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Fitness

Rethink What It Means to Be Mobile

You must understand your movement patterns, mobility, and every other aspect of health and fitness outside of your gym time.

Justin Lind

Written by Justin Lind Last updated on February 11, 2018

The word mobility has flooded the fitness culture these last few years. With the rise of gymnastics and martial arts inspired “movement” training from numerous different “gurus,” mobility has finally earned a seat at the head table with the likes of strength, power, and aesthetics.

The word mobility has flooded the fitness culture these last few years. With the rise of gymnastics and martial arts inspired “movement” training from numerous different “gurus,” mobility has finally earned a seat at the head table with the likes of strength, power, and aesthetics.

We’ve become a fitness culture obsessed more with beautiful movements, positions, and flows rather than with inflated biceps. Gone are the days when our heroes oiled up to pose for audiences and magazine covers. We now idolize those who post short videos of parkour, gymnastics skills, and ground flows.

I love that as a fitness culture our collective values are shifting toward moving in a smooth and holistic way, but I fear that how we think of mobility still fails to capture its true essence.

We’ve compartmentalized mobility into another aspect of fitness when it actually is an expression of your total fitness into the rest of your life.

Breaking Down Mobility

Mobility is defined as the ability to move or be moved freely and easily. The definition actually tells us all we need to know.

The “to be moved” aspect applies to passive flexibility, when we stretch to our limits with help from gravity, equipment, or partners. The other aspect is “to move” and means far more for your fitness and life.

This is your active flexibility and strength but also your agility, coordination, balance, and power. It means to not only possess beautiful freedom of movement through many extended ranges of motion, but full strength and control throughout.

The latter half of the definition, moving both “free and easily” is where so many people commonly miss the mark. We work to achieve deep positions or coordinated flows “easily.”

Our mobility though, is not the positions we can achieve after a warm up or many repetitions. If you can easily touch your toes only after warming your body into it, that particular movement is anything but “free.”

Freely and easily describes not only how well you can move and be moved but also when and how you have access to that quality of movement.

Many coaches and teachers have said this before me. Martial arts masters teach that we must be able to kick cold, as conflicts arise quickly and assailants will never allow you a warm up.

Kelly Starrett’s famous Becoming a Supple Leopard analogy has us seek to be ready to chase tonight’s meal at full speed at a moment’s notice. Leopards do not warm up; they must sprint at full anytime or go hungry.

Understand Your Movement Patterns

Movement and mobility are not pieces of your fitness regimen to only be worked on in reps and sets.

Yes, including ample “mobility” and “movement” flows into your training will make you a more able and embodied mover. However, far more important than any of this training is how you understand your movement patterns, mobility, and every other aspect of health and fitness outside of your gym time.

The point of all of this mobility training is to move better all of the time and in every aspect of your life. Only thinking about how you move in the gym misses the very essence of what it means to be mobile.

The best way to improve your mobility then is not in the focused flexibility work that you do, but in paying attention to how you move your body every second of the day.

Yes, the gym work is when you can incite big changes. But, your time outside the gym is when these changes become integrated into your life and when your awareness informs the actions that you will take in your next training session.

Justin Lind

About Justin Lind

Justin Lind has been an athlete and student his whole life. While hobbies and sports have come and gone, one thing has remained: a commitment to constant improvement of movement quality. Besides an obsession for health and athletics, Justin remains the consummate student and teacher.

Justin has a passion for learning how to glean the most valuable information from many different communities and philosophies. A former mechanical engineer turned coach and writer; he applies his analytical and structural ways of thinking to the world of health, fitness, and athletics.

While training heavily as a competitive Olympic lifter and CrossFit regionals athlete, Justin suffered a back injury that completely shifted his fitness and movement paradigm. He committed to understanding the flip side of intense training: recovery, mobility, and self-care. Justin soon left engineering to focus on creating empowered athletes who are highly in-tune with their bodies.

In addition to a B.S. in mechanical engineering from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, Justin holds certifications in CrossFit Level 1, RKC Level II, and USA Gymnastics.

Justin is currently travelingthe U.S. full-time. He offers remote coaching and workshops for both kettlebells and gymnastics skills at CoachJustinLind.com.

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