If you take a walk through any gym’s stretching area you’ll see that most everyone uses the words “flexibility” and “mobility” to mean the same thing. The thought is that if you stretch enough, you’ll stay limber, mobile and always ready to move.
What Is Mobility?
Mobility is dynamic or active. For example, if you talk about mobility you’re referring to the ability to get your thumb to exactly the same spot on your wrist without the assistance of the other hand.
Prior to a workout, a focus on improving mobility will increase the ability of your nervous system to activate those muscles for movement. Mobility is responsible for improving the contraction of the muscle fibres by the nerves which activate them while – at the same time – lengthening the muscles as well as the surrounding connective tissues, in other words, the fascia. This intensifies the blood flow to the affected muscles, boosts joint range of motion, and ironically, decreases tension! Mobility training encompasses the entire body moving as one unit, enhancing coordination for precise and controlled movement.
Mobility is a massive part of taking care of our entire system of movement. Fitness and working out can be an exercise culture, but we should be thinking of it more as a culture of movement. A common assumption is that if we just exercise or work out, we will automatically have the ability to move better. However, this isn’t necessarily the case. Performing specific exercises repeatedly will most likely improve just those exercises. This improvement will typically not generalise to your whole system, and no single exercise can represent the full spectrum of human movement.
What Is Flexibility?
The term ‘flexibility describes the range of motion that is available to a person. Flexibility is passive and it comes down to the ability of the muscle to stretch.
For instance, you may have the ability to touch your toes while sitting on the ground in a forward fold (that’s your flexibility). You require the flexibility to get into particular positions, such as a deep squat.
How Do Flexibility And Mobility Work Hand In Hand?
In order to have sufficient joint mobility, muscle flexibility is crucial. After all, your hamstrings do need to stretch in order for you to touch your toes. However, there is a misconception that a lack of mobility is merely due to muscular flexibility limitations or – alternatively – a muscle losing natural length. A person can have superb flexibility however still have poor mobility.
That’s owing to the fact that muscle flexibility is only one of many factors in how a particular joint moves. The primary determiner of how a particular joint moves is its structure, in other words the shape of its bones, how they meet as well as how the joint’s ligaments and tendons connect to those bones. Do an X-ray and no two people’s joints are the exactly the same. That’s OK. Every person is built with a different ranges of motion that are available to them.
However, when someone does not have the ability to access that range of motion, that’s a problem. And, interestingly, for most individuals who have trouble performing certain movements – like touching their toes – isn’t due to poor flexibility.
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