Kelly Starrett | Getting Better At The Game Of Life | Modern Wisdom Podcast 119

We were in New York, and we saw this thing called the Pegan diet. It was, uh, being advertised.

The what? Pegan diet?

Pegan. Pegan.

Okay.

Paleo plus vegan. Plant-based diet with small amounts of animal protein. And we were like, "You mean food?" You know?

(laughs)

So one of my friends is a, a woman named E. C. Cienkowski and her ... she's optimized me nutrition. And she has this notion, first things first, let's improve the caloric density of your diet by getting you to eat 800 grams of vegetables and fruits a day. 800 grams, just hit that mark.

Me. (laughs) So ... (laughs)

So that's how far away ... We're having a conversation about is this movie about being plant-based good or bad? I'm like, "Hey, I eat meat and eggs and cheese and all these other things, but I also get 800 grams of vegetables and fruits or a kilo of vegetables and fruits a day. That's my base."

Are you able to stick to around that?

Piece of cake. I eat salad for breakfast. I eat ... a palmful of blueberries is 80 grams. So what you're seeing is, oh, you know, we, we villainize fruit, right?

Yeah.

And I'm like, "Seriously? You think an app- like, eating two apples is really the limiting factor to your performance today?"

(laughs)

"What are you gonna eat instead? You know, like a protein shake? A highly processed impossible burger?"

I am joined by the supple leopard himself, Mr. Kelly Starrett. Kelly, welcome to the show.

It is a pleasure to be, be back on the, uh, I don't know. I, I don't know if I can say it's the better side of the, uh, of the, the ocean, but I do have an affinity for the UK.

Yeah, man. Well, you're with me now. You, you're adopted for the next hour. We're gonna be talking about whatever we talk about. You can be British for a little while. Get a cup of tea out.

Uh, well, I really ... what I'm gonna need is a cup from the Borough Market and then also a sausage roll. So if you can make that happen, I'm in.

That's like knowledge ... but that's you dropping your peak UK knowledge bombs, isn't it?

(laughs)

It's like, what's the most quintessentially British thing that I can think of? It's a cup of tea and a sausage roll.

That's right. That's right, that's right.

(laughs) So how are you, man? It's awesome to see you again. I, I, I, um, follow your stuff. I'm sure a lot of people that are listening will be as well. You guys have been super busy recently.

You know, here's the deal. Um, we try to treat our thinking about human beings and our lives as a game you cannot win. All you can do is sort of play better and better and better. And to that end, if you, if you treat your fitness, your wellness, your health like a game with clear and clear, clear winners and losers, you know what all the rules are, you're a fool. I mean, that's, that's same in business, the same in raising kids. You know, these are open-ended tasks, and we have always reserved the right to get better and refine our thinking and to, and to think differently and critically about the needs of the people we serve. And to that end, you know, we just applied that same amount of thinking to, uh, to our business, and what we, we had is 10 years of experience helping people improve pain, helping people take a crack at moving more efficiently and more effectively on the things that they love, and really trying to get the physio and the doctor out of the conversation, because, you know, frankly so much of this, of what we're working on is, is disruptive in the way that, hey, this is a part of the language of being a human being, the same way that, like, you don't have to talk to a nutritionist when you have lunch, right? You don't have to talk to your doctor, you know, before you go to bed. I mean, it's crazy that there ... we have divorced musculoskeletal health and care and understanding, you know, from our environmental lifestyle selves and now we're trying to fix that. So what we, what we realize is that people are a lot more clever than we have originally given them credit for, and I mean, we've always assumed that people are more clever, but I don't think that, that our traditional industries have necessarily. And, uh, to that end, you know, we, we went ahead and, um, rebranded and changed our, the user experience and user interface, and we went from MobilityWOD, which was really confusing for people. Mobility now means nothing and WOD is a, you know, is a technical term, uh, that has been sort of co-opted by lots of companies like SobrietyWOD and FaithWOD and MentalityWOD. And then, um, we really felt like what we were doing was trying to help people in the context of their lives get as ready as they could for whatever they want to get ready for, and I've been talking about this notion of this Ready State, which is sort of saying, "You can't live in a ... you're not a monk. You have family obligations and private, previous history of injuries, and maybe you played a sport, and maybe you have a job that forces you to stay awake sometimes at odd hours. So how can, how ready can we get you and what can we control?" Which is really a different idea around, hey, I've got a, I have a box of 100 things, and if I don't check off my list of 100 things, I'm somehow a failure and I haven't bio-hacked or optimized. And instead we're saying this, "Hey, look. Let's play a more beautiful game." And that was really the, the birth of the Ready State.