Mobility, Flexibility and Stability - Why are they important in performance?

Hello again and welcome.  Today’s article will be based around mobility, flexibility and stability. I’m sure these are generic terms you have all heard of before, but this article will look specifically into why we should focus on them when training.

What are they?

Okay, so to start off with, let’s look at how these terms are defined. I always believe it is important to have definitions in the back of your mind when training so we can justify our training methods by keeping a focus on the enhancements we are trying to achieve.

Mobility is the ability to be able to move freely and easily, flexibility is the range of motion possible at a joint or muscle and stability describes how efficiently the body manages forces to remain stable under pressure.

Why should mobility, flexibility and stability be trained?

A short session containing mobility, flexibility and stability exercises before a training session will increase the body’s ability to move freely and easily, increase the range of movement possible and improve the ability to maintain form under external forces. These training adaptions will consequently improve your level of performance and also decrease your risk of injury.

How can these be trained?

Personally, I like to add the session onto the start of my normal training session, incorporating it into my warm up. Along with mobility, flexibility and stability exercises, the session consists of foam rolling and some glute activation. This acts as a pre-training session to prepare the body for exercise to ensure I am reducing my injury risk but also maximizing my levels of performance.

Mobility

In order to allow the body to move freely and easily, we need to loosen off and exercise our joints and muscles through their full range of motion. It is recommended to focus on joints such as your shoulders, back, hips, knees, ankles as well as all major muscle groups.

I start my initial focus on general mobility by going for a short jog, incorporating skipping, arm circles and trunk twists. I then focus on my back by performing various back loosening exercises such as knee rolls or cat-camels then onto my hips with some hip openers and leg swings.

Following on from these exercises, I would then further focus on the lower body by performing a number of functional squat and lunge (forward, backward, lateral) based exercises, promoting that high range of movement in my joints and muscles.

Flexibility

Once warm, and you have been through your mobility exercises, we can now look to increase that current range of movement through some flexibility exercises. There are numerous ways to train flexibility; it may be worth looking into each method and seeing which is best for you. Most commonly used methods as part of a warm up protocol are static and dynamic stretching. When stretching statically, ease the body into a position in which you can feel a slight stretch or discomfort (not pain) and hold for around 30 seconds. Any increase in flexibility this generates will consequently improve your mobility also.

For sports such as football, there is clearly significance on the lower body. Try to focus on your glutes, hamstrings, groin, quadriceps, hip flexors and calves.

Stability

Similarly to mobility and flexibility, the actual exercises you select are dependent on your sport. For example, if your sport is tennis, you may focus more on the stability of your shoulders but there are several areas of the body that require stability work. As I am a footballer myself, for the purpose of this article we will focus on ankle stability.

In sports such as football, it is often required to make sharp lateral movements from a single leg stance. Consequently there is a load being placed on the ankle which, if not managed correctly, can lead to injury. If the ankle is strong and stable enough to manage these loads correctly, we can cut away quicker, sharper and more powerfully (away from opposition). Another advantage of ‘stronger ankles’ is improved balance. Strengthening the muscles surrounding the ankle will enhance our balance when performing on a single leg.

Some example exercises include hop and sticks (forward, back, lateral, 180 degree turn), single leg balances (even or uneven surface; un-weighted or weighted) and single leg medicine ball throw and catches to add a force to resist against, forcing your ankle to work and developing balance.

What does the research say?

Now lets look at what the research has had to say regarding mobility, flexibility and stability. All references can be found below in case you would like to look further into any studies or read up further on any theory.  

So, is it really worth it?

Joyce and Lewington (2014) write that mobility exercises should focus on joint range of motion and tissue length. Athletes should perform a series of these mobility movements to access full range of motion, stabilise the joint and create clean movement within the body, preparing them for maximum performance.

A study by Johnson et al. (2014) investigated hamstring flexibility, measuring knee extension range of motion, after a six week programme of stretching. Results showed that participants were successful in increasing their joint range of motion after the programme, which supports the hypothesis behind flexibility training.

A study looking into ankle sprains by Thacker et al. (2003), concluded that special emphasis should be placed on ankle strengthening, particularly with use of a balance board or similar.  It was suggested such methods are likely to lead to a reduction in injury risk and improvement in performance

Joyce and Lewington (2014) also state that unstable surfaces are a potent tool for stimulating muscle stabilisers and incorporating this stability / balance training into a warm up can enhance proprioceptive input.  This also reduces the risk of lower back or leg injuries (Bird and Stuart, 2012).

So why not find the time to incorporate this into your training programme and see if it works for you?

As always, We’d love to hear what you think!

References

Bird, S. and Stuart, W. (2012). Integrating Balance and Postural Stability Exercises into the Functional Warm-up for Youth Athletes. Strength and Conditioning Journal, 34(3), pp.73-79.

Johnson, A., Mitchell, U., Meek, K. and Feland, J. (2014). Hamstring flexibility increases the same with 3 or 9 repetitions of stretching held for a total time of 90 s. Physical Therapy in Sport, 15(2), pp.101-105.

Joyce, D. and Lewindon, D. (2014). High-performance training for sports. Human Kinetics

Thacker, S., Stroup, D., Branche, C., Gilchrist, J. and Goodman, R. (2003). Prevention of ankle sprains in sports: An Update. International Sports Medicine Journal, 4(4).

Can't Do Pull Ups? We Have 7 Tips to Get You There

Pull ups are a basic movement in CrossFit, yet in and of themselves they are an intermediate gymnastic movement. Starting out pulling your bodyweight can seem like an insurmountable task.

Don’t fall prey to the mistakes of progressing too fast, kipping before you’re ready, or skipping over the fundamentals. There are tons of strategies and methods of assistance to get your chin over that bar, but not all of them are helping you to get stronger.

Here we will learn where to begin and which alternatives are worth your time. Here are seven tips for achieving that beautiful, dead-hang pull up:

1. Work Your Mobility

Pullups begin as all movements do - with proper mobility. Work on being able to maintain a proper overhead position exactly as described in my article The Safest and Smartest Progression for Building Your Overhead Lifts. If you start with tight lats, chest, or spine you’re already in a compromised position. This will put more stress on your shoulder joint and spine. For a pull up, you must start in a deadhang position with active shoulders. Once you can hang in this position in a controlled manner, then you can start pulling motions.

If you are unable to achieve a proper active hang position, you can still start building strength while working on your mobility. Work on grip strength using heavy deadlifts along with farmer’s carries. Both will stress the forearm and hands in a similar way to a pull up. To begin building pulling strength, you can do bent over barbell or dumbbell rows. Both are effective at building pulling strength and require less mobility to perform correctly.

2. Get Some Hang Time

Once you open up the mobility to dead hang properly, then you need to start spending time on the bar. Dead hangs for time are an effective way to build shoulder stability and grip strength. Make sure you never let your form suffer during these.

3. Avoid Jumping and Rubber Bands

Jumping pullups and banded pullups are popular in the CrossFit world as a way to get in a workout, but I’ve found little success with these methods and little direct translation into actual pull up strength. Strict banded pullups can be decent for building strength, but during a metcon they get abused and people begin to kip, bounce out of the hole, and squirm in all sorts of ways to finish their reps. If you’re after metabolic conditioning, switch to rows, deadlifts, rowing, ring rows, or some other variation.

4. Build Strength

To get your first pullup what you want to do is build strength. This means operating at 80%+ of your max effort at a minimum. Ring rows are one of the most effective methods to build strength and are easily varied in intensity by changing your positioning. Mark your foot positioning each workout and begin to creep your body closer to parallel with the floor each time. This will increase the load by involving a greater percentage of your bodyweight.

Negative pullups are also effective at building strength. Start with a five-second controlled descent and build to longer durations of time. Eccentric work can be very taxing and leave you sore, so start conservatively and add on as your body tells you. Don’t combine a lot of eccentric pulling work and then a hard metcon involving similar movements.

5. Stay Focused

Remember the body can adapt well in one way at a time. It’s hard to increase strength and endurance at the same time. This is why we cycle our training and have times when we focus on strength and times when we focus on conditioning. If your goal is to do a pull up, then focus on getting that first one now, and then multiple reps later.

6. Resist the Kip

Don’t kip until you can do at least five strict pullups. Kipping is the translation of horizontal momentum to vertical force and allows you to do a greater number of pull ups. Kipping is more efficient, but it also loads the shoulder dynamically, putting more force on it. If you are unable to control your bodyweight, there is no reason to add momentum on top of that.

7. Climb a Rope

Another movement great at building pulling strength is rope climbs. Rope climbing with efficiency involves using your legs to hook the rope and push yourself higher. Your arms hold you in place as you bring your legs up. So for a rope climb you only need to be able to hang on, not just pull your way to the top. Therefore, this is a great tool for people still working on building their pulling strength. If you’re a beginner, though, remember to let your legs help you so you don’t just focus on your arms and get burned out.

Respecting the pullup, training for your current ability level, and listening to your body will yield long-term results. If you’ve never done a pull up, then it’ll take time to get there, but the long smooth road always beats the ups and down of overtraining and progressing too quickly.