YOUR NEW MOBILITY VITAL SIGNS

You know your vital signs for health. This four-part test reveals them for mobility, which is key to building strength and avoiding knee, back, and shoulder pain.

- BEN COURT

WORKING WITH pro athletes, the military, and civilian fitness heads in the early 2000s, physical therapist Kelly Starrett noticed a recurring problem. Many people were in pain and lacked a complete range of motion for basic moves like squats and lunges. That inspired Starrett to create what he called "mobilizations," which take your joints to different places, unstick compressed soft tissue (skin, nerves, muscles, and tendons), and ingrain new patterns of movement. That helped birth mobility training. Starrett's website, MobilityWOD-renamed the Ready State in 2019-popularized daily mobility work like squat challenges and foam rolling, and his books (Becoming a Supple Leopard, Deskbound) espoused more and better movement. Starrett, now 49, is a tattooed, balding canary in the coal mine of wellness who has been warning of the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle for a while. During a Zoom interview with MH, he's on the floor with his feet down and his knees raised, sitting on a lacrosse ball to smash his right glute, and he's really frustrated.

"We've had a revolution in fitness with the commoditization of training, but if fitness is the laboratory of our health and we're applying what we're learning to society, we're not doing very well," he says. "Almost every metric-obesity, back pain, ACL-injury rates, depression, even life expectancy-is trending in a worse direction." Starrett and his wife, Juliet, provide solutions with their new book, Built to Move: The 10 Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully. Along with tactics to hit your sleep, step, and protein goals, it details several tests for basic moves that you should be able to do. "Just as you have vital signs for other aspects of your health, so these are vital movement signs," he says. "Your range of motion has real implications for health span and life span."