FoundMyFitness
#111 The Optimal Mobility Protocol for a Durable Body | Dr. Kelly Starrett
24 Apr 2026
Chapter 1: What insights does Dr. Kelly Starrett offer about pain and injury?
Hello, friends. Today, my guest is Dr. Kelly Starrett, a remarkable person I've admired for a very long time and someone who's truly reshaped the way we think about movement, pain, and physical resilience.
Kelly is not only a doctor of physical therapy, he's a celebrated movement expert, a coach, but also a best-selling author who's inspired countless people, from professional athletes to everyday individuals, to reclaim and maintain their mobility and physical durability over a lifetime. Kelly,
Kelly is the co-founder and chief health officer of The Ready State, co-founder of San Francisco CrossFit, and author of some influential books, including Becoming a Supple Leopard, Ready to Run, Deskbound, and Built to Move.
But beyond all of these accomplishments, what's drawn me to Kelly's work for years is his rare gift for taking complex movement science and translating it into practical, actionable guidance that just makes sense. He has been a tireless advocate for the idea that mobility isn't just an accessory to our training.
It's foundational for how we move, how we recover, adapt, and continue enjoying the things we love as we age.
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Chapter 2: How can we effectively manage persistent pain while training?
And that perspective shines throughout this conversation. This was a deeply enjoyable and insightful conversation and one I've genuinely been looking forward to for years.
In this episode, you will learn why pain does not always mean injury and how to think more intelligently about nagging pain that shows up during training, what a warm-up should actually accomplish, and why the goal is not just avoiding injury, but improving tissue readiness, movement quality, and performance.
How to assess and improve hip and shoulder mobility, including simple at-home tests that can reveal missing range of motion. Why breathing mechanics matter for spinal movement, force production, pain modulation, and athletic performance. How movement snacks, walking, floor sitting, and better desk setups can help offset the cost of a sedentary life.
How to think about blood flow, heat exposure, cold exposure, and simple self-care tools for recovery. Why Kelly's framework, Train for Life, Don't Live to Train, may be one of the most useful ideas for anyone who wants to stay strong, stay capable, and physically independent as they age.
And we also discuss what's gone wrong in youth sports, from over-specialization and under-recovery to sleep deprivation, poor fueling, and the disappearance of free play, and what parents can do about it. and so much more. Before we dive in, if you haven't already downloaded my free How to Train According to the Experts Guide, this is a great companion to today's episode.
It distills insights from more than 100 conversations with leading exercise scientists into practical evidence-based protocols for strength, hypertrophy, cardiorespiratory fitness, body composition, and even sauna use. You can download it right now for free at howtotrainguide.com. Once again, that's howtotrainguide.com.
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When you become a premium member, you'll get instant access to a private members-only podcast called The Aliquot, where I release special episodes like how to slow joint degeneration, creatine myths and misconceptions, how to optimize recovery and prevent overtraining, and so much more.
We have over 145 Aliquot episodes available for your listening right now for all premium members who support the show. Thank you so much for having me. A huge thank you to all of those who support. You can find out more about becoming a Found My Fitness Premium member and supporting the show and getting all these perks at foundmyfitness.com forward slash premium.
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Chapter 3: What role does breathing play in mobility and recovery?
Once again, that's foundmyfitness.com forward slash premium, P-R-E-M-I-U-M. And now onto the podcast with Dr. Kelly Starrett. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm really excited to be sitting here with Dr. Kelly Starrett. Who, it kind of sounds cheesy, but like, I mean, this is 10 years in the making, I feel like. I mean, I've known about your work for a very long time.
And it really wasn't until I started to get into CrossFit training that it kind of popped back up into my head and my world.
Why is that?
Yeah.
Why is that? I mean, you're a legend. You're a legend, Kelly. So I'm super excited to have this conversation with you. And we were kind of chatting about where to start because it's a really hard decision where to start. having a conversation.
There's so many fun things to talk about, right?
So many fun things.
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Chapter 4: Why is it important to incorporate leisure activities into fitness routines?
And we're in the, we're in what we're calling the beginning of third wave of fitness and strength and conditioning. Like first wave you remember was like power, nut malt, malt nut power bars, bad heart rate monitors. Second wave is just this fever dream over the last 20 years of like mass integration and technology and YouTube. And now we're finally saying, okay, well, what can we discard?
And really what does matter to us? And I think it's really an exciting time potentially where we can say, okay, that was some craziness. We live in these very decorative rooms, like your grandma's room with all the doilies. It's like oppressive and you don't know where to start or where to sit. That's where we've just come from.
So now how do we take that pastiche of strength, conditioning, fitness, body composition, bodybuilding, and then say, well, what's important for your kids? How do you have this body that you trust doesn't hurt? It's really, it's a good time.
Yes, what lessons have we learned? A body that doesn't hurt. That's kind of a great place to start. I mean, I have this question about common mistakes that I would say people that are like myself, you know, we're intelligent, very much committed, motivated exercisers. And yet we still have this pain and we're working out with the pain.
What are some common mistakes that myself and others that are like me are making?
Let's frame this first, that pain doesn't always mean you're injured. Right. We want everyone to recognize pain as a request for change. That's a great place to start. And so you can use it a little bit like a check engine light. So when your knee hurts after that run or that thing you did, don't panic. It's giving you it's asking, hey, pay attention.
And that can be modulated by a lot of features that people are starting to get their hands around. Oh, you're super stressed. Went drinking last night, didn't sleep, right? How's your nutrition? As starters, much less, we haven't talked about your range of motion or did you warm up or did you cool down? Did you just redline like an elite athlete?
Because we have access to that now and then sit at your desk the rest of the day, sort of not really having a good adaptation response. So when we begin to pull with that, I think the first thing we can start to say is, hey, let's become curious. Let's not catastrophize. Because it really is. What we expect is, I'm going to have any pain. It's like when I was 15. My back hurts.
It must be rabies. It must be, you know, I've tweaked myself in some way that potentially is gonna be really detrimental and never figure it out. Versus, hey, my body's asking for some input. What tools do I have? And when do I even begin to think, do I need help or not? Because when we ask all the people we work with, who's pain-free, very few hands go up.
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Chapter 5: How can deliberate heat exposure aid recovery?
That's fantastic.
Right.
And I mean, it's probably a lot of things going on, but I feel like blood flow is one, right? You're getting all the goodies to your muscle to recover and your tendons and so on. But the other way to do that would be something that I've definitely talked about a lot on this podcast and I know that you're a fan of.
Chapter 6: What role does blood flow play in muscle recovery?
which is deliberate heat exposure through sauna or hot tub, where you're also increasing blood flow. I mean, it's sort of mimicking moderate intensity cardiovascular exercise. So I wanted to get your thoughts on, first of all, using temperature, both hot and then on the opposite end of that would be cold, which causes vasoconstriction. Combining the two, how you think about using that for...
healing, recovery, and then we can talk about growth hormone too, because I want to bring up something as well.
We're huge fans of...
entertainment of your body michael easter talks about the comfort crisis just that exposure to those ends making you a little bit more psychologically resilient how about that there's probably a ton of really good science thank you for showing us all about the sauna exposure heat exposure simultaneously i would say that what if the sauna miracle of the sauna was just that you have to chill out and be in there with your partner and there's no phone and there's a community
I think it can work on lots of levels. We tend – I think the easiest way of thinking, and I'll borrow this from our friend Laird and Gabby, that heating up and cooling down are two of the most expensive things our body does. And if we can become a little bit more efficient at it, that's probably a good thing.
Getting cold and getting hot might be really great for your range of motion of your vasculature, just reminding your – You know, all those smooth vessels, this is what it means to get cold and this is what it means to get hot. And you're right. Maybe the fundamental aspect of sauna is that we just start moving and pumping and things start, you know, that's great. I'm into it.
Now we can say, well, how often, when should I, can I make it too hot? You actually brought our temperature way down. Thank you very much. We listened. And now we're at like 180, not 230. I'm not retching in the sauna anymore because I'm overheated. But I think if we're talking about performance, great research around sauna. We can sauna, sauna, sauna.
But it's a stressor and will definitely smoke you. We probably tend to use cold a little bit more judiciously because it can blunt adaptation to exercise, right? Which is not what we're trying to do. And yet simultaneously, I would just say, hey, if you're a middle-aged rec guy, get cold when it works for you. Don't worry about it.
If we're trying to win a gold medal, maybe we think about when we're dosing that exposure of cold so we don't blunt any adaptation. But if we're talking about jumping in some cold water for a minute, that's not the same thing as icing.
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Chapter 7: Why is it important for kids to engage in unstructured play?
And full disclosure, my wife and I are professional river guides and kayakers and paddlers. We've been cold our whole life, it feels like. So we're like, oh, this is just like my 20s, being freezing in a river. But I think – It's real fun to entertain ourselves a little bit on the side.
And I think maybe we can look at some of those objects as like totemic objects that focus other health behaviors. Maybe that's the best, nicest thing about them.
Right. Yeah. Well, I wanted to bring up growth hormone because, one, I want to get your input on what I'm going to say, but also because there's not a lot of research on this. There's like – independent research in one area and in the other, and you kind of have to connect the dots, right? Which isn't always great, but it's a start.
And so we know that sauna, deliberate heat exposure, does increase growth hormone. So growth hormone does respond to a stressful type of stress, right? So you can do that through exercise. You can do it through deliberate heat exposure. You can do it through intermittent fasting. All those things have been shown to increase growth hormone.
And depending on the temperature and duration, you can get a more robust response, right?
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Chapter 8: How do we address the challenges of youth sports specialization?
So like the longer you do the sauna, the more hot without going above, you know, 200 degree Fahrenheit, you're going to get a more robust response with growth hormone.
And
you know, the effects of growth hormone, particularly on like tendons, making them stronger. I believe that's, that's something that's, you know, known. So my, my idea here is like, is this, is using the sauna also potentially, you know, helping your tendons because of that growth hormone pulse that you're, you know, getting from, from doing exercise also does right.
It elevates growth hormone as well.
But if we're managing, uh, someone's pain or after injury, again, I might even say hard for me to measure that growth hormone effect. But what is really useful is that I can get people feel better. We get better blood flow without having to work hard on a tissue that we need to protect temporarily, right? It's easy to do that in sort of
I don't have to, you know, we're lucky we have a sauna, but maybe you have one at home and you don't have to drive. We can have lots of these little sort of exposures more often. And ultimately, I think it would be real fun to be like, I got into the sauna and look at my skin now. It's amazing. All right. One time. But it's really the consistency of these exposures.
I think we just it's easy to sort of lose that. We love the sauna because we have a bunch of friends who are maniacs who work really hard. They're at the peak of their power. They're families. And we find it to be the easiest e-brake to yank to slow them down. In the evening, if you get hot and cold a couple times, you're going to fall asleep because it's so exhausting.
But what I really like is you start to say, hey, here's a practice that's pretty easy to low skill, and maybe I could really goose my tissue healing times by optimizing. Because now we start to say, well, are you getting enough protein? Are you getting enough sleep? How are we getting that blood moving? And if there's side effects from some of these things, that's really great. I'll take it.
Right. And the nice thing now is I think there's enough research showing that even getting in a hot tub, hot bath, you could do a hot bath. Most people do have a bathtub at home. You will have to get a little pool thermometer and make sure you're at 140 Fahrenheit. So you might have to constantly refill the bath for it to stay hot for 20 minutes.
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