Flexibility vs. Mobility

One thing that I feel could use some clarification is the difference between flexibility and mobility, since they are often used synonymously and their importance is frequently understated. All sports, whether individual or team sports, require some degree of both flexibility and mobility to be successful, since both are basic physical fitness elements. In fact, flexibility is often seen as a component of mobility, so it’s important to understand the difference between the two. 

Here are the definitions:

Flexibility: the ability to increase your range of motion through the passive stretching of a set of muscles

Mobility: the ability to move a joint through a range of motion in an active setting using the nervous system, the joint, ligaments near the joint, and muscles surrounding it.

As you can see, these are very different and it is important to be familiar with this because a lot of times, people try to fix what they perceive as a flexibility issue with more and more stretching, when in fact they have a mobility issue. More stretching will not fix a mobility issue and the flexibility of a muscle depends on the mobility of nearby joints. Also, the thing about flexibility is that after a stretching session, the muscle reverts back to its original state to some degree. Usually, athletes who participate in sports that require exceptional flexibility must warm up for 5-10 minutes to see that flexibility again.

Mobility, on the other hand, is based on many factors, one of them being the nervous system. If your body is not strong enough to achieve a certain position during a movement, your nervous system will not allow it to happen. For example, both gymnasts and kick boxers must be flexible, but mobility dictates whether or not that gymnast can do a split jump or if that kick boxer can kick his opponent’s head. It doesn’t matter if they can do passive splits all day long, if they don’t have good mobility, they will not be able to do the movement in an active setting, thus making that flexibility useless.

This is all very important because immobile joints affect nearby joints and it can be hard to pinpoint exactly where a problem may be. It’s not uncommon to see people remedying hip immobility with more hamstring stretching and then they’re wondering why their joints are screaming at them and they can’t get off the couch. So remember to implement some mobility work into your routine and to get some stretching done each day.

Savannah Steamer, Intern