Why you should be spending time on mobility daily ?

In this article, we reach out to Clinical Director and Physiotherapist of Physiologic Ryan Tan to talk about why you should spend 15 minutes a day on your mobility.

As a Physiotherapist mostly looking after the athletic population, I often get asked how my clients can both minimise their injury risk, and improve their athletic performance.

For Crossfit, Weightlifting or a Combat Sport athlete, my answer nearly always includes a recommendation to have a regular mobility routine that you can do daily.

WHY BOTHER WITH MOBILITY WORK?

When we look at the physical requirements of sports like Weightlifting, Combat Sports and Crossfit, it’s clear that all three of them require good mobility for you to excel.

You’ll need good overhead shoulder mobility to snatch, clean and jerk, and do your thrusters.

Good hip mobility allows you to generate penetrating power when kicking or getting low for takedowns attempts.

If you’re continuing to pursue your sport while lacking adequate mobility, you’re only holding yourself back from achieving your full potential, and you may just be setting yourself up for an injury later on through mobility compensations.

VR’s range of recovery products can be used effectively to help with maintaining and improving your mobility. Let’s go through a few key areas with VR products that will help you go from good to great.

IMPROVING SHOULDER MOBILITY

The shoulder is one of the most commonly injured joints in the athletic body, and poor overhead mobility is usually one of the main reasons.

• Trigger Point Ball: Perfect for self myofascial release of your rotator cuff muscles, gently lie on the ball with it placed on the rotator cuff muscles of your scapula (shoulder blade). If you can’t tolerate that much force, have the ball on the wall as you lean on it instead.
• Foam Roller: Ideal for slow, long releases of your Lats. Try lying on the foam roller with your arm in an overhead position to get the maximum effect from the foam roller.
• Massage Gun: An excellent tool to use on your rotator cuff, lats and chest muscles to release them yourself, allowing better mobility into overhead positions.

IMPROVING HIP MOBILITY

• Trigger Point Ball: Sit on the trigger point ball, while leaning to one side. The pressure point should be on the outside of your hip, and may even radiate down into your legs. This will help with getting into deep flexion and better rotation in your hips.
• Strength Bands: Perfect to help with hip mobility routines. Try some banded distractions in a lunge position to help open out your hips.
• Massage Gun: Great to use after a training session to help with muscular tightness, preventing stiffness from accumulating.

IMPROVING SPINAL MOBILITY

• Peanut Ball: The two contact points of the peanut ball are ideal for the spine, allowing you to release both sides of the erector spinae simultaneously. Spend a minute or 2 at each spinal segment.
• Foam Roller: One of my favourites for the spine, rolling up and down on the foam roller will help with muscular release along the spine, but did you know that you can also just arch over the edge of the foam roller to work on your thoracic spine extension?

CONCLUSION

If you’re putting your all into your training sessions, you should also dedicate some time to your mobility routine. Having a structured plan that you can do every day works best, as you’ll slowly start to see the improvements over time.

Keep the mobility sessions to around 15 minutes so that it is manageable and fits into your schedule, allowing you to turn it into a habit.

VR’s range of recovery tools will have all your bases covered, so you can be confident that your mobility is in good hands.

 If you liked this article and want to see more epic content from Ryan, follow him on Instagram @physio.culture or head to Physiologic (www.physiologichk.com)