What is Mobility Training

Mobility is the ability to move a joint actively through its range of motion. It’s not quite the same thing as flexibility which is the lengthening of muscles in a passive way. This difference is important to understand because Mobility training is much more than just stretching.

Mobility vs flexibility

The difference between mobility and flexibility can be better understood using an example.

Lets look at the Split, which is a common demonstration of a high level of flexibility that most of us are familiar with.

This is flexibility. 

By Yelpseggs (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The muscles are stretched under the weight of the body. The ability is passive, ie. it does not require active contraction of muscles to achieve.

This is mobility.

‘Handstand split” by Rikard Elofsson is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Since the athlete is in a handstand position (Click here for our Handstand tutorial), She does not have the assistance of her own body weight. Instead she must actively contract the muscles in her hips and legs. Boiling it down, the main difference between flexibility and mobility is strength throughout range of motion.

Mobility & strength

To achieve a high level of mobility, an athlete must possess strength in the full ROM (range of motion). Therefore strength is a central pillar of mobility, the other two being – Stability and flexibility.

That’s right, flexibility (muscle length) is important for mobility. Without the capacity to exercise full ROM, it’s impossible to strengthen it for good mobility.

However, static stretching, while having its place in mobility training falls short of being enough. In fact it is outright discouraged before strength training as research suggests that lengthening muscles makes the subsequent contractions weaker ie. you are less stronger right after static stretching than before it.

So, does that mean you shouldn’t do mobility work before strength work? I mean, how does one get into the proper squatting position without the mobility for it?

The answer is to use active mobility drills that work on flexibility, strength through ROM and stability instead of just Static stretching alone while warming up.

Benefits of Mobility Training

Okay, but what if for some reason you don’t care to be mobile? It could be possible that you just aren’t interested to have those final few degrees of wrist flexibility or to have good ankle mobility. What if you just want to work on your handstand or to Squat heavy and leave all this mobility bullshit behind?

Well, you have to consider that strength and mobility are interlinked. To have a good handstand, you need strong, mobile wrists. To squat heavy with good form, you need ankle and hip mobility.

Mobility is the foundation upon which strength is built. Understand that if you do not possess the mobility to correctly squat, your body is going to compensate in some way to get you into position. These compensations can lead to imbalances, tightness, pain and injury.

This becomes even more true if your actively participating in any physical activity that may put your body in unconventional positions (like Martial arts or dance). Without mobility (strength throughout full ROM), you’re putting yourself at high risk of acute and chronic injuries.

Finally, being mobile opens up many more options for you to move. This means there’s a greater range of motion for your joints to safely move in. This is important, especially in sports for increased resilience but also surprising your opponents with unconventional patterns that might just give you the edge you require to win.

Identifying mobility problems

Now that we understand what mobility and flexibility is, and why exactly we need it – we can start building a mobility training program for ourselves by first identifying our main mobility issues. Remember that each person is different. Plus, different people in different sports tend to have different issues bothering them. This basically means that mobility can be a complicated issue and there isn’t a one size fits all program that will help everyone. Your best option is to go get yourself assessed by a Physiotherapist specializing in your sport. If that isn’t an option, here are a few areas where you can assess yourself.

First things first – if you feel pain of any kind, get proper medical attention

No questions asked!

If you feel pain, go see a doctor. Do not try to self diagnose, do not self medicate and do not try random exercises by yourself. You might end up doing more harm than good.

However, if pain is not an issue then there are certain things that you can do to improve your mobility.

Disclaimer – I am not a doctor or a qualified physiotherapist, I am merely sharing with you the method that I follow for narrowing down and identifying my mobility issues. The information that is about to follow is not a suitable replacement for proper medical attention, and I strongly recommend that you go see a professional, especially if you feel pain of any kind.

The Functional Movement Screen (FMS)

The Functional Movement screen is a system that can be used to check movement quality by measuring several fundamental movements including:-

Overhead squat (Mobility for the Squat)

Hurdle Step

In-line Lunge

Shoulder mobility

Active Straight leg Raise (hamstring mobility)

Spinal rotation

You can visit their official site by clicking here.

There are many excellent resources out there for the Functional Movement Screen. Here’s a full tutorial by one of the creators of FMS, Dr. Gray Cook.

Thoracic Mobility

The thoracic spine refers to the upper and middle back vertebrae. Here’s a picture to illustrate:-

By OpenStax College [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The mobilisation of the various vertebrae of the Spine is something we have lost over the years. Coupled with the fact that most weight lifting exercises demand a straight back, most of us are losing the ability to move our spine regardless of whether we go to the gym or not When an immobile spine is suddenly put into a stressful position, (say bending down to pick up something), it becomes compromised.

There are two main antagonistic movements of the spine that we will focus on today (apart from rotation which is covered by the FMS). This is followed by exercise recommendations by Christopher Sommer, a former US National Team gymnastics coach and founder of Gymnasticbodies.com.

Thoracic Spinal flexion

Spinal flexion is the forward bending movement of the Spine.

Jefferson curl

The Jefferson Curl especially useful exercise for bodybuilders, Weight lifters and power lifters who spend the majority of their time with their back in slight extension under massive loads. It can also be used by just about anyone who wants to increase the flexibility of their Spine and hamstrings and also gain strength in that range of motion.

When first starting out on the Jefferson curl remember to start with light weight! On Gymnastic bodies, Coach Sommer’s official website they recommend starting out as light as 5 – 10 lbs (or > 5kgs). Remember that the connective tissue in the joints take longer than muscles to adapt (upto 6 months), so very slow progression is recommended for this exercise.

Click here to read more about the Jefferson Curl.

Thoracic Spinal extension

Extension is the opposite of flexion, ie the backwards bend of the Spine. It’s a movement that is rarely used in day to day life and is massively under developed in most people.

Thoracic bridge

According to Christopher Sommers, a great exercise to build spinal extension, particularly Thoracic Spinal extension is a movement called the elevated Thoracic bridge, demonstrated in the video below.

Where Coach Sommers modifies the Bridging movement from other practices like Yoga, is that he emphasizes in using the Thoracic Spine for bending instead of the lower back. He says this can be done by elevating the feet.

To read more about the thoracic bridge on his website, Click here.

Choosing the right mobility drills and other Resources on Mobility

There are a huge number of mobility exercises out there and it isn’t practical or recommended to do all of them at once. Also recommending a cookie cutter program doesn’t work because each person’s mobility training requirements are different. So instead, this is what you should do:-

Go to a qualified Physiotherapist

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’m going to recommend going to see a professional again. I cannot stress the importance of this enough, especially if there is pain associated with any movement.

Also, you don’t need to be in pain to benefit from seeing a Physiotherapist.  Prevention is better than the cure and knowing your mobility limitations and imbalances early on will save you the headache of dealing with injuries later.

If you’re an athlete you can also bolster your performance in your sport by making the necessary corrections, so this is not strictly an injury prevention strategy.

I recommend going to a Sports Physiotherapist, especially if training is a priority for you.

Other Resources

There are countless resources on the internet for mobility. Some great youtube channels include The Movement Fix by Dr. Ryan Debell and Mobility WOD by Kelly Starett.

You can also Click here to see a list of mobility exercises recommended by Dr. Gray Cook’s website Functionalmovement.com.

How to Integrate mobility work into your Training

The great thing about mobility training is that it can be more or less integrated anywhere into your routine. However here are two effective ways that I like to integrate it into my training:

Dedicated Mobility training sessions

Just like you have dedicated strength sessions, you can also dedicate a couple of sessions a week exclusively to mobility training. This works well because you can get a lot more sets and reps in. Mobility training becomes the primary goal unlike when you add them in your usual routine where you tend to go just through the motions to get done with it. Working on mobility alone in a session will lead to better progress as you give it the same amount of dedication and attention that you would strength and hypertrophy. You can program it into your weekly routine by keeping your rest days in between strength and hypertrophy sessions to work on mobility. Your week can look something like this:

Monday – Strength & Hypertrophy

Tuesday – Mobility & light Conditioning work

Wednesday – Strength & Hypertrophy

Thursday – Mobility & recovery work

Friday – Strength & Hypertrophy

Saturday –  Moderate to Heavy Conditioning work

Sunday – Mobility & recovery work

Yes, I do recommend doing some kind of exercise every day instead of taking a sedentary day off. Click here to know why.

Integrating Mobility training into your Strength Workouts

The other way to integrate mobility into your training is to include the drills into your warm up. You can also fill it into the rest periods in between your strength sets. The former is especially useful to me. The time between strength sets can be anywhere from 3 – 5 minutes. I don’t know about you, but its hard for me to sit around doing nothing for so long. Filling in mobility drills in between sets is a good way to keep me busy and make me feel like I’m getting the most out of my time.

Apart from taking care of my anal time management issues, mobility drills used in between sets can be useful to improve the actual form and performance of your main strength exercise. For example doing mobility drills for squats can help you get deeper in your actual set. Further more, loading the squat movement after a mobility drill can be useful to cement the neural connections formed when the body is in the newly achieved range of motion. This is helpful in making the new ROM ‘stick’, ie. to actually keep the gained mobility after your training session ends as opposed to only after doing the mobility drill or stretch.

Lastly, you can also work on mobility drills for a completely different joint altogether instead of the one you’re working on in your strength sets. For example, I prefer to work on wrist mobility and strength in between my heavy squat sets. This is because I usually go into planche work immediately after squatting and I want my wrists to be ready for the movement.

Either way, integrating mobility into your workout routine is absolutely necessary.