The no mobility I come across, the mo problems I see.
I’m all about self-diagnosis and have found that I’m the perfect fit for stiff guy syndrome. I’m not very flexible, I don’t recall ever being flexible and my lack of mobility is causing mo problems – so what gives?
I consider myself to be fairly active but I do a lot of sitting. Probably Definitely too much sitting. All those years in a classroom, basically every job since post-secondary requires me to be on the computer most of the day and that’s fine. I’m OK with that and definitely enjoy what I do. It’s just that sitting down for 6, 7 and sometimes upwards of 10 hours a day can be very harmful on the body and hinder mobility.
Pre-existing injuries. Everyone has one, or two, or three, maybe four right? Anyone out there with a perfectly functioning pain-free body? Didn’t think so. All those years of contact sports definitely caught up to me, rugby tackles, hockey hits, baseball slides and plenty of sprains, twists, and pulls along the way won’t help mobility.
Warming up. Do you remember the 10-15 minutes before the gym teacher let you play dodgeball? All that stretching and running that nobody liked doing? Well turns out that warming up your body is pretty important and skipping it can be detrimental to your mobility.The benefits of increasing mobility are great and include flexibility, range of motion, and injury prevention.
The good thing about mobility is that you can work on it & improve it.
So I created a new warm-up and mobility routine – I cleverly nicknamed it warming up to warm up. What does that even mean? I stopped doing the popular “swing your arms a couple times, quick stretch of legs warm-up routine”. That doesn’t work for me (or anyone for that matter). I need to loosen up my entire body before I start squatting, pushing, or pulling anything that even resembles a weight. I start with 5-10 minutes of low intensity cardio – preferably on the treadmill or elliptical. Get the entire body moving. After that a combination of static, dynamic and active stretching, followed by foam rolling and I’ll finish up with some band-work to target specific areas.
I find the my hips, quads, and shoulders (see video below for instructions) need the most attention, but everyone will be different – focus on the problems areas first.
Increasing mobility will open the doors to strength and muscle gains, increased flexibility allowing for proper and full range of motion on exercises and most importantly injury prevention.
The benefits of mobility will out weigh the time commitment and after all don’t we all want mo mobility, no problems?
Always Keep Moving
