Episode 3: Kelly Starrett and Dr. Justin Mager

The four hour body.

We go back quite a ways. He is a monster. He can do a standing backflip, run an ultramarathon and can also, I think, power clean 300 plus pounds.

He's a beast.

And then the other person we have joining us or joining me, joining you guys is Dr. Justin Major, who's been my personal doctor and go to performance doc for several years now. Many years in fact. And he is an MD. He also has background exercise physiology. And when it comes to performance enhancement or living an optimal lifestyle and not just getting your recommended daily allowance and surviving, he is my go to man. And of course, as it would have it in SF, Kelly and Justin know one another.

So we had a bunch of wine.

And decided to mind meld. And that is this episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. I apologize for the background jazzy euro music, but I am currently in Verbia, Switzerland for the first time. I highly recommend it. Looking out at the mountains here, no better place to record an intro and I hope you enjoy the show. Thanks for listening.

At this altitude, I can run flat.

Out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

Can I answer your personal question? Now I'm feeling a perfect time.

What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism. Living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

We are fucking live at Casa Ferris. And this is the first podcast threesome that I've dared to venture into. But I've two fine gentlemen, two scholars and gentlemen, Kelly Starrett, doctor, professor Justin major. And yes, I've been fucking with the audio, and it took me so long that we've already had two and a half glasses of wine on empty stomachs. But I think this is going to be a good session. It's an experiment like everything else. So it'll take us a little while to get past the awkward formality of this extremely clumsy podcast intro. But Kelly, for those who don't know you, who is Kelly Starrett?

Dancer. Well, you can't see on the. What you can't see on the podcast. These are my real calves.

Even through the table. I even feel them pulsating.

That's true. Engorged calves we started. People may know me because I showed up a little bit in far our body. That's when you first did. You sent a tweet out in the universe. I need some deadlifting help. Da da. We kind of went down the rabbit hole a little bit on that.

I have tight quads, my back is bent out of shape.

Weird how that works. Yeah, you're a male athlete. Check the box. Our handle is at Mobilitywad. We start a little project, an open source. Why doesn't everyone know how to fix themselves? Which is what know sitting here with Dr. Major, which is so good.

And we have this Bermuda triangle of knowledge sharing. We've all known each other for a while.

Yeah. Well, what's interesting is the shift for me, as we kind of were gearing up and talking about this is the shift away from personally around performance. I've sort of been obsessed in a performance whore for as long. Let's lift more, let's go faster. There's always our proof of concept. You're in a better position. Let me show you. Because you can generate more wattage.

Correct.

But I have to be honest, I feel like that's this 1% and that the people we need to be talking about are moms and dads, people who are in pain, how to prevent this stuff in the first place. These are the bigger conversations.

Now, you're co founder, co creator, co conspirator of SF Crossfit.

Yes, with my wife Juliet.

That's right, sweetheart. And can probably outlift me also as well as your.

How old?

Five year old.

I have an eight year old and a five year old.

Yeah. I think your five year old can also out front squat me.

Can I jump in just for 1 second? Yes, you may. 60 minutes has been following us around for like, since October. And they were like, hey, can you show October?

That's a long time. That's a lot longer than 60 minutes. I had to pull it because everyone gives me the four hour shit.

Oh, do they really? Yeah. How funny how that works. I don't know how many hours they're going to use, but the best moment for me was they're like, hey, can you show proof of, proof of your concept with correspondence? Like, no problem. Let's do something easy like picking something up. So here's this bar. Everyone should be able to bend over, keep your back flat. Everyone agrees you shouldn't round your back when you pick something heavy. Right. Well, that actually is easier said than done. And so of course she just rounds and rounds and rounds, and we'll just teach her, hey, just got to be able to lift and reach into the crib without round your back. Pick up your baby.

Just hit her with the birch stick, basically.

Stop that. And she couldn't do it. And on camera, everything's there live. And I was like, well, why don't we pull in an athlete who can do it? So I was like, georgia, my eight year old comes right in. It must be my daughter. Doesn't even flinch on camera, like producers, microphones. Bird just deadlifts it up and there's like 25, 30 pounds. Not a big deal. And then she kind of looks at the correspondence like, wow, what's your problem? And literally, you can see the producers back with me. Like, that's good tv. I have daughters who we don't want to do professional athletes. I'm interested to get your takes on this. If you could have a kid, and we'll ask this later on, but would you let them be athletes?

It's a great question.

Well, we'll come back to that.

We'll come back because I think that's a big topic. It's an important topic. But before we do that, part three of this amazing trilogy. Dr. Major, Dr. J. Justin, we've known each other for a while. You've been my doctor for many different things. Helped me review blood tests and all the ridiculous various masochistic things that I do to myself.

Correct.

And what appealed to me about your background, among other things, is you do have a sports background, yet you also have a practicing medical background. And I think that combination sort of allows you to understand the malfunction that I have, which is this compulsive self testing. So I'm really happy that three of us are here because I feel like you guys cover so much complimentary ground, but maybe you could give people a little bit of background on yourself and just what you're up to these days.

Yeah, well, I mean, just as you said, will henceforth refer to me as Justin. I will refer to myself in the third person as do I have an exercise physiology background and degree. I had no agenda towards medicine. I was just kind of curious to go to college after my football career was not going to make it much further than high school, but I was interested in human performance and just human experience, like, what makes us alive? What makes us tick.

Did you have a pull up rack in your office?

I do, absolutely.

There you go. Bam. New screen device. Do you have a good doctor? Yes or no?

Yeah, that was when you showed up. You're like, hey, that's great.

Is my doctor going to die before I do? If yes, find another doctor.

Right. Absolutely. So I actually just wanted to study physiology. How does our body work and how can we have it perform? And I actually, by the way, my. My fifth year of undergrad,