#365 - Kelly Starrett, Glen Cordoza

What are you doing? Is that your new mix? You are not a dj.

You fuck no.

Kelly. How are you, sir?

I'm good, man.

Thank you very much for doing this, man. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Forrest Griffin recommends you. That's good enough for me. And your book is fascinating. I started looking into book, and as I was telling you before the podcast, I've been having some back issues myself. I have like a bulging disc in my neck. The name becoming a supple leopard. Where'd you come up with that name?

A couple ideas. One is I have some tactical friends who are scary and they're always stiff and messed up. And he told me, Kelly, the leopard doesn't stretch. And I was like, well, that's good. I'm glad you're using that leopard defense because, a, you're not a leopard. Two, you don't know how the leopard feels. But then I started thinking about like, leopard can sort of attack and defend at full physical capacity. You don't see the leopard activating its glutes or warming up or prepping. It's just awesome. So why the hell don't you have full physical capacity? Why are you in pain? The resting state of the human being should be pain free. You're designed to be 110. What's going on?

Why is that?

That's because you suck at moving. And you're a human being. You make a ton of movement errors. No one ever gave you the software for your beautiful hardware. You're beat up, you take some injuries, you eat like crap sometimes.

That's a big one, isn't it? The software for your beautiful hardware, that goes with the mind as well. Just managing being a human, it's difficult. It's not that easy.

Well, who says it should be? Not an easy skill? So the bottom line is that we've been sort of, kind of sold this horrible mess that you can just get on the treadmill. You don't have to think bullshit like, you are a very skilled human being. That skill takes work, probably work every day.

So. Meaning that you can't just get on a treadmill and be a healthy person with no pain. Like, you have to do physical, real physical work. You have to do real workouts.

Well, I think we've moved beyond. I think everyone knows you need to probably put the time in under some weights. You probably need to breathe really hard. But really talking about is being a skilled human. Can you do everything that a human being needs to be able to do yes or no? Can you squat down with your feet together like you're in Thailand having dinner? Yes or no? If you can't, you don't have flank or range of motion. Why not? That's why you have plantar fasciitis. That's why you tore your achilles. This is why you have back pain. So the thing is that you should be very, very skilled in your thinking. Very, very skilled. And cultivate the practice. 350 years ago, Musashi writes the book of the five rings. He says your combat stance is your everyday stance. And you're like, wow, that's so deep. Where the short sword goes, your belly needs to be firm. He's talking about your core. From your feet to your knees, you need to be able to create tension. He's probably talking about torque and having your feet straight. So we're not the first people to take a crack at it, but we are the same people who've made the same mistakes over and over again. And you should be skilled, and we don't teach the skill. You've been spending your genetics, and then you wake up one day and you've herniated disc, and you're like, what the hell happened?

So your skill in movement, like, you need to know how to stand, you need to know the correct posture, is that what you're saying? Like that kind of thing?

Look, my life's work as a dream as a child was not to lecture adult men about posture. Like, this is not the apex, but it turns out good standing position in yoga is called tadasana. Right? You should know how to do that. Yes or no? And it's also the setup position for the deadlift. The problem is that it's hard to kind of understand what positions you need to be in what is full range of motion. Finally, we have a language, and that language is the modern language of strength and conditioning. If you can press and pull and roll, you hear the debunked thinking about the old strength. Coaches say, like, bench press, it ties the shoulders to the arms, and you're like, what the hell does that mean? It turns out if you teach kids to create torque off of a fixed object and explain what the purpose of that is, you need to be skilled. Well, then it turns out, in guard, you can create torque off of any position. You can grab the shopping cart and be in a stable shoulder position. So it turns out that the posture that we adopt day to day, like right now, are you in a good position or bad position? Horrible position. My boy's in a horrible position. 24 hours a day. That's right. So is it okay to be unconscious in a zombie and turn your abs off?

You've already scared him so much that he'll never work out for, like, the next month. He's not going to work out. Now you're freaking him out, man.

No, I just have this thing every time. I know I slouch. My whole life is slouch watching. If I sit like this, it looks like I'm trying to show off my delicious boobs. But you should.

That's how you should think. This is how you want to be healthy. Just tell the world, here's my delicious boobs. But I've been doing that lately, man. And I'm telling you, there's been a bunch of different things that I've done lately that have mitigated my back pain. But one of them is I've been really cognizant of my posture for, like, the first time in my life. I have a horrible slump. And I just didn't think it was no big deal. I thought it was like. So I don't like standing up straight. What do I give a fuck? But I didn't think it had, like, health repercussions. I didn't think the damage you can do for your discs.

Well, let's look at it. So you get away with it. You're a pretty good athlete. You have been an athlete your whole life. You're a black belt. You know how to train. You take care of yourself doing these things, and all of a sudden, something's not working right. And the type one error that we make as humans is that, hey, I've always done it, and I could be the best in the world. I know so many gold medalists and so many world champions, world record holders who have terrible positions and bad mechanics and pain. They're still the best in the world. So you can't use that I'm the best in the world excuse. The issue is, are you optimized? Are you in the best position possible for you? Are we in? Maximize your potential, comma, we use pain as a lagging indicator. I wait till I have pain, swelling, numbness and tingling, loss and range of motion, then suddenly I have a problem. That's like driving your car around till it blows up and then being like, I should put some oil in.

Yeah, I know I fucked up in not getting regular massages. I know I fucked up by not doing enough yoga. I know I fucked up.

No, this is the problem.

Is that really?

Yeah. So massage is great. It helps you down, regulate, take care of your tissues.

Having someone, it's really a good idea, right? It's a great idea. And stretching.

But the problem. Stretching. We'll talk about that. Stretching doesn't work. Stop stretching.

After you work out, stop stretching. But how do you get really flexible?

Well, we take a systems approach that doesn't include the word stretching, because stretching has sort of been co opted by thinking about lengthening your muscles. So, okay, let's take your neck, for example, right? One of the things we look at is, is your spine in an optimal position? Yes or no? And what we see is that if you're rounding your thoracic spine, we'll get that little hunch, which is easy. If you're texting or sitting all day long, your head ends up a little forward for every inch. In front of your center of mass, your head is. It's plus ten pounds. So your head weighs eleven pounds plus inch. It's another 22. Okay, we had it super. It's super thin.

It's not a lot going on.

So let's extrapolate that out. So running 400 meters, it's 330 steps, right? That's 330 loads. If you look at sort of the flexion load moment on your neck, extrapolate it out, times force. Bottom line is that your nervous system isn't optimized. The physiology of the human being is no longer debatable. We know what the best position is, right. If I put your head in this position, I can decrease your force production instantaneously.

When did everybody sort of come to a consensus on this? Like, when did people really start understanding real physical training? And how do you correct bad posture and issues? Like, what you're talking about is this, like, fairly recent information?

I would say this is very recent. And the reason it's recent, when the book come out, right. When do we start mobility wad? The issue is that for the first. What is wad?

Workout of the day. Is that what it is? The idea is crossfit fuckers and their acronyms.

Hey, we'll do thrusters later. It's cool.

Thrusters.

Look, the bottom line is the guy.

Who'S got a book about being a supple leopard, and then he wants to do thrusters. What is this show? Fill in the blank.

I'm from San Jeff.

You just say that to people? I lived there as a child. It's a great town.

Come fed thrusters.

Okay, buddy, settle down over there.

Sorry, I don't remember where we were.

It's a grown man. We were talking about how long this information has been out there.

So look at what's happened with the onset of the Internet. We have literally kind of hit some kind of threshold where for the first time in real time we have the best practices test retests being shared platforms. Coaches are talking to strength coaches, talking to nutritionists. Let's use your own show as a model. Look at the people you've brought on. Right. Experts in their fields, legitimate. And for the first time, we start to kind of tie in these very disparate systems. Suddenly nutrition guys are talking to gymnasts, talking to physios, and we were able to connect the dots in ways that we wouldn't. I mean, 2000 years ago, the yogis figured out that putting your arms over your head didn't align the chakras. It put the shoulder into a stable position. And so it's not like we haven't taken a crack at the human condition before, but for the first time we can sort of integrate the fields. Well, it turns out that that shoulder position is the same position. You should have your shoulder if you're pressing or if you're a young gymnast, blocking. It's the same shoulder. The motor control and technique has been worked out for us because humans are obsessed with performance. They're obsessed with lifting heavier weights and going faster when we start to kind of underlie the physiology and match that up with the principles now, like, look, if you go into any gym on the planet, people are front squatting and running and Olympic lifting and swinging kettlebells. My mom brags about her deadlift pr, right? She has an artificial knee. You know what I mean? Cats are sleeping with.

Your mom has an artificial knee and she does deadlifts.

Who doesn't deadlift with an artificial knee? Why not? Right? And she's gluten free.

Right, and gluten free.

That's right. No, you can't.

I want to definitely get to the gluten issue.

That's a very controversial issue, but no, it's not controversial.

I mean, amongst a lot of people, maybe not to you, but amongst a lot of people.

So the issue is suddenly we can tie these fields together and because we have the way to share the information and then we also, maybe you've noticed we're in the center of a human epoch, renaissance for sure. Like, look at the MMA movement. People are like, hey, I should probably learn how to fight and rule and the self empowerment. I'm not going to have a pension. I'm going to have a 401. I'm going to manage it myself. It turns out I'm responsible for my own health care. The center of responsibility has