Mobility routines

Mobility has become a catch-all term for anything done slowly on a mat. It is worth being more precise, because the precise version is more useful.

Mobility is flexibility you can control

Flexibility is passive range — how far a joint moves when something else moves it. Mobility is active range, how far you can move it yourself.

The gap between the two is where most problems live. Someone can have the passive hip range to sit in a deep squat and still be unable to squat well, because they have no strength or control at the end of that range. Passive range they cannot use is not much use.

This is why passive stretching alone often fails to change how someone moves, and why the more productive approach is to spend time working at the end of a range under some load or active tension.

Load the end range

The practical version: get into the position you want, then do something there.

Rather than holding a passive hip flexor stretch, take the half-kneeling position and actively squeeze the glute — as the hip flexor stretch page describes. Rather than just stretching hamstrings, do slow controlled Romanian deadlifts through the full range you have. Rather than hanging in a deep squat, hold the bottom of a goblet squat and move around in it.

Full-range strength training is itself excellent mobility work, which is the finding people are most surprised by. A lifter squatting deep and pressing overhead with good technique is doing more for their mobility than most dedicated routines.

Short and frequent

Range of motion responds to repeated exposure far better than to occasional long sessions.

Five to ten minutes most days beats an hour on Sunday. That is partly physiological and mostly behavioural — a short daily habit attached to something you already do survives a busy week, and an hour-long session does not.

What lifting actually restricts

If you sit at a desk and lift, four areas are worth the time.

Ankles. Limited dorsiflexion is the most common reason heels lift in a squat. See the calf stretch — and do both knee positions, because the soleus is the one that limits deep squatting.

Hips. Both flexion for squatting depth and extension for standing tall. The hips area covers the useful positions.

Thoracic spine. Rotation and extension, both lost to sitting, and both needed to press overhead without arching your lower back. Thread the needle and cat cow cover it in about two minutes.

Shoulders. Overhead range, which depends on the thoracic spine above as much as the shoulder itself.

What it will not do

Two claims are made far beyond what the evidence supports.

That mobility work prevents injury. The evidence for stretching reducing injury rates is weak; strength training has considerably better support for that outcome.

And that it fixes pain. Stiffness and pain are related but distinct, and a great deal of pain has nothing to do with restricted range. If a few weeks of consistent work changes nothing, mobility was probably not the problem — and that is worth knowing early rather than after six months of foam rolling.