Are you looking to improve your range of motion to help prevent injuries? There are many reasons why we may start to lose our mobility, this could be due to over sedentary lifestyles, long-term illness, incomplete recovery from injury, and more. Contrary to popular opinion, we don't lose our mobility as a natural result of aging, but rather, it is our habits, and our willingness to ignore issues and restrict our own range of motion that become more mature.
Our bodies are constantly recalibrating themselves to optimize for what we are asking of them. When you spend all of your time sitting in chairs, and working at computers, or scrolling on your phone, your body is trying to figure out how to make those positions easier to hold for a long period of time. Our posture gets "bad" because we are telling it to take that shape based on what we spend most of our time doing.
In a natural environment, humans would we walking, crouching, sitting on the ground and getting up, and squatting to poop, eat, and do work. We would have to run sometimes, jump, occasionally climb trees and steep hills, throw objects, and lift and carry things. This variety of movement is greatly reduced in modern society, and without that variety, we optimize our bodies for what we do most: sitting in chairs and craning our heads forward with our hands out in front of us.
It's important to first adopt this new mentality. Let go of the idea that you have bad range of motion, or bad posture. You don't. Simple and plain, you have a posture that is a reflection of what you are asking of your body, and what you are ignoring. if you want to improve your range of motion, you just need to communicate this with your body, and the language of the body is movement.
Going to a yoga class a few times a week might make a big difference for someone who otherwise just sits around watching Netflix, driving, and working at the office, but at a certain point, the improvements are going to hit a plateau until you start to introduce some of the other patterns that are missing in your movement arsenal. Going all in with something like Yoga can also have it's detriments, leading to instability of the joints, and an unnatural balance of tension in the body. I'm not saying that Yoga is bad for your health, but it only offers a sliver of what we need to be balanced human beings.
Someone who does physical labor is not only overexerting themselves in a way unnatural and overly specialized to humans, but also still ignoring many of the movement categories we need for our bodies to be healthy. Whether you're sitting at a desk, teaching Yoga classes, or drilling and carrying heavy things all day, what you are missing is movement variety. The proportions of how much you are using certain categories of movement is unnatural and imbalanced in these cases.
Distinguishing Mobility from Flexibility
Mobility is essential to overall health, and wherever you are with your mobility, it can be improved if approached the right way. But what exactly is mobility, and how does it differ from flexibility?
Flexibility is a part of mobility. Strength, specifically joint stability, is also a vital component. Flexibility in the form of stretching increases our range of motion, but it does not necessarily improve our ability to control that range of motion. This is why too much stretching can destabilize our joints if we are not also expanding our functional strength within newly uncovered ranges of motion.
Mobility also enhances our ability to perform dynamic movements. For example, if you are flexible enough to rest as the bottom of a one-legged squat, but you only have stability and strength in the first 1/3 of that range of motion, it will be impossible to stand up from that position, at least without some detrimental compensations being made. It will also be impossible to lower yourself down into that position with control. However, if you take the time to develop your strength and stability as you introduce that range of motion, your ability to descend into a single leg squat will be controlled and you'll be able to stop at any portion of that range of motion. This kind of movement ability greatly enhances our ability to perform techniques like breakfalls and rolls, but also gives us a wider window to catch ourselves before we have to surrender to a fall.
Methods of Building Mobility
In no way am I suggesting that stretching in bad. In fact, stretching and flexibility exercises can be a potent tool in expanding our range of motion, as long as we don't leave it there.
When we're talking about stretching there are a few types of exercises that we can explore. First, we can look at passive/static stretching, and then we can look at active/dynamic stretching.
Static stretching involves holding a position for a set duration, which is often what we see in practices like Yin Yoga. These are often advised to be performed after exercise rather than before, as holding intense stretches for long periods of time (over 45 seconds) can make our joints less stable if we have not built stability in those ranges. If we access to those sensitive ranges of motion and then engage them intensely, we can increase our risk of injury. Because of this, dynamic stretching is usually suggested before exercise. However, I rarely meet anyone who holds a stretch for longer than 45 seconds unless they are Yoga practitioners. I don't believe that there is any risk of holding static stretches for short durations before exercise.
Why 45 seconds? That's the time it takes for the body to evaluate if a range of motion is safe or not, and this is the responsibility of the interplay between Muscle Spindles and the Golgi Tendon Organ.
Muscle Spindles and the Golgi Tendon Organ
Okay, it's about to get a little sciency in here, but I'm going to try to keep the jargon to a minimum. My goal here is to explain this in simple to understand terms, as understanding this can help you understand how stretching works. There are two proprioceptive (our sense of our body in relation to itself) receptors in the connective tissue of the body that work together to restrict the relaxation of muscles and the contraction of muscles in order to prevent injuries.
Muscle Spindles detect when we are at the end of our safe range of motion while we are stretching, and then restrict our flexibility to prevent moving into ranges that may injure us, or that we may not be able to get out of.
Conversely, the Golgi tendon organ's job is to detect how much force our muscle in exerting during a contraction, and restrict how much strength we can produce before reaching a point where we can cause damage.
When we stretch, the muscle spindles stop us short of our full range of motion, but after about 45 seconds, the Golgi tendon organ kicks in, re-evaluates the safety of that position, and then allows us to reach a deeper range of motion in the stretch.
Golgi Tendon Organ
Restricts contraction (strength) to prevent injury
Enables deeper stretches after 45 seconds
Muscle Spindle
Restricts range of motion (stretch) to prevent injury
Releases when the Golgi Tendon Organ reevaluates the position
This is important to know, because if you are practicing holding stretches in hopes of expanding your range of motion, and you never hold them longer than 45 seconds, you're not really stretching into your fully available range of motion.
If you're planning to increase your strength in the full extent of your range of motion, you won't be able to access that range without engaging this internal mechanism.
Increasing Strength Within a Wider Range of Motion
The goal of mobility training is to not only expand our range of motion, but also to build strength and integrity within a wider range of motion. Why do we want this? Because the portion of our range of motion where we don't have strength is the range where we are most likely to incur injuries.
Mobility training makes our active range wider, and our passive range narrower. Our passive range is where we do not have the strength to support ourselves. We want that pie slice to be as small as possible, and to have as big of a slice of active range pie as possible. There is no benefit to having passive range over active range, and mobility training will not reduce our overall range of motion, but can actually expand it just as effectively as passive stretching exercises.
The Role of Passive (Static) Stretching in Mobility Development
It's best to think of passive stretching and active stretching as tools to expand your overall range of motion. Remember the dialog we have going on between the muscle spindles and Golgi tendon organ? Well, passive stretching for more than 45 seconds can temporarily give us access to our fullest available range of motion, which is the perfect primer for a training session focused on developing mobility and expanding our active range.
The inclusion of prolonged passive stretching is helpful for those of us who have pronounced restrictions in mobility and range of motion, but in my opinion, is a bit of a waste of time if your flexibility is not holding you back from doing any particular movements. Often times, we are experience restrictions of range of motion in certain joints, or specific movements. In those cases, focusing any passive stretching on stretches that target those particular areas, and then following it up with strengthening the end ranges of motion can be very helpful, and economize how we are making use of our training time.
The Role of Active (Dynamic) Stretching in Mobility Development
Active stretching involves more movement than just holding a position. During these kinds of exercises, we control our joints actively through their full range of motion, usually very slowly, but these can also be performed more rhythmically, as in pulsing stretches, where you gently bounce near the end of your range of motion in a stretch.
This kind of stretching is a little more suitable for a warm up before a more athletically demanding training session or activity.
Active stretching could involve lifting a limb and moving it between the end portion of your range of motion. This would be as close to your passive range as possible, as the goal is to start turning some of that passive range into active range with these exercises. It can also involve moving in and out of a passive stretch without lingering in the end position for very long. There are many ways to perform active stretching, but the common point in all of them is that these exercises involve movement rather than holding a position. It's kind of like we are flossing our joints.
Beyond Stretching
Mobility exercises are focused on improving the integrity of our joints, the awareness of our bodies in space, and expanding our active range of motion. All passive stretches can become mobility exercises with a few augmentations, but mobility exercises go far beyond the scope of "stretching".
Exercises like hip circles, ankle rotations, and functional movement like squats and lunges are mobility exercises. Active movements where we move through different positions, challenging both or strength and flexibility are also good examples. Even just performing breakfalls and rolls slowly can be seen as mobility exercises if performed with control and attention to our restrictions.
Mobility training is a vital key to preventing injuries and maintaining functional movement in the body, it also goes a long way to remedy the symptoms of living and working in modern society, bringing us closer to the daily stimulations that have driven our evolutionary development over the past few million years.
The Many Benefits of Mobility Development
Aside from increasing access to a more full range of motion, preventing injuries, and increasing our potential to perform a variety of natural movements, mobility-focused training improves blood and nutrient circulation to the muscles, helps promote circulation of the lymphatic system to help transport waste out of the body, improves our mood, psychological state and sense of well-being, reduces stress and tension, and naturally improves out structural alignment and posture.
Consistency is Key
As I mentioned before, if we are coming from a place to deep distortion in the body, training a few days a week can produce profound results, but as your body gets used to these new ranges of motion, a more consistent practice will keep that progress ball rolling.
I recommend a brief daily mobility routine comprised of the most beneficial exercises, which vary case by case. This along with a few longer more focused mobility sessions every week will yield the best results.
Check out the video below for an example of a short mobility training session that you can follow along with:
I lot of people get really excited and put together a 2 hour mobility session that they plan to do every day. Pro tip: You're never ever ever going to keep that up, and even if you do, it's too much! Keep it short and focus on the exercises that create the most profound effect for you and your imbalances.
My personal practice involves a mobility training session first thing in the morning and last thing before bedtime. Each of these sessions last 5-10 minutes. This amount of time is what I call the "no excuses range". If you think you're "too tired" to do some mobility work before bed, you're fooling yourself. You will fall asleep faster, and sleep more deeply if you make the time for it, so you're not really losing any sleeping time.
The Best Time of Day for Mobility Training
The best time of day for mobility training is... The time of day that you're most likely to consistently keep it up! For some people that's in the morning, but for a lot of people, there's too many things to prepare for the day to consistently make time for this. I recommend picking the most realistic time of day to schedule your session, and then use "before bed" as a back up plan.
If you can't manage doing 5 minutes of mobility work before bed, mobility isn't your biggest problem, it's discipline, and there's no excuse for that. Sorry if this sounds cold, but you need to sort your self out, and manage your priorities, because I guarantee that you budgeted some time to watch TV or scrolls some BS on your phone at some point in the day. Get your head right, and remind yourself why you're doing this, and why it's important to you.
Ukemi Foundations Program
My Ukemi Foundations Online Course is all about developing mobility, stability, and balance, in the context of preventing injuries and while learning how to fall safely and roll.
This online course includes detailed video instruction for exercises to improve the stability and range of motion of your joints, enhance your flexibility and functional strength, develop proprioception and balance, and build a strong foundation for safe and graceful movement in daily life and any physical activities you enjoy.
This program was developed to guide to to develop your own mobility practice and lay the foundation for a balanced and capable body. The context through which we approach mobility, strength, and balance in this course is centered around building the skills of safe-falling and rolling, a core foundation of natural movement and injury prevention.
Here's a longer video that walks you through a more comprehensive session with some beginner variations focused on breakfall and rolling techniques:
Developing strength and flexibility in this context is crucial for performing breakfalls and rolls safely and effectively, as well as a variety of other natural movements that you rely on in daily life and during other physical activities. Adopting this practice as your foundation ensures safety and effectiveness in any other expression of movement training that you may be interested in.
I hope to see you in the Ukemi Foundations Program!
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