In today’s podcast we have the honor of sitting down with Dr. Kelly Starrett—waterman, coach, physiotherapist, and author of multiple New York Times bestsellers including Becoming a Supple Leopard and Ready to Run, as well as his most recent book Deskbound: Standing Up to a Sitting World
Kelly and his wife Juliet started one of the first ever Cross Fit Gyms (#30 to be exact) in San Francisco out of a couple of shipping containers sitting in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge. Kelly Worked on site as a PT watching and studying closely the movement patterns of the athletes. The observations and learning from this experience then led to the founding of MobilityWOD a website dedicated to becoming the ultimate guide for eliminating pain, preventing injury and maximizing athletic performance. The idea was to produce a video every day that explained proper movement mechanics as well as tips and tricks for achieving them.
Through all the invaluable content Kelly has produced, he has quickly become recognized around the world as one of the foremost experts on human performance. He now works with olympic athletes, professional sports teams in the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL, and Special Forces Units. In his work, Kelly travels the globe sharing his wealth of knowledge
I could go on for hours writing about Kelly’s credentials and accolades, but suffice it to say, he is an absolute guru and millions of people around the world have taken note
Lucky for us, Kelly also happens to be a super passionate waterman and even met his wife Juliet (who is also a world class whitewater paddler) at a paddling competition in Chile. Safe to say, the entire family is obsessed with paddling. Kelly started paddling whitewater at age 12 and was a captain of the US Canoe and Kayak white water slalom team where he won 2 national titles. Eventually he had to stop paddling due to overuse injuries that led to limited neck movement and numbness in his hands. This led him down the classic rabbit hole of cortisone shots, prednisone, etc. Ultimately Kelly took it upon himself to get to the root cause of his ailments and begin the process of healing himself through proper movement. This became much of the inspiration for his life’s work
Kelly competed in the 2015 Maui Jim Molokai in an OC1 and actively coaches OC1 paddlers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Today Kelly spends time paddling everything from whitewater, SUP, OC and his Epic V10 Sport surfski.
This podcast is fast paced with a ton of information, you’ll probably want to listen to it a couple times and reference Kelly’s website and youtube videos to put it all together, but there is no doubt in my mind that following Kelly’s guidance will be critical to ensuring a long, healthy and optimal paddling journey. Below are just a few of the topics we get into:
- Putting in the work and having the awareness to achieve correct posture and form through the duration of your paddling session
- How posture and movement impacts not only the power you can produce, but also your ability to breathe well
- Using the basic pushup to assess shoulder range of motion
- Understanding how critical shoulder range of motion is to the catch phase of the stroke
- Why the simple deadlift, performed with correct form, is so beneficial to paddling
- Using a Lacrosse Ball or even better the Super Nova to do soft tissue work that will ultimately benefit your paddling
- A small preview of what will be included in Kelly’s next book: Waterman 2.0 to be released next spring
- Lots, lots more
As a deskbound weekend warrior in my early forties who fully plans to paddle for at least another 40 years, I plan to take Kelly’s guidance to heart and implement his suggestions into my daily routines. There is no doubt he is one of the foremost gurus in the world in the movement and mobility space and we are so fortunate that he is also such a passionate paddler and has given considerable thought to how proper movement and mobility applies to paddling!
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