Improve your athletic performance, extend your athletic career, treat stiffness and achy joints, and prevent and rehabilitate injuries—all without having to seek out a coach, doctor, chiropractor, physical therapist, or massage therapist. In Becoming a Supple Leopard, Dr. Kelly Starrett shares his revolutionary approach to mobility and maintenance of the human body and teaches you how to hack your own movement, allowing you to live a healthier, more fulfilling life.
This new edition of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller has been thoroughly revised to make it even easier to put to use. Want to truly understand the principles that guide human movement? Becoming a Supple Leopard lays out a blueprint for moving safely and effectively through life and sport. Want to learn how to apply those principles to specific movements, whether you are doing squats in the gym or picking up a bag of groceries? Hundreds of step-by-step photos show you not only how to perform a host of exercise movements, such the squat, deadlift, pushup, kettlebell swing, clean, snatch, and muscle-up, but also how to correct the common faults associated with those movements. Frustrated because you can’t perform a certain movement correctly due to range of motion restrictions? Breaking the body down into 14 distinct areas, Starrett demonstrates hundreds of mobilization techniques that will help you resolve restrictions and reclaim your mobility. Unsure how to put it all together into a program that addresses your individual needs? This updated edition lays out dozens of prescriptions that allow you to hone in on a specific limitation, a nagging injury, or an exercise fault that you just can’t seem to get right. It even offers a 14-day full-body mobility overhaul.
Performance is what drives us as human beings, but dysfunctional movement patterns can bring the human body to an abrupt halt. Often, the factors that impede performance are invisible even to seasoned athletes and coaches. Becoming a Supple Leopard makes the invisible visible. Whether you are a professional athlete, a weekend warrior, or simply someone wanting to live healthy and free from physical restrictions, this one-of-a-kind training manual will teach you how to harness your athletic potential and maintain your body. Learn how to perform basic maintenance on your body, unlock your athletic potential, live pain-free…and become a Supple Leopard. This step-by-step guide to movement and mobility will show you how to:
• Move safely and efficiently in all situations
• Organize your spine and joints in optimal, stable positions
• Restore normal function to your joints and tissues
• Accelerate recovery after training sessions and competition
• Properly perform strength and conditioning movements like the squat, bench press, pushup, deadlift, clean, and snatch
• Build efficient, transferable movement patterns and skill progressions from simple to more advanced exercises
• Identify, diagnose, and correct inefficient movement patterns
• Treat and resolve common symptoms like low back pain, carpal tunnel, shoulder pain, and tennis elbow
• Prevent and rehabilitate common athletic injuries Use mobilization techniques to address short and stiff muscles, soft tissue and joint capsule restriction, motor control problems, and joint range of motion limitations
• Create personalized mobility prescriptions to improve movement efficiency
The author simplified the content in easy to visualize bits. There is no room to misinterpret what is being presented.
Finally figured out and fixed knee and shoulder pain that I’ve dealt with for nearly 10 years after 1 month of reading and implementing the solutions presented in this book
Thank you!
Thank you Kelly and Team for your thorough research and development of the material.
I've had a slap tear in my bicep from benching. A double hip surgery to help with him impingement. Multiple herniated discs. Labrum repair in hips with microfractures. Bilateral broken feet. Years of PT kind of gave me an idea of what I needed in my head. A large swathe or experi nice or what worked and didn't. This book def helps with getting those tissues to work the way they are supposed too.
Highly recommend. Obviously.
UNTIL riding home on my motorcycle a person pulled out and smeared me 30+ feet down the roadway breaking something on about every limb, wheel chair and hospital bed ridden, had to learn to walk again.
Forced me to retire early from the police and in severe pain where all I did was drink to wash it away the pain.
Non of this self medicating help a bit until I got on board with Dr. Kelly Stattetts programs for mobility. I’m at a point now where I feel I am ready to start running again.
Thanks Dr. Kelly Starrett for what you do!!!
Anyone who is interested in a strength training program should read this. Not just for serious athletes, it’s for everyone interested in a healthier stronger body. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
It is well written with enough detail to inform any athlete or trainer, but simple enough for anyone to read it and benefit.
When you wasted your days at the gym in pursuit of vanity, I cultivated INNER TORQUE
And now that your quads are on fire and your shoulders are all douchy, you have the audicity to come to me for help?
But seriously, this book is awesome. I feel like a new person who has been let out of jail. 10/10 would buy again!
I was happy to find the self care section in the later portion of the book. It shows the a real basic way to help do "smash" or myofascial work at home/gym. The laymen probably wont understand the directions well, but to a health care or trainer it is easy to read and understand. there is are also care plans in the book.
But seriously, this contains some of the most comprehensive data on the human body I've ever read. Wish I had found this years ago when I first started training...could have saved myself a lot of downtime from injuries!
Very helpful book with pictures and all you need to work on your posture and exercise safely.
- Athletes of ANY KIND
- CrossFitters
- Desk jockies
- Manual laborers
- Weight lifters
- People with bodies
- People with pain
- People with tendonitis issues
- People with past injuries
Comprehensive and "textbook like" in its approach = addressing prevention and recovery
Perfect for newbies like me or more avid athletes
And the second edition, is well worth a second purchase, in my humble opinion.
2nd "try" has more info, is better organized, with more complete and clearer photo's and explanations.
Great VALUE, for any serious athlete/trainer, of any age.
dan white
I drive many miles a day, and this book is helping me mitigate the destructive effects of all that time in the car.
I was diagnosed with kyphosis (similar to scoliosis, think hunched back) in high school. It was not that bad, most people would never notice, but I had some back pain. Doctors just said there was not much I could do.
10 years later I started lifting and came across Kelly's work and started working to improve my body mechanics. I have significantly improved the curvature of my spine and mobility in my spine, hips, and shoulders. I notice big differences when I look in the mirror and have much less back pain.
I am in my 20s, but see my parents loosing their mobility in their 50s. I have shared th book and ideas with them. I am sure this will help me stay functional long past my 50s and 60s.
It’s almost a call to arms, a revolution in who we are and how we treat our bodies. It shouldn’t be of course, but the idea that you can do work on your own body is one I have come to embrace. Not just lifting and building muscle but fixing your own injuries. Digging deeper into your own body, learning what is wrong with it and working through a path to fix it yourself.
The idea behind this book is that everyone should be able to move well, like jungle cats. That the body was designed for optimum movement for a long time. If you can’t now that doesn’t mean you can’t in the future.
Supple Leopard is the guide to better movement and performance. It can help you resolve any problem issues and how to do it yourself.
Kelly Starrett is an athlete, a former high level kayaker, the owner of San Francisco Crossfit and a Doctor of Physical Therapy. The guy knows a bit about movement. He’s used his experience as an athlete and physio to turn his gym into a testing ground, a lab for physical movement and how to get better.
Supple Leopard is a textbook, like a dictionary for your body. When I have a physical issue from jiu-jitsu training or lifting weights this is the first place I turn. It’s a thick, dense read that is best chipped away at or pulled out and used when needed.
His message that you have control over your own health is empowering. You can sort out and resolve many of your physical problems. But it won’t be easy and it might not be quick.
Kelly wants you to commit to ten minutes a day of basic maintenance. Find your weak points and work on them. Can’t squat? He’ll show you a progression how to get there and then you best be doing some squat practice everyday. Bad shoulders and can’t lift overhead? There’s plenty for that too.
He talks about fundamental movement patterns and positions that we should all be able to get into. and how we should all be able to get into them. If we can’t something is wrong. So we then we should fix it.
Much of what we do all day everyday goes against how our bodies evolved. Sitting down, reaching forward all day tapping at keys or swiping at phones. Wearing huge soles between us and the ground as we drink and eat poor quality food. And then we try and exercise. Is it any surprise when that doesn't go well?
Starrett thinks the human body is an amazing machine that can take an obscene amount of abuse. When it breaks it can break hard but it doesn’t have to.
Check out his website MobilityWOD for great free content including hundreds of videos. He’s gone on to write a book on how to run without pain, Ready to Run. And has just come out with Deskbound on how to stand up from the desk and change your life. He and wife Juliet run Stand Up Kids where they try and get standing desks in schools. To stop our kids from getting messed up like we did. They are super heroes.
This is a big expensive book but if you are going to be harder to destroy it’s a must. It gives you the tools to make yourself better and more awesome. This one is a lock for the shelf.
Remove restrictions, practice movement quality.... then do whatever you want to get tired, with potentially less risk of injury and less unnecessary wear and tear.
KStar, since you work with so many different military, fire/ EMS departments... I would recommend that you do a book for tactical athletes & first responders that focus on our problem areas and our specific problem areas.
One warning: This is a big technical book, that is more of a textbook than just your average fitness book. Geared toward coaches and trainers and physical therapists. But if I can find value here, so can others looking to improve mobility.
Convinced, I purchased the book. It's an eye-opening experience to have a book describe exactly the pain you're having, exactly the position you have that pain in, and what you can do to resolve it while fixing the root cause(s) as well. Then there's the movement and mobility tests where you realize exactly how stiff you're becoming, and the fixes for the problems that would otherwise be rearing their heads down the line. With clear language and illustrative photographs, this gem of a book will show you how to optimize yourself to become pain free and to move unrestricted. The true essence of a supple leopard.
However, a few weeks ago I tweaked something at work. To the point that I couldn't lift my left leg for three days. I could only take forward steps with my right leg and any effort to move the left leg about was met with excruciating pain in my hip. Finally went to the doctor and she suspected it was actually my spine. This allowed me to at least focus on reducing inflammation and improving mobility in the right area and the function of my leg/hip came back. However, I could tell I was walking right on the edge of being debilitated again. I had to be very cautious bending over, sitting down, standing up... stretching the area was extremely difficult but seemed to help for a day or two. But something was still not right.
This weekend it occured to me that there might be something to help my situation in Supple Leopard. I flipped to the section focused on the lower back and found the "pelvis reset" ... Tweaked your back? Experiencing hip pain?... Do this and your pelvis with "clunk" back into place. Well, I skeptically performed the mobility exercises which said to continue until I heard the "clunk". Lets just say I was shocked with these subtle movements resulted in the "clunk" reset of my left hip. I feel an ease there that has been absent for the last few months. I'm so conditioned now to carefully bending over that I am delighted to feel... NOTHING when I do now. Just a fluid, functioning hip.
Amazing. And I learned my lesson. I moved on to a release for that annoying kink in my upper back, some psoas work. Good grief, I am actually feeling great enough that I could start some more strenuous exercises now.
But all the people just saying this book is ok seem to be forgetting that Kelly Starrett has always been the man in terms of mobility. If you go look at any of the "well the book is just alright reviews" they don't even bother to dispute that. There is a reason Rich Froning recommends this book, and if you ever see him lift, he is a very technically sound lifter and all around athlete.
Just the mobility section itself deserves 5 stars, and I have the original book as well.
This book has helped me understand how my body should work in the first place, something I am now realizing I had no idea about.
It's well designed and written, with some good humor throughout. I've essentially read the entire book cover-to-cover and find the information to be tremendously valuable, and universally applicable. The full-color, hardcover text book for about $35 is a steal of a deal for information that will allow you to live a more full, comfortable, and productive life.
I'm a regular but not (at all) competitive crossfitter, and I'm always feeling like I'm not doing a complete job of managing my mobility. We pound on our bodies so hard in crossfit, and I do whatever feels good or comes to mind after for mobility, but I don't always feel like I'm doing what it needs based on what I did. This book arms me with the knowledge I need to do that in a manageable way that doesn't require a degree in exercise science. Can't say enough.
The biggest differences between the first and second editions is that in the new edition there are sections where you can look for mobilizations based on the location of your pain (which includes mobilizations for muscle groups around the area that is hurting to address the causes of your pain which are not always simply an issue with that muscle group only), and there is an improved section based on muscle group you want to mobilize. Another thing I love is that there are little icons on the side of the mobilization pages that indicate what "architypes" (basically what exercises, movements, or positions) will be helped or improved by the mobilizations. Example: some shoulder mobilizations indicate that it will help your front rack position, overhead position, external rotation, etc.
This book is perfect for people who want to know more about human movement but don't have an educational background in related subjects. It is very easy to understand and has a great balance between scientific writing and casual english so you can learn without getting frustrated about not knowing crazy terms and concepts related to exercise science and kinesiology.
Overall an extremely good investment for anyone even if you're not an athlete or coach and just want to help yourself get rid of pesky pain from your job or lifestyle.
*The book quality is excellent. The fit and finish of the binding and weight of the paper are really great.
* Its fully illustrated, he seems to go over everything, even proper ways to grip the bar and get out of a chair.
* He explains what the voodoo bands are for and how to use them.
* Gives a ton of "joint distraction" techniques.
I have a feeling that I will be using this book as a workout reference for years to come.