#5 Mobility and Stability
Team, we’re still working through our “7 ELEMENTS” of achieving high levels of training and performance. This week we want to hit on #5 – MOBILITY AND STABILITY of training. For review, we’ve hit on:
#1 – NUTRITION,
#2 – REST & RECOVERY,
#3 -PATTERN OF MOVEMENTS ,
#4 – PROGRESSIONS.
Ever take a rock and throw it into a body of water? When you throw in the rock, there is a splash. Then you can see the “ripple effect” that the rock makes. Think of the body like that. Your belly button is the spot where the rock goes in – and the ripple effect moves outward to the rest of your body. In most cases (that means NOT ALL – and I can hear someone after they read this say, “That’s not me”, you would be the exception to the rule). Lack of mobility and lack of stability begins in the mid-section; where the rock went in.
Think about the lower back and hips. If we lose mobility in these areas with tight hip flexors, tight thoracic spine and the inability to maintain stability in the muscles – we break down and other parts of the body breakdown. WHY? It’s called the SERAPE EFFECT.
We’ve spoken about the SERAPE EFFECT before. If you remember, our body works as a Serape Wrap. What happens above the hips will effect what happens below the hips. We have an issue with the front side – it wraps around and affects the back side hip. We have some mobility problem with the inside hip or thigh, and we have stability problems with the outside hip. Low back hurts and we have problems, we have difficulty breathing, standing upright, rotating, sitting or pain into our lower leg.
As we start to move forward with a program and a plan, keep in mind, and we’ve been saying it many times (YOU CAN SAY IT WITH US.) – YOU HAVE TO TRAIN MOVEMENT – YOU CANNOT TRAIN MUSCLE!
Here is an example: You have a tight back, and what do you do? Lower back stretches. Great. Problem solved….or is it? What is the CAUSE of the problem? Is it tight, and immobile hip flexors or inactive and unstable glutes, maybe it’s lack of lower abdominal control (stability) or tight hamstrings (poor mobility)? Could it be a tight, immobile psoas which shifts your pelvic tilt and changes your posture? So instead of just doing back stretches, we do lower back mobility, hip mobility, abdominal stability, hamstring stability all while setting your proper pelvic position.
WOW – that’s a lot of exercises and a lot of work. Or is it?
What if we do one exercise that can combine doing all these exercises into one.
Let’s take a normal plank.
The Plank will work from a stability stand point if we just are in one spot and hold it, and hold it. Had a guy tell me one time he could hold a plank for 16 minutes. Our response – SO WHAT! When in life will you ever need to hold a plank for that long? In our book – and in THE RIGHT MOVES, we progress to being able to incorporate mobility in with stability. Here’s what we do.
Again, do a Plank – but this time, stabilize and lift one leg up in the air. As you do – take the leg out to a 45 degree angle! We have just added lower back and hip mobility. Some of you might not be able to do this to start with, so we begin with simple toe taps! Then we progress to 45 degrees, then 90 degrees, then change the movement pattern of the legs AND ARMS. As we progress (remember #4 – Progressions!), each step requires greater mobility along with greater stability. KEY TEACHING POINT HERE: MAKE SURE YOU ARE MOVING CORRECTLY AND NOT JUST MOVING. If you lift your leg and your hips drop, that is BAD WORK. We always want good work and clean movements as we move forward. If we don’t – they are THE WRONG MOVES – and bad results will happen.
So we look to add MOBILITY movements, but keeping great STABILITY where we need it. When we do, like the pyramid showed at the start of this blog, we can develop controlled movement which leads to great skill – AND BETTER PERFORMANCE at what we are working to do.
Coach Rozy
