Training Myths That Won’t Die #5: “Infinite Mobility and The Importan... (@b.....i)

Training Myths That Won’t Die #5:

“Infinite Mobility and The Importance of Activation”

Ever since the late 2000s, mobility has been the IT concept. For many people, seemingly the only problem that caused any lifting plateaus or injuries was a lack of mobility, which was some magical property of the body that could never be excessive, and there were people lined up around the block that could help you. Most of those people lacked any degree or credential related to biomechanics and physiology, but boy did they spout off the fancy terms to make up for it. One of the fanciest of those terms was and is “activation.” Now it might be mobility that was limiting you, but it could also be that you were unable to activate various parts of your body that you didn’t even know were problematic, like the glutes, which apparently nearly everyone had problems activating. The tip of the spear in this line of reasoning was that… drumroll… your inability to activate was CAUSING YOUR MOBILITY PROBLEMS. Now that’s the one-two punch that, the newfound experts proclaimed, could only be solved with some mystical combination of foam rolling, extreme stretching, face-rubbing (not a joke), and 1-hour-long mobilizing and activation drills before every workout. Millions bought in, and while many have since been soured by the majority of the movement and egressed considerably from most of its practices, countless others are still in the thick of things.

Alright, so let’s shed some light on the major problems with mobility/activation claims and sort through to the valid approaches.

1.) Half the time solutions are proposed, the folks proposing them don’t even have their terms straight. Much of that time, they are using the term “mobility” when they should be using the term “flexibility.” Ugh but flexibility is a term from like the 80s and brings up memories of the sit-and-reach test in middle school… that’s not modern and cool!

To get things straight, flexibility is the ability to produce a certain range of motion about a joint or series of joints. It can be active (you put yourself in that position using the muscles around those joints) or passive (you or someone else puts you in that position using gravity or other muscles not around that joint). Mobility is very related, and just adds one detail. Mobility adds “strength through the range of motion” to flexibility. So that mobility isn’t just “how flexible are you?” It’s “can you move your own body through those positions, including the extreme ones?” An illustration of this difference can compare a typical 8-year-old girl vs. an adult gymnast. Many young girls have CRAZY flexibility… they can pretzel themselves into super extreme positions. But most of them struggle to generate much force in those positions. Gymnasts, on the other hand, can produce meaningfully high forces through their whole flexible ROM, and thus can move in very cool ways. The mobility of gymnasts makes way for abilities in many other sports, while the passive flexibility of children stops short at something like a parlor trick.

This distinction between flexibility and mobility is important, because many “coaches” use the terms mistakenly. For example, when powerlifters can’t hit depth with heavy weights without their backs rounding, it’s rarely a mobility issue… your back isn’t weak when it can lift hundreds of pounds. It’s almost always a flexibility issue, and addressing that is a different problem than one of addressing mobility. On the other hand, working with untrained but flexible people IS a mobility problem, because they already have the flexibility and just need the strength. And for them, end-range or full-range strength training is the most effective remedy, not fancy drills or foam rolling techniques. TLDR: know what’s actually going on before addressing it.

2.) On the topic of knowing what’s going on before addressing it, “more mobility work” has for some people become a panacea in strength training. If you go to nearly any social media forum or post where someone is asking about why they are stalling in the squat or their technique breaks down in the deadlift, something like half of all comments will be “you need to work on your mobility.” Again, because mobility is combination of strength and flexibility, that advice alone isn’t even instructive… does the person need more flexibility, more strength, or both?

Another common piece of advice is “it seems like you aren’t activating your ____ muscles. You should do ____ fancy drills to help.”

Here’s the breakdown of the problems with such advice:

a.) Lift execution is limited in most cases by some combination of:

- Strength deficit (you just need to get fucking stronger)
- Flexibility problems (you’re tight as fuck and need to get more flexible to hit the positions)
- Technique problems (nothing’s “misfiring,” you just aren’t moving correctly because you don’t know how… you need a coach’s eye and lots of reps to actually improve your technique)

b.) In some MUCH RARER cases, you have some kind of medical condition where some muscles are not being activated properly. First of all, this is very rare and should never be a first guess. Second of all, if you don’t see a doctor and he doesn’t measure muscle activation directly in that area, you can’t tell for sure that’s the problem. And that diagnosis sure as hell can’t be done via online video by someone you’ve never met.

c.) Some drills can make you more aware of and more in control of some muscles and movements. But those drills are rarely very long and they are usually just a part of a 15 minute or shorter warmup you do before you actually lift. To quote Dr. Quinn Henoch and Dr. James Hoffmann, if your general warmup takes longer than 30 minutes, either most of it is time wasted or something much more serious than drills can solve is amiss with your body.

d.) Which drills you do are doing should be SPECIFIC TO YOUR NEEDS. Ideally, they should be prescribed to you by a competent physical therapist or other medical sports expert. Just doing a bunch of “must do” mobility work is a great way to waste your time.

3.) Mobility is ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE SPORT-SPECIFIC.

When someone asks you if your mobility is good, a great response is “good for what?” Unless you work in the Chinese Circus, infinite mobility is a goal that will distract your efforts (and compete with them on a time, recovery, and adaptive direction front) from your ACTUAL SPORT. If you’re a powerlifter and you have 10 hours a week to train, any amount of that time spent becoming MORE MOBILE THAN THE SPORT DEMANDS is time you could have spent actually training for powerlifting and getting bigger, stronger, and/or more competent with limit weights. How much mobility is enough for powerlifting? If you can squat with your preferred stance and hit all the positions to depth without rounding your back or caving your knees or lifting your heels, that’s as much lower body mobility as you need. Any more is cool for its own sake, but won’t transfer to the lifts. Same idea goes for the bench and deadlift. If you’re trying to get mobile enough to be able to overhead squat, and you’re a powerlifter, you’re likely wasting your time. If you’re a weightlifter, overhead squatting is important and mobility work for it should be prioritized, as should being able to hit all the other more extreme positions, and the same applies to every other sport; train for the mobility you NEED, not just “as much as I can get.”

4.) Foam rolling and other tissue compression techniques might mask pain or work through other neural mechanisms, but they almost certainly don’t literally break down the tissue and make it more flexible directly. If you feel way better foam rolling certain areas before you begin to train, go to town. But if you’re foam rolling your entire body and you have no idea why short of “that one guy on YouTube said so,” you might want to back off and put your training time towards things like getting stronger or faster or having better technique for your sport.

5.) How do you find professionals (online and in-person) that aren’t likely to fuck you over and take your money in exchange for BS mobility panaceas? Here’s a good start for a checklist:

a.) The individual should be credentialed by some formal institution of medicine or sport… not mandatory but helpful.

b.) The individual should NOT think that every problem has a mobility or activation solution. If they do… run.

c.) The individual should be VERY wary of making fast diagnoses and offering fast solutions on minimal evidence. Most of the best folks in this industry will need to chat with you at length and likely do at least a video consult where you move around for them and describe your issues in depth. If you’re getting diagnosed via a 30s clip you posted to IG, be very wary. Even the very best can’t do that with confidence.

d.) If someone is offering you shotgun diagnoses without you asking them (they just comment on your videos or posts), they are less likely to know what they’re doing. Qualified professionals do their work for money in a personal setting, not for free in public.

e.) If someone seems to diagnose damn near everyone with the same problem, be skeptical. Real professionals go through a long checklist of ruling out various causes and eventually zoom in on what’s likely going on in your case. Often, it will not be what you expect (that’s why they are the expert and you and I aren’t), and it won’t be something you’ve heard 1000 times online like “inactive glutes.”

f.) Their solutions will most often be very specialized and directed drills designed for YOU, with objective prescriptions and goals to hit. Most often, such work will not take you longer than 15 minutes at a time, 3-6 times per week. If your professional has you doing 1 hour of drills 6 times a week, he’s either full of shit, you’re really fucked up, or you’re actually trying to join the Chinese Circus.

Give that some thought and share if you like it. Don’t fall for the hype and navigate this landscape skeptically! There’s great stuff and great people in the mobility sphere, but there’s a lot of nonsense too to steer clear of.

#silownia #mikrokoksy