Compound Effect of Mobility

Sam Pfister
Nov 17, 2021
2 min read

Having mobility through your joints is a key to healthy life. You'll be able to move, react, jump, and use your body to maintain your body for longer.

Mobility doesn't have to be a big yoga session, but as simple as two compound stretches each for 5 minutes.

Think of it as preventative maintenance for your car. If your car has a wobble and you ignore it. Eventually your tires will get off balance, your suspension will get out of whack, or worse!

So if you're playing with your kids (or playing kickball in front of the Capitol building in Nashville) and you notice something feels funky or wasn't as easy to do as it used to be, that's a cue from your body that something's off.

Listen to that cue from your body, don't just work through it. It will lead to bigger problems later down the road -- especially if you just try to do big lifts on top of it.

Strength is awesome, strength on top of dysfunction is a recipe for bigger disaster.

But the compounding effect of being moving well cannot be understated. It will make a huge difference in your life -- whether you do it or you DONT, it'll make a difference -- for the better or for worse. The decision is yours!

That's why my training sessions always start with a short mobility session -- we hit..

Cat-cows with deep diaphragmatic breathing -- this gets the spine moving forward and back, stretches the upper back and lower back, unlocks the hip/sacrum from the low back.
Side-lying windmills to get the spine rotating side to side, the neck rotating, and stretch the pec, the oblique and the upper glute (a lot of these muscles pull on the lower back and this can relieve a serious amount of tension down there)
Spiderman stretch is amazing for opening the hips w/ one leg's hip flexor and the other leg's hamstring & glute being stretched, the stretch also hits the foot, the groin, and some calf

These three stretches are the best I've found to get blood flow to major joints of the body, unlocking sticky tissue of major fulcrum points of the body leaving you more mobile and less dysfunctional for the rest of the workout (or the rest of the day).

I'll do these with all of my clients. Young, old, athletes, couch potatoes. Everyone needs them! These are good for in between athletic events, as a way to get the body woke up in the morning, or to do before a jog! If you haven't worked out in a while -- even this will get you sweating a little bit!

If you'd like to see what my mobility flow is like? Shoot me a message and we can set up a quick skype call to get you moving and feeling good.

Here's some examples of my stretches I do with my clients.