Mobility: Pointless or Productive?

Someone on a podcast was talking loudly about the importance of mobility, and how every session should start with it. A belief, and only a belief, but a frustrating and common (and frustratingly common) one.

You won't see "mobility work" specified in an intelligent resistance training routine. It just doesn't need to be there.

What mobility is

Strip out the templated, choreographed warm-up routines, and observe mobility for what it is: moving joints through their full range of available motion with a negligible amount of resistance.

A well designed exercise routine involves exactly that, but with progressively challenging amounts of resistance. Adding resistance doesn't reduce the benefit of moving a muscle from fully lengthened to fully shortened and back again. It shouldn't limit your ability to do so either.

Why your range gets limited

Yet it frequently does, which is probably why people associate "good for mobility" with "almost no weight". So what usually creates the limitation? Resistance Profiles. More specifically, Resistance Profiles that don't match your strength.

If the resistance is too hard in the portions of a rep where you're weak, you can't go there. Or, wisely, you don't. There's a limitation in range and recruitment.

So let's say we get it right. Either the exercise is well designed, or we choose an appropriate resistance for each portion of the range. Now we're producing contractions through the joint's full available range in that plane.

Now honestly ask yourself. After an exercise like that, what does mobility work add, before or after your sets? What do we think we're doing that the exercise didn't?

“What do we think we’re doing that the exercise didn’t?”

When prep work earns its place

Sure, some general multi-joint preparation might help before playing a sport. (Multi-planar, too, for certain joints.)

There, you're about to meet movements you can't fully predict: different planes of motion, different joint functions, volatile amounts of resistance due to acceleratory effects. The activity itself is random, so warming up with random dance moves might be appropriate.

“For controlled, progressive resistance training, though? Don’t be daft.”

Does this mean there's never a reason to do any prep work for resistance training? We didn't say that. Even in the most "isolated" instance of a single-joint function on a machine, where the machine guides the plane of motion, the muscles around that joint that aren't doing the moving still have a job. They help manage the joint's internal stability, through what the industry sometimes calls "co-contractions". (Note: not mobility.)

It can be productive to perform movements that allow us to prepare muscles that are about to be called on for joint management, by shortening and lengthening them.

It could also be productive to explore some other planes - without load that creates fatigue - if we have a very restrictive resistance training protocol that is strictly involving only specific planes of motion for an extended period of time.

As mentioned previously, if there is a high degree of variability or volatility to the movements and forces we’re about to experience, than a preparation routine that primes joints for all sorts of planes of function and forces would be wise.

If we’re considering using a band to wave our arms behind our head before we set up for some Chest Presses and a Squat though, the productivity would appear limited.

Want to start challenging more industry assumptions? Learn more about RTS Level 1.