Dr. Kelly Starrett

We wish we could just be fit and then go do sports.

And that's certainly a recipe for overuse because you can be like, I served for four hours today, my first time back.

You're like, why did my shoulder hurt so bad?

Well, you haven't loaded those tissues.

You haven't said it's safe to your brain.

So you hint at something really important, which is that the brain is really a tool that's designed for safety, right?

It's in survival, it's not designed for optimization.

And so when we take this lesson that your brain is really trying to protect you and is like, what's a threat, not a threat.

There's a reason you're like, I'm a little concerned about being held down and like, because you probably did that once or twice.

And your brain's like, we're not doing that again.

And I see what you're doing, you're dragging us back out.

So how do we signal safety to the body?

How do we signal safety to the brain?

Well, that'd be one way.

But suddenly you start to expand that.

Sleep is safety.

Nutrition is safety.

Having access to my range of motion is safety, right?

Things that don't hurt is safe.

We can really start to put in a lot of ideas around how do we help the brain optimize for performance through feeling safe.