Kelly Starrett thinks you suck. 

Just kidding. Well, sort of. He just thinks that you- and everyone else, really- sucks at moving. And he probably thinks that your technique sucks too. But he only feels that way because he cares.
Do I know that from personal experience? Of course not!
But that’s the gist of an excellent article from breakingmuscle.com that I stumbled upon while researching movement and mobility for this week’s blog post. The title of the article caught my eye immediately: “How Kelly Starrett’s Mobility Seminar Ruined Me” (http://breakingmuscle.com/mobility-recovery/how-kelly-starrett-s-mobility-seminar-ruined-me).
Here’s a tidy summary of that article, written by fitness columnist Danette Rivera. Kelly Starrett is somewhat of a celebrity in the global CrossFit community. He’s a doctor of physical therapy, and his book, Becoming a Supple Leopard, is either available in or taught to just about every CrossFit box in the world.
He’s a movement and mobility master, and is the man to whom most CrossFit athletes turn to “fix our shit,” as Rivera so delicately puts it. Rivera was lucky enough to attend one of Starrett’s CrossFit Movement and Mobility training courses, after which she felt completely ruined.
During the course, Starrett picked apart and analyzed all kinds of human movement. (Spoiler: CrossFit comprises only a pathetically small fraction of the broad range of human movement.) He destroyed Rich Froning’s muscle-up technique, made participants do burpees if they got up off the floor incorrectly, and painfully rearranged everyone’s elbows into the ‘true’ front rack position.
After just one hour, Rivera says, participants were afraid that they weren’t even holding their pens correctly while taking notes.

CrossFit Movement and Mobility
For many athletes, devoting more time and attention to their movement and mobility means two things. First, and arguably most importantly, improving your movement and mobility prevents injury.
But, as Rivera says, injury shminjury. Most athletes care about their movement and mobility because correct, efficient technique drastically improves athletic performance. We all want to lift more, move faster, and ultimately look fitter.
According to Starrett, however, the notion that we should fix injuries, not prevent them, is deeply embedded in our athletic culture. He believes that human beings can and ought to perform regular maintenance on themselves in order to prevent injuries entirely.
Starrett combines CrossFit training with physical therapy mobility to work toward an ‘injury-free’ body. His philosophy for obtaining an injury-free body is simple: stretch and mobilize your entire body, even when things don’t hurt, to make sure that they never hurt.

Improving Your Mobility to Improve Your Performance
In a fascinating interview with Greatist (http://greatist.com/fitness/kelly-starrett-mobility-injury-free), Starrett says that too many athletes confuse having a lack of pain with performing at peak efficiency. We may not have an injury, but we’re probably performing at 90%- or less!- of our potential efficiency because we don’t move well.
Starrett’s advice for improving your movement, mobility, and efficiency as an athlete is to mobilize, stretch, and care for every joint and muscle in your body before adding heavier and heavier weights. In a CrossFit gym, the temptation to add more weight while ignoring your technique can be overwhelming, especially when you see other athletes busting out reps of your PB weight.
There is no shame in backing off weight and relearning the basics. By improving your movement and mobility, you can and will prevent injury, and you can and will improve your athletic performance.
Even starting with something simple- say, relearning to back squat- will drastically improve your efficiency in that movement, increase your awareness of your movement patterns in general, and will make you a stronger, more capable athlete.
If you’re looking for some more information, visit the websites below, and be sure to check out Becoming a Supple Leopard and MobilityWOD.com for daily mobility advice!

http://www.mobilitywod.com/
http://gymnasticswod.com/ (A website with a philosophy similar to Starrett’s. Excellent mobility WODS and progressions!)
http://healthyliving.azcentral.com/importance-gymnastics-3939.html
http://breakingmuscle.com/mobility-recovery/preventing-common-bjj-and-crossfit-injuries
http://therxreview.com/the-idiots-guide-to-preventing-crossfit-injuries/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lonZ0aI9o0 (A fantastic podcast from Barbell Shrugged!)