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Book Review: Built To Move

Get up! Move! Do it now!

published 2024-03-05 by Brad Dobson

Built To Move book cover

Verdict: 100% would buy copies of this as gifts for family members. There are many, many books and programs dedicated to improving our fitness, but I have yet to see one like Built To Move that pushes us to repair and improve the physical deficits that Western society can create. I love that their approach is mostly agnostic of your favorite diet and exercise programs, and I love that they go right to the core of what needs fixin’. We are not moving freely, nor are we living fully, because we aren’t using our bodies correctly.

Back to basics. In Built to Move: The 10 Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully, husband and wife Kelly and Juliet Starrett present us with 10 tests of our physical well-being - “Vital Signs” in their terminology - along with 10 sets of practices to improve them. The underlying theme here is that there are fundamental bodily functions that are underdeveloped (or have atrophied) in our Westernized bodies.

Yoga, Pilates, tai chi, qigong - they are all fantastic, but they are movement practices, not ways to restore range of motion … they don’t make up for hours of inactivity the remainder of the day. They aren’t compensation for sitting all the time, not sleeping, not walking enough.

— Starrett & Starrett, “Can’t I just do yoga? How about pilates?,” in Built to Move

  1. Our hip range of motion is poor and we are unable to get up and down off of the floor easily. This has been shown as a measure of both our ability to avoid falls and overall health.
  2. We are not breathing well - spaciously, slowly, through our noses, maximizing CO2 tolerance. Our ability to breathe well impacts everything in our lives, including pain tolerance, reducing depression and anxiety, and physical performance.
  3. Our hip extension is poor, reducing our ability to do forceful movements that are part of walking, running, throwing, and standing from a squat.
  4. We are sedentary - even those of us who exercise regularly - because we spend so much time sitting. We don’t walk anywhere close to enough, but we also are not breaking up our long sitting sessions at work or in front of the TV. We are built to walk (and carry) and doing so regularly has a tremendous impact on our mental and physical health.
  5. We have poor flexibility in our neck and shoulders, and that impacts our ability to perform tasks in the house and in the gym. They mention this DocMorris ad from Germany as an example (watch it … yes, it will make you cry):
  6. Our diets don’t include enough nutrients and protein, which impacts our tissues’ ability to repair and move.
  7. Our inability to organize our bodies into a full squat and then stand up again reduces our ability to do basic tasks in the real world and the gym. Squats are unique in the number of muscles and tendons they use.
  8. Our balance is poor - not just in the elderly but in all parts of the population. We sit too much and we don’t walk barefoot. Poor balance results directly in ER visits from falls.
  9. Our daytime environment for work and play is not “movement-rich”. It encourages sedentary behavior and creates all the problems we see above.
  10. Our sleep quality is poor and that, well, trashes everything.

Each of the vital signs is presented along with a simple in-home test to let you see where you stand (or sit). The tests are very supportive - in their words, “there’s no shame in getting a low score. You’re just looking at a starting point for gauging your improvement.” I did poorly(!) and considering they are baseline vital signs that was a wake-up call.

Adding these protocols to your life. Along with each test are movement protocols to help you improve your results: at first blush it is daunting to think about adding the exercises and retests to your day to day life. There are some things, especially increasing daily step count, that will definitely take time out of your schedule. Many exercises can be combined (sitting cross-legged pairs well with a meditation practice, and their suggestion of improving CO2 tolerance while walking is easy to do). The book also provides a sample 21-day schedule of how to add these exercises to your life without the whole thing being too much. It’s useful to remember that these are things to improve and maintain our bodies over a lifetime.

You could walk into the bookstore and find 100’s of different books with unique exercise programs, many of which would do you a lot of good. But it’s this one that shows you how to make changes that support any and all of those programs. When I first read Built to Move I excitedly shared it with Minette and we decided to try and add mileage to our walks. Once I moved on to the next book in my queue my interest waned as did our extra mileage. Like most people we failed to make a habit out of any of it. Reviewing the book has generated the same level of excitement again: I find myself wanting to integrate these practices into my life and improve my long-term ability to live well.