Book notes: Built to Move by Kelly and Juliet Starrett

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Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully by Kelly Starrett and Juliet Starrett

Synopsis:

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

The answers lie in an easy-to-use formula for basic mobility maintenance: 10 tests + 10 physical practices = 10 ways to make your body work better

The book offers:

• Easy mobilization practices to increase range of motion and avoid injury
• Intuitive ways to integrate more movement into your daily life and escape sedentary habits
• No-fuss guidelines for improving nutrition and sleep
• Basic breathing practices to manage stress and pain
• Quick and simple assessments to gauge progress and what needs improvement

It’s full of foundational wisdom for everyone from beginners to professional athletes and everyone in between. Built to Move introduces listeners to a set of simple principles and practices that are undemanding enough to work into any busy schedule, lead to greater ease of movement, better health, and a happier life doing whatever it is you love to do—and want to continue doing as long as you live. This book is your game plan for the long game.” -Audible

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Opening thoughts:

I’m not sure if I heard of this book from the Tim Ferriss podcast, referenced in Comfort Crisis, or simply from an Audible recommendation. However, since my theme this year is energy and vitality, I’m making it a point to focus on leveling up my health game. This book seems promising and offers more insights into living a healthier life.

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Key notes:

Introduction

• The floor-rise test is a way to gauge your benchmark for mobility. It involves sitting down cross-legged and getting back up without your hands or any support
• 10 tests + 10 physical practices = 10 ways to make your body work better

Vital Sign 1: Getting Up and Down Off the Floor

Assessment: Sit and Rise Test

• Tips for sitting:
  1. Choose a comfortable chair
  2. Sit without a chair back to promote stability
  3. Sit at a height where you have power in your legs to move the chair

Physical Practice: Floor-Sitting Positions and Mobilizations

1. Cross-legged sitting
2. 90-90 sitting
3. Long sitting (pike)
4. One leg up sitting

Vital Sign 2: Breathe Easy

Assessment: Breath-Hold Test

• Breathe for stability and energy

If you can’t breathe in a position, you don’t own that position

• Good body positioning can’t be divorced from good breathing
• Breathing through your nose has many benefits
• Reference: Wim Hof and breathing benefits

Physical Practice: Breathing Exercises and Mobilizations

Vital Sign 3: Extend Your Hips

Assessment: Couch Test

• Plan out how you’d like to move in your later years and engage in activities that will allow you to live that lifestyle in the future
• Opening up your hips and improving hip extension will allow you to move much better and has a host of benefits, but could also fix any existing problems
• Movement is the most important function of the brain

Physical Practice: Hip Mobilizations

Vital Sign 4: Walk This Way

• Walking is the best movement tool available

Assessment: Steps-Per-Day Inventory

• Goal: get 8-10k steps per day, 12k or more if possible
• Walking provides a host of benefits
  1. Nose breathing walk
  2. Thrice daily walks
     • Try to walk 10 minutes after each meal 
  3. Barefoot walk
  4. Extra credit: rucking/loading – adding weight while walking

Vital Sign 5: Future-Proof Your Neck and Shoulders

Assessment: Part 1 Airport Scanner Arms-Raise Test; Part 2 Shoulder Rotation Test

• Being in a positional C-shape is very detrimental

Physical Practice: Shoulder Flexion, Upper Back, and Rotator Cuff Mobilizations

• Wall hang
• Bottoms up: the right way to do a push-up

Vital Sign 6: Eat Like You’re Going to Live Forever

• Many different diets work for different people
  • The two things they recommend focusing on are: protein & micronutrients
• 4 shared elements of the optimal human diet:
  1. meat on the bone
  2. fermented and sprouted foods
  3. organs and other offal
  4. fresh and unadulterated plant and animal products
• Don’t settle for just getting enough micronutrients. Set yourself up so that your body and health can thrive

Assessment: Part 1 800-Gram Count; Part 2 Protein Count

• Eat 800 grams (28 oz) of fruits and vegetables per day
• Measure grams of protein
  • The goal is between 0.7-1g per pound of bodyweight
• Metabolic flexibility is the body’s ability to adapt fuel utilization to changes in fuel availability
  1. Frappuccino test: drink a sugary drink 4 hours after your last meal, and no other meal for a few more hours, and record how you fee
  2. 24 hour fast 
• Book reference: Comfort Crisis
• Regardless of vegetarian or non-vegetarian, all agree that protein is an important macronutrient

Special Section: What to Do When You Hurt

• When you feel pain, try to apply therapeutic pressure on an upstream or downstream part of your body and see what happens

Vital Sign 7: Squat!

Assessment: Squat Test

• Practice being in the sit-squat position a few minutes every day
• Mobilizations are good before physical activity, but just as important is actually warming up your body
• Jump rope for 2-5 minutes is a great warmup prep for any workout
  • Use your warmup as a systems check to see how your body is feeling, then proceed accordingly 

Physical Practice: Squatting Variations

• Regular sauna-ing improves immune function (5-20 min)
• Cold immersion also has benefits and reduces lower-grade inflammation from muscle exertion
• Cold water exposure is linked to improved immune and cardiovascular function, as well as better sleep
• Contrast therapy (switching back and forth between the two) might take a bit getting used to slowly

Vital Sign 8: Find Your Balance

Assessment: Part 1 – SOLEC (Stand On One Leg, Eyes Closed) Test; Part 2 – Old Man Balance Test

• Old man balance test: putting on socks and shoes from the floor while balancing on one leg
• Jumping (rope) is a great balance training tool
  • “When you stop jumping, you start dying”
  • Jumping not only keeps your balance systems in shape, it also gets the organs in your visceral cavity moving around which is beneficial
• Warmup and balance training:
  • Jumping rope. 100-200 jumps with both feet
  • Next 50-100 on each foot individually

Vital Sign 9: Create a Movement-Rich Environment

Assessment: Sitting Inventory

• Sitting more than 3 or 6 hours per day has negative health repercussions
• Record how much time you spend sitting
  • Exercising while seated or squatting or sitting on the floor doesn’t count
• While switching to standing from sitting at a desk expends only a few more calories, the compounded benefits plus the ability to fidget and move more are substantial
• The “sit less” mentality is the most important

Physical Practice: Setting Up a Standing Workstation; Dynamic Sitting

Vital Sign 10: Unleash Your Superpower: Sleep

• Sleep is the lynchpin, the hub that everything else revolves around

Assessment: Hours Count

• The goal is 7 hours of sleep or more
  • Also, track how you feel the next day and your energy levels
• Book reference: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
• Sleep deprivation has a lot of negative health consequences
• Sleep is the first line of defense against pain, and the key to overall well-being
• Sleep hygiene: a set of evidence-based behaviors that help ease the body and brain into a full and refreshing night slumber 

Physical Practice: A Better Shut-Eye Plan

1. Go to sleep and wake up the same time everyday, even weekends
2. Move throughout your day
3. Be careful with caffeine
4. No technology in the bedroom, limited before bedtime
5. Drink very little alcohol or none at all
6. Cool down
7. Wind down
8. Make your bedroom a dark, quiet place
9. Overestimate the time you need to spend in bed
10. Mimic your bedtime routine when you travel

Making It all Work: 24-Hour Duty Cycle and 21-Day Built to Move Challenge

Afterword: Never Do Nothing – The Case for Exercise

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Closing thoughts:

I really enjoyed this book! It felt like a combination of other health books I’ve read and summarised on this blog on topics like nutrition, sleep, and exercise. However, I appreciated its fairly unique (at least to me) stance that movement is the key to better health. But as any good, well-rounded book would offer, it touches on other relevant areas within health, not just the movement part.

For example, the book explains how vital sleep is for your health, which is covered in the Why We Sleep book I’ve linked to below. This book also covers topics like breathing and nutrition. While not super in-depth, I feel like it covers just enough to get someone started with actionable and helpful advice that anyone can follow. And it points out that these are general principles that many other diets follow such as getting enough of the right macronutrients.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and think it’s a great book for anyone to read if they care about improving their health.

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One Takeaway / Putting into practice:

My main takeaway is something that I immediately implemented while reading this book. As of the writing of this summary, I’ve been putting it into practice for the last 3 months and have noticed a significant improvement of my own health:

• Walking is the best movement tool available: Getting 10k+ steps per day while rucking/loading

With the exception of only 2-3 days, I’ve gotten at least 10k steps each day, and made up for a few days by walking extra the day before or after if I knew I couldn’t for a specific day. This equates to roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes of total walking per day at my regular pace. During this, I’ve picked up yo-yo-ing as a hobby to pass the time, as well as listening to more audiobooks to be triple productive with my time.

While it’s not the only factor, I believe this consistent practice has helped me to drop 10 lbs (from 157 lbs to 147 lbs) in the past 3 months. I believe walking has not only improved my cardiovascular health but also helped me to get at a daily caloric deficit more often than not. And when combined with my 4 strength training workouts a week and sticking to my diet, it seemed to prove very effective.

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Nutshell:

10 essential habits and practices to help you move freely and improve your overall health.

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Similar books:

• Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
• Peak Performance by Brad Stulberg & Steve Magness
• The Warrior Diet by Ori Hofmekler
• The Obesity Code by Jason Fung, MD
• The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter
• 10% Happier by Dan Harris
• Think Like A Monk by Jay Shetty

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Rating:

4/5

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