The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully by Kelly Starrett, Juliet Starrett

Episode Date: April 30, 2023

Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully by Kelly Starrett, Juliet Starrett Amzn.to/3Li1ORz NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • Simple and proven physical practices designed to improve the way your body feels—less stiffness! fewer aches and pain!—and boost the overall quality of your life, no matter how you spend your time. From the innovators behind The Ready State and the movement bible Becoming a Supple Leopard. “The definitive guide for building an all-around healthy and high-performing body and mind.” —Andrew Huberman, Professor of Neurobiology, Stanford University & Host of The Huberman Lab Podcast 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 readers 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.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the Chris Voss Show. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We really appreciate you. And today, once again, we're going to do some learning it's going to be some learning and

i don't know that's the thing making it up that's the ramble folks that's what we do we make it up we're doing some learning today and we've got some great new york times best-selling authors on the show they're gonna be talking to us about their latest book that just came out uh april 4th 2023 can you believe it's almost may jesus where'd this month go uh anyway guys as always we're going to get to them in a second but in the meantime we have to shame you guilt you and and try and motivate you to put five people in your downline by subscribing to the chris voss show mlm no i'm just kidding it's on mlm but seriously though tell people that they should subscribe the show Give us those five-star reviews on

iTunes. Go to youtube.com 4Chess Chris Voss. Goodreads.com 4Chess Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com 4Chess Chris Voss. And oh yeah, yeah, we're working on the show over at TikTok now. There's TikTok Chris Voss 1 and there's TikTok The Chris Voss Show Podcast. And there's my dogs

over there too. They have their own account. We just set up Huskies of Chris Voss. You can find it over there and all the links to The Chris Voss Show podcast, and there's my dogs over there, too. They have their own account. We just set up Huskies of Chris Voss. You can find it over there, and I'll link to the Chris Voss Show. It's at TikTok. It's where all the kids are. It's where all the stupidity is, too, but that's another story. Anyway, guys, the amazing authors we have on the show, Kelly Starrett and Juliet Starrett are the authors on today's show. They've written a multitude of books. Their newest book just came out April 4th, 2023, Built to Move, The 10 Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully. For those of you who want to live freely and live fully, for those of you who don't, you can skip the show because, I don't know, death sounds really cool, but don't do that. Listen to the show and you'll enjoy it.

You'll learn something and you'll move freely and live fully. Welcome to the show, Kelly and Juliet. How are you? We're great. Thank you so much for having us. What an intro every time you nail it. I try. Sometimes we whiff one, but it's always a ramble and it's always random and whatever bleeds out of my brain and there we are. So Kelly, Juliet, give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs there. Sure. We are at thereadystate.com. And if you want to learn more about our book specifically, it's builttomove.com. There you go.

And you guys have written a few other books if we want to get a plug in for them as well. How many books have you written? So I think we're at six books. One of them is two editions. But our first book was called Becoming a Supple Leopard. We also wrote another book called Ready to Run, a third book called Deskbound, a little book for paddlers called Waterman 2.0, and then we did a second edition of Supple Leopard and now Built to Move. So if my math is correct, I think that's six books. All right. Now I have to ask, what's a supple leopard? Is that, I don't know, me on Friday nights in a leotard?

Nailed it. That's exactly what this is about. Ultimately, can people do what they're supposed to with their body? And can you access that at a moment's notice? Can you feel better and move the way you're supposed to? And that was really the sort of central idea of trying to re-empower people with their bodies. You know, we just get stuck in these little windows of movement. All of a sudden, you can't put your arms over your head.

And that was the whole idea originally 10 years ago when we wrote Supple Leopard. So what is a supple leopard, though? Well, tell that story, Kels. We had a couple of reasons. One of us, we had a friend who was in Navy Special Warfare. He came back. He'd been shot in Afghanistan.

And he's like, you know, Kelly, I really appreciate all the work you're doing. I'm feeling better. But the leopard never stretches. And I was like, you know, that's a really good point, Andy, comma, you're not a leopard. And by the way, if you notice this, that the leopard can attack and defend at full physical capacity and at a moment's notice it doesn't really have to do all these literally be like laying in a tree taking it up and be like oh look there's a kudu here i go that's me when i have my coffee in the mornings we talked about in the green room and as soon as you hit that uh that

skull crusher i think that's what you called it and And then you go right into it. So that sort of idea came out of this joke with our friend about, and then the word supple is just too fantastic. And so that alliteration together, we knew that we would never, ever be mistaken for anyone else. So the idea was born about how can we teach people, and this first book was really a heavy duty textbook, but how do we give people their range of motion back? How can we move the physical therapist and the physician out of the conversation and re-empower people in their own homes and in the gyms to actually feel better and take care of their bodies? There you go. And here I thought it was a strip club name. So anyway, it's all jokes aside. So anyways, what motivated you want to write this book, Built to Move?

Well, I'll start, and I'm sure Kelly can add some color commentary. But we've been working with high-performing athletes for over 20 years, from every major sport to Olympians to elite military units. And what we realized is that if we just took the lessons we learned there and did nothing with them, then that was just sport and had no ultimate purpose. And the other thing we saw is that, you know, thanks to the internet,

there is a massive amount of health and fitness information out there. And for everybody who doesn't have the luxury of being able to have a personal trainer and a coach and an athletic trainer and a massage therapist and a PhD to sort through all of the madness that those people ultimately were very confused and weren't really sure where to start, weren't sure what to prioritize, weren't sure which levers were going to move, you know, which were going to move the biggest levers for them from a health standpoint. And, you know, when you look at the data actually out there about our overall health as a country,

I mean, you know, people are spending trillions of dollars on health and fitness and belonging to gyms and supplements, you name it. But all of our metrics are still trending downhill. You know, we're becoming more heavy, more diabetic, there's more back pain, you know, disability, loneliness, depression, you name it. If you look at any statistic of health, we're not doing a great job. And so we've really, and that speaks to the failure of this, this institution of health, right? This commoditization of health and fitness. Industrial complex. And so we, we felt like there were a lot of really small things that we do in our own lives. And, and those are the same things that we recommend as the, the basic and foundational practices of our elite performers that we could actually share with a broader audience and really make a difference in people's lives and overall health. And let me add that this has got to exclude diet and exercise. Yes, we're going to talk about

fueling for, and making sure you have the right nutrients on so you have healthy tissues. We all want that, right? So that our knees don't hurt. But what we, people have gotten the message that they should exercise and that still hasn't worked. And what we, people have gotten the message that they should exercise and that still hasn't worked. And what we realized is that we could create a set of physical behaviors, kind of thinking differently about our world and in our busy schedules from when we wake up to when we go to bed, that didn't include exercise. And if you did all of these things, lo and behold, you could actually feel better and create more durability. So you can take the hits, take the stress and be ready to go when you want to go and do that as long as you want. And I think that's one of the things that's very controversial. I mean, we obviously love

exercise. We owned a commercial gym for 16 years. You know, we do, we exercise for fun, but what we've really learned over the years is in many ways, exercise is extracurricular, which is controversial. We think it's important. There's a lot of great elements to it, but there are so many other things that are low-hanging fruit that people can do for their health that can be done in short amounts of time that make a huge difference. There's some people that have been saying that sitting is the new smoking. If you're sitting too much, you're never moving. It's almost as dangerous as, you know, smoking some cigarettes. I haven't really tried it. I never got into the smoking part.

You can race them. You can definitely race them and see how that went. You know, that's actually James Levine of the Mayo Clinic, who's one of the preeminent obesity researchers on the planet. And what he realized, and I think we all, we caught on, and then we were all like, that's funny and kind of, you know, witty and sticks in our head, but it's not sitting is bad let's get rid of that let's say that not moving is less good and so we have a bunch of friends who have jobs they fly they fly planes they you know our

bus drivers they cannot not sit as part of their job you might have to sit down and focus at work but it's two things one is that we're really saying, hey, marathon bouts of inactivity are less good for your body. And two, how can we combat that idea of like, if you had to stand, you had a job where you had to stand still all day long, you were, it was murder. And that also doesn't work. What we're looking at is how can we create more opportunities for you to move more in your environment? And the research now is pretty unequivocal. Human beings' brains and our bodies work better when we move. Turns out, for example, that the difference really in the

research between people who are able to maintain their weight over a lifetime and people who struggle with their weight isn't exercise. It's not even the kinds of diet. It's how much activity they have day to day. So just having to walk more, fidget more, be up and down, just be active. It's sort of built in calorie control. There you go. Fidgeting more. You know, it's funny how sedentary, how our, sedentary, is that the right word? Our lives have become with computers and, you know, we were supposed to have these computers. The computers are making your life better, eh? You're going to sit and look at

a screen all day, you know? And you're going to be sitting just as close as when my mom used to yell at me when we were kids in the 70s. She'd be like, that's as close as the screen! You're going to go blind! Only if you're watching Mark and Mindy. You had to be that close. My mom doesn't talk like that, by the way.

I don't want her to send me hate mail. She's very lovely. But no, I mean, everyone's mom did that, you know, and now, now it's even worse. We're walking around looking at our phones, like, you know, six inches in front of our face. And so, you know, here, here in the office, I have, I'm sitting at a uh what's supposed to be a stand-up desk it's a very expensive stand-up desk there's a stand-up desk to the left of me too or the right of me i can't tell directions clearly um and it's the first sign uh and so i never use them and like every now and then i'll be like yeah you know uh this is a moving desk i should it's it's like

expensive it goes like all the way up. But now I'm too tired to move it today. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think what you're picking up on is that there is a, you know, sort of an environment human mismatch these days with all of the technology we have. I mean, you know, we didn't have to necessarily talk as much about these things back in the seventies and eighties when we move more. I mean, if you just look at kids, I think there's some statistic that like when we were kids in the 70s, something like 90% of kids walked or biked to school. And I think that's down to like 15% or something now.

So you just look at how- You had to walk to the hose to drink from it. Yeah, you had to drink from the hose. And you know, right. And we all were put outside until dark, you know, from morning till dark, weren't invited back into the home until it was dark at night, right?

So there were just so many more opportunities to be in constant motion, you know, when technology wasn't part of our lives. But what we do know is that technology is not going away. And so what, one of the things we're trying to do is help people figure out how to, you know, sort of address all of the technology and sedentarism we're doing these days, knowing that technology is not going away. And, you know, one of the things we talk about is this idea of session costs. And you can think about it in... One example would be the session cost of a workout is that you would be sore and tired afterwards, and maybe not as ready the next day to do your workout. But what we like to try to suggest people do is apply the session cost concept to their everyday activities. And so, you know, if you

need to sit for eight or nine hours, because that's what your job requires, that's a session cost, but then you might actually then want to consider putting a little bit of input into your body later on in the form of walking, maybe some soft tissue mobilizations, you know, just something to sort of address that session costs of long bouts of sitting. And like Kelly says, you know, the goal is more movement and, you know, the goal is more movement. And, you know, there's lots of ways you can be in a chair and still be fidgeting and moving around. And, you know, as long as you're getting up every so often, you know, really the goal is just not to sit in one position for really long periods of time. So if we took your setup right now, you might find that you focus really well and you like these interviews seated. It just works for

your brain. But what we want to do is raise you up and say, hey, here's a bar stool. Let's get you perching. Let's not just make you stay in all the time. So Julian and I are both leaning and perching right now. Our feet are on the ground, but we're not sitting. And what happens there ultimately is what we're trying to do with all of this movement at a technical level is raise our activity requirements above one and a half metabolic equivalents. So if you ever remember the old Stairmasters from hotels and you were like, what's a Met? And you'd be like, I'm doing it seven Mets. And you're like, I don't know what seven Mets is that good? Was this, it was like a bonus unit of

like cherries or McNuggets. But the idea here is what we know is that a lot of the sedentary sort of behavior, physiology kicks on below one and a half. It's kind of a metabolic equivalent. And sitting in a chair puts us at that one, 1.2. As soon as you stand, as soon as you perch, as soon as you move and have activated a little bit more musculature, your brain is like, oh, this is an activity. And really our goal is to try to limit that total amount of time. So again, we find that sometimes deep work requires people to sit totally okay. But then what ends up happening is if you raise that desk up, gave yourself a bar stool, chances are without even thinking about it, you would start moving more because it invites a window of opportunity. And so what you've done there is exactly what

this book is about, is re-imagining our environments and asking us, hey, where and when are we spending our time and how might we think differently? Let me give you an example. Tonight, if you're listening to this, your homework, this is it. This is the number one homework. We want you to sit on the ground while you watch TV tonight. We know you're watching TV. The research is clear, but just sitting on the ground, you can sit any way you want. You can kneel, you can side sit, you can long sit, crisscross applesauce. But what you'll get is 20 to 30 minutes of end range of motion in your hips. You'll be in a whole bunch of shapes and positions you're normally not in. You're going to find it uncomfortable to lean up against your couch.

Totally okay. And then eventually you're going to have to get up and down off the ground, which again is going to sort of expose you to a whole bunch of just novel movement that your body typically was using and requiring, but you haven't touched for a while. And that idea is suddenly, Hey, in our busy lives, we don't want to give you another list of crap. You got to get done to optimize your life. You feel pretty great. But if we start keeping an eye on, Hey, where and when can I make these small changes? We find that these are the hinges, small hinges that open enormous doors. There you go. And you guys cover a lot of different gambit in the book you guys cover uh diet simple diet recommendations uh doing the squat position a few times a week

there's a joke there somewhere but i can't find it uh balance exercises creating a movement rich environment getting enough sleep sleeping on the floor uh or sitting on the floor deep breathing uh hamstring mobilization there's a joke there somewhere that goes with the squatting part too. I don't know what that means. Walking at least, what is that? 8,000? Yeah, we recommend 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day. Not 10,000. 8,000

is your minimum. If you're casually like, hey, I want to reduce everything that might kill me by 50%, walk 8,000 steps a day. 50%. So if I do half that amount, I reduce it to 25% walk 8,000 steps a day. 50% If I do half that amount, I reduce it to 25%? Nope, you get 1%. You get 1%.

Oh, damn. But what you bring up is a really good point because, you know, again, Juliet and I are busy working parents. We have two teenage kids. We work in front of computers while what we don't have is hours and hours every day to optimize our schedule. And Juliet gets up and writes her graduate journal. And I get in front of my red LED lights.

And we perfect meal prep. That's not reality. That is some Instagram horseshit. And what I want to point out to people is that when we begin to say, hey, what are the essentials? And what's realistic that you can be consistent with for long periods of time? If you start chunking a little bit of movement, I'm going to walk for five minutes after my lunch. I'm going to just make sure that I'm moving around a little bit more. You can get to 8,000 steps pretty reasonably if you're a little bit more intentional about it and your

life begins to change. I think the other thing is, you listed off some of the things that are in our book, but one of our goals with this book was try to create the book, the one book. Vital signs. Vital signs. And that our goal here was to make a comprehensive book of basic health practices that was super accessible for anyone to follow. Now, if you go to any bookstore or onto Amazon, you can find a thousand books on diet. You can find a thousand books on workouts. If you look at any of these chapters, you can find tons thousand books on diet. You can buy a thousand books on workouts. You know, if you look at any of these chapters, you can find tons of information about that. But what we found is that people often don't understand how all these behaviors interconnect

and, and feed off of one another, so to speak. And we can give some examples of that, but we wanted to basically say, Hey, look, you know, you may or may not be into health and fitness, but you probably want to feel good in your body and be out of pain and not be in a wheelchair and not be in a nursing home. Yeah. And be able to play with your grandkids when you're older. You know, most people share that common feeling. And if you have that feeling, there again are some really basic things here. They're all interconnected and they're totally accessible and doable, even if you're not someone who loves to hit the gym. There you go. There's a simplistic thing to it where, you know, it's not, you know, you don't have something super complex. It's very easy to understand. And, you know, there's a movement where I'm eating the bag of Doritos. I pick the Dorito out.

Sometimes there's a guacamole. Well, check this out. How much is that working for me in exercise? Check this out. When we are talking, like you mentioned sort of diet, which is a word that throws people off. Immediately, like I'm not into diet culture. I'm not into food culture. I don't want to count calories. And so what we know though, is that it is much easier to buffer some Doritos. I am about the

cookie. I love cookies. I'm never going to turn down a cookie. No one in my house is safe. If we have cookies in the house, I'm going to wake up at two in the morning looking for cookies. But what do we know is that if we give people clear objective measures about aspects of their life, they're not aware of, for example, one of the things that we know that everyone benefits from, wait for it, is more fiber, right? And how sexy is it to talk about, hey, let's get some more fiber. But what we found out is that if we got people to eat more fruits and vegetables, specifically 800 grams, what is 800 grams of fruits and vegetables? Four big apples.

A banana weighs 100 grams. If you ate a pound of cherries, you're way into over 1,000 grams. And what you'll see is a pound of cherries, which I don't recommend eating all at once. You'll have explosive diarrhea, but you'll get the idea. But a pound of cherries is 230 calories. And what we end up getting when we put all this micronutrients, all the phytonutrients, all the magic in fruits and vegetables, when we ask people to come up to this level, then we say, hey, here's the minimum amount of protein we want to eat every day. What we find is people feel better. They're more cognizant, more lucid. Their tissues handle better. And guess what? You're so full that you ate so many things. And then if you want to eat some Cheetos on top of it,

knock yourself out. It's not going to hit. But what you'll find is there's also some calorie control built in there. And once again, this eating regimen, this is how we work with, remember, I'm a physical therapist. So I see a lot of injuries and a lot of surgeries. And if we're trying to help people get out of chronic pain or heal from a surgery, you're getting our prescription. If you're trying to change your body weight, you're getting our prescription. And if you want to eat beans and potatoes with your family and not have a weird, bring your chicken bag and a breast to a party. You don't have to do that. You don't have to be a weirdo. We want to expand your

nutrition choices, but understand that your sleep will be better. Your body will feel better. You'll lose weight, et cetera, et cetera. Well, and I think what Kelly's hinting at is that we are refugees as people in the health and fitness. Survivors. We're survivors of the health and fitness diet culture situation. And one of the things that most diets have done for all of us is restrict, restrict, restrict, including things like fruits and vegetables, which to me shows that we've really lost the forest through the trees when it comes to our health. I mean, every culture has eaten fruits and vegetables since there were people making records of what cultures are eating.

People eat fruits and vegetables, just different kinds. And so we've really lost the narrative. And one of the things we love about this style of eating is it's expansive. Every other diet people follow means that they have to cut out this dinner party with their friends and they can't have this alcohol and they can't have this. the way we see it is if you meet the minimums of eating some fruits and vegetables and getting some protein, you, and if you move enough throughout your day, you've got some, you've got some wiggle room to be able to go have a glass of wine with your friends and be normal and not have to, you know, again, like Kelly said, bring a baggie of chicken to your dinner party because you're on some, you know, cleanse or special diet. And here's what we've got with,

by creating vital signs that are physical behavior, so some of them are about range of motion, how well do you move in your environment? But giving you a benchmark allows you to sort of make decisions. Hey, I'm crushing that. I don't need to pay attention to it. Or wow, this is a real blind spot for me. The same way you go in and you get your blood pressure checked once in a while at the grocery store, you stick your arm in the machine, you're like, whoa, my blood pressure is really high or I'm killing it. If I say 120 over 80 is sort of our benchmark, then we have a place where we can start to

pay attention. What we've done here with fitness in the last 20 years is we've made it completely subjective. We've made it completely confusing. And by giving people clear vital signs, they can realize, Hey, I'm above that or I'm below that, but tomorrow I get to play better. And if we expand besides this, we've basically created this situation where we give fitness in one hour chunks. I go to my fitness class, my Peloton class, my CrossFit class. And if I don't

get that one hour chunk, I may as well do nothing. I may as well do nothing. And I assume that that one hour chunk, three days a week is going to cover me. And it does not cover you. It's the 23 hours of the day, plus adding in some of these essential behaviors. And lo and behold, you can start to make big boy, big girl decisions about how you want to live your life. And the hint at is that you think you feel good, but you can feel better. You think you're handling stress well, but you can actually handle stress better. How do we know? We run this experiment in major league soccer, in premier football, I mean, in NBA, NFL, we just test this over and over again. And it turns out we actually can be a little bit better and work a little bit harder and feel a little bit fresher. There you go. I can attest to the fruits and

vegetables things, 800 grams. So I need to see if I'm taking a full 800 grams of fruits and vegetables a day. I buy all my salads from, I have one to two salads a day. I buy all my salads from a local farm here in Utah and it's all hyponically grown. It's just everything about it. I make people drool on Facebook because they're like, oh, my God, the lettuce you have and all the ingredients. Love it. And the one thing I learned is if you want to eat healthy, you got to make it taste good. So, you know, it tastes better than In-N-Out Burger. But I need to put more fruits into my diet.

I eat a lot of pineapple because it's supposed to be good for gut health. Like I'm into eating different things that are really good for the gut health. So I eat a lot of pineapple, beets are more vegetables. I don't really think I eat. I have a banana every day for the potassium. And what people don't realize is a lot of these sugars that are in natural fruit, they're okay for your body to digest. Oh, yeah. And I mean, I just want to say, if you're eating two salads every day and a banana, you are 100% probably exceeding 800

grams every day. I mean, that's just an eyeball, but my guess is you're 100% exceeding it. I mean, I think it's just an example of a know a banana again is you know or a whole entire pound of cherries is 230 calories i mean i don't know how many calories a pound of donuts is and how much sugar that is but i mean it's a lot and so i think part of it is just a volume cookie at starbucks is like 380 calories yeah these cookies they're making nowadays these the acrobal cookies oh yeah oh and they're Yeah, and they're as big as your face. So can you imagine the conversation we're having? People are like, well, that banana and those apples, too much sugar.

But you want a crumble cookie? And you're like, holy hell, what are we talking about here? Like, we do not have an obesity epidemic in this country because people are eating bananas. Surrounded by bananas. We've lost, we have lost the narrative. And the other thing that you're getting, besides all the micronutrients, all the fiber, is you're getting choice. If you're like, I love pineapple.

I'm like, bro, eat 800 grams of pineapple every day. And on day three, you're like, maybe I'll eat a banana because I'm sort of sick of eating that much pineapple. But if you eat an entire melon, an entire melon, it's like 210 calories, eat an entire cantaloupe melon and be like, I'm so hungry. I'm going to have this ice cream. You can't do it. One of the greatest desserts you can probably have is like 10 frozen cherries. Like you're there, just let them get all mushy. And you're going to be like, this is like gelato and it's zero, very, very low calorie. But what ends up happening again is that we don't really care about calories. What we're saying is if you want to have collagen and joints that work well,

and you want to have muscles that function right and a brain that works, you've got to be putting these essential nutrients in. And ideally, what we've learned is that it's all from whole foods. So however you want to do that, four big apples a day, you're into rutabaga, you're a rutabaga guy, knock yourself out. And you know, I have one of my biggest influences is an author named Kate Shanahan, who wrote a book called Deep Nutrition. And she went around and studied food cultures around the world and realized that there are basically four things that all cultures throughout all of history always do. They do the same things. It's just about how they prepare their food. Every culture eats fermented food. Every culture eats meat on the bone. They all eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. The only difference is actually how they prepare their food and which

foods, you know, which underneath those bigger categories they eat. And so that's another reason we love our approach to eating here is that, man, it is like independent of culture. You can eat however your culture, you know, whatever your cultural choices are, and you can choose underneath that larger, you know, umbrella. You can choose whatever foods you enjoy eating and make you feel good. There you go. There you go. A few other things we'll tease out on the book. You guys talk about the importance of mobility, and I guess this is really important my mom had her two knees replaced and i remember when she got them replaced um at the same time uh no she got them done different times and i remember the doctors were like hey you need to get up start moving around now and i'm like don't do that if i get my knees replaced i'm laying in bed for like three months

or something and i don't know and they're like no you have to move that's right and people i don't think realize how important that is to all of your different muscles ligaments tell talk to us a little bit about that if you will well the first thing is let's define mobility for everyone it's your ability to move through your environment pain-free doing what you want to do right that's so julian and i our goal is when we're 80 we're both 50 when we're 80 we want to ride mountain bikes and ski and race cars and do whatever we want like really we want to be able to just be like what are we doing today great we're partying with our bodies i'm tired of thinking i'm 50 and i'm just tired thinking about precisely i might have to go take a nap so one of the things that we know very much with the body is it's user it or lose it. We have to load a tissue.

We have to load your joint surfaces. We have to load your tendons and ligaments. If we want them to be tendons and ligaments, they respond to loading. So when you load a bone, for example, what ends up happening is you flex the bone a little bit. And you create a little electric current in there, a piezoelectric moment where what it does is that electrical current that happens when you flex the bone calls in other cells to come in and rebuild that bone. Osteoblast. Remember, osteoblast build. So if you don't load the bone- I don't think most of us learned that, Kelly.

Welcome to the Chris Voss Health Show. Is this an OnlyFans channel? That's right. And what ends up happening is if you don't load that bone, it doesn't get the call to reinforce it. So we've got to have this kind of constant movement. But one of the things you're finding out is that how we move in the day typically is in a very small movement language. We only kind of, we like, you know, we're 90 degrees with our hips.

We walk around a little bit. We don't really put our arms over our head. We don't have to use our bodies because we can drive and everything's right in front of us. And so what we can imagine is how then do I begin to expose my body to its normative ranges? And as we talked about sitting on the ground is one of the ways that you're going to have to flex your legs a little bit more than you do. If you just sit in the car and sit at the table in the toilet, you're going to have to move your hips a little bit more. So what we're trying to do here is help people understand that no one gives a crap about their mobility until they realize they don't have it and they can't do something or they realize they've got pain and they need it.

One of the ways I like to think about mobility that is just a great sort of mental visual for me, if you think about your mobility or just a great sort of mental visual for me. If you think about your mobility or your physical capacity is like a wide hallway, like a wide hospital hallway. But the more and more you lose your mobility, your hallway starts to narrow and narrow. And what that means is that your choices about what you can do with your body start getting narrower and narrower and narrower. And what you don't want is to get so narrow that you're bed ridden or stuck in a lazy boy for your entire retirement. Most people, now and as they grow older, want to be able to use their body and be able to have as much physical choice as they can.

And you can keep your hallway and keep that corridor as wide open as possible if you retain some of your mobility and actually put some attention towards it. And some of the diagnostics that we have in here, remember, we're still about objective measures. So we opened the book with this simple test called the sit and rise test. So this is it. All you need to do is stand there, cross your legs, lower yourself to the ground like a kindergartner sitting on the mat, crisscross applesauce. But see if you can not put a hand down or put your knee down. Can you just lower yourself down? Are you envisioning it right now?

Yeah, and I can't do that. So hold on. That's only 50% of the test. We all can end up on the ground. It turns out the number one reason people end up in nursing homes, they can't get up off the ground by themselves anymore. So this test is can you rise from the ground from that same position without putting a knee down or a hand down? Well, it turns

out that it's an excellent predictor of all cause mortality and morbidity. So, cause what we're really seeing is, Hey, you're going to have less movement choice. Your balance is going to be off. You're probably going to have more back pain. You're going to have less sort of power in your movements. You're not going to feel as good or want to move as well. The easiest way to start working on it. We already hinted at is to do the things. Lower yourself to the ground, sit on some, while you're watching TV, sit in all these positions, and then you're eventually going to have to stand back up. And when you start to noodle on it, it's that compounding interest. I'm putting one cent in the bank today. In a week, I've got 10 cents. In two weeks, I've got $100. And what you'll start to realize is that

if we give you these vital signs around essential movements, you can start to just knock at them one at a time, a little bit, and you'll have a language for making yourself feel better. Knee hurts? Well, hey, let me check the couch test. Suddenly, I'm looking at my hip extension. Oh, my back also feels better when I do that. So the body is this really complex system. In fact, the brain is the most sophisticated structure in the universe. But when we start to interlay these behaviors together, walking more suddenly makes it so you fall asleep and stay asleep. Holy crap. I didn't know that walking and sleep are related. Wow. My back feels better because I started sitting on the ground. Now we're cooking with gas.

Well, I think what Kelly hinted at that I wanted to mention is that we've been taught that our aging process is just this sort of down, like we're all just going downhill, downhill, downhill. And that's really not the case.

I mean, while it is true that we all at some point start to lose some of our muscle mass at our age, it's harder to keep muscle mass on, especially after age 60. That is true. But we don't actually have to lose our range of motion. In fact, if you look at other cultures where

people actually, you know, practice squatting, get up and down off the ground, toilet on the ground, sleep on the ground, their older populations haven't lost their range of motion at all. And coincidentally, it's not coincidentally. And as a result, they have much fewer orthopedic injuries, joint replacements, and overall less hip pain, knee pain, back pain. So they're suffering from much fewer general orthopedic problems than we are. You know, those of us who mostly spend our time sitting and don't actually practice these ranges of motion. You know, and the other thing that doesn't have to go as we age is our mental acuity.

And while we didn't write a book about the brain, what we do know is that if you do some care and feeding of this carcass that is the human body, you sleep enough, get some fruits and vegetables on board, move enough, and your movement is so connected to your brain that you're actually going to be more likely to actually keep your mental acuity as well as you age. Nailed it. Nailed it. Yeah, you mentioned we all have sophisticated brains. Have you seen some of the politicians we have in the U.S.? You're not wrong. That really does call it into question. Julia was looking at me with a smile.

I'm like, she knows the joke I have set up for that. You know, the other thing you guys talked, you touched on is the sleep part. And basically, you know, what you're saying about these ligaments and muscles in our body is use it or lose it right yeah yep yeah uh so sleep let's talk a little bit about that i've i've learned i've learned that i have to get eight hours of sleep and sometimes i can get four or six and as long as i get that afternoon nap um and and i've learned how important this is

i've gotten like an eight sleep bed i'll'll give them a blog. Oh, fantastic. We reviewed on the Chris Foss show. I love it. The heating and the cooling. But also, it's got an AI system that adjusts the heating and cooling to keep me in REM sleep, deep sleep. And it shows me how good, it even gives me a score. It's like, you know, you have an F today because you didn't sleep right. Let me ask you, did you start paying attention to your sleep once you got the eight sleep?

Or did you get the eight sleep because you were already paying attention to your sleep and you wanted to juice it up? We do reviews on the Chris Foss Show, so they sent it to me. And I was mostly interested in the warm bed part because there's nothing like getting in a warm bed. Oh, it's the best. And then after a workout, there's nothing like getting in a nice icy cold bed and it'll help those muscles. And so that was mostly it. But now the feedback it gives me, but man, I've learned, I've learned that the hard way. If I really want to have a good day and be on point, eight hours of sleep. Yeah. And I mean, you're exactly right. Those are the, that's the minimum we say in our book. I mean, we actually say again,

these objective measures, you know, seven hours of sleep, if you just want to get by, survive, if you want to, if you want to, you know, be focused and creative at work, if you want to grow muscle, if you want to recover from surgery, lose weight, lose weight, eight and lose weight. Eight is the absolute minimum and what chronic pain eight. And the other thing we learned from, cause we also track our sleep using something called an aura ring. And we've, we've tried all the devices and, and we have, uh, you know, cooling mattress, cooling pads on our beds as well, which we love. But you know what, the biggest thing we learned once we actually got some data on our own sleep is that you actually need to be in bed for almost an hour longer than you're planning to sleep to

get the amount of sleep that you are thinking you're going to get, because we all naturally lose almost an hour of sleep with normal wake cycles, getting up to use the bathroom, you name it. And so, you know, if someone says to you, oh, I went to sleep at 11 and woke up at seven, that's actually seven hours of sleep. That's not eight hours of sleep. And, you know, so we, we also like you really need eight hours of sleep. Obviously sometimes we have to travel and that gets disrupted. But when we're home and we can, we are really focused on getting eight hours of sleep, which means we have to be in bed for nine hours. And you hit on something that was so great. Sometimes I get four, sometimes I get six, but you now have a baseline. And what ends up happening

is you start making different decisions about, hey, I'm going to have to start preparing for bed to make sure I get this minimum. That means I, for example, Juliet has to start cutting off her caffeine at noon. Maybe I had a little another wiggle room. I used to be like, I could have an espresso and go to bed until I started measuring it. And turns out that was a bunch of crap. I cannot drink a bunch of caffeine and then sleep very well. My deep sleep just went out. So if we're talking about how your brain clears out the waste, we're talking about putting out all the hormones and deep sleep that allow you to repair and heal and have healthy tissues. Consolidating all your memories.

Holy crap. The fastest stress, the biggest stressor you can add is this disrupted sleep. But because we don't give people this clear measure, if we ask 100% of our friends, you get enough sleep? They're like, oh yeah. I mean, I'm alive. I'm better than you know. And what we find again, we didn't want to become sleep experts, but we were like, we cannot win a world championship or a gold medal until we're sleeping. And we end up again, it's notable that when we come and are asked to work through the environments of high performance teams and individual world champions. These are the practices. And you'll be shocked to learn that the best athletes in the world are like, I'm a terrible sleeper. How'd you know? I'm like, well, because your knee always

hurts. And when we started getting them this, well, tell me about why that, well, I like to sleep with the TV on. Well, holy crap, you cannot go to sleep with the TV on and expect to heal and perform at a high level. So I really appreciate that you're kind of found out that that eight hours is magic and are telling people if you get eight hours of sleep, your life will change. I mean, I can't put too fine a point on this. We owned a physical therapy clinic for a long time. And I imagine a lot of your listeners, you know, at various times in their lives struggle with aches and pains. And I cannot emphasize it enough that, you know, for anyone who comes into our physical therapy clinic with pain, the first question we ask is how much sleep do you get? Because, you know, if we're dealing with someone with low back pain and they're reporting that they're getting five hours of sleep, I mean, our answer to that is what are we even talking about? Like, we don't know.

We have no idea what the source of it is. It's complicated. But sleep is definitely a factor it makes all the difference i do intermittent fasting i've lost what 75 almost 100 pounds holy shit job yeah yeah and and so uh there there are times for some reason uh i i don't get four hours or i get i don't get eight hours sleep straight and so i'll do an afternoon nap it's great i'm 55 i used to tease we used to tease our dad you're so goofy you always take a nap dad now i'm like i realized what the old man was up to sorry dad yeah sorry dad we should appreciate you more but let me let me dive into your intermittent fasting for a second so everyone who who's listened to the show understands that what basically is happening, you're delaying some of the windows of eating and you're compressing

your windows of consumption. So what we know from the research is that's totally valid. But what we often find in our athletic populations, people have to move is that that is basically hidden calorie control. And that oftentimes we see that people are under fueled. So during that window, you've really got to hustle to get those protein minimums and those fruits and vegetables minimums. So let me give you an example for me of understanding principles and making choice. So notice that we didn't say intermittent fasting is bad, but let me give an example of how this principle can drive behavior. I found out that because I played with intermittent fasting too because I was like, this is cool.

I want to be less gross for my wife. I want to lose, you know, be more shredded. Less gross? Sign me up. Less gross. It's a technical term, and it's science, and it's definitely a tactic. How often is she calling you gross? What's going on over there? No, she's just like, she never calls me gross.

She just says, be less gross. She's less gross. Oh, my God. That is so true. So if I, what I found out was that if I didn't eat until noon, I was often way behind on calories. And I had, I would get full and not be able to eat these big meals. I wouldn't work out in the afternoon and feel very good.

But at nine or 10 o'clock, I was starving and I would have to eat like a chicken in a jar of peanut butter. And then going to sleep on a big belly, guess what? I didn't sleep very well. Subsequently, what I realized was like, holy moly, I didn't think about how this eating decision was actually changing and influencing how I was sleeping. Now in the morning, I make sure I have protein and a handful of fruit. I don't have to eat a huge meal, but I make sure I'm covering those basics. Yeah. And, and, and, uh, you know,

I, I was a guy for 20 years who thought that, uh, having a nightcap with vodka was a good way. Oh yeah. You slept great. You thought you slept great. We didn't know. We didn't, we didn't know. I mean, I think that's what's, we want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. And one of the things that happened was that you felt less stressed when you had that nightcap what we did was hey if we don't give people the right tools or a different set of tools people will reach for whatever tool makes them feel good and bourbon and vodka are proven tools to take away pain they just turn out they just turn out that's right they're not not great at things like sleep.

Yeah, and sleep is so important. I mean, with intermittent fasting and trying to lose weight, if I do like four hours of sleep, I'll feel bloated, I'll feel ugly, nasty. Gross. And I have to program it in my day. Like you said, I have to say, okay, there's going to be somewhere where we're doing a two- to four-hour nap. And I will do that two- to day. Like you said, I have to say, okay, there's going to be somewhere we're doing a two to four hour nap. And I will do that two to four hour nap in the afternoon. And I will have this deep REM sleep.

You know, the kind of drool on your pillow where you wake up. Yeah, that feels good. Half the bed's floating. And you've had some, you know, you've had weird dreams where Elton John is in your thing in that yellow. Amen. I was listening to Yellow Brick Road earlier, so I figured I'd use that. So you're off in Wizard of Oz land.

But I'll lose two to three pounds over those four hours. And it's astounding to me. I'll just be like, holy crap. That's not being stressed. That's dropping lower in cortisol levels. That's your body letting go of hydration and water we normally see these big fluctuations when people are super stressed you're absolutely right and the problem is this is the problem with humans we're so good at being stressed we are

we are masters of under eating eating eating crappy, smoking cigarettes, still winning world championships. But what gets you there are not the things that keep you here. And I think the problem is we have so much tolerance in our 20s. I mean, there was a time in my life where I think when I met Juliet, I was in my 20s. I could cut off my hand and the next day I'd be back. And she'd be like, you cut off your hand yesterday. I'm like, I'm 26. This is why she wants you to be less gross. Don't cut off your hand and the next day I'd be back. And she'd be like, you cut off your hand yesterday. I'm like, I'm 26. This is why she wants you to be less gross. Don't cut off your hand. But I would regenerate in the night and be like, I'm back baby. But at 50, I cannot get away with that

anymore. And what we learned was, Hey, what happens if I talk to my 26 year olds about what I've learned when I'm 50 and they can go harder. They can go, they can extend their careers. They can be kind of crazier. They can handle more stress in their lives. Sick baby, sick loved one, red eye, work stress. It's the same thing, athletics or work stress, exactly the same stress in your brain. There you go. I was a division one athlete in college and it was in the early nineties when the fat-free diet was all the rage. And I look back and I think, man, I could have been so much more awesome because I survived my entire college athletic career eating bagels, red vines, and mochas. And I look back and I think, man, if I just had some fruits and

vegetables and some protein, I could have been so exceptional instead I was just sort of wallowing around in like bagelville so you know so puffy that was the Einstein bagel and bobbly Italian bread shell I ate a lot of those as a senior in high school I ate at break I eat four bagels and a hot chocolate. And then the next class, I was so sleepy. Go figure. Yeah, you just crashed from the sugar. Anyone here, try to eat four bagels in a row.

Let me know how that goes for you. I can't eat one or two. I've had those. I remember back in the day, I used to have those Einstein bagels, and I'm like, this is healthy for me. And I just crashed from the sugar. So you guys covered the whole gambit. We've touched on it a little bit in the book, so people need to order the book so they can get it. Anything you want to tease out on the book before we go?

It's a lot easier than you think. Julian and I respect that you're actually a busy, working, competent person, and we don't want you to throw away your life. Let's not push it that I'm competent, though. Okay. The idea here is that there's a ton that you can begin to work in, in the margins of your day where it doesn't feel like you've gone off the deep end. And what we feel like, honestly, legitimately, is that the household is the most functional and most important unit of change. All we have to do is start to be better in our little neighborhood, our little

family, and that's how we can transform society. It really makes a big difference. And then I just want to leave with two things. The first is a phrase that our friend Dave Spitz taught us, which is never do nothing. Kelly used to do a 10 minute workout at 10 PM when our kids were little. And what we've learned over the years is you can actually make a lot of changes and important impacts on your health in two, five, 10 minute blocks. And so even if you don't love exercise or lost the chance to go to your workout at the gym, there's a ton of little things you can do that actually make a huge difference in 10 minute increments. And so we're huge fans of sort of the never do nothing philosophy. And then the other thing is we actually have a free 21 day built to move challenge on our

website at built to move.com. It's a video companion. It's a video companion course to the book. So for anyone who's interested in learning a little bit more and getting demonstrations on all the exercises and tests, there's a ton of supportive content that's out there free that people can follow along with. And you guys have a podcast too. You're coming to us from your amazing podcast studio.

We do. It's the, it's called the ready state. There you go. There you go. So this has been wonderful to have you guys on and talk about this stuff. You know, it really simple,

important things like people ask me, you know, Oh, you know, go in the gym. That seems complicated. It's kind of production to go there, but you know,

once you're there, I used to, when I even felt bad i didn't go to the gym i'm like fuck it i'm getting in the car and i'm driving and if if i don't feel like doing anything when i get there i'm just gonna sit there and you know maybe i'll play with something and you know some and a lot of times i get there and just be in the environment and my body would be like okay let's try few things. Then pretty much you're back into your routine. Sometimes it's just that being there factor.

Losing as much weight if you've lost is a miracle. It is such an anomaly that people listen to this. If you have a family member, listen to what Chris has done. A little bit of movement. Don't rely on motivation. Just go through the motions. Start looking at some of these things. You can transform your life. It really is a lot easier than people think, but what you've done is incredible.

Thanks, man. And what you guys have done in the book is you've really outlined the simplistic nature of a lot of this stuff. It doesn't have to be complex. And it's funny, and we should probably mention this because people do this in our heads because we're idiot humans uh and and we we think that okay well if i'm gonna lose weight or if i'm gonna exercise and it's got to be a big production we got to spend a bunch of money doing it we got to do all this thing and you know in your guys's book you guys have okay get eight hours of sleep like get out of sleep walk around neighborhood. Say hi to your neighbors. Oh, let's not do that.

Have you seen my neighbors? No, I'm kidding. This is why you have to go walk and see your neighbors. This is how we have a civil society. What I do with my teenagers to get them exercise is I give them a moving box of their stuff, and I have them practice going out the front door from when they finally turn 18. I'm like, I just want to make sure we know this. So when you hit 18, we know how this works,

right? That's not going to work. We have a senior in high school. I'm taking that home and I'm employing it tonight. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's exercise.

I'm kidding. I don't have teenagers. I put all my kids in, in, in military school and I don't know, they call me every now and then when they can get through. So there's that. But it's been wonderful to have you on the show, folks.

Give us your dot coms, wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs. Sure. We're at thereadystate.com. You can get the 21 Day Built to Move Challenge and learn more about the book at builttomove.com. We are at The Ready State on all the social channels. And I am at Juliet Starrett on Instagram. There you go. And one thing I was going to ask you is I forgot.

Do you guys, you guys are standing at the desk there at the podcast stage. Do you guys have one of those? Do you guys have anything on your, for your feet? Like any of those softener, you know, they have like these foam things. Do you guys have any of those? Yeah. So our feeling about a standing desk is it doesn't count as a standing desk unless you have a place to put your foot like you would at a bar, you know know that actually takes your back out of extension and makes it easier to stand for

longer so we think having a place to put your foot is key but we're we're total fans of those squishy mats because sometimes it is hard on the feet to stand on you know hard concrete you're not supposed to be still and um and you know and then kelly's actually perching and i'm standing just so that we're like an even height in this podcast um But, you know, we each get credit for, you know, he gets credit for perching and I get credit for standing. And so, yeah, huge fans of mats and any way that you can make a standing desk feel more comfortable. I need to look into that.

I need to start using my standing desk. I got two of these damn things. Well, let me leave you with one idea. If you start standing and fidgeting instead of just sitting, there's a simple calculator you can probably find that gives you a rough idea. Juliette, if she just doesn't sit at work, she burns 100,000 calories a year. I'm way bigger. I'm almost twice as large as she is.

That gives me 170 to 180,000 calories of ice cream. Or Doritos. That I can eat and not have it mess up anything. I don't have to do anything extra, and I can smash 180,000 calories of ice cream a year for free. Wow. Now I know why she wants you to be less gross. That's right.

That's a lot of ice cream. I know. Look, that's how I work. Juliet's like, I want to live forever. I'm like, I just want to smash more ice cream. I just want to. Well, I mean, that's the I work. Juliet's like, I want to live forever. I'm like, I just want to smash more ice cream. I just want to, you know, well, I mean, you know, that's the reward basis. You know, people need to, you need to have a little bit of reward for the work you do.

Seems reasonable. Every now and then, I mean, that's why I go, you know, my 800 grams of fruit is, I just go to McDonald's, get the Big Mac and the cherry shake. That's not right. You can do that once in a while for sure. Yeah. And that's why you, that's why you be good. Every now and then you, you know, I'll go get some fried onion rings, which aren't too bad.

So there's that. Anyway, thank you very much for having us on the show. You're on your podcast. I'm on my podcast. So whoever was on the show today, we certainly appreciate it. Thank you very much, guys. Oh, it's so fun to talk to you. Thanks, Chris.

There you go. Order up wherever fine books are sold. My family and friends of the Chris Vosho family. The family loves you but doesn't judge you. At least not as harshly as your mother-in-law. I've seen her. She's nice. Anyway, order up the book wherever fine books are sold.

Built to Move. The 10 Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully. I'm going to do some calorie check and see how much it, when I swivel my chair to the side computer, does. Tens. Over a year, tens of calories. Yeah, probably tens. So anyway, order wherever fine books are sold.

Refer to share your family and friends, folks. Go to youtube.com, Fortress Chris Foss. Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss. Those crazy places the kids play on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you next time. And that should have us out, guys.

That was a fun show.