make sure you're getting some protein and you're actually getting fruits and vegetables as a vegetarian. You're vegan? Cool. We respect that. You're carnivore? Cool. You can eat these berries with your, you know, your raw liver. Whatever that is that you need to do to be you and identify. But there are these certain metrics and baselines. Principles. Principles that underpin that, that give you a lot of freedom. And that's, we do think that people are smart enough to make the decisions. But then you can start to say, wow, I thought I was eating a great way. But we just saw that study that came out that most kids aren't eating any fruits.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  You know, most kids are 56% of the kids aren't eating vegetables. Like that may be a, a long-term problem for us as a society.

• 53:07Rich Roll?

  I think it's pretty certain to be a long-term problem. It already is a long-term problem.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 53:12Rich Roll?

  You know, we're reaping it right now. When you look at the incidence of obesity and type 2 diabetes and prediabetes and, you know, metabolic health is kind of a core piece in your nutrition chapter, like having metabolic flexibility and all of that. Like, that's a newer conversation where there's a lot of emergent science coming out. So I'm super interested in looking at that. And perhaps that's a way into talking a little bit about the wearable technology. Like, you've got a, I assume those are, those are Oura rings that you got on. I got the Whoop on. And that's another piece when it comes to the suburban moms or like the average person.

• 53:56Rich Roll?

  We're now in a situation where we have all these data points. Like, we can look at, like, oh, my sleep stages and my HRV and my resting heart rate and my metabolic rate and my skin temperature. But it's like, what do I do with it? How do I interpret this? What is, what's important about this?

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Do I have a second less point or not based on that, right?

• 54:15Rich Roll?

  And with, you know, the kind of continuous glucose monitors also, like monitoring, you know, glucose intake and how to make sense of that. I think there's a lot of risk of people leading to conclusions with these data points and then making poorly informed decisions about nutrition, et cetera, because they don't understand the complexity and the nuance of what all these data points are trying to tell them. Setting aside also, you know, just the accuracy of all of these things, which I think, you know, you can't rely on, you know, too, too much.

• 54:48Juliet Starrett?

  No, I mean, you know, I'm often wearing more than one tracking. So, you know, between the two of us, I mean, Kelly does really enjoy this Oura ring, but he hates wearables and tracking as a general rule. He just, he's not into it. And I, on the other hand, am a total nerd and I love, like, tracking everything and seeing everything. But I think over my own life of having every single possible wearable and tracking every possible piece of data, for me, when push comes to shove, the only one that really matters and is really actionable for me is my step count, which I literally could get from like a $5 pedometer that was made in the 60s.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  You already have one on your phone.

• 55:24Juliet Starrett?

  And I already have that on my phone, you know, and... You're exactly right. I mean, you know, I could be wearing a Garmin and an Oura ring and do a workout and it would track completely different calories and, you know, different metrics and I would get different sleep scores and my heart rate variability would show up as, you know, different on each one. So, you know, I sort of enjoy seeing at a high level, you know, how my sleep looks on my Oura ring. That's really what I use that for.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  We recognize people are unique. Your tolerances and your history and all the things going on. So you get to, we run at this always is, here's what most people are going to experience. Drinking alcohol before you go to bed typically will impact your sleep. So that doesn't mean we don't drink alcohol. That just means we make it now an informed decision about alcohol related to sleep. That, hey, I'm with friends. There's an amazing bottle of wine out. I haven't had a margarita in a long time. It's hot. I'm gonna have a margarita. But I know the trade-off is here. And I think that helps us to make informed decisions about some of these behaviors. Let me tell a story about our friend who works with Whoop, Kate Courtney. I don't know if you've met Kate?

• 56:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. I haven't met her, but I know who she is. We have the same managers.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. So Kate Courtney is one of the greatest American mountain bikers cyclists ever. She's a world champion. She's a superstar and one of the most complete athletes I've ever met. Just really pays attention and is thoughtful about details. She's racing for the world championship title, her first world championship. And she wakes up and her Whoop says, poor recovery. And she's like, nope, it's wrong.

• 57:00Juliet Starrett?

  She has like a 12. It's red.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  And she's like, no way. I'm, I am, I feel great. I'm gonna win today. And so she just ignores it. And she goes off and wins and then calls up Whoop and is like, hey, your algorithm's off. And they're like, we're Whoop, we're not off. And then they were like, you're right, we were off. And she got this weird data telling her to ignore how she felt. Right? And again, instead of taking that piece of information and saying, huh, how does this, you know, integrate into my behavior and my understanding of how I feel myself and trusting that because she's done that and she's so capable that she could have said, oh, my, my device is telling me not to race today. But here we have such an incredible athlete who's done an amazing job of understanding herself, controlling

• 57:43Speaker 01

  what she can control, setting the parameters to win that she was like, oh, that data doesn't make sense with the whole. And I think that's amazing. And simultaneously, We have people who come in with chronic pain and persistent pain. And the first thing I ask them is, how much are you walking? And tell me about your sleep. Those are the first two questions about anything that's going on. And, you know, one of the things they're like, I said, great. I'm like, great, prove it. It's what gets measured, gets managed, right?

• 58:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I think, you know, what I take from what you just shared and what I agree with is that these are tools and they are powerful tools if you have the right relationship with them. Like you have to look at trends over time and not get too caught up in individual data points. Because, you know, like maybe the thing flips up or like, you know, you don't know how the... So it's like, and look, I love my whoop. I leave it on and they're a great sponsor of the show and all of that. And I get a lot of value in it. And I think on the sleep piece, one thing I've learned, and it was interesting, you talked about this in the book. Like you realize that if you, if you're trying to get eight hours of sleep, like you better be in bed for like nine hours.

• 58:50Juliet Starrett?

  I mean, I was gonna...

• 58:51Rich Roll?

  Cause you're not actually asleep the whole time that you think you're asleep.

• 58:54Juliet Starrett?

  No, I was actually gonna say that when Kelly was talking. I mean, that's the other, like key learning that this, you know, one of these tools have given us is that we really had no idea until we started tracking that, that, you know, the average person is losing a whole hour of sleep. I think Matt Walker talks about that in his book as well. But, you know, between Matt Walker's book and actually seeing it in real life, realizing that, oh, okay, going to bed at 10 and waking up at 6 is not eight hours of sleep. That's seven hours of sleep. That was a big revelation for us. And these tools are what helped us get that. So I'm with you. I mean, I think there's, they're tools and I think if you, you know, you don't, as long as they're not dictating how you feel, which I think actually can happen, but as long as they're not dictating how you feel and you have a good relationship with them, then they're great.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  And they also have to fit in, you know, early on I became sort of mini obsessed with HRV. When it was just new and do you, there was a...

• 59:45Rich Roll?

  And that shit's complicated.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  It is. And there was an HRV device that came out.

• 59:49Juliet Starrett?

  Really, can I tell the story?

• 59:50Speaker 01

  Oh, please.

• 59:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:51Juliet Starrett?

  Okay, so we get like an early, early HRV thing. This is probably 2012. Like you probably got one of these. I don't even know what company it was. But in order to track his HRV, he had to get up and be up for 15 minutes. But then he had to go back and lay down and put all these nodes all over his body. And then lay there for 20 minutes.

• 1:00:11Rich Roll?

  This sounds like a Tim Ferriss thing.

• 1:00:15Juliet Starrett?

  And meanwhile, at this point, our kids are like, you know, seven and four. And they're awake and like, we're trying to get them ready for school and make breakfast and make lunches.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  And I was training for the Molochai. And do all this like. I am an elite middle-aged dad who's gonna slay this. I need this information.

• 1:00:32Juliet Starrett?

  And I finally, after like four days, I was like, dude, like, this whole thing we're doing in the morning, like, you need to be present helping with this kid thing.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  We had funny, and I'd be like, you just ruined it. Now I have to lay here longer.

• 1:00:43Juliet Starrett?

  So, no, we got, we got in this whole battle about, because, you know, he had to go. And so obviously, that wasn't sustainable. And, you know, the technology has gotten so much better since then. But that was where we started.

• 1:00:53Rich Roll?

  But what is important to understand about heart rate variability? Like, I just, all I, I know is that, okay, when it's low, like, that's not good, and you should chill out. And when it's high, like, okay, that's, you have a green light to like, push it.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Well, I think that's a really great use of it.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  You know, I suspect you are a very durable person, and then I could throw a lot of stress at you, and you can swallow that down and kind of normalize the next day. That would be my guess based on your past.

• 1:01:23Rich Roll?

  You might be surprised.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  You could suffer through. You know, we're not experts in heart rate variability. It's another piece of the equation. We're trying to understand inputs and outputs. And what, where can we help people understand why they may not be recovering or feeling as good, even though they feel like they're doing the thing? So, you know, one of the things that, statement that we have is we're like, the bigger the engine, the bigger the brakes. You need a really, if you're an executive person, you're, you know, working hard, you're an athlete, you're a working, a single mother, you need to have a set of tools to be able to hit the, the brakes at the end of the night. I think it's like the moto people are like, you're either wide open on the gas, or you're on the brakes, and the back wheel is locked up as you're sliding.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  And I think we're really good at opening the gas now. And if you look at so much of what happened the last 10 years before, we've kind of gotten into sauna and cold and down regulation. It was all about how do we wake up and go?

• 1:02:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  And then you get to the end of the day, and you don't know how to calm down. You know, we, this came to a view, and a few years ago, we had a friend who got a blood panel, and it freaked her out because, said she was prediabetic. And some of her liver markers were off. And so the first thing we said was, well, tell us about your day. Are you under stress? I mean, like, we need to know a little bit about you, not just show me how many macros you counted. And she said, well, you know, I'm under a lot of stress. And we're like, how do you cope with that stress? And she said, well, I usually drink some wine before bed. Okay, great. So tell us about that. You know, we're curious. And she's like, well, it's, it's sometimes it's two bottles of wine. And that, if I just walked in, it was like, well, you're crazy. No wonder you can't drink two bottles of wine. If I take her only strategy of self coping and

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  not understand, that's the tool she was given. And that's what she discovered on her own. Then shame on me. I'm a really terrible performance coach. And I think that's where we started to really understand this, this notion of trying to look at stress and how people are coping with their stress. So they can hit the brakes in their own home at that hyper local, you don't have to go somewhere, you don't have to hire an expert, you should be able to self soothe in the evening. And heart rate variability is just one of those pieces, I think.

• 1:03:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:33Juliet Starrett?

  I think also, one of the things it Kelly and I have really tried to pay attention to, and I think it took turning 40 for us to have the maturity to do this, because we both do like to bleed through our eyes and suffer in training. But that is, you know, the question we ask ourselves a lot is, do we have a desire to train? And then we actually try to listen to that. And we try to not be, you know, not let our device override that. Like, you know, it's really powerful if you're someone who uses and moves your body to actually sort of listen to that inner, do I have a desire to train? And then, and then, you know, and then actually follow through with that. And, you know, if we wake up and don't have a desire to train, then that's a day where we just walk.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:12Juliet Starrett?

  And, you know, it's, for us, that's an evolution, because we, in the old days, it was like, we would

• 1:04:18Rich Roll?

  That's not, yeah.

• 1:04:19Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, I mean, we would, it didn't matter. It was like, six days a week, no matter what, maybe you take one day off. And, and so, you know, we have, we really have tried to learn how to listen a little better to our own bodies.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  You're talking, what's interesting is that, that's an individual. As soon as you're on a team, you're on a triathlon team, you're in a soccer team. You're gonna have to perform and this is what time practice is for everybody. So you don't have the luxury of really dialing up and dialing down. And so it becomes even more incumbent on us to ask, how can we control what we can control? You know, when we work, we're working with a Division One water polo team at a local university that's really good, Cal, shout out. They are Go Bears. They are incredible. Sorry. Please. No, I know. It had to come up at some point. They are, they are an incredible coaches, a world-class. The women are amazing. Like, I really am inspired. I just volunteer and just get to be around.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  And I, one of the things I tell those women is, they're not outworking the competition. That model has sailed. Where you just like, I'll sneak in some extra volume, I'll do a little bit extra. Everyone is doing that. So what's the limiter now? The limiter for, what we believe is, how well you can adapt to distress. Whoever can adapt the best can handle higher volume and still show up and be fresher. And we've been saying that forever, right? Whoever does the most volume is the freshest wins. I think that's like Alan Lamb or Pavel or someone. And so then we can say, well, if that's a generality, can we apply that to humans? Right? How can I show up for my family on the weekends without being torched? Or in the evening, you know, and not, not blackout on the couch because I'm so exhausted?

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  How can I adapt to the stresses in my life, whether they're good or bad? And manage that in a way that leaves me intact or leaves me to have more stress? And one of the things that we believe is, believe it or not, people think they're working really hard, they're not. And they could actually work harder. So some of this isn't just playing defense, don't do this because you'll make it injured. We just think actually you're only working at like 50%. You can actually go harder.

• 1:06:30Rich Roll?

  I think it's a very interesting time because this conversation around recovery, holding back, like trying to calibrate your output so that you're properly bouncing back and can be fresh for the next day is, even if you guys have been talking about it for a long time, is pretty new. Like, you know, I'm older than you guys and I'm a product of that era where it's just like, you just go as hard and as long and as much as you can until you just absolutely break yourself. Like, you know, swimming in the 80s, it was like, I mean, we were doing 20,000 meters a day, every day, and you're going in, you're just, there was no like, okay, today you're gonna ease off and you're, no, you just go

• 1:07:12Rich Roll?

  in and you go as hard as you can for as long as you can. And I walked around like a zombie for like a decade and a half. And then you roll the dice on a two-week taper and see how it goes. And, you know, there was no, like,

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  That's bananas. What you just said, by the way, is so bananas.

• 1:07:28Rich Roll?

  Oh, I mean, this was the whole sport, you know, and I'm sure there were other sports that kind of approached this similarly. It was like, how much volume can we actually do?

• 1:07:37Juliet Starrett?

  Just to add to that really quickly, I was a rower at Cal.

• 1:07:41Rich Roll?

  It's similar.

• 1:07:42Juliet Starrett?

  And, I mean, it was 30 hours a week plus of training, but, you know, we would, we would train for three hours in the morning and then like another four hours in the afternoon. And even though the rowing season is spring, we would start doing that on like August 1st. I mean, it was just like, non, it was just like,

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  How was your fueling then?

• 1:07:58Juliet Starrett?

  Destroy ourselves.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  How was your nutrition?

• 1:08:00Juliet Starrett?

  And all I ate, all I ate was red vines and, and bagels.

• 1:08:03Rich Roll?

  Calories, calories, it didn't matter what. And, like, the idea like, oh, you need to be fresh for the workout. What are you talking about?

• 1:08:12Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, yeah. No one ever talked about that. That was like not part of the conversation.

• 1:08:15Rich Roll?

  Not for nothing. Like, like five hours of swimming a day for a race that literally is like 47 seconds long, you know? And, and you were really good.

• 1:08:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, good, but like now I look at the times now and I can't even relate to the sport. Like the, the, the progress is extraordinary and that is due in no small part, I'm sure, to the kind of work that you guys do and understanding how the body works and the importance, the primacy of recovery, like allowing your body to repair itself in between training sessions? Like what is that about? Like literally just being a zombie for as long as possible? And being in a chronic state of, of overtraining, which really is an injury. Like that is an injured.

• 1:08:57Juliet Starrett?

  It's a stress and it's a stressor on the body.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  If you can't do your job or occupy a role in the team, we call that an injury. Right? Clear mechanisms injury. There's a bone sticking out of your arm, right? There's a fever, something going on.

• 1:09:08Juliet Starrett?

  Does being a zombie count?

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Zombie? I think we're gonna add that in. I really, that's a really important piece. I can't show up and perform the way I should perform. And it's tricky, you know, it's tricky working with young people. You know, we have two teenagers and we are, turns out the strictest parents in the whole, you know, we're like, you will have to sleep, you'll have to eat these fruits and vegetables, you know?

• 1:09:29Rich Roll?

  I heard you tell a story, like what is, what's required in order for somebody to date your daughter? These days, you updated that, like?

• 1:09:36Juliet Starrett?

  Well, it's, it's actually worked, so we.

• 1:09:41Rich Roll?

  It's worked to prevent her from dating?

• 1:09:42Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, basically. I mean, you know, just the myriad ways our kids are gonna need to be in therapy in their twenties is, it's starting, it's starting to add up, I think. But, um, you know, Kelly used to make his own, um, like strong man stones.

• 1:09:57Rich Roll?

  He hasn't.

• 1:09:58Juliet Starrett?

  You know, and I would come into the backyard on like a Sunday afternoon and there he is stirring the concrete and pouring it into these molds. And I was like, you are such a weirdo. Like I'm even into this stuff, but that's weird.

• 1:10:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:07Juliet Starrett?

  Um, and so we've had two or three of these, you know, what do they weigh? A hundred, a hundred and fifty pounds?

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  Some were, some, some were a little heavier.

• 1:10:13Rich Roll?

  I thought you said 200 pounds.

• 1:10:14Juliet Starrett?

  I think it might be 200 pounds. And so we have, we have these stones in our yard. Um, and Kelly's rule has always been, well, when Georgia starts dating someone, like if, you know, if he, if he or she, um, wants to date our daughter, they need to be able to lift up this stone. And I said, and my point of view was like, no, no, no, you don't want the kid, you know, you don't want. Like the oversized seventeen year old kid with like all the testosterone dating your daughter. I was like, that's actually the exact opposite kid you want.

• 1:10:41Rich Roll?

  The one kid who can lift that is actually not the kid you want.

• 1:10:44Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, you don't want that kid dating your daughter. But nevertheless, our daughter did, does have this lovely boyfriend named Yannick. And fortunately, the kid loves to train and he can actually pick up the stone.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  He heard the story finally and rolled it out of the yard.

• 1:10:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  And then one day, and then he like sent me a picture with the stone on his shoulder.

• 1:11:03Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, so Kelly was so proud.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  You know, I think what was, what's interesting about that is I actually stole that idea from, I think it was Dan John, who said, you know, it was like this, he had this test of like, overhead squatting your body weight ten times. And as a test, and as you get heavier and heavier, that becomes quite a thing. But just overhead squatting a barbell is quite a thing. But no one does that without practicing. No one does that without training. And so my, my intention with this is no kid just comes in and picks up the stone without having some things built in. Like this kid trains, this kid loves to play, this kid is interested in, you know, theoretically it was a screening device and maybe it was a little blunt, but you know.

• 1:11:44Juliet Starrett?

  The idea is that. We also had that diet that we did in like nineteen ninety-nine, right?

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right, the vertical diet, only protein shakes.

• 1:11:50Juliet Starrett?

  It wasn't vertical diet, it was something else.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Velocity diet.

• 1:11:52Juliet Starrett?

  We, we briefly followed Dan John's diet.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  Cause we like to tinker.

• 1:11:56Juliet Starrett?

  Tinkers in, this was probably like two thousand.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  We made it thirty-six hours.

• 1:12:00Juliet Starrett?

  And, and the diet is you just eat protein powder for thirty days.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  I don't think it was thirty days, was it thirty days?

• 1:12:07Juliet Starrett?

  It was supposed to be thirty days.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  Lord help us all.

• 1:12:08Juliet Starrett?

  But I mean, keep in mind that this was in the dawn of protein powder where, you know, you could only get it in these, you could only get it at GNC and it was in these giant houses. It was like weight gainer nine hundred and I actually was practicing law at this point. So I'm trying to do this for the, and I think we made it forty, forty-eight hours.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  How, that is so messed up. I would like it if you didn't tell that story anymore. That is so, it shows us that like.

• 1:12:31Juliet Starrett?

  It makes it okay because it was two thousand three.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  Body composition is the reason I think most people come to nutrition. You know, if you're an athlete, maybe you come to nutrition because you're like, it is a secret weapon to fuel and do these things. But for most people, they initiate a conversation because it's about body composition. Or my cholesterol is so high, I gotta stop eating this.

• 1:12:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, either a health crisis or, I mean, weight loss. When you say body composition, for most people, it's weight loss.

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  Let's say weight loss, that's right. And, uh, you know, imagine if I'm just like, hey, why don't you just eat some?

• 1:13:00Juliet Starrett?

  Protein powder for thirty days?

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  No, that's. That metal taste in your mouth, it doesn't go away.

• 1:13:06Rich Roll?

  Food?

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, food. You know, I think that's really, as we're trying to untangle this, you know, we keep flip flopping back and forth between here, if you want to win a world championship, this is what we recommend. And we're going to help you find your blind spots so you can be more durable. And simultaneously, because that's, I mean, that's our view through this. This is what we talk about with all of the seals and delta force and all of these things. And simultaneously, we know what's good for the goose is good for the gander. So how do we scale that through? That comes from even ideas where I got to work with really good coaches. Mike Bergner is a good example, who was coaching high school kids in the morning. And then he'd go home in his evening and be coaching Olympians in Olympic lifting.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  And being there on either side of his day, I could see the through thinking in his methodology. What was essential? Why is he teaching this first skill? And how's that skill progressed to go to the Olympics? And we should be able to do those things with these principles that, you know, this is the foundation. And then you can get really sharp and pointy as you need to, to go as far as you want. Because really, you know, we always talk about potential and, you know, sometimes I think it's easy to get doom and gloom. But really, you can feel better and do more in your life if you take care of the care and feeding of this husk.

• 1:14:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, the way that I see kind of the value of your work in the context of, at least with respect to elite athletes is with respect to the best of the best, what's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander because they're doing something so specific. And, you know, they're training really hard and they're training only specific muscle group, all that kind of stuff. Ultimately, is potentially at odds with longevity, you know, long-term health, like all these other, you know, it's like if you're chasing a performance goal, that goal is not necessarily in alignment with long-term health goals.

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  Or even relationships, right?

• 1:15:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, or everything else in your life, right? And you kind of come in and say, well, we have all these other things that will help you long-term be the best elite athlete, but also are in service of your life as a civilian down the line.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Which is gonna happen.

• 1:15:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, which, yeah, ultimately, despite you thinking you're going to be like in that elite state for the rest of your life, you will not. I was at...

• 1:15:30Rich Roll?

  So, so I swam at Stanford in the late 80s and, and my coach Skip Kenny recently passed away and there was a memorial service for him up in Fresno where he moved, it was his hometown, he moved there after he retired. And so a ton of alumni, you know, people that I swam with over the years showed up for this event. And I was standing at the reception and, and just off to the side was Anthony Moss, who in my era was the number two 200 butterfly in the world, Pablo Morales, winningest NCAA swimmer in history at the time, never lost a race at NCAA championships. And Sean Murphy, who was a Canadian backstroker,

• 1:16:13Rich Roll?

  went to the Olympics, incredible finalist at the Olympics. And all three of them, this was the era in which the underwater dolphin kick was being pioneered for the first time. And all three of these guys, like their, their, their, their knees bowed back, but were bowing backwards and they were standing like, you know, like they're all standing like this. Like my knees hyperextend a little bit, but like Anthony's literally looked like a bow, that, that way, like, like that, right? And, and I'm noticing this and I, and I knew this about them and it's what made them, those three guys were the best underwater dolphin kickers in the world at the time. Like they could go underwater faster than

• 1:16:55Rich Roll?

  anybody. And I went up to Anthony because he had the most extreme, like, you know, bow. And I'm like, how's your back? And he's like, it's terrible. I've got bulged discs. I've had to, you know, I can't remember, I don't think he's had surgery, but he's had chronic problems. He can't do flip turns in the pool anymore. And I was like, yeah, me too, man. Like, what do you think that's about? And so I'm interested. So the reason I bring that up is It is that contrast between like that that quality made them extraordinary at that one thing, but here we are, we're in our 50s and you know, chronic brain pain problems as a result of that's just the way he stands, you know, it's probably the way he's always

• 1:17:37Rich Roll?

  stood, it made him great at that one thing and now is causing him pain. So that that dissonance between, you know, what makes you great and elite at one thing and how you want to feel later in life and be stable, bulletproof, you know, mobile, functional and the rest.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  We were hanging out with Sean Sean Payton, who is now coach at Denver and we were working with the Saints and he had just gone to a Hall of Fame gala and all of the coaches that he worshipped as his mentors had to be helped on stage with like multiple people helping them, they were so crippled. And he just said to himself, okay, that that can't be me. You want to jump in?

• 1:18:17Juliet Starrett?

  Well, yeah, we actually just were talking to our old friend Mark Bell, who is a world champion powerlifter. I don't know if you've heard of Mark Bell.

• 1:18:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's the Smelly Bell guy.

• 1:18:27Juliet Starrett?

  Mark Smelly Bell. When he was, when he won his world championship, he was 330 pounds and sort of by all conventional metrics, like super unhealthy, like he couldn't tie a shoe and he felt terrible and you know, he probably, his blood panel was probably horrible at that time and he was taking massive amounts of performance enhancing drugs and you know, it just like he was basically not doing well from a health standpoint, but that body allowed him to win a world championship. And then a few years later, he got injured doing a lift and kind of had this light bulb moment and realized that that wasn't how he wanted to live his whole life. And he's actually spent the last 10 years basically trying to like totally overhaul his body, rewild his body and his transformation is exceptional.

• 1:19:12Juliet Starrett?

  And he's going to run the Boston Marathon. But he started literally by just walking three times a day for 10 minutes. You know, he really started small and, and realized he had to take these real baby steps to sort of, you know, figure out how to get back to health and transform his body and lose all that weight and gain back some of his mobility. But I mean, you know, it's been a slow process. It's taken him 10 years of baby steps and just adding in, you know, adding in different practices as his body got, you know, better and more mobile and healthier. And now 10 years later, he's running a marathon next month.

• 1:19:46Speaker 01

  And let me apologize to all the athletes in the eighties who went before. And the nineties, we broke a lot of people. The model, you were right. As long as the clock was faster and you did it and solved it. There were a lot of eggs that were broken that didn't need to be broken. And if you could survive because you had the will and the coach and the sort of support, you maybe came out of that and thrived or survived and did well enough. One of the things that we like to say is you should come out of this thing unharmed. Even if you're elite, it crashes are going to happen. Of course, there's going to be, you know, you may have some laxity in your shoulders. There's some things like that that are, are related. But it isn't necessarily a given that because they were able to have a greater range of motion

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  and hyperextend their knees a little bit, it's called genuer curved abdomen. That doesn't always translate to low back dysfunction. But what we see is this special skill that gave them this uncrushable kick and big range doesn't necessarily that we didn't know how to control it or support it or take some of the load out of the low back. And what we did was we just said, well, as long, we worship the clock. Instead of saying, is there, are there inputs in there? Think about the nutrition, you know, I mean, just power bar was just on the scene. I remember hearing like, I think it's Dave Scott, talking about like running with bags of figs. Yeah, bananas. Bananas and dates. Oh my gosh. And so if that's how far we've come.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  You know, we do owe a, we know what we know because we broke a lot of people. And I want to say that absolutely you're right, that sometimes there is a cost at being an elite, there is a cost. But not necessarily it's one to one, that that had to be the outcome. It was the only outcome, we knew how to deliver at that time. But if you look at, you know, what Stanford has done to support its athletes, because we work there, they're really sophisticated about nutrition and, you know, and supporting. And it looks like a very, I mean, you know, because you go back, but it's, you're like, where am I? This is Mars.

• 1:21:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a completely different place from when I was there, in a good way.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Well, maybe we can say you can do this and you don't necessarily have to have spinal surgery.

• 1:21:59Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. So, in thinking about like these, these vital signs and, and the kind of principles around mobility and stability, et cetera, I want to talk a little bit about like some of the, you know, core things that the listener or somebody who's, who's watching this should be thinking about incorporating into their daily routine. Like, I don't want to complicate people's morning routines, of course, God forbid, but like, you know, what are, what are some of the key things that you think, you know, move the, you know, move the needle the most? That people are not thinking about, not practicing about, not, you know?

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  How about, let's, um, let's start with just some, getting some input, beginning a conversation with your body about pain, or about making yourself feel better. We think that in our clinical experiences, that if we had people do a little bit of myofascial work, rolling, soft tissue, self massage, whatever language you're comfortable with, in the evening before they went to bed, that was a great entree into understanding your body, feeling your blind spots, getting non-threatening input into the system. So if you, in the evening, could sit down next to a ball, a tennis ball, a softball, roller, and ask yourself from the day, what's sore? What hurts? What's achy?

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  And I'm going to commit 10 minutes, the first part of this show I'm watching, I'm just going to roll around on whatever ails me. That's a really important conversation you could begin to have. I'm talking about 10 minutes, like that's super reasonable. And the reason we started shifting that to the day, from the day in the gym to the evening, was that we saw that people didn't actually do it or want to do it as a team. But in the evening, they had time and agency and nothing was happening at the end of the day. Like you're on Facebook, you're surfing Instagram. So there was this great moment where you could do some self-care. And 10 minutes a night usually turns into 12 to 14 minutes because you discover something. You can sit on your coffee table, put that ball right in your hamstrings, just roll around.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Then the next sort of level there is we could say, hey, can you take a full breath in that position? So if you're working on something, or you've got some aspect of your body that hurts, and you push on it, and that takes your breath away, or you catch your breath, then we found an area of interest. And it doesn't mean we need to shy away from that. It's okay that that's uncomfortable to compression. So one of the first things we can do is say, am I doing harm to myself? No, not at all. You can, if you can take a full breath in and out, you're signaling to your brain, this is safe. Nerves are king of the breath, the breath is king of the brain. That's Iyengar 101. And why breathing is such an important part of yoga is teaching your body to accept and be able to control those positions by breathing there. Your brain says, it's not a threat.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  So if you find a painful spot, or a sore spot, or an uncomfortable spot, you found a spot. And all you need to do is take a four-second inhale there, contract into the ball roller, and hold that for four seconds. We call that an isometric in the parlance, right? You're just building a tension or a movement without motion in the limb. And then exhale a long time for eight seconds, long exhale. And what you'll find is if you just repeat that cycle a few times, whatever hurts in that area that you're working, sometimes starts to hurt less. You're desensitizing, you're changing your, resetting some threat signals. And if you started doing that on your back, your hips, your calves, your feet, what you realize is, wow, I can make myself feel better.

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  And because you did it before your bed, it's like getting a massage, you tend to sleep a little bit better. You're down-regulating. Yeah, and we snuck in breath practice.

• 1:25:34Juliet Starrett?

  And you had to get up and down off the ground in order to do that work.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  You ruined it. Exactly right, that's exactly right.

• 1:25:41Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, and I mean, I think we talked about it a little bit earlier, but we are really such huge fans of people... You know, taking, using these practices and thinking about how they can constrain or change their environment so they don't have to think about it. You know, we have standing desks everywhere at our office, so you can sit. We have stools, but the default is to stand, and so it just makes it not a choice if you're, you know, you can't rely on your willpower that day. And, you know, we have mobility tools all over our living room floor, and we have easy ways to sit on the floor, and we have balance boards all over our house, and, you know, ways to practice balance. And, you know, I'm sure you've heard of Chris Hinshaw's Old Man Balance Test, where you put your shoes on on one.

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  Oh, this is great. Everyone, you're welcome.

• 1:26:21Juliet Starrett?

  Everyone listening should do this test.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  What's it called again?

• 1:26:24Juliet Starrett?

  It's called the, Chris Hinshaw, and it's called the Old Man Balance Test, and he actually created it so that he would have something to compete against his kids and win. And so, the idea is you put your socks and shoes on the floor, and you stand on one leg, and you reach down and grab your sock, and you put on your sock without putting that foot down, and then you reach down and grab your shoe, and put your shoe on and tie it, and then you switch and do it on the other side. And it's a really great two-minute balance practice, and that's how I put my shoes on every single day.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:26:55Juliet Starrett?

  You know, and that's something, you know, that's just this little, you know, small behavior that we add into our day that's easy and fun, and you can, you know, challenge your kids to do it. And so, you know, that's just one of those things that we've snuck in and said, hey, there are ways that you can change your environment and just slightly think about your environment differently, so that these are just things you do without having to rely on willpower or motivation.

• 1:27:18Rich Roll?

  Hmm. I think I would struggle with that.

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  Everyone struggles with it.

• 1:27:22Juliet Starrett?

  It's hard.

• 1:27:23Speaker 01

  It's okay. And that's okay. You know, keep in mind that if you just grease that, I mean, I don't know where you're living, some kind of barefoot cult, that's cool. But, you know, some of what we're trying to do is, you know, is that dynamic balance work. And if you can just start to think about your environment a little differently, then that's something you never have to do ever again. I don't need you to work on balance because you did all this. And if you really want to make it super gnarly, put your shoe three feet away from you. You have to do like a, you know, a crazy lunge or drinking game to get it. But when you start to shape your world this way, you know, rinse, washer Repeat for a decade and let me know how that goes for you. And you you brought it up. It's difficult for us to imagine our futures. I think in economics, we always think that the future is going to be more valuable. I think there's a term and phrase for that.

• 1:28:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  But in willpower, we always think Kelly started tomorrow is not going to eat the cookie and he'll start yoga tomorrow. Right. But that's that future self is never as valuable as as today.

• 1:28:18Rich Roll?

  And you'll have more money and more time and you'll be able to do all the things that you can you can do today.

• 1:28:23Juliet Starrett?

  And I think it's also important for people to, you know, once you, you know, with his old man balance test, for example, you know, we traveled yesterday, sat on a plane, did a lot of driving. I may have had a harder training session. And so, you know, every single day, my experience is different with it. I have some days where I just grease it and get my shoe and sock on, tie my shoe and I'm like, I am crushing this. And then other days, based on, you know, what's been going on in my life, it's different, but it's all just sort of information I have. And I'm able to say, hey, you know, I'm struggling a little bit with my balance day. I'm feeling a little bit stiff. You know, maybe I should spend a little time, you know, mobilizing my hips today and make sure I get enough steps in because I was, you know, stuck sitting all day yesterday on a plane. It's like, you know, it's just information on which we can make different decisions.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Is a good piece of data. It's called the SOLEC. Single standing one leg, eyes closed. And you should be able to stand on one leg, remove the visual field. That's with the eyes closed and balance for 20 seconds without touching.

• 1:29:22Juliet Starrett?

  That's the benchmark. Really easy, but it's not.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  You know, I I was just speaking at a big conference and a provider from Norway came up and he said, you know, what we do is that the SOLEC is actually too hard for most people. And so what we do is we put them in front of a wall, a white wall. So you can do this with your parents so they can touch the wall. But the white wall allows them to keep their eyes open, but removes the visual information.

• 1:29:45Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  Because what happens is as we get older, we stop feeling, I mean, remember the foot has so much real estate in the brain, right? That homunculus sort of sensory motor cortex part. And if you take away the eyes, if you have downregulated how good your feet are, you know, how how surfaces you're on, you take away a lot of key. Balance visual information. He started doing this because everyone falls elderly fall in Norway in snowstorms because it's all white and you don't get any visual information or in crowds. People fall in crowds because you can't see where the the ground is and understand. So, you know, it turns out, of course, that we're obsessed with foot function and being barefoot and having rock solid rad feet makes you better at surfing and everything else.

• 1:30:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and it's such a simple thing, right?

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  And not sexy.

• 1:30:32Rich Roll?

  It would be easier than at least when you get older.

• 1:30:36Speaker 01

  But when we when we started working on, you know, there's obviously from our friends at FMS and it's originally a Gary Gray idea, this Y balance test where you can actually have someone stand on one leg and then just make a Y, you know, the the first part of the Y goes out in front of you and then there's the two other arms go behind you and you can just reach out as far as you can with your foot and take a breath there and we work use it as a dynamic warm up. I hand you a medicine ball and then I'm like, okay, how far can you get that foot out in front of you? And suddenly you realize, oh, there is time for me to play more in some of my training. If you're jumping on the trainer, I love to me, mountain biking is our jam and I spent a lot of time on the trainer and during my warmups for the trainers when I do a lot of

• 1:31:21Speaker 01

  exploring and playing and I see something on internet and I'm like, oh, that rope looks cool or that's fun. I use it as a as a warm up device. And I think one of the things we could give to all the athletes listening and people who like to exercise is incorporate a little bit more play into your training. Still do the training. You're still gonna we're still gonna suffer and do brutal one minute on pieces or whatever is we're gonna do. But there's a lot of exploration and it may be as simple as Juliet and I love to go out and play frisbee, you know, before we go.

• 1:31:50Juliet Starrett?

  Or like we have double dutch ropes at our office and I don't know the last time you tried to do double dutch, but it's really hard.

• 1:31:58Rich Roll?

  It might have been it might be 50 years at this.

• 1:32:00Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:01Rich Roll?

  If I've ever tried it, I don't know.

• 1:32:03Juliet Starrett?

  And it was like it was like a playground. Yeah, but you know, we have double dutch ropes around and we have balance boards and we have, you know, in our garage at our house, we have a pegboard and you know, every single teenager who walks through our garage beelines. directly for the pegboard and like tries their luck on the pegboard. And so we just try to have these things around to make it fun and play. And so that it's not just all like get on the bike and crush yourself, you know, we just try to, try to make some of this fun because you know, it is fun to use your body and be able to use your body and connect with other people and, you know, throw a ball and throw a frisbee and.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  If there was one thing, though, people love to ask us, what's the one mobilization?

• 1:32:41Juliet Starrett?

  Oh, yeah. It's my favorite thing to watch Kelly's face when someone asks him this. His, he does this like,

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  I could just do one thing.

• 1:32:49Juliet Starrett?

  Hey Kelly, if I could just do one thing, like what would it be, you know, and, and so he, his head like tilts to the side. And then he kind of starts like twitching a little bit.

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  Well, because really asking was what's not important, right?

• 1:33:00Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah. And so I just peek out from the background and I'm like, the couch stretch.

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  I think today we are not spending enough time with the hip and extension. And if you go to a yoga class and jump into Warrior One where you're like, wow, you're really into this kind of triangle pose, split stance position. And there's a reason there's that's so heavily in a lot of the movements of rehab of sort of movement practice. It's such an important person. That's position. That's the position we walk around in, being able to take my leg behind me and sprint and sprint faster. And if I want to run faster, I'm going to be able to need to have that knee further and further behind my butt into a lunge. But it's the one thing I think we're witnessing as modern people,

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  because we do so much sitting and so much, you know, work on the computer, we're seeing that people are losing that capacity to effectively have that leg behind them. And we have a test in there called the couch stretch test, which is a shocker. And to your point earlier, someone said, you know, hey, I can't activate my glutes. One of the things that happens is that if that into your line, so the line running down the front of your body, your quads, the connective tissue system, your hip capsule, if you can't bring that hip effectively behind you, like in a deep lunge and squeeze your butt, that tells us we sort of are being inhibited by that position. And oftentimes what happens is that we end up in shapes where we're not very competent. We don't even have the range or we don't have the exposure there, whatever is the limiter.

• 1:34:33Speaker 01

  And that can inhibit our ability to control that. And one of the reasons we see that stiff quads, being on a bike, kicking, long lever kicking all day long, rectus moris, all the running can make us really stiff. All of a sudden, when we're in hip extension or hip extension, we can't squeeze the butt effectively, recruit very effectively. We call it positional inhibition that can contribute to the loss of glute function controlling the back. So whether it's knee pain or low back pain, and we have so many stories of us adding in these movements, some lunges, some Bulgarian split squats, some isometrics in these positions, and people's backs get better, their knees get better, their butts turn on. That would be the thing I would say.

• 1:35:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  The one thing. The one thing. I'm sorry, everyone, the one thing. The one thing. Plus vegetables.

• 1:35:20Rich Roll?

  Well, that's like the main antidote for all the sitting and the sedentary lifestyle. That is like, that is the low hanging fruit.

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  It's the position that gets messed up.

• 1:35:29Rich Roll?

  That's the one thing that like, we're all doing too much of, that's contributing to all of these imbalances and ultimately, you know, atrophies of certain muscle groups that lead to our pelvises not being like, you know, like all the kind of things that have those lower back and knee downstream, you know, injury repercussions.

• 1:35:48Speaker 01

  And when people, if you're listening to this and you're, you're like, hey, I've got some pain in my body, it can be really daunting to say, what's going on there? You know, and if I give you this laundry list of like, sleep, nutrition, hydration, stress, breathing practice, you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, that's a lot. I gotta work on that. But one of the things you can absolutely control right away is your range of motion. And oftentimes, when you go see a physician or we're trying to, to manage pain and positions, no one really owns range of motion or position. What we end up seeing is there's all this conversation about the tissue health or getting stronger, but no one ever checks your native range of motion. And we see this actually as a feature of a lot of the very sophisticated training. So we've had the pleasure of working with the 49ers last year, and one of the

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  things their strength and conditioning staff has identified was the rehab staff is putting out fires and trying to get return players to the field. The strength staff is trying to develop the capacities and physiology. Let's get you stronger and fitter. But no one really owned full position. So they had athletes who were coming in who couldn't bring their knees up very high, or missing hip extension or ankles, and they didn't have, they were realizing that they weren't really Really seeing it and then the rehab staff might put people out back into play, but they're they were pain free or healed and now they got to do their job and the strength staff is like didn't get enough. So enough time to develop these positions, but as a mortal person, if I discover that there's some aspect of my tissue system, I have shoulder pain, for example, just saying is a I don't, but you get the idea.

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  If I can't put my arm over my head, that's a really simple place to start by restoring the function of your body. And you can imagine if you're swimming and you're ineffective at putting your arm over your head, that's going to be tricky.

• 1:37:28Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  Right? So when we can start giving people some simple diagnostics, some vital signs around key movement features, that can be a really powerful way to untangle what seems like very complex pain problems.

• 1:37:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, the question that I have is a follow up to that is is where does flexibility come in? Because when you talk about range of motion, particularly if you're over indexing on strength work, you're going to reduce your range of motion.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  Not necessarily, you shouldn't.

• 1:37:56Rich Roll?

  Well, like I just know if like if I'm if I start throwing heavy weight around like suddenly like I, you know, I'm swinging my arms around my shoulder. It doesn't feel the way it did, you know, prior to putting on a little bit more muscle mass unless I really focus on making sure that I'm maintaining that.

• 1:38:12Speaker 01

  And there it is, right?

• 1:38:13Rich Roll?

  Of flexibility.

• 1:38:14Speaker 01

  You can't just say to someone, get stronger. I just saw a great coach named Franz Bosch. Talk about if you get hypertrophy on athletes, you just get them big. You can actually really wreck their coordination. You change the penetration. That's the how the fibers align. You change length, angles of pull. You change how the brain is interpreting what's going on. You have to account. You can't just say get stronger. Otherwise, we just give you blood pressure, you know, blood flow restriction cuffs and an assault bike. And we would just get everyone big.

• 1:38:41Rich Roll?

  Well, yeah, and on the extreme spectrum of that, just look at a bodybuilder. They can't like they can barely move.

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:38:48Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, yeah, like our friend, yeah, like our friend Mark Bell. He literally couldn't like he had to put a shoe on with a stick.

• 1:38:53Speaker 01

  Did you watch Physical 100?

• 1:38:54Rich Roll?

  No, uh-uh.

• 1:38:55Speaker 01

  Oh, this great Korean show where they brought in.

• 1:38:58Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, I've seen the ads for it, but I haven't watched it.

• 1:39:01Juliet Starrett?

  It is really fun.

• 1:39:02Rich Roll?

  Like ripped up like Korean dudes.

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  And men and women who are badass wrestlers, skeleton athletes, track field, track cyclists. We won't give it away.

• 1:39:11Juliet Starrett?

  Very diverse, though. I mean, it's like every kind of, you know, there's some dancers.

• 1:39:15Speaker 01

  There's a 50 kilo. Concrete ball and then there's a test. They call it like the Hercules test or something Atlas and they had to just hold it. They had a couple of strong men and

• 1:39:25Juliet Starrett?

  You had to get it over your

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  Get it over your head.

• 1:39:28Juliet Starrett?

  Get it over your head and then stand there.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  And there's a jacked bodybuilder in there. You're like, you're like, well, that guy.

• 1:39:33Juliet Starrett?

  He's definitely gonna win.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Unless you had any insider knowledge and that guy couldn't even get the ball over his head and hold it for one second. Everyone else held it for two hours. He couldn't even find a position because the cost of his aesthetic drive had nothing to do with the application of that. And I think one of the things that you bring a really good point to is our fetishization of the gym and gym culture hasn't necessarily always connected to, am I training for something? What's the minimum dose in the gym so I can be a better swimmer?

• 1:40:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:40:09Speaker 01

  Right? We're like, go just get bigger and stronger. Strength is never a weakness. Hmm. If you can't, if it starts to mess up your swim.

• 1:40:15Juliet Starrett?

  If you can't put your arms over your head.

• 1:40:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:17Juliet Starrett?

  Because you're so strong then.

• 1:40:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Or you just start to cramp up.

• 1:40:21Speaker 01

  You could.

• 1:40:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:22Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:23Speaker 01

  You don't have to, but suddenly you, but somewhere in there, you know, I think Tyler Hamilton said in his book, would you rather be have your hematocrit up two points or be two pounds lighter? He's like, two pounds lighter, you know, because strength to weight does make a difference. That matters. So those are all considerations. And if your point is that I'm doing something, we call that session cost. And if that thing is removing my ability to move freely, I need to either modify it or put in another stimulus to maintain my range. It doesn't necessarily mean just because I got a little bit stronger that I have to change my technique or style, but it could certainly if we're not keeping an eye on it. And I think that was why a lot of athletes were like, hey, I'm a worse swimmer

• 1:41:08Speaker 01

  when I do this leg press.

• 1:41:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. You start bulking up and suddenly you can't, you don't have the flow and the technique and the range of motion.

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  I believe you.

• 1:41:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But the important distinction here is that mobility, like mobility work is not the same as stretching. And you make that point pretty clearly in, in the book. There is a distinction between these two things. Just because you're stretching, you're not working on your mobility.

• 1:41:34Speaker 01

  Not necessarily.

• 1:41:35Juliet Starrett?

  Not necessarily. I mean, you could be, but you know, and I'll let Kelly talk about the anatomy part of this, but I mean, I think what we learned in the 80s and 90s, and I know I did when I was a D1 athlete at Cal, is that nobody ever really did much stretching because it didn't work that much, right? We were just all passively, you know, stretching our tissues.

• 1:41:51Speaker 01

  You guys stretched. You would swing your arms around.

• 1:41:52Rich Roll?

  I was like incredibly flexible. And then when I got back into multi-sport in my 40s, there was this idea like, oh, you shouldn't stretch if you're a runner. And I kind of bought into that. And I've lost a lot of that flexibility to my detriment. Like, I wish I had kept that up. And I think that that has been harmful to me.

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  Your range of motion doesn't, I want to jump in on you, but your range of motion doesn't have to change because you age. That's the one physical, you're going to be less powerful. You may be able to maintain your aerobic power for a long time. We know that that to be true. But your ability to express your range of motion in your joints doesn't have to degrade necessarily. You may have bony blocks and a patina of athleticism.

• 1:42:38Rich Roll?

  You gotta work through the fascia and all that kind of stuff.

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  As we take this system's approach, you being able to get up and down off the ground or flex your knee all the way, doesn't have to go away. And I think that that's important to remember to consider for people.

• 1:42:52Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:55Rich Roll?

  Squatting.

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  No, boy.

• 1:42:58Rich Roll?

  People love to talk about squatting.

• 1:42:59Speaker 01

  They do. I couldn't agree more.

• 1:43:02Rich Roll?

  People are obsessed with deadlifting and squatting for some reason.

• 1:43:04Speaker 01

  You know what's amazing? We just made two new things. One of them is a pad that makes it easier to do a Bulgarian split squat. So you can slip this pad on the end of a barbell, and you can put your foot up there. And it really does help you get into a lunge. And it doesn't work. People hate it. They don't like to do this movement. It doesn't sell. But it's like one of our best ideas. We just did another thing that allows you to do hip thrusts, which is when you lay on a, like a bench, and you put a barbell on your hips. And it's kind of a modified squat. People love that. And to your point, it's so much more fun to squat. It is not fun to sprint, lunge, get into these split stance positions.

• 1:43:47Rich Roll?

  But why are these so important? Like, why did you, you know, make, you know, an entire vital signed chapter on squatting?

• 1:43:57Rich Roll?

  Like, why is this so key in your mind?

• 1:43:59Speaker 01

  You know, really, you're going to lower yourself up and down a bunch. So you squat all the time, whether you like it or not. And notice in this, this book, we don't talk about squatting weights. We just talk about the ability to access the squat. And the reason that's such a fundamental position is that it ties in a lot of joints and a lot of tissue systems all at once. So we don't just look at your ankle by itself, or knee by itself, or hip by itself. We're looking at the coordinating the system. And getting up and down out of a chair, off the toilet, all of those things, very important. Cycling is a bunch of single leg squats done in that position. So what we can start to ask is, I don't always have to be a bilateral squat.

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Can I do a single leg squat in that position? But when we say squat, what we really mean is, I'm in a hinged shape and my knee is bending towards my chest. That's really the definition of a squat. So to take squatting away means that you're gonna not be moving in your environment very well. And it's an easy diagnostic for people to quickly pick up if they're having these gross motor restrictions or can't access these positions. I think that's what's, that's amazing. And if you wanna go in Japan, or toilet in another country, or you're gonna find that sitting by the side of the road waiting for a bus, we should be, have access to these positions. These are resting positions.

• 1:45:22Juliet Starrett?

  Well, and I also, you know, there's data to show that people in those cultures have far fewer orthopedic injuries, hip replacements, low back pain, you know, and, and sort of a lot of the chronic issues and pain problems that we have, you know, as Western humans that are sitting in chairs and have lost the ability to squat.

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  It's melasena in yoga, right? It's this deep squat position. And one of the reasons that it's so important is that it's one of the ways where we can get really good flexion in the lumbar spine. Where when we sit all the way down, like we're just hanging out, whether your heels are up off the ground or not, your knee comes to your chest, you take that knee in full range of motion, you take that hip into that aspect of full range of motion, and the lumbar spine reverses. And so it's a restorative position for so much of the extension, arching forces that are sort of modern and endemic to us. It's a way of restoring and putting in loaded flexion into people in a really graded position.

• 1:46:18Juliet Starrett?

  And that that's my most challenged position for me of all the tests in this book. That's where I struggle the most. And you know, like you said, you wish you'd focus a little bit more. I mean, my ankle range of motion is terrible. And you know, I was still with terrible range of ankle range of motion, able to be a D1 rower at Cal and go on to win three world championships in paddling. And

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  Are you pushing off the wall in a squat?

• 1:46:43Rich Roll?

  Uh, well, certainly you are. Yeah.

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  So it turns out, maybe, you know, if we had been more effective, we could have shaved more time by getting you and training you into positions to be more efficient. Just to be clear, you don't have to be a huge squatter. I think a squat is a practice. We can goblet squat, hold something in front of you, you could just air squat. I think there are better ways and and more effective ways for most people to train the system. Do I need to have my mother in law do heavy back squats? No, we've definitely fetishized it because it's easy to see progress. I can put another kilo on the bar. It's easy to measure, you know, that I've changed some capacity. But does it make me better at my sport? Maybe not.

• 1:47:29Speaker 01

  So there's an old saying, train the deadlift, train the hinge, kettlebell swings, good mornings, those kinds of things, practice the squat.

• 1:47:38Rich Roll?

  Right. But the ability to squat, even if it's just air squat, do it without pain, et cetera, becomes like this proxy for longevity, right? Like the longer that you can kind of maintain your ability to do that, give, puts you in a position where you're not going to fall down and break your hip, or you're going to have that kind of flexibility.

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  Or your pelvic floor is going to work better. We're going to start to expose the connective tissue systems of your body to the forces that were there and have been there all along because you used to toilet on the ground. I'm not trying to make romanticize paleo living. I don't like, we watch, we watch Alone and we're like primitive living.

• 1:48:14Juliet Starrett?

  We watch Alone and we have no skills.

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  Primitive living is not for me. I'm not into it.

• 1:48:17Rich Roll?

  Actually, yeah, I was, I was really happy to see that. Like, there is a fetishization of like, you know, the ancestral life lifestyle, all that and

• 1:48:28Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, really not for us.

• 1:48:29Rich Roll?

  The first time I took.

• 1:48:30Speaker 01

  First time I.

• 1:48:31Rich Roll?

  Like that is, I mean, listen, you talk about, you know, the dewilding and the rewilding and all of that. Like, there is wisdom in trying to be, live our lives more in alignment with certain aspects of how we've evolved to be, et cetera. But that doesn't mean we're, we need to, you know, martyr ourselves.

• 1:48:48Speaker 01

  No, on the contrary.

• 1:48:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, you know, I, first time I ever was sort of discovered paleo, I was like, that makes sense. I'm eating more whole foods. Like, that makes sense. The old osteopathic model was don't eat anything that's white, don't eat anything that doesn't rot. And I was like, well, that's also really good, right? That pulls out a lot of things that potentially irritate people. So I sent this to Julie. I was like, what do you think about this?

• 1:49:08Juliet Starrett?

  This, by the way, was in like 2003. So it was like early.

• 1:49:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I remember. I remember.

• 1:49:12Speaker 01

  Paleo, right?

• 1:49:13Juliet Starrett?

  And I did a little, I was probably still at my law firm. I did a little bit of Google research, whatever you could do back then. And the first paleo recipe that came up was a recipe for like larva soup or something. And I was like, dude, Kelly, we're not doing this. Like, I was like, this is way too extreme for us. Like, it's not up our, this whole paleo thing is like, you know, I was like, people in the paleolithic era died at age 30.

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

  A lot of has changed in the last 150 years, for sure.

• 1:49:42Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:43Speaker 01

  And what we can say is, like, you know, there's a definitely a trend of getting a little bit more light in the morning. People are talking about that.

• 1:49:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:52Juliet Starrett?

  You may have heard.

• 1:49:53Rich Roll?

  There's one guy responsible for that.

• 1:49:54Speaker 01

  We see you. We see you.

• 1:49:55Juliet Starrett?

  You may have heard that you're supposed to face the sun in the morning.

• 1:49:58Speaker 01

  The, um, but what we can start to say is, well, what are the biologic processes that that are required for my body to function well? And a good example is walking. Your lymphatic system is the sewage system of your body. So everyone knows their cardiovascular system. You have, you know, capillaries, arteries, veins, but your, your lymphatic system is how you move all of the other waste, normal waste from your body. So if you've injured yourself, you get swelling, all of that swelling is evacuated through your lymphatic system. Your joints are drained through your lymphatic system. The proteins break down, the small, the gut things, all of those things get recycled back into the body through lymphatic system.

• 1:50:41Speaker 01

  Your lymphatic system is built into your movement system. What drives the lymphatic clearage? It turns out it's pumping of the muscles. So if you don't squeeze your lower limbs, you don't actually decongest and circulate. So Andy Weil talked about, was it cross pattern motion? Well, maybe it was just that we were moving. And in that moving and breathing, we're starting to decongest and move the waste out. And if you've ever had a sink that's clogged up, that is an example of what's happening when you sit on an airplane and you get cankles. You're not decongesting.

• 1:51:14Juliet Starrett?

  Which is why, you know, doctors are so obsessed with getting people up out of bed that, you know, as soon as they can after surgery. Because the only way to really clear your lymph is to walk around, is to move, keep moving.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  So now we can start to say, well, if walking is about drainage, how much, how many steps do I need in order to facilitate that? And it turns out 6,000 to 8,000 is a pretty good number to get people moving. And again, that's not even about burning calories. That's not about strong feet. That's just about.

• 1:51:44Rich Roll?

  Circulation.

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  Circulation. So I think when, when you're right, when we can push back on this romanticizing, you know, hunting my own chickens in my backyard, I don't need to do that. But somehow there are some things that used to happen to us. We used to sit on the ground a lot. We cooked on the ground. We toilet in the ground. We slept on the ground. We walked around. There's some things we did that we probably could do a little more.

• 1:52:07Rich Roll?

  Well, we were in, in a persistent state of like low energy movement, right? Like, we were just kind of like moving throughout the day consistently. That's another Blue Zones thing as well, like. Um, and, and we don't really do that. Like, even if we, and you make this point in the book, like we, you may go to the gym and kill it, but then you sit in a chair all day. And like, you know, that's certainly, that's me, you know? That's a lot of people.

• 1:52:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:33Rich Roll?

  And this is not great.

• 1:52:35Speaker 01

  And we're not saying that that's.

• 1:52:36Rich Roll?

  You're not flushing out.

• 1:52:37Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:52:38Rich Roll?

  All of that kind of stuff, you know, is not happening.

• 1:52:41Speaker 01

  So if you're an elite athlete or someone who trains hard, because I think that the distinguishing between an elite athlete and someone who trains like that is, is your genetics and what you're doing with it. Because as you have seen, people are training really hard and have gotten really sophisticated about their training. They're training like, you know, they're training like the elites, whether they can handle it or not. And one of the things we know. Is if you want to have a better adaptation to that, you need to continue to decongest and continue to move along. Keep moving throughout your day. Exercise movement. That's it. Whatever that looks like to you.

• 1:53:13Juliet Starrett?

  And bringing it back to sunlight, that's, you know, one of the, I mean, we're obsessed with walking, as I think you know, and just general movement and non-exercise activity throughout the day. But, you know, it's also this bonus thing where you get a little bit of sunlight on your body. You decongest your tissues, you, you, you know, accumulate a bunch of non-exercise activity.

• 1:53:31Speaker 01

  Check this out. Our daughter Caroline was a preemie. And Juliet had placenta previa, Caroline comes a little early. We are being discharged from UCSF, really good hospital, super gnarly. Caroline, who is 5'10" now, was, her apgar was two. She was very small and purple. And she's a monster.

• 1:53:52Juliet Starrett?

  And purple.

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  And they were like, okay, you're leaving. And Juliet is breastfeeding. She's made this heroic effort to get milk into our kid. And they're like, you just got to give your kid these vitamins. And I was like, look at me.

• 1:54:02Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, Kelly's like, isn't breast milk like God's food, like the perfect food?

• 1:54:07Speaker 01

  Like, look at me.

• 1:54:08Juliet Starrett?

  What are you talking about?

• 1:54:09Speaker 01

  You know, and I'm like, I just know enough as a physical therapist to be annoying, you know? And this is UCSF. Right. This is, this place, that place is the shit. They are the shit. And they saved both my kid and my wife. I'm very grateful. But so I asked them, what do you mean, I have to give my kid these vitamins? I'm like, have you tasted these vitamins? Like, they're awful. And why do I give my kid these vitamins? She's drinking milk. And they were like, well, you just really got to do it. And I was like, what's the problem? And they said, well, the problem is, women in San Francisco don't get enough sun, or don't go into the sun. So there's not enough vitamin D in the milk. And so the child oftentimes...

• 1:54:41Juliet Starrett?

  So we were like, so we could just go into the sun with our baby? And then not have to take these vitamins? And so we, you know, we just would lay our little teeny daughter, who was like, six pounds at this point, we would just lay her in the sun for like, three minutes a day. And she was fine.

• 1:54:59Speaker 01

  That's how they used to get rid of John as a kid. So that's, that's a kind of a case study of, of the fact that we make some of these... From no fault of our own, we find ourselves in environments where we have to now be a little bit more conscious about some of these other things.

• 1:55:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah. A sort of analogous thing that you talk about, or like a counterintuitive sort of thing that I was really happy to see, because I've always agreed with this, but never really was validated for it, which is that you should not put ice on an injury, right? Like, it's always struck me as wrong, like, it's like, oh, you gotta get the inflammation down. It's like, it's inflamed for a reason. Your body is sending all of this stuff there.

• 1:55:44Speaker 01

  Where did you figure that out? Who told you that? Like, that's crazy.

• 1:55:47Juliet Starrett?

  I have to tell, I have to tell the backstory here. So, I think this was back in 2011, maybe? We were at the CrossFit Games, and we met up with a guy, Gary Reinal, who wrote the book Iced, and he was really the first person to...

• 1:56:00Speaker 01

  In my world.

• 1:56:01Juliet Starrett?

  In our world, anyway, to take this different perspective on icing. And at that time, though, the guy who had created Rice had already...

• 1:56:09Speaker 01

  Gabe Merkin.

• 1:56:10Juliet Starrett?

  He had already, you know, turned the corner and said that was actually terrible.

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  Rest ice compression elevation.

• 1:56:14Juliet Starrett?

  That was terrible advice. So, you know, there was starting to be this groundswell of people talking about how icing injuries was not the way to go. And we put up this one-hour-long video on YouTube, where Kelly, Kelly was interviewing Gary Reinal about icing injuries, and that thing got, well, first of all, this was in the dawn of time and we were unpro. So, we put the video on YouTube, and the title of it was like IMG underscore 447, and we just put it out. You know, you know, it was the olden days. And we put it out, and this thing started getting thousands and thousands of views. But, I mean, there's been a couple of things we've put out into the world that have generated a lot of hate and skepticism, and I think that icing video was probably top of the list, because it was so shocking to people.

• 1:56:59Juliet Starrett?

  I mean, it's just default. If a kid injures themselves, you make an ice bag. You know, it's just this, it was so part of our understanding of how to manage an injury in the short term, that people were like, really bothered by this advice. And, you know, slowly but surely, I think people, you know, the word's been getting out that icing injuries is not the way that you actually, you know, you want to welcome that swelling.

• 1:57:21Speaker 01

  Even in the cold plunge community, people are realizing, maybe we need to put that... That cold a little bit further away from the training.

• 1:57:28Juliet Starrett?

  Far from training stimulus.

• 1:57:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's not even the same thing as icing something for hours.

• 1:57:31Rich Roll?

  The reason you train is to create the stimulus and an adaptation. And if you are robbing your body of that adaptation by getting in the cold, then you've just undercut the purpose of the training itself. And I, I believe in ice baths. I have an ice bath. I think it's great, but I think you have to be conscious about the timing, when, the purpose and all of that. And listen, if it's halftime at the Super Bowl and you blow your knee out and you gotta get back in the game, put some ice on it. And you, you, you want to reduce that inflammation, reduce the pain so you can go, if there's an immediacy to the thing. But if you're trying to heal yourself, you want heat. You want to get blood flow in there. You want to get your immune system sending what it needs to be sending to that area to repair it as quickly as possible.

• 1:58:15Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah. And you're right, it can be a short-term pain reliever, but it's not a great long-term strategy.

• 1:58:20Speaker 01

  If your kid gets a bee sting, give her a bad guy.

• 1:58:22Juliet Starrett?

  And if you cut off your finger, you should put it in ice. That's also another useful medical way.

• 1:58:27Speaker 01

  Where did you find, where did you figure that out? Because that is really so progressive.

• 1:58:30Rich Roll?

  It just seemed, it just seemed obvious to me, but it seems, it was so contrarian. Like, I don't know, I never really talked to anybody about it, but I, I've always preferred putting heat on any kind of injury over ice for that reason.

• 1:58:42Speaker 01

  The head athletic trainers in Major League Baseball now basically say, we don't ice anymore. And if you're doing that, you can't keep up with, you know, how we're managing these soft tissue injuries. And really what, what you can see is, well, is the body so sophisticated that we're going to modulate this process of angiogenesis and remodeling tissues with, by getting it cold? And, and for everyone who's out there isn't into the cold physiology, when you have an injury, your body sends out a whole bunch of chemical signals to the rest of your body. And these circulating cells, local stem cells, circulating stem cells come and repair that. The macrophages, they gobble up the tissue. And what can happen when you get something cold is you cut that connection.

• 1:59:26Speaker 01

  You suppress prosthetic land and release. That's the same reason where we say now we're like, ooh, ibuprofen, maybe let's not use ibuprofen because it may do the same. You know, healing limiting problem. You're gonna go on.

• 1:59:38Juliet Starrett?

  But on the other side of that coin, you know, if you have to go out there and perform as an athlete and you need to take a couple of ibuprofen because that's how you're gonna make it through your game or sport.

• 1:59:46Speaker 01

  You're a pro.

• 1:59:47Juliet Starrett?

  Then that's fine. I mean, you know, we're not anti-using, anti-inflammatory in the right context, but, but, you know, it's, but I will say that, you know, even though there's been a conversation about this icing thing for well over 10 years, maybe 15 years at this point, I mean, still, it's the default, though, for most of the people we know who have an ACL tear, or, you know, any kind of orthopedic surgery, surgery for the recommendation from the physician to send them home to ice or get a game ready. So, I mean, you know, we're making little baby steps in trying to get that word out, but it's still, you know, people really still want to go for the ice right away.

• 2:00:21Speaker 01

  You know, I think that's what it is.

• 2:00:21Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:22Speaker 01

  And until, like so many other behaviors, until we give someone else something else to do, we're gonna default to the thing that makes me feel like I've done something. You know, I, I, I took this, you know, this pill that has micronutrients in it, that must be good enough as eating a salad or vegetables, right, or fruits. And, and yes, that's better than nothing. But in this situation, it just turns out, now, we were incomplete in our thinking, and we reserve the right to evolve our positions. And here's one where we think we weren't as effective as we were. And, and the proof is, we're returning to people to play at higher levels of function faster, because now people are healing at the rates of human beings. They were not, we're not delaying that or retarding that healing process. We're just saying, hey, there's no such thing as a fast healer. You're gonna heal at your

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

  genetic limit. Let's at least get you to that limit.

• 2:01:10Rich Roll?

  Right. And not unnecessarily slow it down. I mean, it seems to me to be a conversation around the difference between a chronic, you know, talking about inflammation, is it a chronic inflammation, or is it an acute inflammation? If you have an injury, you have an acute inflammation, you need to like, you know, figure out how to address that. Chronic inflammation, that's a different protocol and a different set of problems that need to be looked at.

• 2:01:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. That's right. And it's okay to become more nuanced, and not just attack everything with the same hammer. I think that's absolutely okay. And, and even if we just, you know, sometimes people get a little confused on this, and we love getting cold. We think it's really fun. And maybe, that's just the best part of it. It's super fun. That we feel better. And, and wait for this, everyone, all you touchy-feely data people. Athletes that feel better tend to perform better. People that feel better in their lives tend to be more stoked and do better. So if icing, getting in a cold plunge, excuse me, makes you feel better, I'm down with it. It could be range of motion for your vasculature. It could just be.

• 2:02:11Rich Roll?

  Well, there's hormonal impacts.

• 2:02:13Speaker 01

  Sure. What I'm saying is there are so many aspects of monkeying with being uncomfortable. You know, Laird says, Laird Hamilton says, hey, heating up and cooling down are the two most expensive processes your body engages with. Let's become more efficient at that. That seems reasonable. Have you ever done heat training for Ironman?

• 2:02:31Rich Roll?

  Well, no, I know, but I know like people who train for bad water, put treadmills in saunas and things like that.

• 2:02:36Speaker 01

  So we know we can adapt to these things a little bit.

• 2:02:39Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, I mean, our friend, Michael Easter, wrote a great book called The Comfort Crisis. And, you know, one of his main points is that we've, you know, in our modern world, we no longer feel any discomfort. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to get hot and cold. And so, you know, that's one of the 10,000 reasons that.

• 2:02:55Speaker 01

  In your shower.

• 2:02:56Juliet Starrett?

  We, we love those two things, but you know, I think the other side benefit of, you know, our own heat and cold practice is for us. And this may be, you know, what's been the greatest part of us for us is that it's a chance for us to connect together. And then also we use it as a community building.

• 2:03:11Rich Roll?

  It's a social thing.

• 2:03:12Juliet Starrett?

  It's a social thing.

• 2:03:13Rich Roll?

  Good enough.

• 2:03:14Juliet Starrett?

  We've had some of the best connections and conversations with our friends and community and people who come over for dinner in the sauna that we've had in the last 10 years. And I mean, so there are a myriad of well-studied health benefits at this point to sonning and definitely emerging in terms of cold plunging. But, you know, if I could look back and say the greatest thing that, you know, our sauna has done for us is just connection.

• 2:03:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Gabby and Laird call the sauna, The Truth Barrel.

• 2:03:39Juliet Starrett?

  Yes.

• 2:03:40Rich Roll?

  And then Neil and Neil Strauss and Gabby had a podcast called The Truth Barrel where they would get someone in the sauna to have a conversation. I think even, I think Tim Ferriss was the first one to do that when he had a, he did Rick, he had Rick Rubin in his, in his sauna for a podcast conversation.

• 2:03:56Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 2:03:57Rich Roll?

  They, they heat will bring the truth out.

• 2:03:59Juliet Starrett?

  And then you see the guest slowly start to like, by the end of the podcast, they're sitting on the floor of the sauna, you know? And it's like Gabby and Laird are just totally fine and the guest is like dead.

• 2:04:08Rich Roll?

  They crank it up to like 220.

• 2:04:10Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:10Rich Roll?

  You know, I mean, it's no joke.

• 2:04:12Juliet Starrett?

  It is no joke.

• 2:04:13Rich Roll?

  It gets in that thing for sure. But you have your own sauna cold plunge protocol in the book. I can't remember exactly, but I think it's three minutes in the cold and then you kind of go back a number of times.

• 2:04:26Speaker 01

  Think of it this way. We think, we, again, we're privy to a lot of tech and a lot of ideas, but we think that the functional unit of measurement is the household. It's you and your roommates, you and your partners, you and your kids and family. And that's where the real change happens. And that concept of hyper-locality, of really understanding what's going on in the context of someone's life, that's how we make the big change. So we can come in with these big principles, but ultimately it's you, and I need to understand, you know, where you're going to put this in and what your resources are. And anytime we can move something into the household, like a shower that gets hot and cold, or massage, or some kind of thing where you don't have to go out,

• 2:05:10Speaker 01

  we see that adherence goes up, we see that compliance goes up, and it becomes manageable. And especially in those people who are working really hard, I want you to have your castle set up to the extent that you can, so that you don't have to make another decision or go to another place. And if it's easy for you to step out and get hot, cool, you'll do it. And if you have to walk across the street, the chances of you doing it drop to zero.

• 2:05:34Rich Roll?

  Right, which beautifully segues in the next thing I wanted to ask you about selfishly, which is, I'm in the process of building a home gym right now.

• 2:05:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, we're in.

• 2:05:44Rich Roll?

  We've got like a 40-foot shipping container that we're customizing with a deck out front and stuff like that. So it's going to take a couple of months. We're in the middle of the build right now. And I haven't acquired any kind of equipment for it yet. So obviously, you two are the best people to ask, like, what are the things that I should get? What should I avoid? Like, so 40-foot, it's big, it's pretty big.

• 2:06:08Juliet Starrett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:06:08Rich Roll?

  But it's not like unlimited space. Like, I gotta be, I have a, you know, I have like an indoor bike trainer, and I've got a hydro rowing machine.

• 2:06:17Speaker 01

  Great.

• 2:06:18Rich Roll?

  So I have those two things. But then, what kind of weight equipment should I be getting? What should I be looking at? What are the essentials?

• 2:06:25Juliet Starrett?

  Quick backstory, did you know our first gym was a shipping container?

• 2:06:28Rich Roll?

  No, I didn't know that.

• 2:06:29Juliet Starrett?

  So we actually started San Francisco CrossFit in 2005. And because real estate was so expensive in San Francisco and CrossFit was so emergent. And we actually weren't starting it to be a business. We were just starting it because we were like, hey, this CrossFit thing is fun. And you know, and I was Kelly had a full-time physical therapy job. I had a big firm, law firm job. So this was a complete side hustle for us. And so we actually had the idea to get a shipping container and put all of our equipment inside the shipping container. And then we got this awning. It was like a awning is awning, the right word for this canopy. And

• 2:07:03Speaker 01

  You could say tent if you're disrespecting us.

• 2:07:04Juliet Starrett?

  We were outside, our entire gym was outside for seven years from 2005 till 2012. And our members, you know, we had 350 members and our members would come and work out outside in the rain or shine. And eventually we moved inside into a cool building in the Presidio. But we've, we've been laughing during the pandemic because everyone's like, look at this thing I'm doing outdoor gym. And we were like, hey, we were the first, like, we invented the outdoor gym and, and we saw all the positives and negatives of having an outdoor gym. When there's any kind of weather, but

• 2:07:36Speaker 01

  I would say that the main thing that people sort of think is my gym at home needs to look like a college strength and conditioning platform. I need all the likes, think about the old school, the programs at Stanford, you walk in there and you're like, whoa, this is an impressive gym. Maybe you need a squat rack, maybe because that's convenient. But those could be squat stands. So really, I think it comes back to you have a couple mono structural pieces of cardio equipment, which you love that you're going to do because it's easy to get intervals in when you're compressed for time. Otherwise, go out, right? Dumbbells, kettlebells, maybe one barbell for pressing overhead. I think overhead, we could come into and this and say, well, what are the fundamental positions and shapes

• 2:08:21Speaker 01

  we should train, especially as a person who's not 20s trying to win world championships anymore? You know, I am a huge fan of deadlifting with a hex bar, right? A trap bar deadlift because we can really get control and we can put the tissues into good shapes. But it really is a lot simpler. Having medicine balls, having things to pick up and carry. Those were I'd put all My energy like I am not I I have such a bad wrist from paddling all those years. And and broken that I can't handle a regular barbell anymore. I have to use a sort of a neutral grip, but I can handle all the sandbags. And really, how do we make you durable in a short amount of time when you're? What's the minimum effective play dose?

• 2:09:04Speaker 01

  So that you can go out and do what you want to do. And then what is it your family likes to do? What's their input and leaving it as open as possible as the game because it is easy to be like, oh, this is so fun. What do you know, we go to Rogue and

• 2:09:17Juliet Starrett?

  There's a couple of things. I mean, there's a couple of things I would add. It sounds like you have a bike, but I would really recommend getting an assault bike or some kind of, you know, bike with arms if you don't like. And and there's two reasons for that. Number one, because it seems like you do like to go hard in the paint. You really can go hard in the paint on an assault bike. But number two, in the event that anyone in your household ever faces an injury or a surgery, that is the the single piece of equipment we recommend people get who have, because you can do it with three limbs.

• 2:09:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, no impact.

• 2:09:48Juliet Starrett?

  No impact. So if you, the amount of people that we've put on with a cast, a knee surgery, a brace on that thing and done three limb biking is all the people. And in fact, in all of our surgery recovery protocols, that's the one piece of equipment we recommend everybody get because, you know, just for your psychological health, you know, getting injured and going through a surgery and not being able to move your body. And that's like the first thing you can always do is three limbed anything on that bike. So to me, that's like one of the greatest investments you can have if you can invest in a gym.

• 2:10:17Speaker 01

  And and what I would say is, as you are an experienced mover, you have this ability to go out in the world and do those things. I want you to spend your tissue tolerance credits on actual sports. So do I care that you can full snatch? No, I don't. But I care that you can muscle snatch a dumbbell, right? And from a hang position. And what we'll see is that a lot of the training decisions, I think, makes sense for people like my age, I'm 50 this year, is I want high physiology. Low skill, where I can get all the bang for the buck and then go stand up paddle or go ride my mountain bike or spend my, you know, my Achilles credits running the hills instead of smoking myself with exercises.

• 2:11:02Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, that's certainly, yeah, that's certainly my, you know.

• 2:11:06Speaker 01

  High physiology.

• 2:11:07Rich Roll?

  I'm not trying to like, yeah, completely wreck myself. I just want to be sturdy, stable, mobile, flexible, functional, pain free. So I can go and do all the other things that I enjoy and, you know, basically work on maintaining that to the best of my ability for as long as possible.

• 2:11:25Juliet Starrett?

  I think you could do your entire, I mean, you could get a barbell if that's something that you, if you like to do barbell work, but I think you could get all the stimulus you want with some dumbbells, some kettlebells, couple of heavy balls, a few sandbags. I mean, the, the amount of things that you can do with just those things are infinite. And, and, you know, to me, you can get so much bang for your buck with that. So, I mean, if you, if you like to do barbell training, then I would get a squat rack and a couple, you know, a couple of pounds of weights.

• 2:11:53Speaker 01

  Don't get crazy. Recently, one of our friends was like, they're building their gym out and they're like, what do you think of this? I'm like, I'm not sure you need a competition bench. Like, that seems a little excessive. Like, you know, you can floor press just fine.

• 2:12:04Rich Roll?

  But if you just have a rack where you can, and a, and a, and a bench or whatever, where you can do all the, all the multiple things.

• 2:12:11Speaker 01

  And they swing out. You can get them so they tuck away.

• 2:12:14Juliet Starrett?

  And then it's a pull-up bar too. You know, you can make your rack a pull-up bar. So that's a bonus.

• 2:12:18Rich Roll?

  On that subject of like making, you know, movement a priority in the home, the obvious kind of next thing that I want to talk to you guys about is, you know, parenting and how you instill a passion for movement and in, in, in young people, right? Like, it reminds me of, of Peter Attia talking about watching his kids when they were young and realizing that kids are naturally geniuses at movement. Like, they're able to do things that now, you know, we wish we could do. So, we are all built to move, the title of your book, right? And children know exactly what to do. And somewhere along the line,

• 2:12:57Rich Roll?

  we lose that, that, that touch, that connectivity, that capacity to move like a supple leopard. Right? So like, how do you guys think about this and practice it in your own home and talk about it with respect to young people?

• 2:13:13Juliet Starrett?

  I think the, the way we've approached parenting in every respect is, is trying to sort of do as we do, not do as we say. And so we've always had a home gym. And I think that that is such an important part of teaching our kids how much we love movement and how much we value movement. And, you know, there's, and I also have a group of ladies who comes over and works out at my house three or four times a week. And, and, you know, as we said, we have peg boards and pull up bars and balance boards and, you know, double under or double Dutch ropes around the house. You want to set a lot of traps for your kids? Yeah, we want us, we've just tried to set a lot of traps and, and show them that, you know, movement is a priority for us. One of the things I've seen in, now that I'm

• 2:13:54Juliet Starrett?

  in my late 40s, is that the, the friends of mine who didn't grow up moving in some way are the ones that have really struggled to figure out how to fit exercise into their life now as adults. And so one of the things I really wanted and was sort of intentional about, and I think both of us were, was that I was like, when my daughters leave the home, I want them to want to move on their own, to be motivated on their own to keep moving their body because they've learned how much better they feel if they just keep moving. And, you know, we like to tell a story way back when our daughter Georgia was like nine, we had occasion to do all this genetic testing on the whole family. We did all this genetic testing on all of us. Sorry, kids.

• 2:14:35Juliet Starrett?

  And, and it turned out that Georgia is, had a low genetic drive to move, our daughter Georgia. And Georgia does- There's a genetic marker for that? There's a genetic marker on desire to move. Wow. And so Georgia has a low genetic drive to move. And it, that's actually obvious. She loves to bake and left her own devices. She probably would bake and watch TV. She even created a subscription cookie company. Yeah, she has a subscription cookie company and, and, but what we, so when we got that piece of information, we realized, hey, this is a kid who might be, need to be pushed a little bit more to move because she's not, just, she's not going to naturally get off the couch and start moving. And so we definitely made sure that, you know, she was involved in some kind of sport or activity. I think the other key thing we did is that we made

• 2:15:19Juliet Starrett?

  movement, our, our kids were loved to choose what type of movement. They wanted to do, but not whether or not to do movement. And you know, that's one of the ways I think we found ourselves to be like the strictest parents. Like we give our, our kids choice, but it's within these very clear sort of parameters. And that movement was one of them. Uh, movement was not, whether or not they moved was not a choice and how they wanted to move. Skies the limit. We wanted to give our kids the opportunity to try anything they wanted. Because I'm really a true believer that if you find a type of movement that you like and enjoy, and that's fun for you, then you will do it and probably for your entire life. And so my goal was to let, see my daughter, Georgia, go off to college, which she's going to do this year.

• 2:16:01Juliet Starrett?

  And know that on her own accord, without any outside motivation, she was, she was going to know that if she kept moving, that she would feel better and do better in school and have better, more connected relationships and feel good in her body and be able to do things she wants to do. And it's so interesting to see that, you know, we didn't really see that click individually for her until about two years ago, when she was 15 or 16. And now the kid who, when she was younger would bake and then go sit on the, sit on the couch and watch movies, now bakes and then goes out to our home gym and deadlifts.

• 2:16:34Rich Roll?

  So what was the, I'm interested in how that tipped from one to the other. Cause I, you know, similar situation, some, some, not frustrations, but you know, queries or challenges around like how to instill or inspire movement in young teenagers that aren't interested in listening to their parents or.

• 2:16:56Juliet Starrett?

  Yes.

• 2:16:57Speaker 01

  Expert is someone who lives a mile away.

• 2:16:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And I'm doing, it's not like I'm not the example. You know, I'm like, I'm doing it every day and my wife is doing it in her own way. Like we are modeling that and yet it's not connecting.

• 2:17:10Juliet Starrett?

  It's not connecting.

• 2:17:10Rich Roll?

  Necessarily.

• 2:17:11Speaker 01

  I think one of the solutions is when our daughters are exercising with their friends, they're in a, an environment where there's a team doing it, that reduces a lot of the drag. You know, I'm like, let's go front squat and do sprints. You know, and my daughter's like, that's so boring. But you know, it lights me up. You know, I have this insane desire to move. You know, gamifying it, putting in a class setting. Those are the ways when we have, you know, you two at this end of the table. Have, you know, you can be, live a life of austerity and put in the work and grind for its own satisfaction. But that's not a lot of the reason that especially young people love to do it. They like to relate.

• 2:17:56Speaker 01

  Yes, it's very cool that Georgia now can go back squat. And she's in, as an aside, she's in a little bit of a power struggle with our school right now, who has a great weight room, because the coach there wants her to do this foundations work. And she's like, no, no, no, I don't need to do that foundations work. I just want to come in and squat. Do you know who my parents are? Don't I get a pass on that?

• 2:18:14Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, she really wants to get a pass, but she's like,

• 2:18:15Speaker 01

  What do I need to do? Power snatch? Like, what do you need?

• 2:18:17Juliet Starrett?

  Anton is not giving her a pass.

• 2:18:19Speaker 01

  Anton, this is for you. So, you know, one of the things I Nepo baby. I've learned. That's the best. I've learned, working with this women's water polo team, is that the women like to do things together differently than boys or men. I'll do it on my own, right? You know, and so thinking differently about that solution, putting our daughters into environments with their friends, that really made a big difference. Right. And creating a social structure around it really made a big difference. And I would say also, you know, what are we talking about? Do your, how fit do your 14 year old need to be? When we talk about shaping the environment, one of the things that Juliette and I figured out

• 2:19:03Speaker 01

  early on when our kids were in elementary school, was we created a walking school bus. And we realized that we lived within a mile and a half of the school. And we can set, we, we do this thing where I'd work the drop off lane. And if you've ever had a kid and you work the drop off lane.

• 2:19:16Juliet Starrett?

  It's like the most depressing place on earth, the drop off lane.

• 2:19:19Speaker 01

  You open the door, you hear the hate and the stress of each family roils out.

• 2:19:23Juliet Starrett?

  And then you absorb it.

• 2:19:24Speaker 01

  I love you, I love you!

• 2:19:26Juliet Starrett?

  You absorb it as the parent volunteer that's opened the door. And it's like the worst experience.

• 2:19:30Speaker 01

  It's the worst. So what I said was, maybe we don't have to do that ever again. We could just walk or Juliet created this walking school bus. But that was a great example of making it so that we all walked as a family. And that wasn't one more thing we had to do. Like, at the end of the day, your dad's trumping in being like, let's go exercise. You know, like, that was, I made my kids cry a lot. Yeah, like, teaching them to Olympic lift.

• 2:19:54Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, like, quick side story. I said, you know, Kelly's been really worried our whole kid's life about being like, that dad at sporting events. And so, but, but the problem is that, in my view, the pendulum swung too far. And at one point, I said to Kelly, I was like, hey, so our kids should at least get some benefit from the fact that they're Kelly Starrett's kids. Like, like, you don't ever coach them, or because he's so worried about being that dad. And so I said, so I was like, you've got to start weightlifting with our daughter Caroline. Like, you've got to start weightlifting. And of course, she was very resistant to it, not excited. And there were three occasions where she came in from the side yard and was crying. And she was like, Dad was mean. Dad was mean.

• 2:20:36Speaker 01

  Look at your foot pressure, kid.

• 2:20:37Juliet Starrett?

  So anyway, that's when I realized we needed to outsource. And so we actually started sending her to this Olympic lifting club. And she, on her own, in with a group of other kids, actually really learned how to like, weightlifting and learned the fundamental skills with these great coaches. And, you know, we took ourselves out of the equation there. And so, you know, we're definitely fans of outsourcing.

• 2:20:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's interesting how that works. Like, they just, it can't be the parent.

• 2:21:02Juliet Starrett?

  It can't be the parent.

• 2:21:03Rich Roll?

  It can't. And like, I'm thinking of, I had Joe to send on here, and he's talking about his parents. And I was like, this dude is insane. Like,

• 2:21:09Juliet Starrett?

  Oh, my, we just had him on our podcast.

• 2:21:11Rich Roll?

  Waking his kids up at four in the morning. And, you know,

• 2:21:14Juliet Starrett?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:21:14Rich Roll?

  Like, trudge up, trudge up a mountain before they can open up their Christmas presents.

• 2:21:18Speaker 01

  Quitters' office is closed.

• 2:21:21Juliet Starrett?

  The quitters' office? Did he tell you about the quitters' office?

• 2:21:23Rich Roll?

  No, but I can imagine.

• 2:21:25Speaker 01

  I think, one of the things that, you know, my, my daughters were gifted because their mother is a world champion and a sufferer. And you get your mitochondria from your mom. So, children, you're welcome. Three time world champion, superstar.

• 2:21:39Speaker 01

  We, as a family, like to go into the woods and wilderness. We love to run rivers and be active outside and pulling our kids into that forces us to do those things. And so, you know, making your kids uncomfortable because you do this as a family is a really great way to do it. And if you, if, for some families who are saying, hey, I want to struggle or I struggle with this, let's go for a walk after dinner for 10 minutes. That's what our family does. And it could be a simple beginning of conversation of doing that together. And again, I think we're going to have to culturally have to wrap our heads around what is it to be a human being and a member of society? You know, how do we

• 2:22:19Speaker 01

  do a better job supporting coaches? How do we put PE back in school? It's a big, multi-layered problem. What you can do is start to control some of this at home just through activity. And theoretically, again, give your kids all the opportunities to do as many different sports and as diverse experiences. And then when they start to get older, you can specialize.

• 2:22:38Juliet Starrett?

  And I just want to make very clear, we have met a massive amount of resistance. You are not alone. And in Georgia's case, it did seem like it was more of a maturity thing. Like she turned, you know, 16 plus, 17, and that was when

• 2:22:54Speaker 01

  She liked being jacked.

• 2:22:55Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, there was kind of a shift. I think she saw the difference in her body composition. If she exercised, like, I think she probably had some external motivation from, from just like wanting to look a certain way.

• 2:23:04Speaker 01

  She had the hardest shot in the, like, the league on water polo. And people were like, where did she learn to throw so hard? I'm like, muscle snatch.

• 2:23:10Juliet Starrett?

  But I mean, getting our 14-year-old daughter, who probably will be a Division One water polo goalie, who is extremely athletic and a gifted athlete, but I mean, getting her to like leave TikTok and her bedroom is a serious challenge.

• 2:23:24Speaker 01

  Right. So what we started doing recently is in between all of the training, we just do little micro sessions. We just keep it, it's like 20 minutes, we're just going to do one movement. That's going to be enough. Really, the idea of never do nothing. Like, there's always things you can do in your house together. And Caroline, who is crazy and awesome, she was like, hey, Can we throw knives out here too? And I was like, you bet. So, front squats and knives. She likes to throw knives.

• 2:23:52Juliet Starrett?

  We have a knife throwing setup now in our side yard.

• 2:23:54Speaker 01

  So now she's like, hey, you know, I fetch the knives. I'm like, you want to go throw knives? She's like, yeah. And I'm like, why don't we press in between? I think that's really reasonable. So, making about music, making it the most enjoyable experience possible. You know, anytime you're doing any sport activity with your kids. I mean, we used to with Caroline, we'd go hiking. We loved to hike and we invented these things called emo bears. And they're gummy bears. And when our daughter started getting emo and all glummy, I'd whip out the emo bear and boom, she'd be back. I was like, hey, how about a couple of gummy bears? So, you know, I think you have to do high manipulation to learn to like to exercise and train and be in that training environment. That's a learned experience.

• 2:24:32Juliet Starrett?

  And I do think keeping it playful and fun. I mean, we went through like a, Kelly will get mad that I describe it this way, but like a bow and arrow phase. Right? Well, how did I say?

• 2:24:41Speaker 01

  You go right ahead.

• 2:24:42Juliet Starrett?

  We went through a bow and arrow phase. So, we have all these targets at our house and, you know, so kids can go in the backyard and do that. And, you know, we just, anything that they're willing to do that seems fun to them, like we're game, like we're in. You know, if they want some cool device, we're like, yes, we're in. You know, the other thing, and this is, you know, the most inaccessible sport for most people. But I mean, one of the most fun things we've done with our kids is ski. Um, because, you know, nobody's on their phones. You're on the chairlift. You have this, a ton of time to connect. We're outside. Um, so we've had a ton of fun doing that with our kids too.

• 2:25:13Speaker 01

  But it's starting to catch.

• 2:25:14Juliet Starrett?

  Very inaccessible, but.

• 2:25:15Speaker 01

  I think you don't ever get to take your foot off the gas. I think that's really, and if we, if we use this algorithm we've been talking about, like scaling from, you know, children all the way up to the Olympics. Think about how hard it is for adults to develop the practice and love to suffer and be uncomfortable. It takes a minute to do that and to change those behaviors. So, you just have to put it in front of your kids in microdoses for decade plus. That's how long it's going to take, I think.

• 2:25:41Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, and our, our dear friend TJ gave us this, um, he, he told us this story and his kids were in high school at the time and our kids were in middle school, but he said, you know, one of the things he'd noticed with parenting is that if you think of parenting like a marathon, he noticed that a lot of parents stop running the marathon at like mile 24 when they're like, their kids are like 15, like they sort of give up.

• 2:26:01Speaker 01

  Pull the hamstring.

• 2:26:02Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, the foot comes off the gas because.

• 2:26:04Rich Roll?

  They're pretty much baked.

• 2:26:05Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, they're pretty much baked. They're pretty independent. You know, and his point of view was like, well, actually that's when you need to put your foot on the gas. Like that's when they're the most mature, the most, you know, most able to, you know, absorb information. They actually, they pretend like they don't, but they need the most support, you know, and then that's actually the time to sort of put your foot on the gas as far as parenting. And so that really had an impact on us. And so I think we've been trying to, you know, make sure in our own way that, you know, we're, we're going to run across the finish line of the marathon. Um, and really be present and kind of stay on them when they're in high school.

• 2:26:37Speaker 01

  George is a senior. She's looking at, last year was looking at colleges and doesn't want to play in college. Understands and recognizes collegiate athletics is professional athletics. And it's just like, that's not for me. And, but one of the things she graded every university she checked on was the weight room and training facilities. And I was like, it's perfect. And she was super bummed that sometimes she's like.

• 2:26:58Rich Roll?

  Daddy's girl.

• 2:27:00Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah, Kelly was so proud. Like we had these, like, we went, we went on this Midwestern tour and she created these spreadsheets and it was like, you know, overall campus feel, gym. And she actually really loved the University of Indiana. And it's like one of the most beautiful campuses I've ever seen. It's like Hogwarts. And we went into the gym and she's like, nope. She's like, no way. I'm out. Peace out. And literally that was like.

• 2:27:21Speaker 01

  Why are the kettlebells so far from the rowing machines?

• 2:27:23Juliet Starrett?

  She checked it off her list. And she, you know, she said, and, and the other thing she noticed is she said, there's no women in the, in the weight room at this college gym in Indiana. She's like, I'm out. So.

• 2:27:34Speaker 01

  Olympic lifting and powerlifting were the original amateur sports because they really could, with just a York barbell set, you could train yourself in your basement. And if we can get back to some of those basic competencies and exposure of kids to these things, you don't have to be a weightlifter, but I want you to be able to be comfortable with that.

• 2:27:51Rich Roll?

  Well, on that subject, I'm sure you've put quite a bit of thought into how you would revamp, you know, PE, physical education in, in the school system like it's a disaster. You know, when I grew up, it was the president's physical fitness test and dodgeball and what have you. But in terms of something that needs an upgrade, I mean, this is certainly, you know, primed for that, given the fact that childhood obesity rates are through the roof and through devices, et cetera. You know, young people are more sedentary and, and less engaged with physical activity than perhaps they have ever been. So like we need to solve this problem.

• 2:28:32Speaker 01

  And I don't think we, maybe you both have like such genetic drives to move and cope. But, you know, if you'd given me all this tech, I'm sure.

• 2:28:40Juliet Starrett?

  I love how you've like bucketed Rich and I into this like suffer lawyer category.

• 2:28:44Speaker 01

  I know, exactly.

• 2:28:45Juliet Starrett?

  He's just like, he's just put us over here in this like suffer lawyer.

• 2:28:48Speaker 01

  We're over here.

• 2:28:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:50Speaker 01

  We're just one unit.

• 2:28:51Juliet Starrett?

  You're like, we're just one unit and then there's him.

• 2:28:53Rich Roll?

  In his mind, we represent like one thing. Yeah, it's okay.

• 2:28:56Speaker 01

  Multi-dimensional suffer.

• 2:28:58Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 2:29:00Speaker 01

  What you really just brought up was sort of two things. One is how can we reconfigure what we're doing during the school day where kids are mandated to be there. It's a government activity. What does that look like so we can get more movement in, right? And, and that may mean we need to give kids three meals a day there, or they can take a snack home, they can have access to good food there for their first time. Of course, that's tricky.

• 2:29:24Speaker 01

  You know, if we just started something like the daily mile, which they started in the UK, these kids have to walk a mile a day, right? Just during that time, who, what, what teacher can't administer a walking mile? Every kid has to walk a mile. We started the first, our kids went to, we did a Google talk in 2010 about looking at the workforce. And then we realized that we were not applying our lessons to our children. And we went into our local elementary school and said, what do you think about this radical idea of creating a different kind of classroom where kids could move more? They could stand, they could fidget, they could sit on the ground, we could give them more movement choice. And our principal was like, yes, let's do it. And then in the next course of a year, we flipped the entire school, became the first all moving school in the world.

• 2:30:07Speaker 01

  So kids had all this agency and choice and the desk was individually hired for them. So we didn't have to program in a specific program. We just made it so that there was more movement in the day. And so there's that one piece of what happens if you couldn't drop your kid off? You know, or you had to drop your kid off to a walking place or something like that? How can you, how could you get more movement in? Cause I think we need to do that.

• 2:30:28Juliet Starrett?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:29Speaker 01

  And then simultaneously, redefining PE as not this horror show of, you know, the flexed arm hang test where we, you know, kids who don't move or don't have any families that move, how can we start to use that time to explore dance, yoga, but weightlifting? How, and what movements do we think that every child should know how to do in order to progress? What movement skills? And so it becomes a skill base, just like reading or math or anything else, we could do the same thing with, with that. And there's a real opportunity for that. I think there's a real hunger and awareness, because I think parents are like, holy crap, we're behind. No child, no parent wants their child to be unhealthy.

• 2:31:08Juliet Starrett?

  And, you know, I do think there's a lot of separate from PE things that could be done. I mean, one of the things that drives me insane, and I went to like 500 PTA meetings and now my kids are in elementary school, but our elementary school was set up so that on rainy days, the kids would stay inside at recess and watch movies. And I was like, that is the craziest thing I've ever heard. Like, I mean, I grew up in a snowy climate and we actually would put on our snow gear and go outside and play. So the notion that kids have To sit inside and watch movies when it's raining and that it's, you know, they're not going to get a cold. They're not going to get sick and kids actually love to play outside in the rain. So that that was a battle I tried to fight and lost. But I mean, to me, that's just one of those simple things that it's like, kids can go outside in cold weather. And kids can go outside in the rain and they need to, they need to move their bodies and they need to play.

• 2:31:54Juliet Starrett?

  The other thing is that something like 90% of kids live within a mile and a half of their own elementary school. And, you know, when we were kids, it was like 75% of kids biked or walked to school. And now it's like 15%. You know, we've just had this huge draw, you know, schools have rebuilt themselves around the whole concept of the drop off lane that we talked about before. And so, I mean, yes, the PE programs need to be massively revamped. But I also think there's all this sort of connected stuff. How do we make sure kids can move more in the classroom? How do we build in things like the daily mile? How do we make sure little kids are getting all the time they need to play outside at school? How do we facilitate environments where kids can walk and bike to school safely?

• 2:32:34Juliet Starrett?

  And I think even that would make a huge difference because, you know, tackling the specific PE problem is such a huge one. It makes me feel tired to think about it. But I mean, we agree.

• 2:32:44Speaker 01

  You don't have to solve the problem for the school district. You have to solve the problem for your classroom. So you have a child in a classroom. You can improve that classroom. The teacher is the functional unit of that and there's all of those things. And if your teacher can teach math and skills and social studies, they can teach squatting. And there are tons of resources available. What we're going to have to do is think differently about the problem because clearly who owns this? That's that's the issue. No one wants to own it.

• 2:33:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, it's a it's it's a grassroots problem in the classroom with the teacher and the students in that particular classroom. And it's a federal, you know, program issue that scales all the way up to the White House. So the question is, is there a political will for this? Like, I remember when, you know, Michelle Obama was the first lady and there was initiatives around moving and like eating healthy. And, you know, that did not go well and it's like insane.

• 2:33:36Speaker 01

  Do you remember Jamie Oliver was like run out of the country, right? Pizza is not a vegetable.

• 2:33:40Rich Roll?

  How dare anybody come in and try to like? Improve, you know, the health and welfare of of young people like I think the last time physical fitness in the public school system was a thing was when Arnold Schwarzenegger was talking about it, right? Like, I don't know what the current state of it is now, but I know it's decrepit in comparison to what it could be. And they're certainly in need, but there's so much bureaucratic red tape. All you can do is, like you said, Kelly, is get involved in, you know, your kid's classroom and try to begin there.

• 2:34:10Speaker 01

  There is, um, the other thing is to say, okay, this high school, middle school, and muncher school problem is beyond my skill. But then there is this thing, this kind of irregular army of of youth sports. So the youth sport coach becomes even more important because this may be the only time where kids learn to move and play.

• 2:34:29Rich Roll?

  It's a good point.

• 2:34:30Speaker 01

  And we actually, the data is pretty good that a lot of kids actually do engage in small sports. It's not everywhere and it's not equal for sure. But the data is that kids are starting to play so that we now can think, well, how can we support the coaches? Because that may be the only place where kids are getting any actual coaching. It's not about basketball. It's how do I self-regulate? And how do I calm down? And what does movement skills look like? So we have to, I think, be clever enough to look at some other opportunities to support. And right now, you know, there's Positive Coaching Alliance and some of these things. But who teaches volunteer coaches how to coach kids? It doesn't happen.

• 2:35:05Juliet Starrett?

  Well, and I think a lot of, you know, as we were talking about before, where, you know, your kids often don't want to hear the message from you, but they can better hear it from other people in their lives. And oftentimes that could be a coach. And so if youth coaches did get into the game of a little bit of like, you know, teaching kids how to take care of their tissues and, you know, telling kids they do need to sleep and maybe get off their phones, like, that would be such a support for, I think, all of us parents who are trying really hard within our own homes. You know, sometimes that outside voice is really what kids need to hear to actually try to make change.

• 2:35:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they can't hear it from their parents.

• 2:35:38Juliet Starrett?

  No, they can't hear from their parents. But man, if we had our youth coaches out there saying, hey, you guys really need to put your phone down and get eight hours of sleep if you want to perform on the soccer game tomorrow. And hey, you guys should probably eat a few vegetables. And hey, here's this $2 foam roller. Like, if your calves are sore, you can do some input. I mean, that alone would make a huge difference.

• 2:35:55Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Right. Uh, but how dare you, you know?

• 2:36:00Juliet Starrett?

  How dare you volunteer coaches?

• 2:36:02Speaker 01

  It's tricky, it's tricky.

• 2:36:02Juliet Starrett?

  It's really complicated.

• 2:36:03Rich Roll?

  It shouldn't be, but it is, right?

• 2:36:05Speaker 01

  And, you know, we'll, we'll let you know how the experiment goes, you know, when our kids.

• 2:36:10Rich Roll?

  Well, also, you know, on the subject of like the White House and stuff like that, is it correct that you have worked with the president? Is this true?

• 2:36:18Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 2:36:18Rich Roll?

  Like, can you, is this like?

• 2:36:20Speaker 01

  Two presidents.

• 2:36:21Rich Roll?

  Sign an NDA on this?

• 2:36:22Speaker 01

  Two presidents.

• 2:36:23Rich Roll?

  What is it, what are we talking about here?

• 2:36:24Speaker 01

  Uh, we have a friend who is the physical therapist and coach to us to President Obama and also to President Biden. And he is a good friend of ours and says, hey, we need help with resources or do you have ideas for this or how do we solve this problem? And I think we can say now because he's just a citizen, but one of the strangest experiences we had is making an air gapped computer full of mobility drills and things where I talked directly to President Obama. That was very uncomfortable for me. But.

• 2:36:55Juliet Starrett?

  And, and little strategies, you know, like we're obviously huge fans of standing desks, but Obama was writing his next book and he finds that he can concentrate the most and the best when he is sitting. And so he, but he also was uncomfortable and couldn't figure out a good sitting setup. So we consulted with him on, okay, here's sort of a sitting desk setup where you can still manage to get some movement in and, you know, fidget and be able to keep your brain alive, but actually be in a sitting position. I mean, it's really like minor stuff like that, but that makes a difference in the end.

• 2:37:26Rich Roll?

  It's pretty cool.

• 2:37:26Speaker 01

  How do we keep weight on a aging executive? I mean, this is, these are the real questions. How do we, you know?

• 2:37:32Juliet Starrett?

  Aging executives.

• 2:37:33Speaker 01

  You know, whoever is doing this job, how can we support them so that they can do the job the best? That's really.

• 2:37:39Juliet Starrett?

  And we, we have put our name in the hat, although no, no one's come a calling, but our name is in the hat to be on the president's physical fitness council, which.

• 2:37:46Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah. Well, that's a no brainer.

• 2:37:48Juliet Starrett?

  We would love to do that. I mean, that would really be like, you know, an amazing thing.

• 2:37:52Speaker 01

  Are you politicking right now?

• 2:37:53Juliet Starrett?

  We think we have something to contribute, but no one's come a calling. So.

• 2:37:57Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm, I'm setting you up for that layup and, and, and, you know, on the subject of keeping President Obama on the basketball court, right?

• 2:38:05Speaker 01

  Well, yes, that's very true. Um, you know, one of, this is a great allegory for everything we're talking about. President Obama is a great athlete and very competitive. He's said as much. And one of the things that was happening was he would play basketball in the, at the White House and he was ruining. A lot of cabinet members and staff members, they were having catastrophic injuries. The most dangerous sport for a middle-aged person.

• 2:38:32Rich Roll?

  Burning out his whole staff.

• 2:38:33Juliet Starrett?

  He was burning out his staff. They were like tearing their ACLs and going out there.

• 2:38:37Speaker 01

  Quad ligament tears, Achilles. You know, the most dangerous sport for middle-aged people is basketball. Because you go from zero to sprinting, lateral movement, don't have the tissues. You haven't exposed yourself to... When's the last time you jumped rope, much less cut?

• 2:38:50Juliet Starrett?

  Well, I think it's now been surpassed by pickleball, though.

• 2:38:52Rich Roll?

  Hmm, that's true.

• 2:38:53Juliet Starrett?

  I don't know if we have the perfect data on that, but we think it has.

• 2:38:57Speaker 01

  That's the allegory for how can you be prepared to come off the couch and theoretically come out intact and have more fun?

• 2:39:03Rich Roll?

  Be game-ready.

• 2:39:05Speaker 01

  When the president asks you to play basketball, will you be ready?

• 2:39:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:08Speaker 01

  That's what I want.

• 2:39:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and without having to sacrifice your ACL.

• 2:39:14Rich Roll?

  This was super fun, you guys. I really appreciate your time. I'm a huge fan of the work that you're doing. I think it's really important.

• 2:39:21Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 2:39:22Rich Roll?

  And the new book, Built to Move, you know, it's got, like, we talked about, the 10 chapters, which kind of goes through seriatum, all of these practices that are very easily incorporated into our lives and, obviously, you know, super important to keep us moving and stable and mobile and flexible and all the good stuff. And I might just start practicing.

• 2:39:48Speaker 01

  Can't wait to see.

• 2:39:49Juliet Starrett?

  Do you have any blind spots? Yeah, let us know if you have any blind spots and we're really grateful to have.

• 2:39:55Rich Roll?

  That's a whole other podcast, Juliette, but we'll get to it.

• 2:39:58Juliet Starrett?

  Let's do it.

• 2:39:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you and I can sit down and have a suffer fest slash recovering lawyer, retired lawyer conversation as well.

• 2:40:07Juliet Starrett?

  I look forward to that. Thank you so much for having us. It was really fun to chat.

• 2:40:10Rich Roll?

  Really, really, really cool. So if people want to check you out, obviously, pick up the book, Built to Move, but thereadystate.com. You've got tons of materials and programs there, your YouTube channel, The Ready State as well, you know, a million videos on Instagram. Anywhere else you want to direct people?

• 2:40:27Juliet Starrett?

  That's it.

• 2:40:27Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 2:40:28Juliet Starrett?

  Those are the two things, builttomove.com.

• 2:40:30Rich Roll?

  All right. Thanks, you guys.

• 2:40:31Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:40:32Juliet Starrett?

  Thank you so much.

• 2:40:32Rich Roll?

  Cheers.

• 2:40:33Juliet Starrett?

  Cheers.

• 2:40:33Rich Roll?

  Until next time, peace. Blinds.

• 2:40:48Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as The Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. Supporting

• 2:41:33Rich Roll?

  the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated, and sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, The Meal Planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel

• 2:42:15Rich Roll?

  Solis, as well as Dan Drake. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.