Personal Trainer – Mobility Drills

I’m like a bus, they don’t come for ages and suddenly two come at the same time! I said yesterday that I would talk about mobility training a little more so that’s what I’ll discuss in this blog. In my personal training plan I do about 10 minutes of mobility exercises when I wake up each morning and then another 10 to warm up for my actual sessions. So what is the idea behind mobility training then?

Well there are two aspects of joint health, the first of which most people are well aware of. This is the flexibility of the muscles surrounding the joints. If the muscles surrounding a joint are tight then the joint will have less range of motion. The classic example here is when a person can’t touch their toes they have tight hamstrings and lower back muscles.  This is also observable in people with poor posture. Rounded shoulders are due to chronically tight chest and shoulder muscles. It is common knowledge that if you stretch the muscles you increase the range of motion at the joint. What people don’t know is that conventional stretching is very ineffective at getting the job done. I’ll discuss stretching more at a later date. If you need to know now then get in touch and make an appointment!

The second aspect of joint health is the actual joint itself. People only tend to become aware of their joints when they have a direct problem such as a damaged cartilage or arthritis. Joints are relatively complex structures, but they can be likened to hinges on a gate. When the joint is well oiled it opens and closes easily but without oil it creaks and becomes stiff. Just like the gate your joints go through years of use and abuse. The more use they get the more looking after they need. Instead of oil the joints have synovial fluid which gets released when the joints are used. So the simple way to increase the amount of synovial fluid is to use the joints more.  Normally as we get older we get calcium deposits in the joints which make them less mobile.

It is for this reason that I personally perform mobility drills every day when I wake up. Another reason is just to loosen my body off for the day. It doesn’t mater how flexible you are people get stiff when their body is kept in the same position for a prolonged period of time. By doing mobility drills you reawaken your proprioceptors and get things functioning again. So another excellent time to do a quick set of mobility exercises would be after a long flight or drive. What ever time you choose to do them, performing daily joint mobility exercises can slow down the degeneration of joints and sometimes reverse it.

The drills can be very simple or a little bit more imaginative. In my personal plan I like to keep things simple. I like to start from the extremities and work my way to the centre of the body. Whatever the movement is I simply work that joint through its full range of motion. I tend do just do ten repetitions in each direction unless something feels particularly tight in which case I’ll add in more. My personal routine includes; multi-directional head twists, shoulder circles, elbow circles, wrist circles, ankle circles, knee circles, hip circles, cork screws, Hindu squats, and press ups. There are lots of others that I thrown in as and when I choose, but the one thing that is guarantied is that I feel much better and more ready to face the day afterwards.

So who are mobility joint drills good for? Well just about anyone unless you have a pre-existing condition in which case it is better to check with your doctor first to be on the safe side! Ok, enough from me today. Next time out I’ll just talk about my training for that day.