Difference Between Mobility and Flexibility and How to Improve Them
There is more to fitness than just strength – flexibility and mobility are also important. It will be difficult for you to do the exercises if you cannot bend far enough to perform any of the movements. Here’s how to improve those skills.
While flexibility and mobility may sound the same colloquially, they are different concepts that have an important impact on your fitness. I think Tony Gentilcore , co-founder of Cressey Sports Performance, put it most succinctly:
Mobility: How the joint moves Flexibility: Muscle length
Essentially, think of mobility as an umbrella covering a range of factors that can affect range of motion around a joint. Flexibility is one of these components: it is difficult to move a joint if the muscles connected around it are not stretched far enough to allow it. But there are other considerations that also matter, such as lack of strength to exercise, soft tissue damage (such as tendon inflammation), and even problems with other joints in the same chain of motion. So while adequately stretched muscles can theoretically contribute to a greater range of motion around the joint, it is mostly useless if your mobility is limited by other factors.
So why should you care? In addition to working out in the gym, mobility and flexibility affect the health of your joints and in your daily life. Think of it this way: if you have a general mobility problem that affects the way you move, your body will not function properly. Over time, you may suffer more wear and tear as well as general discomfort than if the area around the joint could move normally. Plus, when you exercise, you are essentially performing these irregular movements at higher intensities and more stress, so painful injuries can accumulate over time. Tony cites basketball players , many of whom have limited ankle mobility with high-top sneakers. However, this limits the ability of the ankle to work, balance and absorb impacts as expected, which often leads to knee problems in the future.
So, mobility is important and flexibility is part of it, but that doesn’t mean you need to spend an extra hour in the gym every day stretching all your joints. Matthew Ibrahim , strength and conditioning coach, recommends working in areas that you know are narrow and have limited movement in the past . Everything else is superfluous.
Common problem areas are hips, shoulders, knees and upper back. If you are having trouble in these or other areas, here are three key steps to help you relax these areas:
- Foam rolling : Sometimes painful but usually effective, foam rolling is essentially a self-massage technique that helps free up space in the muscles. If you’re not sure where to start, Eric Cressy has a great video to help you get started.
- Mobility exercises : These are exercises specifically designed to train your range of motion around your joints. MobilityWOD is probably the most complete source of exercise on the Internet – just search for the relevant body part on the site and the corresponding exercise set will appear.
- Stretching: This is not always necessary, especially if you are a naturally bendable person, stretching can make your joints more vulnerable to injury than if you simply did not use this exercise. But if you’ve always been pretty tough and it gets in the way of doing your exercises correctly, you might find it useful to have a few short stretches as part of your warm-up and longer stretches after your workout.
Image of Angela Aladro Mella .
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