Mobility and Stability

Many of us work out either at the gym or at home trying to perform exercises that we hear are good for us.  Most trending right now are squats and deadlifts.  And these can be good…. when they are done correctly.

With limited mobility comes increased risk of injury.

The reality is most of us don’t always have the mobility needed to do these exercises safely.  Personally I recommend starting by practicing these movements without adding any load to begin with.  This will help you work on your mobility (aiming to improve your range) without being overwhelmed with load and therefore allowing you to focus on your stability also.

If you add a barbell to your squat with or without additional weight to the barbell whether it be a front, back or overhead squat, you should have already mastered the body weight squat to full range in great form so you can continue to improve your strength in that range and not a limited range as this promotes muscle imbalances, poor performance and increased risk of injury.

Alignment is everything.

If you drive a car and just focus on how fast it will go but yet haven’t mastered it’s braking, cornering capacity, looked at wheel alignment or tyre pressure then you’re not only limiting the performance of the car and running it into the ground prematurely but the risk of crashing it increases because the machine isn’t prepared to cope with the loads it's under!! Check your tracking such as your spine.

Toe touch and stiff muscles are good??!

In this interesting short video from Gray Cook he talks about how you should be able to touch your toes before you start to learn the deadlift.  He also talks about why stiffness in your muscles can be a good thing…!

On that note as Gray Cook says- “Move well and then move often”.

Thanks for reading, see you next time.

Thanks for reading!
Rich.