Ten minutes of maintenance

Kelly Starrett is a physical therapist in San Francisco who in 2013 wrote Becoming a Supple Leopard, a large book with a small message: your body needs daily maintenance the way your teeth do, and almost nobody does it.

His argument is that most of the pain and most of the lost performance people bring to him comes not from weakness but from tissues that have stiffened and joints that have lost their range. Hips that won't open because of chairs. Shoulders that won't go overhead because of keyboards. Ankles that won't bend because of shoes. None of it is permanent. All of it takes ten to fifteen minutes a day to undo and keep undone.

The practices are plain. Slow, sustained pressure on tight tissue, with a ball or a roller. Long holds at the edge of a joint's range, breathing, until it gives. And the test he applies to everything: can you get into the position with good form? If you can't squat below parallel with your heels down and your back flat, the problem isn't your strength program. It's that your body can't get there yet.

I'd put this key beside brushing your teeth. Nobody expects a dentist to fix neglect. Starrett asks for the same with your joints: ten minutes a day, forever, and most of what goes wrong won't.

It's in the month of the Body because the strength you've been building needs somewhere to go. A muscle that's getting stronger across a stiff joint is a problem being built. Mobility is what lets the strength be used.