Mobility vs. Stability

The word “Mobility” gets thrown around in so many ways these days and has made some people really rich in the process. But what does it all really mean? and how does that apply to you and your workout?

Mobility is the ability to move or be moved freely and easily. Beautiful right? If we all moved this way the amount of injuries people have would decrease, the amount of weight moved would increase and we would all look like Men’s Health magazine models doing it!

Imagine for a second a perfect world where you sit effortlessly into a overhead squat position, how much easier it would be to snatch some ridiculous heavy weight? or how much easier it would be to do thrusters during FRAN or how much safer it would be taking something heavy off the top shelf in the garage when you need to do some house work?

To gain this type of mobility IS possible! I know from first hand experience, I took myself from a tight mess of a Muay Thai Boxer to being able to Snatch 270 pounds (pic above) in a deep overhead squat position. That takes a lot of ankle, hip, shoulder and t-spine mobility to do.

Now let me throw a word at you that you probably have heard way less of… STABILITY! Stability is the quality or state of something that is not easily changed or likely to change, now sounds kinda the opposite of Mobility right? WRONG. If something is Mobile and Stable you have the ultimate combo for a healthy, highly functioning body and physique.

Just because I am mobile in a position does not mean I’m strong in that position. One of the biggest problems I find with people who spend a lot of time on gaining new range of motion with all their mobility work is that they forget to strengthen that new range and can end up injured when they go to lift. SO, stability work is a must in any mobility program worth its grain of salt.

Let’s take this Snatch for example. It was consistent mobility work that led to this position BUT it was all the extra pause Overhead squats, where I sat in the bottom of that squat and held in a tight position first with just the bar for reps and slowly over weeks and months as my strength grew worked up to 300+ pounds, that’s the stability I needed in that position to receive that snatch so low and stable, walking away from it with a PR and no injuries. If you want to watch the lift in slo-mo check out my instagram page @radixdan and you’ll see how low I drop to catch this.

I covered all this and more in our Performance Talks Series #1, so watch the talk and then watch my top 5 mobility exercise demo, and you’ll be good to go!

Coach Dan