Let's talk Mobility and why it's important.

I can't stress this point enough to my clients simple because it prevents injuries, fixes muscle imbalances, and helps you build more muscles.

Kelly Starrett defines mobility as: “a movement-based integrated full-body approach that addresses all the elements that limit movement and performance including short and tight muscles, soft tissue restriction, joint capsule restriction, motor control problems, joint range of motion dysfunction, and neural dynamic issues. In short, mobilization is a tool to globally address movement and performance problems”.

I tend to work with people who sit almost all day for a living, which leads to lower and or upper cross syndrome. Not addressing the glued down muscle tissues eventually leads to pain signaling usually in the shoulders, lower back and knees. This usually causes people to stray away from exercising or doing particular movements because they think they are injured. Just because there is pain in the body doesn't mean there is an injury. More times than not you're just locked up somewhere and you are getting what is a referred pain.

This can be fixed with proper mobility and soft tissue work. Say your knee hurts, well typically releasing the glutes and TFL will fix that cranky knee or lower back pain. Releasing the levator scap and upper traps will get rid of that neck pain.

I program all my clients to do soft tissue work, mobility, and wake up activation drills to make sure we can work within a safe full ROM and properly get everything engaged/ firing.

No one likes doing the soft tissue work/mobility work but the fact of the matter is if you're in pain lifting or missing range of motion you're not doing yourself any justice by continuing to workout or ignoring the problem. FIx the problem so you can safely and effectively workout and strengthen your posture or potentially the new found range of motion you just gained. Remember it's important to go slow and own every piece of ROM you have access to. This will also help correct imbalances and weakness.

In the up coming days and weeks I'll post some of my favorite ways to fix upper/lower cross syndrome that most people suffer from and most likely causing you pain or at the least lack of ROM.