Why Is Mobility Important?

First time gym goers will often learn new movements and experiment with others that they see the people around them doing. When implementing new activities into a routine, whether its lifting weights or doing cardio on the stair stepper, it’s important to have decent mobility not only to decrease the risk of injury, but to function properly during everyday activities. Mobility, not to be confused with flexibility, is the ability of the two bones that connect at a joint to move uninhibited by surrounding tissue. Unfortunately, this side of physical fitness usually goes unaddressed because people do not take the time to do a meaningful warm-up. This article will help you differentiate mobility from flexibility, and review why it is important to recognize mobility as a unique facet of overall fitness.

Most people will get to the gym, do a quick warm-up that consists of talking to friends and checking their phones (maybe a little flexing in the mirror), and then jump right into sets of heavy compound movements. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is a recipe to get hurt, but you’d be surprised to find out how many people do just that. Stretching and mobility work isn’t glamorous. Putting up big weights will get the heads in the gym to turn, so you often see kids throw plates upon plates on the bar without doing even one set with the unloaded bar. If they don’t even do a proper warm up, you can almost guarantee they aren’t doing any mobility work to make sure their joints are healthy. Not doing this will put you in a vulnerable position for an injury that could set your progress back months, if not years. 

We all know the guys that show off to their friends saying: “My chest is so big I can’t touch my elbows together!” or “My arms are too big to touch my shoulders with my fingertips!” Many of us have been that guy at some point. Everyone “oohs” and “ahhs” at your parlor trick, but unless you’re 250+ pounds, you should not have these issues. That is a result of poor mobility, not massive, gloat-worthy muscles.

The important thing to remember about mobility is that it differs from flexibility (a subset of mobility), which is the ability to stretch a muscle in a static environment. Mobility means being able to move a joint through a full range of motion in a dynamic environment. This means that your ligaments, muscles, and nervous system capabilities are all factored in to determine whether or not a particular joint is immobile. For example, someone who is flexible might be able to do a full split on the ground and stretch from side to side, touching their nose to the ground. But mobility determines whether they can summon these skills to do a split jump in the air. A martial artist who can kick his opponent’s head would be considered mobile because he is strong in that split position and can bring force down on his opponent. Someone might be flexible enough to get in that position on the ground, but in a dynamic environment, their nervous system will not allow it if they are immobile.

Having poor mobility WILL eventually lead to injuries. Just because you haven’t had any serious problems yet doesn’t mean it won’t come back to bite you in the future. Most of the time, mobility problems lead to more muscle tears and strains than lifting with poor technique will. So take at least 15 minutes before every workout to foam roll muscles to break up scar tissue and then STRETCH! Don’t mess around and BS it. Really make the stretch uncomfortable, and it will pay off in the long run. As you slowly improve, you will find it easier to fix form, get stronger, and feel less tension overall in your joints. Implementing mobility work in your routine will not only reap performance benefit, it will improve overall wellness and flexibility.

Savannah Steamer

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