Book review: build to move
Even if you just read the words “No exercise. No cardio. No strength training. Instead, a simple set of activities that enhance your capacity for free and easy movement, and in doing so also improve all the systems in your body (digestive, circulatory, immune, lymphatic) that are impacted by putting yourself in motion” you’d probably Built to Move by Kelly and Juliet Starrett is right on brand with Fitbynature’s philosophy!
I first found Starrett in his book Becoming a Supple Leopard and if there’s one thing that’s since become foundational in fitbynature’s philosophy is his concept of the "single joint", where we organise and stabilise movement around our hips and shoulders, rather than our spine. Simply, when performing functional movements like squats or deadlifts, the primary flexion and extension should occur at the hips and shoulders, not by rounding or bending the spine. Applying the "one-joint" rule helps improve stability, prevent injury, and simplify movement mechanics by creating a stable platform for force generation. Stability. That’s what we’re all working towards!
In this most recent book, Starrett compares a 23yo Olympic mountain -biker and 68yo boomer-grandma, not something most assume have anything in common. But they both need the same basic mobility maintenance-ways to address, preserve, and enhance the natural human physical condition. And that’s all in daily mobility to keep our bodies in well-oiled-machine-tip-top-shape. We all need daily mobility
In health, people tend to get siloed according to various details-their ages, their activity levels, their abilities, their individual aches and pains. What Built to Move does is bridge that divide because all bodies are built to move! No matter what our extracurricular activities, as humans we're all fighting technology creep, food confusion, stress, sleep disruption, and the inevitable process of aging. Built to Move prepares you to play the long game: it teaches us what's to be learned from the most durable people among us, to be our most durable!
The thing about mobility is that it’s what makes everybody perform at the top of their game, even if that game is nearly dormant in a chair (actually esp them!). The practices that maximise mobility are the same for everyone because it turns out what makes an elite athlete excel also makes a non athlete a more agile vital and pain free human being - and the good news is you hardly need to be an athlete to work mobility practices into your life. The practices that maximise mobility are the same for everyone!
Again we’re not talking about exercise. Exercise is vital for your heart and lungs your muscles your body composition your peace of mind and hundred other things. Exercise doesn’t replace practices that engage the muscles tissues bones and joints in acts of simple yet vital movements. Nor can they destitute for the practices that support these movements. How much sleep for instance affects how much pain you feel and therefore how much you move during the day. It’s all connected!
Movement is putting your body in motion by ways of stepping, bending, crouching, shifting your weight, reaching, pushing, pulling, even fidgeting. It’s a combination of physical actions that keep everything, joints to digestive system, in good working order. We all move in some way every day, yet most of us don’t move enough or in all the ways we need to in order to keep doing so. If you’re so hyper specialised that you fall apart when we hand you a weight and ask you to do a lunge you’re not really that functional. And isn’t that what we all really want to be? Functional at the level that allows us to do everything we want and need to do?
Regardless of what your goals are - it could be just fulfilling your daily obligations without being encumbered by a body that hurts - this is where you start for today and the future. Built to Move features 10 essential habits that will help you live a longer, healthier life: the mobility you foster now will ease you into your later years too. So let’s start putting some of these ten optimisations in practice and harnessing our body’s power to achieve agility ease and quickness of step while vanquishing restriction rigidity and pain foreverrrrrr.
