Book Review – Move your DNA by Katy Bowman

I think I first heard Katy Bowman speak on one of the Paleo Solution podcasts and really liked the topic she was talking about and the message she had. I then heard her again on the Joe Rogan Experience and the longer interview was great to hear the different nuances of her message. So I decided to buy the book and give it a read to see what extra pieces of information I could glean.

(I don’t much like to write bios about the Authors when I review a book, I’d rather just get into it, I’m sure you can look this sort of thing up, or you already have but want to know what other people think of the book before spending time and possibly money reading it)

I found the book well written, funny, simply written and laid out, but with technical detail added in a way that made it easy to integrate into your thinking. From the beginning I found the book to be written in a piece meal way that was easy to consume little bits of data that could be taken on their own, but also built up a very informative picture. This included the technical details which were kept concise but gave the reader enough detail while making it clear how technical things really can get.

The book is split into two part, kind of the why and the how titles ‘think’ and ‘move’. For my personality and my position into health and fitness I got so much more out of the think section and little out of the move section. That is not to say that one is better written than the other, they are both very well written. It’s just that I enjoyed the concepts behind the why, and am already on my way to tackling the how in a lot of cases. I’ll expand on that in a little bit.

In situations where I’m getting a huge amount of data, if I can get just one useful piece then I’m happy. I got several pieces like this from this book, all from the think section. One is that we are when we most often do. So one hour of exercise cannot undo 8+ hours of sitting. Obviously this is laid out in the book, but for me this has been a good piece of information to integrate into my daily activity. If I want to make some changes, I have to be those changes most often. The other big concept for me was thinking of loads. A back squat is a load, so is a front squat, or carrying a back pack, or the way we sit. This is an infinite number of possibly loads, but our tissues are shaped by the ones we put on it. This is another piece I have tried to integrate and make changes.

The move section was like movement prescriptions, with instructions of working your way up, and moving on to more movement. They were really detailed and well written but just didn’t suit my personality. I will integrate some if it, but will likely come at it from a different angle. That said this section was still very helpful in reinforcing different aspects of what I am already working on with a little more detail in areas I hadn’t thought of.

In summery ‘Move your DNA’ was a very worthwhile book. I suggest reading it, and integrating some of the concepts and positions (sit on the floor once and a while, or more) into your every day.