Blog

In Part 1, we established that increasing the flexibility of our tissues does not instantly improve the way we move. If we don’t add other ingredients like strength and motor control, we won’t improve our mobility in any meaningful way. You can learn about this principle in part 1. This is especially true with the areas on today’s list: the muscles of the spine and the upper body.

Historically, mobility in these areas is a matter of some debate. There are some who believe more flexibility is always better, while others feel these two areas should be permanently locked into a “safe” position. As always, the answer lies somewhere in the middle: you need to be able to take joints through range, but you also need the strength and control to make sure this happens at the right time, with the right limitations. Being very strong in just one position is almost never the answer.

Enjoying this content? Why not sign up to the newsletter to be notified of new articles!

Except I wasn’t.

It is common for people to have a great deal of negative misconceptions regarding back pain. This is clearly demonstrated in this post by Dr. Jarod Hall, which summarises this research paper.

These types of misconceptions prove that people need to be reminded that the back should be able to move, and the muscles of the back should be trained through range.

Imagine you break your arm, and have it immobilised in a cast for 12 weeks. When you have the cast removed, is it weaker, or stronger? Is it more mobile, or is it stiffer? Does it have more muscle tissue, or less? These are the risks we face when we refuse to load and move the back. And of course, once the back is weaker and stiffer, pain or injury is more likely to occur.

This can lead to a vicious cycle of injury and weakness, leading to the assumption that the back is inherently weak or risky to train. Instead, we need to reintroduce movement to increase mobility, confidence, and strength. This is especially true if there has been pain in the past.

This lengthy introduction is the discussion behind the rising popularity of Jefferson Curls. For this exercise, you commit the greatest training sin. You grab a weight, and you fold over from your spine!

• Stand with feet shoulder-width apart.
• Hold a weight in both hands, letting your arms hang.
• Have a small bend in the knees to keep the stretch off the hamstrings.
• Starting with tucking your chin and rounding your shoulders, try to fold joint-by-joint down as low as you can go.
• If you can touch the floor without moving the lower back that much, stand on an elevated surface.
• Return to standing in the reverse order to how you lowered yourself. Lift yourself one vertebrae at a time until you can return to standing.
• If you’re nervous to try this, perhaps start with some Cat/Cows.

Whilst it’s important to retain mobility and strength in the back, we also need the control to fold at the hips without rounding the back sometimes. This is especially true when deadlifting or lifting the leg in a sporting movement.

Enter the Romanian deadlift, which is the perfect accompaniment to the Jefferson Curl. In many ways it is the opposite task: fold over with the absolute minimum of lower back or knee movement. This is great for mobility because it forces the hamstrings to lengthen under load instead of the back muscles. If you’re good at both Jefferson Curls and Romanian Deadlifts, then you’ll be prepared for a lot of back-related challenges.

Want to know more about getting a strong back? There will be a strong back series coming soon!

Shoulder Mobility – Lat Stretching and Pullovers

Shoulder mobility is perhaps the best argument for needing mobility and strength in equal parts. Owing to it’s shallow socket, the shoulder requires a great deal of muscle strength and control to protect the joint. On the other hand, if the joint is locked down too much, you lose access to an essential movement capacity: your overhead mobility.

The ability to reach your arms overhead without leaning through the back is a skill that we often lose with age, and one that should be preserved for as long as possible. It can be affected by spinal position and shoulder blade movement, not to mention the ball and socket joint itself. This does mean that shoulder mobility can be restricted by multiple issues, each with their own solution, but I’ve decided to focus on something more general.

Having tightness in the large muscles of the upper back (namely the latissimus dorsi, or lats) can limit overhead mobility because these muscles pull the arms closer to the body. Stretching the lats with a band is a great way to add extra leverage to the stretch without cranking the shoulders back. The band also pulls the arms upward, encouraging the shoulder blades to move too.

This is all well and good, but as you’ve probably guessed, we need to train the lats through range too. Pullovers are great for this as the weight will pull the arms up overhead. I prefer the cable version as a way of loading the movement equally in all positions. You might feel your abs working with this too – they have a role in controlling the amount of back movement involved.

Lat Stretching

Pullovers

1) Attach a strong resistance band to something high. 2) Loop your wrist into the band, so you don’t have to grab it. 3) Step back far enough that the band drags your arm forward. 4) Fold over from the hips, so your arm passes level to your head. 5) Experiment with twisting, lowering the chest, rounding your back, flexing sideways, and stretching both arms at the same time. 6) Explore this stretch for 30-60 seconds.

1) Lay on the bench and push your lower back flat to the bench. Elevate your feet if it helps you flatten your back. 2) Start with the cable attachment over your shoulders, with arms straight. 3) Allow the weight to pull your arms back over your head as far as you can tolerate without the back lifting from the bench. 4) Pull the weight back over the shoulder.

What’s the Next Step for Working on Mobility?

While the purpose of this post is not to suggest that other methods of stretching are obsolete, you should try incorporating these exercises into your workouts for a while. This is especially true if you’ve been pursuing more static forms of stretching for a long time. Hopefully you’ll find that these are more enjoyable to perform, at least.

Remember that a lot of traditional strength exercises are great ways of expressing the mobility you have, provided your restrictions don’t make them risky to perform. I’ve attached other examples below:

Shoulder Press	Overhead mobility
Squat	Hip/knee/ankle mobility
Lunge	Hip mobility
Horizontal Pulling	Shoulder blade mobility
Romanian Deadlift	Hamstring/hip mobility

This review suggests that there may not be much difference between stretching and full-range strength training for Improving flexibility. If you already have a good enough level of mobility to perform these exercises, you may not need to spend time doing additional work on your mobility. Keep this in mind when you decide what to prioritise in your training.

Thanks for reading! If you’d like to be notified of more great content, you should sign up to our newsletter.