Built to Move: Book Overview
Are you feeling stiff and inflexible? Do you want to improve your mobility and overall health?
Kelly Starrett and Juliet Starrett's Built to Move book offers strategies to enhance your physical capabilities. You'll learn about exercises, lifestyle habits, and environmental changes that can boost your mobility and well-being.
Read on to discover how you can transform your body and daily routines for a more active, healthier life.
Overview of Built to Move
We live in an increasingly sedentary modern world that hinders our natural mobility and physical engagement. In the Built to Move book, Kelly and Juliet Starrett offer actionable methods to regain your body's physical potential by integrating movement practices into your daily life. Their strategies range from specific mobility exercises to cultivate flexibility and strength, to making simple adjustments like breathing techniques and ergonomic setups to encourage more movement.
The Starretts guide you to enhance both performance and longevity through sustainable lifestyle changes. Whether your aim is pain relief, improved fitness, or just more energy in daily activities, Built to Move provides a practical framework to develop mobility and resilience for lifelong wellbeing.
Improving Your Mobility
Mobility is key to tackling life's physical challenges, from aging to injuries and sedentary lifestyles. The Built to Move book offers strategies to prepare your body for these hurdles. By focusing on flexibility, you'll be ready for both physical endeavors and everyday demands.
Let's explore some ways to enhance your mobility:
Mastering the Sit-and-rise Test
The Sit-and-Rise Test is a great tool to assess your physical mobility. It looks at how well you can control your legs and trunk, your balance, and your hip mobility. All these factors contribute to how easily you can get down to the floor and back up again, which reflects your overall well-being.
To ace this test, aim for a perfect ten-point score. This means you can lower yourself to the ground and stand back up without any help. Don't worry if you're not there yet - practicing this movement regularly can improve your natural range of motion. Try incorporating specific exercises that help you smoothly transition between standing and sitting positions.
Improving Hip Flexibility
Your hips play a crucial role in walking and running. To keep them flexible and functional, try the Hip Opener exercise. This movement can help reduce muscle tension and joint stiffness. Another great exercise is the Couch Stretch. It might be challenging at first, but try to hold each leg in position for three minutes.
Maintaining Neck and Shoulder Mobility
Keeping your neck and shoulders flexible is crucial for everyday activities. The book suggests ways to check your shoulder flexibility. One method is the upward arm raise, similar to the position you'd take in an airport scanner. Another involves testing your shoulder's rotational capacity.
These assessments help you understand your current abilities and identify areas for improvement. To boost flexibility, focus on exercises that target the complex areas of your shoulder, especially the rotator cuff and upper back.
Integrating Movement Into Daily Life
It's not just about specific exercises - incorporating movement into your everyday routine can make a big difference. Here's how:
Mastering the Squat
The squat is a powerful exercise that works multiple joints at once, engaging your hips, ankles, and knees in a coordinated movement. To keep your knees stable, it's important to strengthen the muscles around them.
To maintain and improve your squatting abilities, try activities like extended deep squat holds and high-intensity Tabata Squats. These exercises can help you build strength and stability in your lower body.
Developing Body Awareness
You don't need to be in a gym to improve your physical presence. Everyday tasks can enhance your stability and increase your bodily awareness. Try incorporating single-leg balance exercises into your routine activities to improve your equilibrium.
There's also an assessment called the Old Man Balance Test, designed to measure and improve stability through balance-challenging activities. By engaging in specific exercises and using self-massage techniques, you can improve your perception of your body's spatial orientation and dynamics.
Capitalizing on Incidental Movement
Walking is a simple yet effective form of exercise that can significantly improve your overall health. It not only enhances mobility but also promotes holistic well-being, including strong bones, cardiovascular fitness, and mental health.
Try tracking your daily steps to ensure you stay active. Aim for 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day. You can boost your step count by taking the stairs instead of the elevator, going for short walks after meals, and having walking meetings at work.
Remember, staying nimble is crucial for maintaining an adaptable and evolving lifestyle. By carefully assessing your abilities and doing specific exercises, you can gradually increase your capacity to perform tasks like comfortably lowering yourself to the floor.
Adopting Healthy Lifestyle Habits
The Built to Move book doesn't just focus on physical exercises. It also emphasizes the importance of adopting specific practices to enhance your overall health and vitality. Let's look at some key areas:
Mastering Breath Control
Proper breathing techniques are essential for maintaining good health. With regular practice, they can enhance flexibility and alleviate stress. Here are two important aspects of breath control:
Improving CO2 Tolerance
Enhancing your tolerance to increased carbon dioxide levels can lead to more effective oxygen distribution throughout your body. This means you'll have extra energy for daily activities. You can evaluate and improve your CO2 tolerance through practices that include breath retention after exhaling. Techniques to boost tolerance involve managing CO2 levels and increasing the duration you can hold your breath underwater.
Nose Breathing
Breathing through your nose should be your default practice. It filters the air, increases oxygen uptake, and promotes a state of calmness throughout your body. Try incorporating techniques like the Nose-Breathing Walk and even consider using mouth tape to encourage nose breathing, especially during sleep. Many workout programs now include breathing instructions to ensure proper use of the diaphragm.
Prioritizing Nutrition
Eating a diverse range of foods not only helps prevent illness but also enhances overall health. Here's what the book recommends:
The 800-gram Challenge
Try to include at least 800 grams of fruits and vegetables in your daily diet. This regimen, known as the 800-Gram Challenge, is recommended for its health benefits. Look to nutrition experts for guidance on incorporating essential nutrients into your meals. Ensure your food intake is diverse - for example, try including three different vegetables in your dinner.
Protein Intake
The book suggests consuming between 0.7 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight daily. Older individuals and athletes might need to increase their intake to prevent muscle deterioration and aid in recovery. It's crucial to carefully track and adjust your diet to maintain peak health.
Prioritizing Quality Sleep
Sufficient rest plays a crucial role in your general well-being, mental sharpness, and recovery processes. Here's how to improve your sleep:
Improving Sleep Duration and Quality
To understand your sleep habits, monitor your slumber over several nights and aim for seven to nine hours of sleep. Research shows that sleep is vital for learning and memory processes, and it also helps to lessen how much pain we feel.
Enhancing Sleep Quality
You can improve your sleep quality by maintaining a consistent schedule, managing light and electronic device exposure, and creating a conducive sleeping environment. Using devices that generate steady background noise can also enhance sleep quality.
By adopting habits that promote proper breathing, nutrient-rich diets, and regular sleep patterns, you'll contribute to your overall health and ensure active engagement in every aspect of life.
Creating an Active Environment
The Built to Move book emphasizes the importance of creating spaces that encourage frequent movement, both at home and in the workplace. Let's explore how you can do this:
Setting Up an Ergonomic Workspace
Creating a vibrant and dynamic atmosphere is essential for promoting movement. Design a workspace that supports ergonomic health and allows for both seated and standing work. This can boost your productivity and overall well-being.
The book suggests using various assessments to evaluate and enhance movement. One such assessment looks at hip extension capabilities, helping to create an environment conducive to mobility.
Standing desks are particularly beneficial. They promote physical activity, leading to increased calorie expenditure, improved focus, and a reduced risk of certain health conditions. In fact, standing throughout an eight-hour workday could lead to burning an additional 275 calories - that's equivalent to the energy used in running 38 marathons each year!
Incorporating Movement Into Stationary Tasks
The authors stress the importance of minimizing sedentary behavior and incorporating regular exercise into everyday life. To maintain your agility and health, try to develop routines that alternate between sitting and standing, engage in subtle continuous motion, and break up extended periods of inactivity.
A standing workstation can promote an active environment by encouraging natural movements such as shifting weight, pacing in place, and changing posture. These small movements can add up to significant health benefits over time.
Embracing Lifelong Exercise
The Built to Move book encourages readers to view exercise not as a temporary fix, but as a lifelong commitment. Here's how you can adopt this mindset:
Always Taking Action
Embracing a philosophy of continuous action means making regular movement a part of your daily routine. This goes beyond structured exercise sessions - it's about being active throughout your day.
For instance, engaging in consistent walking, regardless of intensity, can improve your cognitive abilities and contribute to pain relief. Standing more often, along with increased activity, adds to long-term health benefits. Research shows that taking frequent walking breaks can counteract the adverse effects of prolonged sitting more effectively than less frequent, longer walks.
Incorporating Strength Training
While incidental movement is important, the book also emphasizes the need for targeted strength training. The authors suggest that an ideal exercise strategy would probably combine deliberate, organized exercise sessions with spontaneous, everyday movements.
Try to mix strength training exercises into your daily routine. This could be as simple as doing a few squats while waiting for your coffee to brew or some push-ups during TV commercials.
Building a Resilient Body for the Future
The Built to Move book isn't just about improving your mobility now - it's about preparing your body for the future. Here's how you can build a strong and flexible physique to thrive in the years to come:
Understanding the Mobility Triad
The book explores the concept that mobility relies on a solid base, which includes proper nutrition, adequate rest, and regular exercise. These three elements work together synergistically to maintain a robust and energetic body that can withstand the challenges associated with aging.
For example, good nutrition provides the building blocks your body needs for repair and growth. Adequate sleep allows for recovery and helps consolidate the physical improvements you've made. And regular exercise keeps your body strong and flexible. By paying attention to all three of these areas, you're setting yourself up for long-term health and mobility.
Embracing Incremental Improvements
The book introduces the concept of the Aggregation of Marginal Gains Theory. This theory suggests that small, incremental advancements can accumulate to create significant overall progress.
In practice, this might mean opting for a standing desk, advocating for daily physical activity, and maintaining an active lifestyle even outside of structured exercise routines. Each of these small changes can enhance your physical well-being and potentially improve your overall performance.
Over time, these marginal gains can add up to substantial improvements in your stamina and longevity. So don't underestimate the power of small, consistent changes - they could be the key to building a body that's truly built to move.