Summary: Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully by Juliet Starrett and Kelly Starrett

• The book is a guide for improving your mobility, health, and longevity by adopting ten habits that promote natural movement, nutrition, and sleep.
• The authors are mobility experts who have worked with elite athletes and ordinary people, and they explain the science and benefits of each habit, as well as how to implement them in your daily life.
• The book is not only a practical manual for moving better, but also a holistic approach to enhancing your well-being and quality of life, with stories, tips, and quizzes to motivate and inspire you.

Built to Move (2023) is your ultimate guide to building a better, healthier, more functional body. The concept is simple – it provides a handful of simple tests to assess your movement, and a handful of easy-to-follow routines to improve it. Utilizing the latest insights of mobility, sleep, and nutrition science, you’ll learn to keep your body and mind as fit as possible with minimal effort – no matter if you’re a couch potato or a world class athlete.

Introduction： Move well, live better.

Do your knees hurt? Are you worried about your back every time you bend down? Is your whole body tired, achey, and sore?

No more! In this summary, we’ll show you how to build the body you deserve – free of pain, full of energy, and capable of handling whatever life throws its way.

Here’s how this summary works: there will be a simple test at the beginning of each section to assess how well your body works right now. Then, we’ll talk about some simple practices you can integrate to make your body work better.

This means you might want to consider reading [listening to] this summary at home, so you can follow the instructions. Keep in mind that some of the tests and exercises can cause discomfort, but they shouldn’t cause pain. Listen to your body and have fun!

The Sit-and-Rise Test: Finding Back to Natural Movement

Let’s begin by stating the obvious: We all move, all the time.

And let’s state another obvious fact: We’re all not moving enough. And we’re all not moving well enough.

Sitting at a desk for hours on end, guzzling caffeine, staring at screens all day – you don’t need to be an expert to recognize that modern life isn’t working out so well for our bodies. Too many of us are stiff, sore and in pain.

The good news? Taking care of your body is way less complicated than you think. We’re not talking about weightlifting, yoga, or pilates. Our keyword is “mobility”.

Mobility, a popular fitness industry term, can be broken down like this: being able to move in the ways nature designed us to move.

So without much ado, let’s do the first movement! It’s called the Sit-and-Rise test. Stand barefoot and cross one leg over the other. Lower yourself to the floor until you sit in a cross-legged position. Now, get back up the same way. Try to do this all without using your hands.

Start with a score of ten, and subtract a point every time you struggle or need an assist – for example if you lose your balance. If your score is between three and six, you have some work to do. If it’s between seven and nine, that’s pretty good. Ultimately, you want to shoot for a ten.

Why is this important? Well, the ability to get down and up off the floor is a key indicator of health and longevity. You may have noticed that little kids sit on the ground all the time.

But as adults, we sit on chairs – often many hours at a time. This is a problem. Chair-sitting can cause tight hips, tight hamstrings, and serious back and knee pain.

The remedy? Sit on the floor! There are tons of ways to do so – cross-legged, with your knees bent in a 90/90 position, with both or one leg stretched. Do what feels best for you, and switch it up often.

Your new goal is to sit on the floor for 30 minutes every day. Do this for a week, then redo the Sit-and-Rise test. You’ll notice the difference – promise!

The Breath-Hold Test: Breathing Big, Deep and Slow

Remember when your parents told you to not slouch on your chair?

Well, they were right. But not just for aesthetic reasons. Sitting upright also helps you breathe well. And since your muscles need oxygen to function, breathing well is directly related to how well you move.

So a good question to ask yourself when you’re standing, sitting, or doing any other kind of movement is this: can I breathe well in this position?

Breathing well means three things above all. It means breathing spaciously – being able to expand your belly, chest, and ribs on the inhale. It also means breathing through your nose – if possible, even during exercise. Mouth breathing is associated with all kinds of health problems such as sleep apnea, snoring, and bloating. Nose breathing, on the other hand, is associated with better lung capacity and increased endurance. Finally, you’ll want to breathe slowly. This activates the parasympathetic nervous system – the part of your body responsible for rest and relaxation.

So let’s do the test. This one is called the Breath-Hold or BOLT Test. Do this when you’re feeling relaxed. Sit or stand. Inhale normally through your nose. Exhale normally, then pinch your nose. Now look at the clock and hold your breath until you feel the first serious urge to breathe.

What this test measures is your so-called CO2 tolerance level. The longer you’re able to hold your breath comfortably, the more CO2 you can tolerate. The more CO2 you can tolerate, the better your body uses oxygen. And the better your body uses oxygen, the more energy you have.

Here, an ideal result would be 30 to 40 seconds. 20 is alright. If your score is below 10, you need to make breathwork your priority.

So, where does the work begin? With something as unconscious breathing, simply becoming aware of how you’re breathing can already be a game changer. Remember the parameters from before – big, slow, and through the nose.

On top of this, integrating a short breathing routine in your mornings can work wonders. Sit or lie on the floor, and take the kind of expansive, slow nose breaths we just talked about. You can even make a hum or a sound on the exhale. Do this for two minutes at a time, working up to three to five rounds. A nice side effect? This double-functions as a meditation practice.

The Couch Test: Extend Your Hips, Fix Your Life

Sitting so much isn’t just keeping us from moving around more – it’s also limiting our movement when we finally do get up off the chair. If you’re sitting, your torso and legs are forming a 90 degree angle. This means your hips are in flexion.

But they long to be in extension just as much. Hip extension is the exact opposite of hip flexion – think of kicking your leg back. Walking, throwing stuff, getting up and down the floor, and all the other things humans are built for require good hip extension.

But thanks to our sitting culture, most people today have limited hip extension. That’s why opening up your hips may be one of the most important practices discussed here

The test for hip extension is called the Couch Test. Unfortunately, you won’t be sitting on a couch for it – unless you fail the first variant of the test. To start with, you need just a little bit of clear wall and floor space, and a cushion to protect your knees. Glute engagement is key to good hip position, so you’ll want to squeeze your butt throughout these positions.

Get on all fours with your toes touching the wall. Place one knee on the cushion at the wall-floor intersection, shin resting on the wall, and your toes pointed down. Your other knee remains on the ground, and your hands are still on the floor. That’s Step 1.

Step 2 is to see if you can ​​raise the free knee and place the foot on the ground. Keep the other knee at the floor-wall intersection. Step 3 is to raise your torso fully upright. If you can hit this position without much discomfort, congrats – you have the kind of hip extension we all should aim for!

If you only get to Step 1 or 2, you have the amazing opportunity to unlock full hip mobility. If Step 1 is already too uncomfortable, you can try the whole thing on the couch. Place one knee on the couch seat, and the other foot on the floor.

The good thing is that the Couch Test is both assessment and remedy. If you want to work on your hip extension, the Couch Stretch is the perfect place to start. Hold the same positions, but for longer – work up to 3, even 5 minutes. Just remember to breathe deeply and squeeze your butt!

The Steps-Per-Day Inventory: Walk Away the Pain

Okay, I’m sure you’ve gotten it by now: Sitting isn’t great.

Sitting in a chair for multiple hours a day is so bad, in fact, that even that 60-minute Crossfit session you crank out every morning is not enough to offset it.

A 2010 study from the American Cancer Society showed that people who sit more than six hours a day are 18 to 37 percent more likely to die earlier than those who sit less than three hours a day.

The lesson is, don’t sit for too long. What’s long? To be safe, let’s say no more than 30 minutes at a time.

And now that we’ve deterred you from sitting, let us sell you on walking. More walking is associated with less obesity, diabetes, heart diseases, depression, anxiety, certain cancers – the list goes on. It strengthens your joints and bones, boosts your circulation, and even improves your sleep, mood and memory. Oh, and get this – walking 8000 steps a day burns twice as many calories than running three times a week.

So let’s do the test. This one could not be simpler – just use your phone or any other pedometer to count your steps for three days. Take the average of those three days, and see how you fare.

Researchers estimate that our hunter-gatherer ancestors got in between 12,000 and 17,000 steps a day. Chances are, you’re not walking that much. But an honorable goal for all of us would be to get 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day.

You want to aim for quantity and consistency here. But of course, some issues of quality apply too.

For instance, you might want to keep an eye on your foot position as you walk. Your ankles should be right above your heels, not jutting out to the left or right. You also want to maintain a nice arch between the ball and the heel of your foot – this design feature is what literally puts the spring in your step.

To improve your foot mechanics, you want to choose the flattest shoes possible. Or better yet: go barefoot whenever you can.

The rest should be a walk in the park – literally. Or perhaps it’s walking your kids to school? Walking while talking on the phone? Walking while practicing nose breathing? We’re sure you can figure it out. Just hit those steps!

The Food Count: Eat Your Veggies, Get Your Protein

Food is a complicated matter for many people. Here’s a trick that may work wonders in how you relate to it: think of food as fuel.

Your daily food intake affects your muscles, tendons, cartilage, bones, and virtually all other parts of your body that help you move. So to spell it out: eating well means moving well.

Eating well is not about one specific diet over another. You can be vegan, Paleo, Keto – it doesn’t matter. It’s all about two key components: protein and micronutrients. Micronutrients are essential vitamins and minerals that come from unprocessed fruits and vegetables. They help promote cell growth, immune function, nerve conduction, muscle contraction and hundreds of other important body processes.

But protein is huge too. It comes from animal sources such as meat, eggs, and dairy, as well as plant sources like grains, legumes, and nuts. Protein provides the amino acids that help our bodies build and maintain muscles, express DNA, make antibodies, and much more.

So, what’s the assessment? This one actually has two parts. The first part is called the 800-Gram Count. It’s simple – record how many grams of unprocessed fruit and vegetables you eat in a typical day. Fresh, cooked, canned, or frozen – it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s not fried or processed. The goal here – you guessed it – is to hit 800 grams of fruits and veggies a day.

Now for the second part. This one is a little more complicated, and is easiest with a nutrition tracker app like MyFitnessPal. It requires you to record all the protein sources you eat in a typical day and check how much protein you’re actually getting. The gold standard here is between 0.7 and 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. But if you’re an active athlete, aim even higher.

So, how do you hit those targets? Plan ahead. Make sure to have nutritious foods on hand whenever you need it. For example, pack a snack box with veggies for work. For protein, use this rule: include a fistful – whether fish, meat or beans – on every plate you eat.

Remember, from a health perspective, there’s no need to punish yourself with an overly restrictive diet.. Focus on nutritious food you love to eat, and the rest will fall into place.

The Hours Count: Sleeping Soundly

Another thing we should all know by now: Sleep is important.

And yet, there are still people out there proudly claiming they only need four hours a night. According to new research, there might actually be a “sleepless elite”of people who can do well on five hours of sleep a night. But they comprise less than one percent of the population. Chances are, you aren’t one of them.

The rest of us need seven to nine hours per night. Yet 35 percent of the US population doesn’t even hit the low end of that spectrum.

So, let’s look at why sleep is so important for our body. Firstly, your brain needs sleep, and your body needs your brain; without them, everything falls apart. One 2015 study from the University of California showed that people were four times more likely to catch a cold when they slept less than six hours a night. Less sleep is linked to lower life expectancy, diabetes, obesity, depression, heart attack, and stroke. On the flipside, well-rested people perform better, react faster, and have lower rates of injury.

Here’s the test for this section: count how many hours you’re actually sleeping. Not how much time you spend in bed – how many hours you’re actually snoozing. If you’re getting less than seven hours, it’s time to take action. But not literally – you actually want to make sure you’re sleeping more.

It might also make sense to measure the quality of your sleep. There are plenty of fitness trackers that do so, but you can also just ask yourself a simple question – how rested do you feel after those seven to nine hours of sleep? If you’re regularly getting eight hours but are always tired, chances are you’re not sleeping well.

To sleep better and more, work on you “sleep hygiene.” This means making sleep a priority. Try to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day – even on weekends. Next, make sure your body is tired enough to wind down. Move throughout the day, and avoid caffeine late in the day. Make sure your bedroom is quiet, cool, and dark. Turn off bright lights and technology a couple hours before bed.

All of these habits let your body clock know it’s time for a good night’s sleep. So rest well, and move better!

Summary

We discussed a few of the key habits that will help your body feel, move, and function better. The first one is practicing sitting – and getting up off – the floor. You want to avoid sitting on chairs for prolonged periods of time. Walking is a great way to get your daily dose of movement. To counteract all the sitting, you’ll want to open up your hips with mobilizations such as the Couch Stretch.

Other practices that are also essential for good body function are breathing, eating, and sleeping well. These things do not have to be complicated – and you’re not aiming for perfection. You’re just trying to give your body the care it deserves, with as little hassle as possible.

About the author

DR. KELLY STARRETT is the coauthor of the New York Times best sellers Becoming a Supple Leopard, Ready to Run, and the Wall Street Journal best seller Deskbound. He is also the cofounder of The Ready State, and the cofounder of San Francisco CrossFit. He consults with athletes and coaches from the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB, the US Olympic Team, elite Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard forces, and consults with corporations on employee health and wellbeing. He lives in California.

JULIET STARRETT, J.D. is an entrepreneaur, attorney, author, and podcaster. She is the cofounder and CEO of The Ready State, the former cofounder and CEO of San Francisco CrossFit. She is coauthor of the Wall Street Journal best seller Deskbound, and was a professional whitewater paddler, winning three world championships and five national titles. She lives in California.

Genres

Health, Nutrition, Personal Development, Nonfiction, Self Help, Fitness, Sports, Diet, Exercise, Stretching, Longevity, Happiness Self-Help

Review

The book is a guide for improving the way your body feels and functions by adopting ten essential habits that promote mobility, health, and longevity. The authors are mobility pioneers who have worked with pro-athletes, Olympians, and Navy Seals, as well as ordinary people who want to live better. They explain the science behind how our bodies are designed to move and why modern lifestyles often interfere with our natural needs for activity, nutrition, and sleep. They also provide practical advice on how to implement the ten habits into your daily routine, regardless of your age, fitness level, or occupation. The ten habits are:

1. Sit on the floor
2. Squat
3. Hang
4. Carry
5. Walk
6. Run
7. Jump
8. Crawl
9. Roll
10. Breathe

Each habit is explained in detail, with illustrations, instructions, and variations to suit different abilities and preferences. The authors also share stories and testimonials from people who have benefited from their methods, as well as tips on how to overcome common challenges and obstacles.

I found the book to be very informative, inspiring, and easy to follow. The authors have a clear and engaging writing style that makes the concepts accessible and enjoyable to read. They also use humor, anecdotes, and examples to illustrate their points and keep the reader’s interest. The book is well-organized and structured, with each chapter focusing on one habit and its benefits, challenges, and solutions. The book also includes a self-assessment quiz at the beginning and end of the book to help you track your progress and identify areas for improvement.

The book is not only a guide for improving your mobility, but also a holistic approach to enhancing your overall well-being and quality of life. The authors emphasize the importance of finding joy and meaning in movement, as well as the connection between physical health and mental health. They also encourage the reader to experiment and discover what works best for them, rather than following a rigid or prescriptive program. The book is suitable for anyone who wants to feel better in their body and mind, whether they are young or old, fit or unfit, active or sedentary.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about how to move better and live longer. The book is full of practical wisdom, scientific evidence, and inspiring stories that will motivate you to adopt the ten essential habits and reap the rewards of a more mobile and durable body.