Built to Move

April 3, 2023
In this useful program, husband and wife Kelly and Juliet Starrett (Deskbound)—founders of The Ready State company, which provides personal training services—share “instructions on how to prepare your body for whatever comes its way.” The authors detail 10 ways to make the body more resilient, focusing on how readers can achieve greater ease of movement and improve overall health. Eschewing intensive workouts, the Starretts focus on boosting mobility through simple exercises. Sitting for long stretches of time, they suggest, leads to knee and back pain, and they describe activities for engaging affected muscles, including lying down and raising one’s leg at a 90-degree angle to stretch one’s hamstrings. To fight neck and shoulder stiffness, the authors recommend lying down with a small ball under one’s shoulder and repeatedly raising one’s arm over one’s head. Additional chapters tackle sleep and diet, encouraging readers to maintain a consistent sleep schedule and eat 800 grams of fruit and vegetables per day. Helpful illustrations demonstrate how to perform the exercises and the low intensity of the workouts will appeal to those intimidated by more demanding regimens. Even couch potatoes will be motivated to get moving.

June 10, 2024

Written by married mobility experts (Deskbound) who have worked with Olympians, Navy SEALS, and professional athletes, this book is designed to increase readers' knowledge of how to move their bodies in ways that will boost strength, increase agility, and decrease pain over time. Each chapter contains a self-assessment and one illustrated physical practice, some of which require basic exercise equipment. The rest of the material explains the reasoning behind the exercises, and it offers tips to improve results. Many of the authors' sources are from within the last few years, but the anthropological article from 1955 and several sources from the 1990s and the early aughts may make some readers question the documents' validity now. The book also includes suggestions that some readers may find extreme, such as not eating for an entire 24 hours, or taping one's mouth shut to stop snoring. VERDICT While mobility, as opposed to exercise and fitness, is an intriguing concept, the outdated sources and sometimes radical lifestyle suggestions make this book difficult to recommend as a collection purchase.--Heather Sheahan

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