Simple habits you may already be doing optimized to help you dial up your workouts and health when you leave the Club.
“A one-hour workout at Equinox is not enough to make people a fully durable human,” says Dr. Kelly Starrett, PT, and co-author of the new book Built to Move: Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully (Knopf, 2023) with his wife, Juliet Starrett, who work with elite athletes and coaches as part of their business, The Ready State.
While you push the envelope during your workouts and pride yourself on doing your best to take care of your whole self inside and out when you leave the Club, there’s more you can be doing to prepare your body for whatever comes your way.
We get it; Equinox time is “you time.” Right now, that might be the only time you think you have to take care of your body. But the other 23 hours of the day are also important…particularly if you aren’t getting the results you want in body composition, strength, endurance or hitting your one-rep max, says Kelly.
That’s where Built to Move comes in with 10 assessment tests and 10 physical practices that show you how to work your body better and weave them into your daily routine. At the minimum, aim to do some of these mobilizations for 10 minutes a day.
1. Sit and rise test: Determines if you have good range-of-motion in your hips
2. Breathe-hold test: This shows if you’re breathing spaciously, slowly, and to maximize carbon dioxide tolerance.
3. Couch test: Determines hip extension ability.
4. Take a steps-per-day inventory: Highlights where you could be more active.
5. Airport Scanner Arms Raise Test; Shoulder Rotation Test: These highlight upper body limitations.
6. The micronutrient assessment (800-gram count; Protein count): Eat 800 grams of fruits and vegetables daily (about six cups); Eat grams 0.7 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight.
7. Squat test: Practicing getting into a full-range (low) squat can show range of motion limitations.
8. Balance tests (Stand On One Leg, Eyes Closed): Balance affects every aspect of mobility, and practicing balance can help prevent falls.
9. Sitting inventory test: Note how often you sit in a chair and find more opportunities to stand throughout the day.
10. Assess how many hours you’re sleeping: Aim for at least seven hours a night.
What was it about these 10 principles that made the Starretts include them in this book? “We found that these 10 signs were the biggest hinges that opened the doors and improved people’s durability,” says Juliet. "Durability to us means the ability to move freely, with less pain and be able to do the things you want to do physically." It helps maintain a healthy, robust and pain-free body. “These are the 10 behaviors and practices that we realistically have been able to fit into our busy time-crunched lives that have moved the lever the most for us as individuals,” Juliet says.
Here are a few principles you can apply to your daily schedule that won’t take up a lot of time.
3 Habits to Practice to Move Freely, Pain Free, and Live a Healthier Life:
Improve Your Range of Motion.
The first test challenges you to go from a standing position to a seated one, and then rise up again, without using your hands for balance. Sounds easier than it is. (Go try it, we’ll wait.)
What this exercise shows is your hips’ range of motion, balance, and other mobility essentials. Many of us who sit all day at desks for a living are likely to have tight hips and decreased mobility from being in this position.
“The consequence of not putting money in that mobility and mobilization [bank] is that people's worlds can start to get very small, either they suffer from an injury where they can no longer do what they want to do, or they lose their native range of motion and can't do basic things that they love to do,” says Kelly.
“Mobility means the ability to move freely throughout your environment, without pain, and to be able to do the things you want to do physically with your body, as long as you want to be able to do them,” Kelly says.
This sit-to-stand test illuminates the expression of range of motion. “Getting up and down off the ground without your hands is not a fitness issue, it's not a strength issue,” says Kelly. “But oftentimes, we find that people are actually missing big chunks of their ability to move effortlessly freely.” That can cost athletes and fitness enthusiasts down the line when you want to learn a new skill and are limited by mobility issues or experience pain.
The Starretts outline seated floor exercises and mobilizations you can do in the book to help loosen up tissues in the legs and help you achieve more fluidity.
Step It up throughout the Day.
If the only “activity” you do each day is your workout at the Club, chances are, it’s not enough movement to counteract the adverse health effects of all the sitting you’re doing — that includes a higher risk of death from all causes if you sit for more than six hours a day, according to research in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
The recommendation in Built to Move is to increase the non-exercise activity (NEA) throughout the day so you hit 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day, ideally 12,000. This helps maintain the fluidity of the tissues and joints and reduces overall pain from sitting too much.
“We have found working with elite groups in our coaching practice that when they increase the step count and non-exercise activity throughout the day, it actually helps people sleep,” says Juliet. Speaking of which…
You Need to Focus On Your Sleep.
As someone who tries their best to take care of their body, you know how important it is to prioritize rest and recovery. But despite your best efforts, you might still struggle with sleep — whether that’s getting enough quality hours, falling asleep, or even staying asleep.
This vital sign strategy is to focus on getting at least seven hours of sleep a night. It’s been well-established that athletes perform better when they’ve gotten enough sleep; they’re also less likely to get injured and feel the effects of pain. The same goes for you.
“We don’t think any of the vital signs are more important than the others,” says Juliet. “But if pressed by someone who insists on asking us what we think is the single most important thing, our joint answer is always “sleep,” because to us everything, every other positive, healthy behavior flows from a well-rested body.”
Better sleep means you’ll be less likely to want to skip that morning workout, or eat unhealthy foods, and science says you’ll probably be in a better mood throughout the day.
Learn Tools to Help You Self-Soothe if Something Hurts.
The exercises in the book are designed to help your body well, move better — and without pain.
If you can restore your native position, and get to that innate range of motion that every physical therapist and every surgeon thinks you should have and you can actually improve your positioning, that can help eliminate old nagging physical problems and pain points, says Kelly.
“By giving people these sorts of benchmarks, these vital signs of key positions in the book, what it does is it expands this notion of, ‘my training also maintains my ability to move, have more movement choices and move more effectively in the rest of the world,’” says Kelly. In other words, when you go to pick up a bag of bats for your kids’ baseball practice, you won’t throw your back out.
When you turn the dial on some of these really basic behaviors — like improving hip range of motion, prioritizing sleep, getting enough micronutrients, and walking more throughout the day — you’ll be more likely to see much better results from the work you’re doing in the Club.