OUR STORY
- 2005
- 2015
Juliet & Kelly Starrett open San Francisco Crossfit, one of the first thirty Crossfit affiliates in San Francisco and begin working with athletes of all stripes. Juliet, a lawyer, runs the business side of the gym while Kelly, a physical therapist, coaches and operates a physical therapy practice at the gym.
After seeing the same orthopedic issues over and over again in his physical therapy practice and observing tens of thousands of athlete sessions at the gym, Kelly realizes that his clients and athletes lack a basic understanding of their bodies and need to be empowered with the tools to fix themselves. In response, Kelly begins teaching his Movement & Mobility Course to coaches, professional and recreational athletes, medical professionals, Moms and Dads, and desk jockeys all over the world.
Although the Movement & Mobility Course was a huge success, Kelly and Juliet realized they needed a way to get more information to more people. They begin the Mobility Project at MobilityWOD.com, where they filmed a video a day for 365 days on movement, mechanics, self-care, and lifestyle, all with the mission that every human should be able to understand how their bodies work and how to perform basic maintenance on themselves.
MobilityWOD.com becomes a huge success with 5 million unique visitors, 20 million page views, and 23 million YouTube views. Kelly begins consulting and working with the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, professional soccer, major university athletic programs, and elite military groups and noticed a common connection between many of their orthopedic problems and lack of performance gains– SITTING TOO MUCH.
Juliet redesigns and rebuilds the MobilityWOD.com website, turning into a subscription-based site, and 20,000 subscribe.
Juliet & Kelly begin counseling their clients and athletes that, if they want to be serious as an athlete and perform to their full athletic potential, they cannot train and then sit for the rest of the day, period. They recommend standing desks for all professional and recreational athletes. Kelly also begins speaking at corporations about the impacts of sitting, how to survive sitting at a desk, and continues to advocate for standing desks in the corporate and tech world. They begin to receive photos from all over the world of people’s standing desk hacks.
Kelly’s first book, Becoming A Supple Leopard, is published and becomes a New York Times and Wall Street Journal Bestseller. The book continues to top the charts and is critically acclaimed as one of the most significant works ever published on optimizing athletic performance, resolving pain, and preventing injury.
Juliet & Kelly volunteer at their daughters’ school field day running the sack races. They see that many of the kids (as young as 6 years old) lack the range of motion to get into the sack and also lack the range of motion to get full hip extension in the jump. They also see that many of the kids are overweight and lack the basic fitness to complete the sack races. They realize that kids are losing significant ranges of motion, are overweight, and not fit because they are SITTING TOO MUCH.
Juliet finds a rudimentary calorie burning calculator online and learns that if she stands all day at work (8 hours/day, 5 days/week, 52 weeks/year) versus sitting, she would burn an additional 95000 calories/year, or the equivalent of running 33 marathons. She realizes that standing versus sitting could have a huge impact on childhood obesity and begins researching physical inactivity, sedentary lifestyles, and standing desks for children. The results are alarming and she realizes that the advice she and Kelly have been giving to adults must be spun backwards to children. They realize that sitting is literally harming our children.
Kelly and Juliet’s work though MobiityWOD.com is featured on 60 Minutes Sports. Juliet founds StandUpKids.org and begins building it as a non-profit and educational platform.
Juliet & Kelly convert their daughter Georgia’s 4th Grade classroom to a standing classroom, the first known standing class in California. The kids transition easily to standing and report that they feel more focused and engaged at standing desks.
Juliet & Kelly meet with Charles Best and his amazing team and Donors Choose, and a partnership is formed. Kelly’s second book, Ready to Run, is launched and becomes a New York Times bestseller.
Juliet & Kelly fund standing desks for the remaining 4th Graders and one 1st Grade class at Vallecito Elementary School, for a total of 100 kids at standing desks.
StandUpKids.com launches with the goal of educating teachers, parents, and donors about the ill-effects of sitting too much and why standing is a simple and elegant solution. The StandUp Kids Board begins raising money to bring standing desks to all public school children.
StandUpKids launches a massive crowdfunding campaign through Donors Choose to raise an additional $110K for the remaining classrooms. Thanks to the single largest number of donors on a single Donors Choose project, we raised $110K.
All 450 students (K-5) at Vallecito convert to standing desks and the school becomes the first all standing school in the world. The media takes notice and the school appears on the Today Show, CBS This Morning, CBS Evening News, CNN, and more.
March 2016 – Donors Choose reports that, since the founding of StandUpKids.org, more than 27,000 kids nationwide either have a standing desk, or access to a standing desk during their school day!