Juliet and Dr. Kelly Starrett - Your Back Pain Isn't Your Back

**Juliet Starrett** (0:00)
We are living in an environment that is causing us to be in flex positions all the time. We're sitting, we're sitting on our bikes, you know, we're sitting in the car, we're sitting for most of our lives. I do think, especially if you are using your body as an midlife to older person, some musculoskeletal pain is another one.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:21)
There seems to be this accelerated loss of muscle, whether it's aging or inactivity. What is it that we need to be doing?

**Dr. Kelly Starrett** (0:30)
As you get older and you're not sleeping and don't have the nutrition, your ability to adapt to a stimulus is less. You're going to be sore, you're not going to get the gains everyone else get. The key here is range of motion doesn't have to change as you age.

**Juliet Starrett** (0:45)
We all have adopted this very small movement diet, and that just like nutrition, we need to expand our movement diet. I would say everybody should test themselves on those basic movement vital signs just in the same way that you would test your blood pressure and then work to improve those.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:03)
How do we determine what they need to work on?

**Dr. Kelly Starrett** (1:08)
We recognize that these fundamental shapes increase our movement language, increase our movement options, but that single behavior starts to do a whole lot of things. Turns out.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:26)
Kelly and Juliet, the Starretts, I would say that you don't need an introduction, but I'm going to give you one. I have been listening to both of you for years.

**Dr. Kelly Starrett** (1:37)
You don't get that time back. I'm so sorry.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:39)
Well, I consider it an investment. And an investment, you are both incredibly humble. But when I think about the concept of movement as medicine, I don't want to put any pressure here, but you both were visionaries. And I say you both because you're a physical therapist, your extraordinary wife, CEO and lawyer, just and also both so athletic and parents, tremendous amount of respect because it's not easy.

**Juliet Starrett** (2:08)
Well, thank you so much for having us. And it's long overdue, and we're just so delighted to be here. And we feel the same about you. I mean, we love that we've been sort of following each other in the background. And it took us a bit too long to get together, but we're so happy to be here.

**Dr. Kelly Starrett** (2:24)
It's so fun to do what we do. We love it. And we're standing on the shoulders of giants, all of us, of course.
But one of the things I respect about you so much and this community and the place you work is that you show your work. You have this track record of clear, you're not just videoing yourself dead lifting in a commercial gym. So I just want to say that it's time for everyone to know if you're following, listen to someone, know what their bona fides are. Let's talk about the resumes. Let me see your inputs and outputs. And you've been doing that really well.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (2:53)
Why? Thank you.
You don't know this about me yet, but I will take compliments and gifts. So redhead. I spend a lot of time really thinking about this episode because throughout your career and I would say throughout all of our lives, there's this idea of performance in the beginning. And we think about, you know, how do we build stronger glutes so that we can run faster or jump higher or we've, we just evolve as we also get older. And selfishly, as I look back and I think about all my injuries, I think, what is the landscape showing us now? And you wrote, you know, the first book is Supple Uppard.
With it, by the way, I'm sure people are still reading it.

**Juliet Starrett** (3:34)
They're.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:34)
And as I think about, as we age, how is your thoughts transformed? I guess is the best way to say it. As you've gotten older and you guys have worked with so many elite people and yet we're all aging.

**Juliet Starrett** (3:50)
Yeah, I mean, we, I think probably like you in our 20s and 30s, we're really focused on working with high performers to make them like just two seconds faster. And how can we make someone lift just a little bit more, like working at the margins of performance.
And then I don't know if it's because we aged or, or what the transition was, but we sort of stopped caring as much about that, about making the best better. And we really started wanting to expand our work and our thinking to, you know, how do we make everyday people feel and be more healthy, and especially in this sort of aging phase of our lives, like 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. And so that's been what we've, we care more about now. How do we live well? How do we enjoy life? How do we make sure that we're, you know, involved in health practices that aren't our entire identity, but work? So I think that's where we've been, we've had a big shift, I think, in the last 10 years.