New blog at wisconsinbjj.com: Three Basic Mobility Movements
Three Basic Mobility Movements (click link to read at source)
Last week we introduced the concept of mobility. Today we’ll discuss a few basic movements that will help improve mobility, prepare the body for activity, reduce tension and increase joint longevity. As mentioned in the last blog, soft tissue work is essential to correcting tension problems and restoring proper muscular alignment, but in order to build strength, stability and range of motion of the muscles, tendons, and ligaments we need dynamic movements that use proper biomechanics to train the body. So here’s a few easy movements you can add into any part of your workout to improve your mobility.
The Squat
You might be saying to yourself, “Really? Is that all you’ve got? Squats??” The truth is, when used correctly, the squat is a functionally essential movement that requires the body to move synergistically through a large range of motion. There are so many variations and usages for the squat that, beyond catastrophic injury preventing any hip/knee flexion, it would be foolish not to use this movement. There are plenty of informed squat tutorials out there, so I won’t delve into the specifics here. The king of squats is the overhead squat, and I can’t recommend it enough. Begin with a PVC pipe (or wooden dowel) to learn the movement with proper form, and progress from there.
Paint-the-sky push-up
Push-ups are another important foundational movement and are widely used, but rarely used correctly. Once you’ve mastered the basics of the push-up, as with the squat, there are endless variations you can use to progress the movement. A limitation with the push-up, as with any horizontal pressing movement (ie, the bench press), is that over time it can tighten down the chest and shoulders and potentially damage the rotator cuff. Using a variation like the paint-the-sky push-up adds mobility back into the shoulder joint. Perform a push-up as usual, but at the top of the movement, pivot onto the sides of your feet (assume a wider foot-stance if needed), turn chest and eyes towards the sky while maintaining shoulder pack (don’t let your shoulder rise up towards your ear), and trace a large circle with your free hand. The idea is to take the free arm and “paint the sky” with an imaginary brush, taking the shoulder through a full range of motion while stabilizing with the planted arm.
Salutation lunge
This movement is more or less the warrior one pose from yoga. We are slightly modifying it to correct external rotation of the hip and focus the stretch on the hip flexors and quadriceps of the back leg. Step out into a lunge long enough to instigate a stretch in the back leg. Make sure both feet are pointing straight forward, though the back foot in particular may feel like you are standing pigeon-toed. Sink down a bit deeper into the movement, but do not let the back knee touch the ground. Slightly shift your weight to the back foot, bring your hands together in front of your sternum, push them towards the sky, leaning ever-so-slightly back. As mentioned before, the idea here is to bring the stretch to the hip flexors and quads (the muscles on the front ) of the back leg. If you start to feel excessive tightness/pain/discomfort of the lower back, there is too much backwards lean coming from the spine and not enough stretch coming from the hips. Try to sink into the movement by bending the back knee and shifting the weight back to correct this.
These are three simple movements we use on a daily basis to work out common tension patterns in clients and athletes. If you work at a desk, drive, type, run, cycle or even train MMA, these points of tension in the hips and shoulders can snowball over time into serious injury. Incorporate these movements along with regular soft tissue work in order to improve your overall mobility, flexibility and strength.
