How to Improve Your Mobility, Posture & Flexibility | Dr. Kelly Starrett

1. 0:00 – 2:44

   Dr. Kelly Starrett

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Kelly Starrett. Dr. Kelly Starrett is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and one of the world's experts in movement. That is, he teaches people how to move better for sake of sport, for sake of recreational fitness, and for everyday living. Today, we discuss several important topics, including how best to warm up for any and all workouts. He also tells us how to improve our movement patterns for cardiovascular exercise, for sport, for resistance training, across the board, how to move better, and how to improve our range of motion with the minimal amount of time investment. We hear a lot about different forms of stretching. We hear about dynamic stretching. We hear about passive stretching. Dr. Starrett explains how to improve our range of motion across our entire body in the best possible ways, as well as how to offset or repair any imbalances that stem from musculoskeletal problems or from neural issues, and how to reduce soreness, how to improve our posture, seated, standing, and movement-based posture. We talk about nutrition. So today's episode covers an immense amount of actionable information that I'm certain all of you will benefit from. Dr. Kelly Starrett has authored several bestselling books, some of which you may have heard of, such as Supple Leopard. He was actually one of the first people to become synonymous with the use of a lacrosse ball or foam roller, but really even though a lot of people have talked about those, what he was really doing there was to emphasize the importance of understanding the relationship between the skeleton, the muscles, the nervous system, and the fascia. And today we also talk about fascia, which is an incredibly interesting and important topic. In addition to consulting and coaching for various college level and professional athletes and teams, Dr. Kelly Starrett and his wife, Juliet Starrett, co-own The Ready State, and we provide a link to The Ready State in the show note captions there. They have a plethora of useful information and actionable protocols. I should mention, years ago, I took one of the courses from The Ready State. It's a really interesting course that we touch on some of the protocols from today. It's all about pelvic floor. So whether you're male or female and regardless of age, understanding your pelvic floor, how to take care of your pelvic floor in the context of exercise, posture, et cetera, is vitally important for all sorts of vitally important bodily functions. So today we also touch on that. By the end of today's episode, I'm certain that you will be armed with a number of new highly actionable protocols. I should emphasize these protocols take very little time and have an outsized positive effect on your movement, your posture, and your overall health. Before

2. 2:44 – 5:46

   Sponsors: Maui Nui & Joovv

   1. AHAndrew Huberman2:44

      we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Maui Nui Venison. Maui Nui Venison is 100% wild harvested venison from the island of Maui, and it is the most nutrient dense and delicious red meat available. I've spoken before on this podcast about the fact that most of us should be consuming about one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight every day. That protein provides critical building blocks for things like muscle repair and synthesis, but it also promotes overall health, given the importance of muscle tissue as an organ. Eating enough quality protein each day is also a terrific way to stave off hunger. One of the key things, however, is to make sure that you're getting enough quality protein without ingesting excess calories. Maui Nui Venison has an extremely high quality protein per calorie ratio, so that getting one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight is both easy and doesn't cause you to ingest an excess of calories. Also, Maui Nui Venison is absolutely delicious. They have venison steaks, ground venison, and venison bone broth. I personally like all of those. In fact, I probably eat a Maui Nui venison burger pretty much every day, and occasionally I'll swap that for a Maui Nui steak. Responsible population management of the axis deer on the island of Maui means they cannot go beyond a particular harvest capacity. Signing up for a membership is therefore the best way to ensure access to their high quality meat. If you'd like to try Maui Nui venison, you can go to mauinuivenison.com/huberman to get 20% off your membership or first order. Again, that's mauinuivenison.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Joovv. Joovv makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it's the incredible impact that light can have on our biology. Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, meaning reductions in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improving visual function itself. What sets Joovv lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near-infrared light in specific combinations to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Joovv whole body panel about three to four times per week, typically in the morning, but sometimes in the afternoon. And I use the Joovv handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you'd like to try Joovv, you can go to Joovv, spelled J-O-O-V-V, .com/huberman. Joovv is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off select Joovv products. Again, that's Joovv, J-O-O-V-V,.com/huberman to get up to $400 off. And now for my discussion with Dr. Kelly Starrett.

3. 5:46 – 12:50

   Movement; Tool: Daily Floor Sitting

   1. AHAndrew Huberman5:46

      Dr. Kelly Starrett, welcome.

   2. KSKelly Starrett5:48

      Thank you, my friend.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman5:50

      Been wanting to get you on here for a long time, for many reasons, not the least of which is that you've just pioneered so many areas of health and fitness that...I don't even know where to start, frankly. But let's jump in with the big M, with movement. You're an expert in dissecting complex movement, figuring out how people can move better, and also figuring out how people who are doing what they think are simple movements are actually making their life either more complex or more painful than it needs to be. So, you're also known for helping people with so-called mobility-

   4. KSKelly Starrett6:28

      Mm-hmm.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman6:29

      ... um, which of course falls under the umbrella of movement. And I can't see somebody do a foam roll or anything with a lacrosse ball where they're loosening up or talking about fascia without also thinking about you. So, that should frame today's conversation at least partially well. To kick things off, when you look at how most people sit, walk, and do their, quote-unquote, "exercise resistance training" and/or cardiovascular, hopefully, and cardiovascular training, what are some of the most common problems that you see? Is it imbalance, like leaning to one side? Is it that their bodies are trained into asymmetry? Is there any way to kind of, um, you know, mass diagnose everybody all at once in this first question?

   6. KSKelly Starrett7:16

      Let me, uh, borrow a couple analogies from one of my favorite people, Katy Bowman. And first thing is she will point out, and it's not a perfect analogy so bear with us, is this notion of mechanotransduction, which means that at a cellular level, your tissues, some of your tissues specifically, need mechanical input to express themselves. You want a strong tendon, how do you get a strong tendon? You have to load it, right? Does it do tendon things? Does it... Is it lengthening under load? Does it experience shortening under load? Does it do isometric holds? So, we can start at that level. She points out that if you put a, a, and again, not a perfect analogy, but if you put, uh, an orca into captivity, over a while, that orca fin will start to fold over.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman8:00

      Mm-hmm.

   8. KSKelly Starrett8:00

      Folded fin syndrome. It's, it's nicer than flopper, floppy fin syndrome.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman8:03

      Mm-hmm.

   10. KSKelly Starrett8:03

       That's hurtful. And what you're doing is when you alter the environment that this amazing animal lives in, it's not swimming, it's not fighting, it's not hunting, you're not loading the base of that fin. And so what happens is that collagen breaks down, and we start to see changes in that, in that expression of that. So, what we can start to say is, again, not romanticizing the Pleistocene era when human beings were paleo and... But what is it that we need in our daily dose lives to maintain the integrity of our tissue systems? Exposure, so that our brain says, "This is safe," so that you actually have tendons and ligaments that can do what tendons and ligaments can do, and fascia that is... Can be springy. If... Borrow another sort of Katy Bowman-ism, if we have a movement language, an actual language made up of words, how many words are you using today? And most of us aren't using that many words. So, very few words. So, I sit, I stand, I walk very slowly, I sit, I stand, and walk very slowly. So, everything is just in those few... And then I go exercise using the same words, I'm on the exercise bike, right?I'm on a, an elliptical, which doesn't actually ask me to have any hip extension. And suddenly, you can see that our movement language, which we're really codifying under intensity load, right? We're becoming very competent in these adaptation positions. Sitting, what ends up happening? Well, we start to see that our bodies are adaptation machines, and they just begin to adapt. And so suddenly, what we have is a human body that doesn't express normative range. The brain may not think that that range is even safe and put there. Then we start to loo- sort of minimize the movement choices that the brain has, the movement options that the brain has. So really, the question is, you know, at low loads... Let's, let's es- es- establish things. At low loads and low speeds, you can get away with everything. Why? Because this body is rad, and it's designed... It's durable, it's not fragile, it's designed to be ridden hard and put away wet for a long time. Remember when you were 17, you would cut off your hand, it would grow back the next day, right? (laughs) You would. Think about the falls you took skating-

   11. AHAndrew Huberman10:11

       Mm-hmm.

   12. KSKelly Starrett10:11

       ... and you'd be like, "Oh, that sucked." The next day, you put your shoulder back in, you just kind of respawn. So, what is it that we need to put into our movement diet, and then we can start to separate out, should that be exercise or should that be movement? And now, the real filter that we should be beginning these real and earnest conversations about is, what is it in the environment, given that I'm a busy working person, and maybe I have some agency in the morning, and maybe I have some agency in the afternoon, but let's take exercise out of it. The one-hour discreet working on zone two cardio, working on, right, my evidence-based practice, what should I be doing the rest of the time? So for example, one of the things that we're huge fans of in the evening is sitting on the ground for 20 or 30 minutes.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman10:53

       In, in what, um, uh, cross-legged, um-

   14. KSKelly Starrett10:56

       Yes.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman10:56

       ... squatting?

   16. KSKelly Starrett10:57

       Yes.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman10:58

       Uh-

   18. KSKelly Starrett10:58

       Long sit, side saddle, 90-90.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman11:00

       Okay.

   20. KSKelly Starrett11:00

       Anytime you need to fidget, fidget. And what you'll see as you start to accumulate exposure, which I think in my world view is the first order of magnitude in problem-solving, is how do we have the human be exposed to the thing we're trying to change or improve or restore normative ranges.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman11:18

       Mm-hmm. So, that would be in the evening, just getting down on the floor?

   22. KSKelly Starrett11:21

       Yeah, that, that behavior alone... Cultures that toilet on the ground sleep on the ground. We start to see fall risk in our elderly populations attenuate to zero, approximate zero, lower hip OA, lower low back OA. And it may just be that we're using and touching some shapes, and our bodies are saying, "Hey, let's just keep that around. Let's, let's, let's normalize what the hips should be able to do." In terms of your connective tissue-

   23. AHAndrew Huberman11:48

       Mm-hmm.

   24. KSKelly Starrett11:48

       ... think about, you know, the idea here is that we're, we're loading you passively, actively, whatever, that you're saying to your brain, "Muscle..." You know, this, this is a quote from one of my PT instructors, and this is really important. If people take this away, they should...Listen to this. Muscles and tissues are like obedient dogs. At no age do you stop adapting, at no age do you stop healing. Those things slow down, it's a little bit harder to have the same adaptation we did when you weren't in full-fledged puberty, but you can always adapt. In the first order of business, if you spend 20 or 30 minutes sitting on the ground, you're gonna start to see that, "My hamstrings start to feel better, my hips start to feel a little better," because I'm just spending time in these ranges and my body's gonna start to adapt as I increase my movement language.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman12:32

       Uh, would you extend what you just said to, um, like if somebody has a hardwood floor and maybe a little, um, low pile rug or something like that, and they're gonna, I don't know, watch a podcast or a, or a movie or a show in the evening. They stretch out and, you know, like on their, on their belly, like sort of up-

   26. KSKelly Starrett12:47

       Sure.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman12:47

       ... up dog or cobra or whatever it's called.

   28. KSKelly Starrett12:49

       Sure.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman12:49

       So,

4. 12:50 – 17:07

   Tools: Stacking Behaviors, Stretching, Floor Sitting

   1. AHAndrew Huberman12:50

      so basically any kind of movement where you're on the ground, um, any kind of, um, squatting, stre- and maybe they start to stretch a bit here and there.

   2. KSKelly Starrett12:59

      Oh, so now we're into the real magic, the behavior. Where are we gonna stack these behaviors? So if you have to get up and down off the ground, plus one, right?

   3. AHAndrew Huberman13:07

      Mm-hmm.

   4. KSKelly Starrett13:07

      I gotta get up and down off the ground every day. So if you're an older person who may hasn't gotten off the ground, and I'm older, I'm just talking about over 50, you may not have gotten up and down off the ground for a hundred years. You just don't do it anymore. Right? W- we wanna hear why I think MMA is so amazing? You have to get up and down off the ground a lot, right? If you do, go to jiu-jitsu, right? How about yoga? How about Pilates? You know, like, wow, there's a lot of time organizing on the ground. So w- a lot of people, Ida Rolf really said, "Hey, how do we help the person organizing gravity first and foremost," right? Then we have someone like Philip Beach who is this incredible, uh... He wrote this book on functional embryology, which I highly recommend called movement, uh, Muscles and Meridians, I think. Muscles and Meridians. But his hypothesis is that one of the ways that the b- the body tunes itself is by s- being on the ground. Again, restoring native ranges, reapproximating joints, right? Kneeling, walking. And, and if, and if you just took a step back and said, "What's it look like for the last 10,000 years?" You know? When have we... 10,000 years ago, my understanding is that I'm a little fatter, your femur's a little longer, but we're pretty much the same people. Maybe I don't digest milk yet, maybe that's the understanding. But ultimately, what behaviors have changed, we're off the ground. And so this is an easy l- l- don't need any equipment, can drop this in. I can answer my emails, watch TV. That seems like the how we're going to improve and be able to start to untangle this very complex cordial knot when people have a lot going on.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman14:39

      I love this. Um, you know-

   6. KSKelly Starrett14:41

      And, and, as you pointed out, sorry, the roller's already there. So if you're sitting there and the roller's there, another barrier to adherence knocked out. So you're like, "Oh, I might as well just... What's stiff today? What hurts today? How could I have some self-soothing input?" And when we're working at high levels of performance, like the highest levels, these range of motion a- like keeping you being able to access the full sort of arsenal of what you can do with your body, these movement solutions, sort of like Ido Portal plus the Olympics, right? You would see that this is an easy way for our elite athletes to work and integrate without having to do another thing.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman15:17

      Mm-hmm. So what I'm getting here is that everybody, regardless of age, should get down on the ground once a day, and-

   8. KSKelly Starrett15:24

      100%.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman15:24

      ... get up off the ground at some point, right? Or-

   10. KSKelly Starrett15:26

       And, and you can use whatever you want-

   11. AHAndrew Huberman15:28

       Mm-hmm.

   12. KSKelly Starrett15:28

       ... to help you get up and down off the ground.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman15:30

       Mm-hmm.

   14. KSKelly Starrett15:30

       So those of you listening, you're like, "I can't do that." Um, you know, there's a, a test we, we write about in the book, um, that if you just do criss-cross applesauce standing, you should be able to lower yourself to the ground and stand back up without using your hands.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman15:45

       Okay, so cross, cross the feet.

   16. KSKelly Starrett15:46

       Yep.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman15:46

       Just so, for those that are just listening. Cross the feet.

   18. KSKelly Starrett15:48

       Yep.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman15:49

       And then just slowly lower yourself into a seated-

   20. KSKelly Starrett15:51

       That's right. Don't, don't collapse. Just lower yourself to the ground. And then without putting your hands down or a knee down, can you stand back up?

   21. AHAndrew Huberman15:57

       And should one be able to do it with, um, either foot over the other?

   22. KSKelly Starrett16:01

       Seems like I should use my left leg and right leg equally, right?

   23. AHAndrew Huberman16:03

       Mm-hmm.

   24. KSKelly Starrett16:03

       I shouldn't have a good side and a bad side.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman16:05

       Mm-hmm.

   26. KSKelly Starrett16:05

       But what's interesting is the data, I think, is that, like, it's a nice predictor of all cause mortality and morbidity. That's fine. But what it really hints at is your changes in how your body interacts with the environment. That because you've adapted, suddenly the skill that you've done 100,000 times, 200,000 times as a kid sitting criss-cross applesauce, you suddenly are confronted as an adult with a skill you can no longer perform, and it doesn't require massive hip range of motion, doesn't require full range of motion in your ankles. It's actually a really fair test. But if you're missing some of these end ranges, you're gonna struggle. And it's nice now that I have this, like, what's the session cost? I've become a, I love cycling. Mountain biking's my jam. But if I ride my bike a ton, my hips get super tight. But if I have some assessments, just like vital signs, blood pressure 120 over 80, that's not good blood pressure, but it's a nice decent reference. Now I create some movement minimums that help me understand how my body's interacting with stress, environment, nutrition, exercise, et cetera.

5. 17:07 – 23:47

   Transferring Skills; Movement-Rich Environments; Range of Motion

   1. KSKelly Starrett17:07

   2. AHAndrew Huberman17:07

      For some people, maybe me-

   3. KSKelly Starrett17:09

      (laughs)

   4. AHAndrew Huberman17:10

      ... uh, if I were to, you know, sit cross-legged on the ground for a bit-

   5. KSKelly Starrett17:13

      Mm-hmm.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman17:13

      ... um, and then stand up-

   7. KSKelly Starrett17:15

      Oh yeah.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman17:15

      ... if it hasn't been a while, I'm like kinda like just kinda ache.

   9. KSKelly Starrett17:19

      100%.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman17:19

       But I consider myself pretty, you know, pretty mobile. Once I warm up, I can run for an hour and a half, jog for an hour and a half. Once I get warmed up in the gym, I can move at l- what at least for me is, is satisfying amounts of weight. So I wouldn't say that I'm out of shape. I wouldn't say I'm in spectacular shape. Is it normal for us after a certain age to kind of feel like we creak or ache as we move in an or out of a new movement? I mean, is that, is that... Does it fit with being still a healthy person or should we just not have any of those kinds of like, "Ugh, that was like, I gotta like-"

   11. KSKelly Starrett17:52

       (laughs) Dude, I sat on the ground. That was rough.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman17:53

       "... get a stretch out one of them." Yeah.

   13. KSKelly Starrett17:53

       That was super rough.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman17:54

       Yeah, maybe, you know, sitting for 30 minutes then standing up and feeling like you have to-

   15. KSKelly Starrett17:57

       Yeah.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman17:57

       ... kind of open yourself up with a can opener, so to speak.

   17. KSKelly Starrett17:59

       Well-... couple things there. One is that you said, new movement.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman18:03

       Mm-hmm.

   19. KSKelly Starrett18:03

       So, one of the ways we define best athlete is who's the person who can transfer the skill, their current skill set, and pick up a new skill the fastest?

   20. AHAndrew Huberman18:11

       Mm-hmm.

   21. KSKelly Starrett18:11

       So, what I'll say is, if you wanna test how fit you are, how good your program is, go ahead and jump in someone else's program. Let me know how that goes. Can you perform the skills? Are, are you skilled enoug-

   22. AHAndrew Huberman18:21

       I'm ch- I'm chuckling 'cause I joined Cameron Hanes for his weight workout, which is, you know, high repetition circuit work for... It went on for about 45 minutes. None of the weights were particularly heavy, but it's just nonstop. I was sore. And I normally don't get sore for more than a half day, if a- if at all. Soreness hasn't really ever been an issue for me. I was sore for almost a week and a half, maybe two weeks.

   23. KSKelly Starrett18:43

       (laughs) So, so-

   24. AHAndrew Huberman18:43

       Like, it was, it was insane. It was, it was-

   25. KSKelly Starrett18:44

       ... we're gonna-

   26. AHAndrew Huberman18:45

       Yeah.

   27. KSKelly Starrett18:45

       This is so good, it opens up the next thing, right? Uh, founder of CrossFit, Greg Glassman, one of my earliest influences/coaches says, "We fail at the margins of our experience." So, what you just saw was, hey, here is this metabolic pathway range work that I have not inoculated myself to. And I think we're in an interesting place where fitness has become hobby. Fitness has become sort of my, my personal pastime, and I can go to the gym, and I can look jacked. You're jacked and tan. You're a very handsome 49-year-old.

   28. AHAndrew Huberman19:20

       (laughs)

   29. KSKelly Starrett19:20

       But what we start to see is the things that make us look aesthetically pleasing or, um, functional enough isn't the same thing as preparing for sport or transferring to a new skill. And in fact, I would say if I had a, a spectrum of activities, I'd put, like, fitnessing over here. Like, I go to a camp. I just do a million reps. I breathe hard. It's super fun. I'm in, I'm in Zumba. I, uh, like, I'm mirroring, and I have positive regard, and I see my friends. On the other side, we have very much sport-specific training. The only goal is to support the sport. If you're an elite soccer player, we have goals off season, but in the n- in the season, it's to support your body to win. But one step back from that, I call sports preparation training, which is where we start to see sort of some really patterned interference between what the internet says I should do to have huge quads and the best way to create an elite sprinter or an elite footballer, or... Right? In that sports preparation training, I can be... think of it GPP plus looking at positions and how things transfer. A fr- Franz Bosch is a great example of sports preparation training. He's a Dutch thinker. His books are great. And you'll see, understand that really what we're trying to do is... in sports preparation and say, "Hey, what is this complex system in front of us? What's the minimal amount of input so that we can still go and project ourselves into the world through sport and performance?" And on the other side, suddenly we, we do come a- confronted with, "Hey, I'm doing this thing, and I jump in with my friend, and I get brutalized," which is actually a problem that we have with people, really good fit athletes, and I throw them into, like, a group fitness class, and they can do so much work that they wreck themselves-

   30. AHAndrew Huberman20:59

       Mm-hmm.
6. 23:47 – 25:18

   Sponsor: AG1

   1. AHAndrew Huberman23:47

      I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited. In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from Whole Foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better. I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also noticed, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com/huberman to claim that special offer.

7. 25:18 – 30:51

   Warm-Ups & Play

   1. AHAndrew Huberman25:18

      Well, as long as we're there, I'm just gonna tell you what's worked best for me in terms of warming up, um, and I'd love t- to know your thoughts. Um, years ago, I think it was a Charles Poliquin post or something like that, um, where it was suggested to do relatively low repetition warmup-

   2. KSKelly Starrett25:36

      Love it.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman25:36

      ... as opposed to going in and doing, you know, 15 reps, then 10, then eight, or whatever it is. And I've found over the years what's allowed me to get strongest and stay strongest for me is to, sure, I'll go in and do the first set of a movement, resistance training movement of maybe eight repetitions just to get some blood flowing and remind my brain-

   4. KSKelly Starrett25:57

      Yeah, practice.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman25:58

      ... you know, what, what, what the-

   6. KSKelly Starrett25:59

      You practice.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman25:59

      ... range of motion is, right?

   8. KSKelly Starrett26:00

      Yeah, absolutely.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman26:00

      Then I'll do maybe just, you know, five, four, two repetitions on, of subsequent three sets. So five, four, and then two repetition sets with heavier loads. And it's just to prepare my nervous system for heavier loads. And then, uh, when I start my actual, quote-unquote, "work sets," I can get a lot more real work done. And this for me was th- uh, like spit in the face of everything I had read, everything I had seen that you need to do higher repetitions warm-ups-

   10. KSKelly Starrett26:26

       Altough he's a smart kid.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman26:27

       ... and it has allowed me to progress n- m- more or less continuously over the decades that I've been training. And I'm not a natural athlete. I'm just not. I've trained for a long, long time, but I would never fall under what you would call, like, natural athlete. I don't... I have a low recovery quotient, all that stuff. And so for me it was like a shocker, but it makes total sense. Prepare the nervous system for the work you're about to do, and don't follow some preconceived idea that you have to do high repetition warmup or even moderate repetition warmup. And lo and behold, you get much stronger. And if you want to grow muscle, you can grow more muscle. Why haven't we heard more about this? Why don't people in fitness talk more? I know you do, and please do, talk about the nervous system and the fact that it's not just all about warming up and getting blood flow, it's really about preparing the brain and spinal cord and-

   12. KSKelly Starrett27:13

       Yeah.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman27:13

       ... all the stuff in there.

   14. KSKelly Starrett27:14

       Love that. Let's say, m- couple variables there. What's your training age, right? If I'm gonna take a beginner and you in the same thing, we can make big jumps. You and I have been... we've d- deadlifted together a decade ago. Like, we can just go.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman27:26

       Mm-hmm.

   16. KSKelly Starrett27:26

       We know our bodies. W- the patterns are well ingrained. Our tissues w- have exposure here, right? There's some things we can do. So, I love that you're starting to see that what's the minimal amount of warmup to p- to do the task? And on some days, you may be sore, you may be stiff, and it takes a little more time to go, get right underneath it. One of the things I think we have this opportunity to do is put play back into warmups. So one-

   17. AHAndrew Huberman27:52

       Mm.

   18. KSKelly Starrett27:52

       ... of the things is that I th- I suspect, and please correct me if I'm wrong, you don't find a lot of joy in doing these, like, rote A, B, the world's greatest stretch, wah, wah, wah, do the active... Like, it's not that fun. So what... Let me talk about my experience working with a team at, at Berkeley. I have this shout-out to the women's water polo team at Berkeley who are my just total family. These women are incredible. But I came into the sport and looked around and I saw really ineffective warmups that weren't a good use of the time, that didn't prepare us to get into a fight in 20 minutes or 30 minutes later. So, if you went through your warmup and said, "I'm gonna be in a fight. Am I prepared for that or not?" And that's a nice, like, rubric-

   19. AHAndrew Huberman28:39

       Hmm.

   20. KSKelly Starrett28:39

       ... to say I'm a r- I'm, nervous system arousal, I have a little sweat on, I've practiced, right? You know, you know, I've touched some positions and shapes. But w- you know, what I see is that there's, in the typical training session, there's a lot of work to get done. S- so now I think training has become very, very dense. You know, here's this piece, here's this piece, now I do the successor work, I gotta hit these, these car- i- i- and so the warmup for me has been one of the last places where I can get you to explore new movements, something you saw on the internet, play around. If you came to my gym, you know, or we came to my house now, I'd be like, "Let's go throw the medicine ball for five minutes." And there's no wrong way, but I want you to start to explore speed. I want you to explore catching an object and going fast. And what we haven't done, and I suspect I wouldn't say that your warmup is the best way, I'd say it's one way to get to the thing that we want faster, and potentially you stop doing what didn't work and what didn't serve you, which I really want people to understand, is that if... you're not blind f- going through some program. I want you to say, does this serve me? 'Cause my experience working now 20 years with-... the best teams and athletes and organizations on the planet, is athletes do what work and they stop doing what doesn't work. Isn't that interesting?

   21. AHAndrew Huberman29:58

       Hm.

   22. KSKelly Starrett29:58

       Right? So, what I love is that you started to get under heavy loads relatively quickly, and movements you had real competency and exposure with. Yes. Because what we wanna do is come back to say, "What's the least amount of work I can do to have the biggest adaptation?" And three hours in the gym doesn't fit into your life, and it doesn't fit into the typical person's life. And theoretically, you're gonna have to go do a sport, so you're gonna have to recover from this sport and this training session. Right? You were like, "Hey, I can't even handle this high volume." You know? It's a ding on me too, I can't handle the same high volume as my friends can. So, wasting your time, in quotation marks, with lots of high volume sets of an empty barbell might have been useful at some point, and maybe it doesn't serve you as well now. Or because you have to put so many plates on that bar, that just-

   23. AHAndrew Huberman30:45

       That's-

   24. KSKelly Starrett30:45

       ... that's a warmup by-

   25. AHAndrew Huberman30:46

       ... that's not-

   26. KSKelly Starrett30:46

       ... itself, right?

   27. AHAndrew Huberman30:46

       That's not an issue for me.

   28. KSKelly Starrett30:47

       I'd say you walked a mile to load those plates.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman30:49

       No, that's not an issue for me. But that's a perfect,

8. 30:51 – 38:27

   Asymmetries & Training

   1. AHAndrew Huberman30:51

      what you just said is a perfect opportunity for me to mention something that I've noticed, which prompts a question, which is, I noticed that I have some asymmetry. My right-

   2. KSKelly Starrett30:59

      Mm.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman30:59

      ... shoulder naturally sits a little lower-

   4. KSKelly Starrett31:01

      You bet.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman31:01

      ... than my left. And whenever I get a little back tweak, it's always on the same side, et cetera, et cetera. I know this, this varies for, for everybody. And I noticed that I was always, um, picking up the, the weights and re-racking them, 'cause I re-rack my weights like a grownup.

   6. KSKelly Starrett31:13

      (laughs)

   7. AHAndrew Huberman31:13

      Um, re-racking them on the same side. So, I've made it a point now to-

   8. KSKelly Starrett31:18

      Oh, I love that.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman31:18

      ... to switch up, you know, which side I, which side of my body I do them from.

   10. KSKelly Starrett31:22

       Yeah. Yeah. That's great.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman31:22

       Um, and notice I'm significantly weaker on one side of my body. I mean, not to the point where, you know, I have to use two different sets of, uh, dumb, or two different dumbbells if I'm doing curls or something. But just noticing these natural asymmetries starting to, uh, show up because I'm a right-hander, or who knows? Or I, I skateboarded, so I, you know, I've spent a lot of my life, early life-

   12. KSKelly Starrett31:41

       That's right.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman31:41

       ... with my left foot forward and my right foot pushing. And as a consequence-

   14. KSKelly Starrett31:45

       Yes.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman31:46

       ... there are a lot of asymmetries. So, what I've tried to do is correct those asymmetries in the between movement movements, but also to stagger my stance during curls and then, and switch it each, each time. Or maybe even overemphasize the weaker side. I have no professional training in any of this.

   16. KSKelly Starrett32:01

       Mm-hmm.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman32:01

       I've just found that it's made for better posture, more, more evenly distributed strength. And I must say, all of that is based on teachings that I read in your books and through conversations with you about, hey, we have these natural imbalances, and there are little things that we can do that take moments that can correct those imbalances. So if, if you would, could you, um, sort of expand on the number and type of imbalances that you most commonly see-

   18. KSKelly Starrett32:25

       Sure.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman32:25

       ... and some ways for people to remed- remedy them? Excuse me.

   20. KSKelly Starrett32:28

       Let's, uh, if we just took the word imbalance and put it to the side for a second, because it's sort of a non-specific term. Like, are we testing your hamstringing to your quad? Like, what, what, what's the ideal ratio here? Like, if you're a professional pitcher, I hope your arm, right arm looks different than your left arm, right? But what we can say is, number one, imbalances don't necessarily cause pain. Let's, let's be clear about that. We should be using our time in the gym as training to find deficiencies and blind spots in our patterns, in our skill, in our, you know, in our, in our brains feeling comfortable with a certain movement. And what you just hit was that it's, boy, it's really easy to get a lot of variability just doing the things I wanna do anyway. So, now I'm in a tandem stance. I skate left foot forward, right? But, you know, suddenly that's my dominant stance. If you're gonna ask me to do anything of consequence, I'm gonna adopt that stance. But suddenly, I get to have some exposure here. So, what's the point of the gym? What's the point of training? Just to work on some cardiorespiratory output, you know, that the science says? Is it to move and to play? Is it to pro- You know, if the brain's a, you know, problem-solving machine, let's give it some problems to solve. So, you suddenly have a new problem to solve. And I would even say that weakness isn't even the right idea. It's just like, here is a ca- a pattern that I'm not as effective at, as efficient at. So, when we go into the gym sort of with this great curiosity, then it's a really rich place and a really, frankly, the only safe place, because there isn't contact in sport and we're not fighting and dancing and moving and, and we can really do this controlled formal movement where we can really see inputs and outputs. I explained to my mother-in-law a long time ago what was happening when we were developing our model to understand movement. And I, I was, and I explained it and she was like, "Oh, you mean it makes the invisible visible." That's right, is that this is a place to understand how your range of motion is changing, how your skills are changing, right? Over the course of a season or the course of, you know, something going on in your life, a season in your life. Suddenly you're like, "Wow, my left hip is a little tighter, or my left shoulder is, my internal rotation's going away." Hard to see when you're swimming, really easy to see when we dumbbell snatch, right? And what we're trying to do then is take the gym, not only have it be a stimulus for adaptation, but have it be a really great place to uncover changes in my movement, changes in expression of that movement. And so, really, what you see, again, if I just do this one thing over and over again, that's patterning, that's repetition, that's practice, right? And what you've done is just said, "Hey, let me change my brain. Let me open the door handle with my left side." And bec- coming into the gym with that curiosity means that we can have seven bottom lines. We're working on your fascia, we're working on these energy systems, we're working on these movement skills. But simultaneously, we can have fun, we can work on understanding our range of motion. So, for me, I think it's easier to say, let's, let's frame mobility as, do you... Here's the, this is my definition. Do you have access to normative range of motion? The range of motion every physician, every physical therapist, every chiro agrees on. Shoulder, it's 180 degrees, hoo, of flexion.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman35:44

       So for those listening, this is lifting your arm above head so you can bring your, your hand basically, b- you know, above the, the center of your head. With-

   22. KSKelly Starrett35:53

       And what you can see right now is Andrew has his elbow bent, his hip, head tipped to the side.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman35:57

       (laughs) Okay.

   24. KSKelly Starrett35:57

       He's internally rotated. He's solving the problem.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman36:00

       Mm-hmm.

   26. KSKelly Starrett36:00

       Which is what his brain is saying.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman36:02

       It's compensation.

   28. KSKelly Starrett36:02

       Right?

   29. AHAndrew Huberman36:02

       Ain't better on this-

   30. KSKelly Starrett36:03

       Oh, no, no, no, there's-
9. 38:27 – 42:41

   Maximizing Gym Time; Tool: 10, 10, 10 at 10

   1. AHAndrew Huberman38:27

      I keep coming back to this, but this thing about getting down onto the ground for 30 minutes each night while watching TV or while, maybe even while eating dinner or while talking to your family-

   2. KSKelly Starrett38:35

      Yeah. Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman38:35

      ... or partner, I think it's fantastic. It also gives me an excuse to push the, the sofas off to the side of the room 'cause I have this weird, uh, neuroticism about furniture in the middle of the room. So, I'm imagining getting mats on down in the, down in the floor of the living room.

   4. KSKelly Starrett38:48

      And suddenly, we're not programming another thing that's... I think one of the things that's happened, and it's a good thing, it's, it's a feature of the system, strength and conditioning in the last 20 years has become very sophisticated. So, Juliet and I, my wife and CEO, opened our gym in 2005.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman39:10

      This was the CrossFit gym-

   6. KSKelly Starrett39:11

      San Francisco CrossFit.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman39:12

      ... down at the Presidio.

   8. KSKelly Starrett39:12

      That's right. San Francisco CrossFit.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman39:13

      Bea- beautiful location.

   10. KSKelly Starrett39:14

       20th first CrossFit in the world, early, but we couldn't buy a kettlebell in San Francisco. We had to drive to Santa Cruz.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman39:20

       That says a lot about San Francisco. I can say that 'cause I'm from the Bay Area.

   12. KSKelly Starrett39:23

       But y- there was one place in Santa Cruz that sold them, Play It Again Sports. They imported these Russian kettlebells. Thank you, Pavel. And we had to make this trek down to buy them. So, the fitness... I think we... I bought my first pair of Olympic lifting shoes outta the back of someone's car, like a drug deal. Like-

   13. AHAndrew Huberman39:39

       Olympic lifting shoes?

   14. KSKelly Starrett39:39

       Yeah, yeah. Like, you just couldn't buy them. Now you can-

   15. AHAndrew Huberman39:41

       Flat-soled shoes?

   16. KSKelly Starrett39:42

       No, like, actually an Olympic lifting shoe-

   17. AHAndrew Huberman39:44

       Okay.

   18. KSKelly Starrett39:44

       ... with like a heel. But, like, you can buy those at, like, three different stores in Malibu right now. Like, you go right over there. There's, it's, we have normal... You can buy kettlebells at Target. So, the world has become much more sophisticated. Um, sometimes, like, the overhead squat is a good example. Fantastic diagnostic tool, tells us a lot.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman40:04

       So bar held overhead.

   20. KSKelly Starrett40:05

       Yeah, squat down.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman40:06

       Squat down.

   22. KSKelly Starrett40:06

       Super simple.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman40:07

       Stand back up.

   24. KSKelly Starrett40:07

       All you have to do is have normal range of motion and your, your joints and tissues-

   25. AHAndrew Huberman40:11

       NB you.

   26. KSKelly Starrett40:11

       Well, it helps.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman40:13

       (laughs)

   28. KSKelly Starrett40:13

       Juliet likes to say I was bendy before I was big, but, you know. The idea here though is let's go ahead and also put skill back into this, but most people weren't overhead squatting, you know, at all. It wasn't part of their language. Now everyone knows what an overhead squat is, right? Dan John, CrossFit, all the Olympic lifters have been doing this forever, but what we are seeing is that the, the natural evolution of, of fitness and strength and conditioning is that we've become, we've gotten really decorative in our rooms. So we create this room that's just every inch has a knickknack, has an assistance, this is my tib raise, this is my neck thing. It's a very decorative experience, and instead of asking what was essential in terms of energy systems and positions that I can train so that I could go use those credits. You know, for lack of a better word, it's, fitness has become very recursive. I have this zone two so I can do more zone two, so I can do more zone two, or I have pull-ups because they beget more pull-ups. Instead of well, how did that make you swim? What's the minimum amount of time we can spend in the gym so that you can go express that, Lex is right, in a sport or an activity? And look, there are times in your life where the gym is the only thing you got. You know, Juliet and I, when we had two kids and a baby, or two kids and our businesses, we did the 10/10/10 at 10:00, which is like 10 air squats, 10 kettlebell swings, 10 pull-ups at 10:00 PM for 10 minutes, and I was like elite. My fitness is elite.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman41:36

       You would do that every day?

   30. KSKelly Starrett41:37

       Well, I just did it when I could do it, right?
10. 42:41 – 47:26

    Tool: Warming Up with Play; Breathwork

    1. KSKelly Starrett42:41

    2. AHAndrew Huberman42:41

       You mentioned warming up with play, which I think is a wonderful concept. Um, and presumably brings about more dynamic movement.

    3. KSKelly Starrett42:49

       100%.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman42:50

       Um, and another reason I like it is that I loathe warming up-

    5. KSKelly Starrett42:54

       Yeah, me too.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman42:54

       ... aside from the types of warmups that I just described. And-

    7. KSKelly Starrett42:58

       I hate it.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman42:58

       A- and I'm beginning to realize that, um, the way I've been training, even though it's been, um, I would s- I would say useful and, and, uh, successful for where I've been, uh, I've been thinking a lot about what I wanna do heading into the new year.

    9. KSKelly Starrett43:11

       Love it.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman43:11

        This is not like a New Year's episode, eh, this, this is, uh, you know, evergreen because it's you. Um, but we have a new year coming. A lot of people are, are going to naturally mark the time during and after the holidays as a transition point. And if one wanted to, you know, start to not necessarily completely re- restructure their fitness, but wanted to start incorporating a few things. So we've got sitting down in the evening for 30 minutes.

    11. KSKelly Starrett43:36

        Amazing.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman43:36

        We've got incorporating play into the warmup. What would that look like? Are we taking a tennis ball and bouncing it off the ground?

    13. KSKelly Starrett43:42

        Sure.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman43:42

        Are we setting some rule and playing a game?

    15. KSKelly Starrett43:44

        Sure.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman43:44

        What if I'm alone? Am I, um, am I playing a little, a little, a little handball type game against the wall? Um-

    17. KSKelly Starrett43:49

        Absolutely. See something on the internet, wanna learn a new skill, this is the time to put it in. Uh, I'm gonna talk about my brilliant friend David Weck. He has something called rope flow that he created, and it's just a piece of climbing rope, and he will talk about all the things that will do. For me, I get 1,000 PNF patterns. I tie my upper body into my l- lower, my upper body into my lower body. I get-

    18. AHAndrew Huberman44:13

        Could you explain PNF? Sorry. Acronym.

    19. KSKelly Starrett44:14

        Sorry. S- sorry, everyone. That's a, a model of facilitating movement developed at Kaiser Vallejo. It is by N- Knott and Cabot, I think. Uh, maybe I'm getting confused in those. And anyway, the, the bottom line is this, how do we help the body restore movement by using its own positional awareness?

    20. AHAndrew Huberman44:34

        Got it.

    21. KSKelly Starrett44:34

        So, if you've ever done a hamstring stretch-

    22. AHAndrew Huberman44:36

        Mm-hmm.

    23. KSKelly Starrett44:36

        ... where someone holds you and you resist, that contract-relax is a style, it's a technique born out of PNF.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman44:43

        Got it. Sorry to interrupt.

    25. KSKelly Starrett44:44

        Okay, no problem. Perfect.

    26. AHAndrew Huberman44:45

        Okay. So he's got these ropes, and he-

    27. KSKelly Starrett44:46

        And, and so suddenly, like I use this with all my teams, is suddenly I'm spinning ropes. I'm getting thousands of evolutions of the wrist turning, the elbow turning, the shoulder turning. I'm generating speed in weird positions that would be vulnerable and not as effective at high load, high stakes. I get to twist. I can tie my eyes into it. I can v- develop my stance. And in five minutes of messing around, you're like, "Oh, I feel good."

    28. AHAndrew Huberman45:14

        Mm-hmm.

    29. KSKelly Starrett45:15

        And we've added some speed to that, right? Because a lot of the warmups I see people do, I'm like, "Hey, there was no speed." You know what sport is? Speed. And you haven't added any velocity to your training. So, where are we gonna do that?

    30. AHAndrew Huberman45:26

        I love this. Um, I'm excited to... I, I always-
11. 47:26 – 50:35

    Sponsors: Function & Eight Sleep

    1. AHAndrew Huberman47:26

       I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality. Function not only provides testing of over a hundred biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had too-high levels of mercury in my blood, which was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test. Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, 'cause I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC, N-acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels. Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health. And while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive. I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is, getting the tests done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com/huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com/huberman to get early access to Function. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. That's truly the foundation of all mental health, physical health, and performance. And one of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment, and that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees, and in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to control the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. Eight Sleep has now launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and even has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com/huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman.

12. 50:35 – 1:01:30

    Tool: Foam Rolling, Uses, Types & Technique

    1. AHAndrew Huberman50:35

       Somehow, and we can talk about how, it's not a coincidence, um, you became synonymous with foam rolling. It became syno-

    2. KSKelly Starrett50:43

       The worst part of my life. (laughs)

    3. AHAndrew Huberman50:43

       ... synonymous with you. That's okay. That's, uh... I, I mean, it's not okay, (laughs) but it's okay with me.

    4. KSKelly Starrett50:48

       (laughs)

    5. AHAndrew Huberman50:48

       Uh, they weren't saying about me, but I was about to say it's okay, you know, anytime somebody, um, goes public-facing and starts to, to try and educate people, you know, people... There are certain things that are sticky. They have, like, high salience. Like, um, yes, I like to get into a cold plunge, but how I, how Andrew Huberman became associated with cold plunging-

    6. KSKelly Starrett51:04

       (laughs) Right, right, right.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman51:05

       ... or buying a cold plunge is, is wild. I mean, sure, I own one, and, you know, this sort of thing, and I think they're great for shifting your state. Um, but it, it's hardly the cornerstone of my life or my, or my, um, existence. But I love it. I, I use it, but I think f- foam rolling, I think, looked different enough from what people ha- had not seen before, and it... You know, these things just, they have a stickiness to them.

    8. KSKelly Starrett51:29

       Yeah.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman51:29

       Who, who knows why? Um, what is the deal with foam rolling? Is, is there a utility to foam rolling?

    10. KSKelly Starrett51:35

        Absolutely.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman51:36

        Um, is there a wrong way to do it?

    12. KSKelly Starrett51:38

        No, but there's a way that's not a great use of your time.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman51:42

        Okay.

    14. KSKelly Starrett51:42

        Right? So what we're all looking at is, we have finite amount of time, and what's my goal? To quickly touch my whole body? You know, what, what are we trying to do? So if I was using soft tissue mobilization and, or using a roller or a ball or a something, what's my goal here? Well, I think, and the research is very clear, it can help with pain, it can restore range of motion. Again, v- very clear. And I want to point out sort of one of my research friends, Brent Brookbush. The Brookbush Institute has incredible summaries of musculoskeletal care. Brent is a genius, and if you go on his site, there's a little hourglass, and you can search, like, trigger points, and you'll see all of the deep dive research, analysis of the meta research. Like, you'll, you'll be like, "Okay, this is really excellent." And, and it is tricky because, you know, what doesn't work for my body or wasn't a good use for a time now is useless, and it's easy to shout on the internet. So what's our goal? If I was in pain and I was about to exercise, uh, a quick two or three-minute intervention working on, let's call it desensitization of the tissues. Let's, let's be mechanism agnostic for a second-

    15. AHAndrew Huberman52:51

        Mm-hmm.

    16. KSKelly Starrett52:51

        ... and say that's a really low-level, entry, safe, highly effective way for you to suddenly feel better, so we create a window of opportunity to move. That's really cool. I love that. No physical therapists in the room. No one went blind. You didn't dislocate, right? So that could be a really excellent use of some soft tissue work. The same way a boxer would go or an MMA fighter or the Olympic lifters in China. They have people who are giving non-threatening input to the body to tell the brain it's safe or to rehydrate something or g- get some, uh... Now, again, is it just stimulus so that the brain says it's safe? Sure. Are we restoring how the tissues slide and glide? Sure.A lot of times, I think, if you look at any of the mobility work I'll just put writ large, it really comes down to just doing a couple of things. Most of 'em are just isometrics. So we have a lot of isometrics, which everyone can agree is good stuff, and we do a lot of tempo work. That's really just moving slowly through a range. It just may be that I'm using a different tool to have that isometric stimulus or that, that tempo, moving slowly stimulus. So we like to say, "Let's use mobilizations, mobilizing the tissues." Why are we doing it? What are we trying to do? Well, pain is a good reason. And again, multifactorial, highly subjective. Why do I have pain? Well, I got in a fight with my wife and I didn't eat and I, you know, twisted my knee back in Vietnam. And you know, who knows, right? But what are the inputs that I have to self-soothe and desensitize? And it turns out a ball and roller is a really good one. So I can use those to help myself feel better. Did that solve the problem? Did that solve o- two weeks of shitty sleep? (laughs) Did that solve my poor nutrition and lack of fiber? Did that solve the fact that I don't feel safe in this environment? No. But it got me a window of opportunity where I can go feel better in my body. Is anyone against that? No. Okay. So what we can also say is, "Hey, this would be a great way to do," what? Restore your range of motion. A, one tool in a system of tools to get you to do what? Have normative range again. Right? For whatever reason. Your lats are super stiff. Your... It doesn't... Uh, again, it's more complicated than that, but sometimes it's not more complicated than that. And if I just get you getting some input into there, maybe we can restore that range of motion or create a window where you can go use it again. Lastly, I would say is that it's a wonderful tool to decrease DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness. So in the evening, you blew out your quads, do a little soft tissue work and what you'll see is maybe that's blood flow, maybe it's non-threatening input, maybe it's just massage, maybe it's just the parasympathetic input that massage has. Touch, right? It just down-regulates. Maybe those are the reasons I feel better. But the bottom line is, is that a good use of your time? Yes. Are all techniques on the roller the same? No.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman55:39

        Mm-hmm.

    18. KSKelly Starrett55:40

        Right? And I think that's where we've lost our minds, is that if you, uh, you just rolled up and down on your calf, it didn't do anything. I'm like, "Yeah, well, you just... What are you doing?"

    19. AHAndrew Huberman55:48

        Mm-hmm.

    20. KSKelly Starrett55:48

        Right? What if I rolled side to side? And so suddenly, we can start to layer in some really complex thinking around this. How about this? You, you have a roller out, and I put my calf on there and I start rolling side to side. Should that be uncomfortable?

    21. AHAndrew Huberman56:04

        I'm guessing you're gonna say no, but, um, I, you know-

    22. KSKelly Starrett56:09

        Well, it might be uncomfortable.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman56:09

        Any, any time I've used a roller, any time I've used a roller, I'm like, "Man, that hurts."

    24. KSKelly Starrett56:15

        It hurts. I know, I do. That sucks.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman56:16

        That hurts. I don't... Well, I mean, I don't mind it. Like it's not like the kind of, it's not like level, level eight pain or anything. It's just, it's sort of like it feels very localized.

    26. KSKelly Starrett56:25

        Yeah.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman56:25

        Even if the roller's a big, fat Costello the Bulldog-sized roller-

    28. KSKelly Starrett56:29

        (laughs) Totally, totally.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman56:29

        ... it feels like someone's kinda kneading down in between my muscle fibers. And then I start to think, "Maybe I just have, like, low fiber density, and if I were Mark Bell or something, then this would feel comfortable." But, you know, I, I, I always feel like the roller's going-

    30. KSKelly Starrett56:42

        Andrew, you're now-
13. 1:01:30 – 1:05:54

    Injury vs. Incident, Pain

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:30

       say I want to, quote-unquote, "loosen up" or, um-

    2. KSKelly Starrett1:01:33

       Mm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:33

       ... or move out some potential soreness or soreness from a given, uh, muscle, uh, like the quadricep. Does it make sense to start in the middle of that muscle, the top? Like, does it, can you work above and below the, the, the knee? Um, are all of those things gonna help? I realize this is a, a much fuller discussion than we can have-

    4. KSKelly Starrett1:01:51

       No, but-

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:52

       ... you know, in a few minutes, but-

    6. KSKelly Starrett1:01:52

       ... I think this is, this is so great.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:53

       But, like, how should I approach it? I'm like, okay, you know, my-

    8. KSKelly Starrett1:01:55

       Yeah.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:55

       ... my, uh, my quads are a little sore, my, or my back is sore. Do I go straight to the back, or do I start with another, with another body region?

    10. KSKelly Starrett1:02:01

        I don't think it matters.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:03

        Hm.

    12. KSKelly Starrett1:02:03

        What I want, interested is inputs and outputs. Right? What I'm really interested in is, what did you do to make yourself feel better? Did you just hope it would just go away? And then one day it didn't, and then you had to activate the emergency medical system? So, let's define a couple things. What is an injury? This is a great question. Injury for us is, there's a clear mechanism of mechanical trauma. There's a bone sticking out of your leg, Andrew. Time to go to the hospital.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:28

        Injured.

    14. KSKelly Starrett1:02:29

        Right, you're injured, right? Heard a snap and a pop.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:33

        Yikes.

    16. KSKelly Starrett1:02:33

        I have night sweats, dizziness, fever, vomiting, nausea, unaccounted for weight loss, weight gain, changes in my bladder bowel function, problem like coughs, sneezes, or swells. Those are red flags. You're not sore, you're sick. Let me introduce you to the doctor again, right? If your pain or dysfunction is so bad you can't occupy a role in your family, can't occupy a role in society, can't occupy a role on the team, that's emer- em- emergency problem. That is a medical condition that needs medical... So, you come in today, you tweaked your back. It may need, we need to activate EMS. You need to go to the hospital. We need to get... Because it's so severe you can't do your job. Everything else, I wanna call non-injury. I wanna be very specific with the language we use. We call it an incident. It actually comes out of this, um, sort of language. There was a, a guy... Here, here's the long way around the barn. I read this great book called Deep Survival, which is Laurence Gonzales, which is about why people end up in survival situations. And it's literally a lot about, like, "We got away with it for a long time, and then I just didn't have a... You know, I ended up two miles out to sea. I've done it a million times, and this time," right? That's a... But there was a footnote in there from a book called Normal Accidents by Charles Perrow, who's recently passed on. I emailed Charles 'cause I was like, "This has blown my mind." He calls, a lot of times we'll have trivial events in non-trivial systems. So, he's taking systems thi- thinking. He's looking at complex system organization. And his idea is that a- an accident, a normal accident, is actually just expression of the system if you gave the system long enough to express itself. The inputs and outputs are so tightly coupled that it's difficult to see what causes what and how they influence each other. That's the body. So, your stiff shoulder isn't a problem until you fall on the ice. And then that stiff shoulder suddenly can't take overpressure into overhead, and you tear your rotator cuff off at high speed. You'd say, "Oh, black swan event, super crazy," but that's actually just a normal expression of that shoulder system if we gave it enough time to es- express itself. So, he has sort of, like, incident and accident. So, an incident is I want us to start to think about incident-level problems are pain, loss of range of motion, numbness, tingle. We're becoming curious. Why is the brain sending you the signals? Pain is a request for change. So, when, if we ask our athletic population, I just did this with 100 kids, I'm like, "How many of you are pain-free?" 100 high school kids. Two hands go up. Two.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:07

        High school?

    18. KSKelly Starrett1:05:07

        High school. So, what we're suddenly realizing is that pain is very much a part of the athletic condition, the human experience, certainly the athletic experience. You've been in pain a billion times and still gone out and done the thing. So, what we, we wanna do is say, "Pain is not always a medical problem." It's a medical problem when... The rest of the time, we're saying, "How are you using fitness training as a scaffolding to understand nutrition, hydration, soft tissue work, desensitization, reperfusion of the tissues?" So, that's what we're trying to do in sport and training, is empower people to say, "What's going on with my body? And why don't I feel the way I do, or why does something hurt, and why can't I remedy that? And then when I run out of ideas, let me go get some help."

14. 1:05:54 – 1:11:04

    Managing Pain & Stiffness, Tool: D2R2 Method

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:54

       So the, the rolling, um, we can think of as a way to, you know, move out soreness, prepare us for more work the next day-

    2. KSKelly Starrett1:06:02

       Sure.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:02

       ... or something like that.

    4. KSKelly Starrett1:06:03

       Love that.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:03

       But is it fair to say that we can also use the roller as a diagnostic tool?

    6. KSKelly Starrett1:06:07

       Sure.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:08

       Like, if I'm feeling, like, an unusual amount of, of, um... Well, not unusual, but let's just say, um, that I'm feeling like a wuss 'cause when I, when I lie down on that roller and I kinda, like, mm, you know, like slide back and forth like I've seen in the videos of you and other folks doing that, I'm like, "Man, that really hurts." Does that necessarily mean something's wrong?

    8. KSKelly Starrett1:06:26

       No.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:27

       Um, okay. So like-

    10. KSKelly Starrett1:06:28

        No. It mean- it means that for whatever reason, those tissues have become sensitized.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:33

        Mm-hmm.

    12. KSKelly Starrett1:06:33

        And that your brain is interpreting that stiffness as a threat, and it's reading it as pain, right? And some people, they don't have that. They just, their tissues feel like this, but they don't have pain when they do that. But that's not a normal tissue. You should be like layers of warm silk sliding over steel springs. And what you're seeing-

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:51

        Is that what, is that what quality tissue should-

    14. KSKelly Starrett1:06:53

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:53

        ... should feel like?

    16. KSKelly Starrett1:06:53

        Absolutely. That it-

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:55

        Layers of silk over steel springs.

    18. KSKelly Starrett1:06:56

        Layers of silk over steel springs. And what we see is that we are loading and training at such high intensities and such density now that our tissues get stiff. I'm just gonna hang stiffness as, for whatever reason, fib- high fibrotic, high density of tissues, whatever the reason, the tissues don't behave the way the joint system should.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:17

        Mm-hmm.

    20. KSKelly Starrett1:07:18

        Right? And that's a problem, because my training shouldn't mitigate or attenuate or change my range of motion. It can, but now how am I keeping an eye on those changes? Or, as you said earlier, as I do a sport and I start to do a sport and specialize, I'm throwing, throwing, or I swim, or I kick on one side, how can I start to identify as my body is changing and adapting that sport, so I can drag myself back to a sort of a greater readiness? And that's one of the reasons that that mobilization tool is such a powerful tool. Again, however you wanna do it. I think it's useful for us when we have, we... I came up with this thing called the D2R2 model because the other way was taken, R2D2. So, the first order of business is I wanna desensitize if something hurts. If something hurts, let's desensitize it. I can do that all different ways. Scraping is powerful desensitization. Isometrics can be really useful. Uh, rolling, BFR can give me desensitization. There's so many techniques to make my body-

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:19

        Blood flow restriction.

    22. KSKelly Starrett1:08:20

        Yeah.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:20

        Yeah.

    24. KSKelly Starrett1:08:20

        Blood flow restriction. So that no longer I'm- my brain is perceiving this as a threat. Because if you're br- in pain, you cannot generate the same amount of force, or wattage, or output, and your brain is gonna start to truncate, it's gonna start to lop off your movement solutions, right? It's just gonna happen. So we wanna, we want everyone to be saying, "Hey, we don't panic when we have pain. We just treat it like another diagnostic tool." Then second D, right? We desensitize, and then we ask, "Is this something to be decongested?" So, decongestion means that oftentimes tissues that are swollen become more easily sensitized. Tissues that are swollen and congested don't heal as fast. If you have a swollen ankle, those collagen fibers will not knit together as fast as a... Right? If you have a joint that's swollen or a tissue that's swollen, your brain will shut down force production in and around that joint system. Is swelling an emergency? No. Is a swollen joint environment really healthy for those, the integrity and surface of the joint? No. We wanna manage that. But oftentimes when someone comes in and the tissue is congested, right? Just sometimes we say swelling and we think ankle, right? Only capsular. But here we have a, a... If you've ever flown on an airplane and had cankles, those, that's congested tissue. If we manage that congestion, if we move those lymphatics along, we... Muscle contraction drives the lymphatic drainage. The lym- the lymph system is the sewage system of the body. Decongested tissues often express less pain. And what we find is that in broken bones or soft tissue injuries, if we can better evacuate that swelling, better evacuate that congestion, not only do we see you now healing at the rate of a human being, we're not rate limiting the healing, but also we can help you manage that sensitivity. Then the third one is, can we get some blood flow in there? Like, how... You said, "I, once I warm up, I feel great." Welcome to the power of blood flow. Tissues become hydrated. We're shifting blood from the stomach, all the things that happens, right? All that venous return is coming back on board. But suddenly we see that if we can get something pumped full of blood, it tends to be less painful. And that's a really easy... So if I have an old orthopedic thing, maybe I spend a few minutes just getting a huge quad pump on the leg extension machine, then I go squat heavy, right? So now I have desensitization, decongestion, reperfusion. Whatever tool you want to use for these is fair game with me, just is how I've come to kind of conceptualize these different tools. And the last one is restore. Do you have full range of motion, full normal in that joint, yes or no? 'Cause that's the last thing that we talk about, because you're still able to perform your sport at college or do your job, but we're not seeing how inaccess, your ability to not access that range of motion may be limiting your movement choice and potentially overloading a tissue in a le- by making it work in a less effective manner.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:03

        Or even

15. 1:11:04 – 1:19:58

    Posture, Neck Work

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:04

       just leading to progressively worse and worse posture-

    2. KSKelly Starrett1:11:07

       Sure.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:07

       ... which is probably-

    4. KSKelly Starrett1:11:08

       Well, define-

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:09

       ... too-

    6. KSKelly Starrett1:11:09

       Define posture for me, 'cause I think that's a really great place to start, right?

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:11

       Yeah. I can define bad posture as when you catch yourself in a, in a reflection and you realize, "Wow, I'm starting to-"

    8. KSKelly Starrett1:11:17

       (laughs)

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:17

       "... I'm starting to look more-"

    10. KSKelly Starrett1:11:18

        Perfect.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:18

        "... like a C-"

    12. KSKelly Starrett1:11:19

        I love it.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:19

        "... than a, than a, than an I."

    14. KSKelly Starrett1:11:20

        That- that's so great.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:21

        You know?

    16. KSKelly Starrett1:11:21

        The question is, is that a matter of aesthetics or pain?

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:24

        Well, uh, certainly for me it's not pain, but you know, I...

    18. KSKelly Starrett1:11:29

        It's not becoming injury.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:30

        I notice that, um- It's not becoming. I- I- I notice that unless I pay attention to my posture while sitting, unless I do a, um, you know, like b- bridge my fingers together and pull my, my chin back a few times a day, that I'm just naturally starting to tip over forward towards my text messages that aren't even in my hands right now. And I think this is, you know, the-... the, the younger generation, I mean, now that I'm 49 I can talk like that, right? I mean, it's striking-

    20. KSKelly Starrett1:11:56

        Were you born in the 1900s?

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:58

        (laughs) They are, um-

    22. KSKelly Starrett1:11:59

        Late 1900s?

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:00

        Yeah, exactly.

    24. KSKelly Starrett1:12:01

        Let's go all the way back.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:01

        They're, they're starting to look like a s- they're shaped like a C. The, it's, um... And I'm a big believer in, uh, people, especially men, doing neck work. I feel like, uh, like, if, if you, especially if-

Episode duration: 3:26:09