Doing you mobility work will be the foundation of your success with my training.
I know mobility work can be painful. It’s not that I am trying to be mean, I actually have your best interests at heart.
Most programs give you a few standard warm-up exercises, then throw you into a workout. This is fine if you are in your teens or twenties. As you get a little older, you find when you do these workouts you end up with more aches and pains or even serious injuries. This is because you are tight and have mobility issues and that affects your ability to do the exercise properly.
The bottom line is this. It took decades to screw up your body, You can’t expect to undo that with three thirty minute workouts a week.
Everybody is different. Maybe you don’t have any issues and your mobility work will be minimal. Almost everyone else will have a few trouble areas to resolve.
When I talk mobility issues, specifically I mean:
- Pain in the feet
- Tight Calves
- Tight Hamstrings
- Low Back pain or stiffness
- Knee Pain
- Hip Pain or stiffness
- Shoulder Pain
- Upper back and neck pain or stiffness
- A general feeling of getting old.
Tight knotted up muscles will almost never be fixed by working out. Here’s why. The body has to move. If the muscles that are supposed to be working aren’t working because they are knotted up, the body will recruit the next set of muscles to try and help. The problem is that these muscles have their own job to do and are never positioned to take over the job. In other words, the way the new muscles being recruited aren’t attached to the bone the same way, so they can’t contract and move the optimum way. This leads to overworked, angry muscles that over time will pull the body out of alignment. That results in chronic pain for you.
Mobility work or getting regular deep tissue massages will sort all this out. Your desired outcome is to:
- Improve posture and work habits.
- Undo muscle knots and break up scar tissue.
- Make sure the right muscles are doing the right jobs.
- Make sure your joints sit in the proper place.
Once you start getting this under control, your life changes but it will take time, consistency and mindfulness.
Your Homework:
Make a list of trouble spots.
You may have a laundry list or just one or two areas. You want to focus on 2 main areas that give you the most issues and spend less time on everything else. As you start healing, you will have time to give those other areas attention.
Get the Equipment
Get a foam roller, golf ball, lacrosse ball and softball. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on this and you might have most of this stuff lying around the house. In case you don’t, here is a link to my Amazon store where you can find good deals on this. Click Here.
Set aside 5-10 Minutes Everyday.
You don’t have to spend a lot of time on mobility work, in fact it gets counter productive. So think about targeting your top 2 areas and work on them 2-5 minutes each. That is a max of 10 minutes a day.
Important note: Do not spend more than 1 or 2 minutes on an area with the same technique. In other words, if you are rolling your foot with a golf ball, break up the five minutes by doing different exercises.
If you do more than that, you can bruise the muscle and make matters worse. Just use common sense and you will be okay.
Do Your mobility work before you workout.
It doesn’t have to be right before you train. Think about this. Would you rather do a bench press with a tight, angry shoulder joint or a loose one that moves properly? Makes sense, right? Do the mobility work as part of your warm-up and you will see a huge difference.
Additional tip
I would find this hard to believe, except I did this in my younger days too. Every feel joint pain while doing a set and you kept on going? What a bad idea. I would yell at you but I did it myself all the time. The smart thing to do is stop.
- Does the pain go away?
- Are you using bad form? If so, pick up a lighter weight, try again and see if the pain disappears.
- Still not feeling right? Do a couple mobility exercises, then go back and try again.
- If it still hurts, move on to the next exercise.
The Bottom Line: You can’t work through joint pain, so don’t even try.
Have you joined my Online training yet?
It is free and open to the public. I have a section about mobility training with videos and will be adding specific sections in the future. Learn how to do this stuff right. Don’t let tight, ugly, knotted up muscles control your life.
