Mobility- What’s Your “Why”

What’s Your Why?

  One of the biggest reasons I see for why people don’t make LASTING gains in their mobility is because there is no “why” to their training. Or the reasons they are working on their mobility simply doesn’t match up with their lifestyle, or goals they really want to achieve. If you want your mobility gains to stick, the convincing factor may not just be that you created end range strength, or created structural symmetry or whatever… it comes down to the question of are you actually using the new range, and for what? Do you have a movement practice that supports the need for expanding your current range of motion, and are you moving in and out of these ranges of motion throughout your day to day life? If not, then something is not matching up. At the end of the day the nervous system is the key governor for determining your range of motion, and the way you spend the majority of your time moving is what your system will default to in terms of range of motion access. You can do all the latest and greatest mobility sequences and techniques that are actually quite effective at breaking up nasty adhesions and calcifications built up from a lack of movement, but if you do not give your nervous system a reason to keep those ranges, you WILL lose it fast and those adhesions will be built right back up. And maybe even end up tighter. You see, a new range opened up is threatening for the nervous system which is why it locks you up in the first place. If you simply open up a new range of motion without giving the body a good reason to keep it, the nervous system will sound the alarms and perceive the new range as a threat and tighten back up as soon as you cool down. Ok rant over, so let’s get into some more practical details.

 Why do YOU really need this Range?

Mobility is task specific. The range of motion you need is determined by movements you choose to do. One of the biggest problems I see in the physical therapy/ corrective exercise world I come from is the idea of “normal ranges” everyone needs to have. Who even made these up anyway? Why do I NEED a full 180 degrees shoulder flexion, 20 degrees angle dorsiflexion, and 50 degrees hip external rotation? There is absolutely no context here! Need “ “ degrees for what? What is the goals you want to accomplish and what movement practice are you involved in? These are just arbitrary numbers at the end of the day. Some need more some need less. And just creating more range when you don’t need it in the first place might even be detrimental to performance and function. Maybe in this case, you’d be better off controlling and learning to create torque in the ranges of motion you currently own.

An example is an elite level sprinter. Look at Usain bolt with is flat feet, lack of dorsiflexion, stiff hamstrings, and hardly any hip IR. He needs the tendon stiffness to be able to recoil fast and doesn’t need all the range of motion people say they do. Of course, he is an extreme example and you CAN have speed/ strength/ and flexibility at the same time… but when you want to be the best, there are sacrifices you need to make. Flexibility and power development in mid ranges can be competing goals at the end of the day. Although the fact that speed, and power are neglected in most people’s flexibility training is another issue on its own that we’ll address later.

 On the other hand, a gymnast or dancer may need much more range than the AAOS orthopedic standards… and especially more range then an elite sprinter! Here we need splits as a pre- requisite and may even work towards over - splits and head- to – ass backbends. In gymnastics, the range of motion requirements are built into the skills such as straddle handstands, planches, mannas, acrobatics, and basically every aspect of their training. Don’t get me wrong they are not just floppy humans. The serious ones are quite strong through these extreme ranges of motion because they build it the right way and have been using these ranges in their day to day training since they were children.

 But the point is not everyone NEEDS the splits, not everyone NEEDS to squat deep, not everyone NEEDS anything some doctor or coach that doesn’t even move themselves says they do. Let’s just set the record straight here with this. There’s a big misconception that more range of motion and flexibility will cure all your issues. For instance, if you have hip or back pain you need to get more flexible. I hear this with my clients all the time. I ask what they are dealing with and what their goals are. They’ll say “Oh I’ve had this hip pain for a while now and I want pain free hips and be able to do the splits!” Contrary to popular belief, these are very competing goals. Working towards extreme ranges of motion like the splits fucking hurts! It’s uncomfortable and painful sometimes. If you are naturally a stiff person, teaching the body to gain a range it never wanted you to have is going to take a lot of convincing over YEARS and the body will fight back at times. Just being able to slide into the splits cold and have endless freedom there takes WAY longer then people know. It’s a process and you have to be in it for the sake of the process. So I will explain this to the client and it is up to their discretion if they truly want it. I mean let’s be honest, the splits look pretty awesome, are a great party trick, can be incredibly useful if you need that range in your movement practice, and building that range can teach you a lot about your body. But if this is not the goal of the client, then maybe they are misled and misinformed and it is up to us as coaches and teachers to help truly guide the client to what modality will get them to where they want to be.

 This brings me to another controversy:

Different Displays of Flexibility and Carryover

This is a big issue and mistake I ran into with my own mobility training. I see it all the time on Instagram and in certain mobility systems that try to correlate open chain mobility gains having carry over to closed chain movement. Unfortunately, this does not always carry over and both are not specific enough to enhance each other.

You see there is not just one type of flexibility and range of motion can be displayed in many different ways. We have to take into account active range of motion, speed, strength, and relaxation ability. The type of flexibility trained just be relevant to the task, however not all forms of flexibility training have carryover to once another.

For example, there are plenty of strong and flexible people who can perform full middle splits while holding a 45lb plate, but in a straddle handstand they cannot straddle past 90 degrees. They only learned how to create mobility through large amounts of tension and external load, however cannot relax into a position for shit.

Or another example, a martial artist who can kick someone in the face and basically perform an active split, however performing a loaded middle split with their bodyweight poses a big difficulty for them.

I started my mobility journey with the need to achieve a more comfortable deep squat to make my Olympic weightlifting more efficient. I went through a year of creating all this new range only in open chain and failed to direct specific tension to my joints throughout the full range. I was doing all the weighted joint rotations, end range lift offs, isometrics that were taught to me by the experts with the thought that this is what “bulletproofing” your joints means. This is not the whole picture. When I returned to actually lifting, I actually came back weaker despite what the experts said.  The mobility work I was performing was not specific enough to carry over to the practice I was involved in and I paid the price. I was only loading my joints against gravity, not my ENTIRE bodyweight which is a much more intensive stimulus to some degree. My mobility work did NOT match the goal I was after. My joints felt better, but that’s just because I took a significant amount of time away from super high intensity barbell training. (more on that next section).

I see people overcomplicating “joint prep” by doing weighted high intensity joint rotations and open chain flows and that’s it. I just ask, what for? It’s certainly not a bad thing, but just keep in mind the goals you have and if what you are doing is the most efficient way to get there. Since you only have so much recoverability anyways there’s no sense in wasting energy when not needed. As Jon Yuen says, “joint prep should make you feel 10% better.” Joint rotations should just feel good and provide nutrition to the joints, not be straining. Save the straining for the REAL loaded mobility work that’ll have the most carryover.

It wasn’t until I started combining all the end range work with more closed chain loaded stretching that I was able to bridge this gap much safer. As mobility guru Emmet Louis says “mobility is created concentrically, suppleness is created eccentrically.”  Any well rounded mobility/ flexibility program should include a healthy mixture in phases of concentric, eccentric, and isometric work (and passive work if needed) because After all, we need to treat mobility like strength training at the end of the day. For the person with less specific goals, I think its best to train mobility in a variety of ways that prepares a person for a broad range of activities..

 I really like DJ Murakami’s definition of mobility- The range you can maintain a specific torque. This is where intention leads what you will get out of your training.

So its safe to say increasing your flexibility can certainly provide the body with more options, but at a cost if the adaptation does not match the intention.

 What About Pain?

Often times coaches and therapists turn to range of motion as the answer to all of people’s problems. You hear accusations like “you have no hip IR, therefore you have no hip, therefore you should never squat with weight, walk up your stairs, or drive a vehicle.” Says who?

Tough to correlate that statement when there are athletes and regular people walking around pain free with no hip IR, thoracic extension, core strength or whatever the accusation is.

In my opinion, pain comes down to one big factor.

Load management which I would describe as how much load can your tissues tolerate and recover from. If you are constantly training the same way with the same form and technique, this opens you up to overuse injuries. For example, if you’ve been bench pressing twice a week for a year nonstop and you start to feel shoulder pain, maybe its time to add variability to your training. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to ditch the exercise all together. Variation can come in the form of exercise selection, tempo, volume, frequency, or intensity. Tons of stuff to play with here.

Pain is far more complex than “do you have _ prerequisite range of motion?” Yes, more degrees of freedom at a joint can lead to more tissue being trained, and more load dispersed throughout other tissues, but it can come with a price of decreased performance short term. As long as you have enough ROM to perform an exercise with enough efficiency, you probably don’t need much more past that to make range of motion be the main blame of your pain.  What matters is if you can maintain tension through YOUR full range of motion when performing an exercise.

Now if you have been training your flexibility and now notice decreased pain, it is probably because you simply changed up the load and provided a novel stimulus to the body. The mechanism of pain relief most likely isn’t because you just created more range. Don’t get me wrong, training your outer limits of a range of motion is a great way to re map your somatosensory cortex in your brain to desensitize an area. The mechanism might just not be what you think.

If you feel you need to increase your current range of motion there should be intention behind it. Maybe you want to increase efficiency in handstands, give you more options in climbing, be able to achieve a nice overhead squat for olympic lifting, kick someone in the face, live in a body with less overall resting tension, or just take a cool IG picture going #ballstofloor in a middle split. On your pursuit to this type of adaptation, remember theres a cost and benefit to everything in physiology. Training for splits is uncomfortable and there is a risk to pushing your body to the limit which can result in acute joint pain. (yogis aren’t always pain free no matter how graceful they look)

This is why when training flexibility, make sure you train it the right way so you are not just hanging out on passive structures constantly…

Building Strength

Since range of motion is primarily governed by the nervous system, we need to convince the nervous system to allow you to access more range of motion. The reason a specific range at a joint is locked up comes down to 1) lack of familiarity with the position (you don’t move through these ranges), and inability to generate force and create torque throughout the range especially at end ranges. If done incorrectly strength and flexibility can be competing goals but not if they are looked at as one in the same. How do we influence the nervous system with strength? High intensity, low volume. We need to treat our flexibility programming like strength training if we ever want to see lasting gains in range of motion increase. 1-2 times a week per target area while using the range daily should be plenty. How many times a week will you squat and bench heavy? Probably 1-2 depending on the person but this is generally the same concept with flexibility. The nervous system needs time to re- map the range after a high intense training session to build a new range. So, get strong in a range of motion to convince your nervous system to give you more. I can’t tell you how many years I have wasted strictly doing banded joint distractions and soft tissue work then going right into my strength sessions. They were looked at as separate entities and woke up just as stiff the next day every day with no change. Plus my strength training did not match the flexibility gains I was trying to improve…

Accumulating time

How much ACTUAL time are you spending in the positions you want to achieve. People wonder why they can’t sit in a resting squat because of all the fancy hip mobility drills they do… Heres the problem: YOU’RE NOT SPENDING TIME IN THE SQUAT! Just warming up for you 5 x 5 squat work out with mobility drills won’t get you there. Think about how much time under tension you are actually spending in end range there.

Ex) 1 sec per rep x 25 reps= 25 total seconds in the bottom of your squat that day. Not enough. This goes back to what I was saying “does your movement practice compliment your flexibility practice?” What’s helped my squat depth the most has been spending time there. 10-20 min throughout my day, hammering my hip Rotation/ flexion 1-2 days a week depending on the phase of training, and using the squat in low gait locomotion based workouts learned from Ido Portal. Something like THIS.

Ever since I switched up my training to match my real goals that’s when my mobility actually started to change and adapt. This goes for any range of motion not just the squat. If you are searching for more overhead range of motion ask yourself how much time do you ACTUALLY spend overhead? Spend more time in the positions you want to achieve. Its simple, yet its more than half the reason most people’s gains don’t stick.

Conclusion

Dig deep and find your “why” for wanting more mobility and make sure your training is specific to that goal. There is no right amount of mobility one should have, just an amount that is specific to your movement practice. Adopt a movement practice that challenges your joints in awkward places and through their full biological range of motion. It could be climbing, yoga, martial arts, locomotion, acrobatics, gymnastics, or ALL OF IT. Allow your flexibility training to compliment the movement practice and build it the right way. Just move my friends. Expand your capacity, and free your options. Or else you’re just mobilizing for the sake of… mobilizing.

 G-money~ The Supple Dragon