Kelly Starrett - 8 Essential Strategies To Maximise Your Fitness

Most adults move fewer than 3000 steps daily

Kelly Starrett explains that the lymphatic system requires muscle contraction to function and that most adults are moving fewer than 3000 steps a day, creating a dangerous mismatch between human biology and modern environment.

"And that system is a bunch of one-way tubes that's driven by muscle contraction. And so it's almost like we've been evolved to walk or move a little bit more in the day than we currently are."

Sitting versus standing is not the real issue

Starrett argues the debate should not be sitting vs standing but rather about movement frequency, noting that switching from sitting to perching burns 170,000 calories a year while standing all day is also problematic.

"Switch from sitting to perching, being more active. So 170,000 calories a year. If I choose not to sit, just in choosing not to sit in a traditional chair, 170,000 calories of ice cream, beer, whiskey, whatever it is you give a shit about, convert that amount and that's free money."

Mobility as a fundamental vital sign for durability

Starrett describes mobility as a compounding investment that serves as a vital sign for physical resilience, applicable from world championship athletes to children growing up durable.

"Is there anything, are there any cues that they can have at their desk, any movements they can do, any little stretches they can do whilst on a call where the video maybe isn't on? Um, that can besides quit your job. Yeah, right. You can't quit your job, I have to feed my family. Correct. So, one of the ways I think is useful to think about this is that you're not fragile and you can sit all day long and go ahead and jump on a red eye, take a long flight, you know, go to a conference. You'll see that it's fine. But what we can start to say is, I think if we can give people some vital signs, so the book, for example, is kind of, you can divide it into two categories. The first category is, here are some vital signs. And when I say vital sign, like we'd say like blood pressure. If I say 120 over 80, everyone's like, well, that's not very good blood pressure, but it's not bad blood pressure either. It's sort of like, hey, I should pay attention to this. So, when we give people objective values, objective experiences where they can say, okay, I'm above or below that, then we can start to ask what the next question is. And what we can, what we can strip out one of my favorite ways of talking about training, and this came out of some of the work we did with Premier Soccer, is Premier Footy."

Breathing mechanics are the first spinal motion

Starrett explains that breathing is the first and most fundamental motion around the spine, and that most people default to chest and neck breathing due to poor posture, which limits VO2 max and creates chronic tension.

"You know, the first order of business is to get beyond like sitting is bad and standing is good. Because if you've ever had a job where you stood all day long, it's gnarly and it's a real problem. We have to actually create a whole bunch of surfaces for people that are squishy and we have to give them special shoes and you have to give them breaks. It's complicated. So, human beings, what that tells us is standing still is not good, sitting still is not good, that we need to move a little bit more during the day. So, you know."