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There’s something you need to know about mobility that no one’s talking about. But if I just tell you now you won’t believe me. So I’m going to use the oldest and best form of education: a story.
In 2013 I started following Ido Portal, who hugely emphasizes the importance of the resting squat. I quickly realized I had a horrible squat, I could barely hold it for 30 seconds and couldn’t get low at all. I got kelly starrett’s book, because I too, wanted to become a supple leopard. Kelly’s book made it clear The problem was my ankles were too tight- I didn’t have the range of motion necessary to squat with my feet in the proper, parallel position that I needed to have. And I needed to have this mobility to start doing real olympic weightlifting.
I tried stretching for months, that didn’t work. I tried Kelly’s banded distractions and foam rolling and this crazy compression thing, months later- still no change. Then I went to physical therapy, they were sure I had had some traumatic ankle injury because of how immobile my right ankle was, they had me do all these exercises and did graston technique on my calves more stretches- still months later, no change.
Then I talked to a family friend physical therapist. He told me this may all be because of something called a bone spur. Basically, I could have this growth, or spur, of bone that was blocking the proper articulation of my ankle and preventing me from having the range of motion and squat of my dreams. I asked him what I could do about it, and he told me the solution, and the only solution, was a small and minor surgery to remove it.
I go get the MRI, sure enough there’s the bone spur. I talk to the surgeon, and he confirms, there’s nothing else I can do that would work, So we do the surgery. I rehab like crazy, But months, then years go by and I never got any more range of motion than I had before the surgery.
Summer 2014. I’m working at Stanford, and I had just started training handstands. I go to the gym, and I see this huge guy working on one arm handstands. I’m like hey that’s really cool you’re incredible! We start talking, and I tell him, you know I wish I could handstand, but I don’t have enough wrist mobility for it, see it only goes this far, and that’s causing this pain in my wrists that’s really holding me back.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been proven wrong so instantly and dramatically in my entire life, but he just goes- oh- I don’t have that much wrist mobility either- and his wrists look exactly like mine.
Since then I’ve gotten all the way to a freestanding one arm handstand for a 30 second average. Do you know how much my wrist mobility improved since that day 8 years ago, when I could barely hold a 2 arm handstand against the wall? None. It’s exactly the same.
I’ve also snatched 215, and squatted 400 pounds at a bodyweight of 170. Do you know how much my ankle mobility had to improve to allow these feats? None. I just rotated my feet out, allowed my knees to cave in a bit, and then developed strength and comfort in the position.
Trying to solve a movement task with brute mobility development is like trying to get a girlfriend by just throwing money at women. If you throw enough at the problem, it could potentially work, but it really isn’t an effective way of doing things, and let’s be honest things are going to go ok at best.
But what about more general sports? I’m gonna drop a quote on you guys that was eye opening for me a few years ago, from Todd Hargrove’s book, A guide to better movement. He says: "The best athletes, the best dancers, the best martial artists and yogis are not just those who are the strongest, fastest or most flexible. (Although all those things help!) The best are those with the highest quality of movement, the best coordination, the best organization of the body. What sets them apart - people like Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Leo Messi, and Mia Hamm - is not their size, strength and speed, but their movement intelligence.”
Now Probably most of you are thinking: isn’t mobility good for injury prevention? Indeed, it is possible. But you’ll then have to explain to me why one of, if not THE best and most studied mobility & muscular balance assessment, the functional movement screen, has shown pretty much no predictive power when it comes to injury in the bulk of the literature. Hyper mobility has generally shown no association with injury, and actually a fair chunk of the literature on stretching shows a negative effect or no association with performance and injury risk.
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Whenever you find yourself thinking that you can’t do something because you’re not mobile enough- check yourself. See if there’s a better way to do things for your body- and I promise you 9/10 times, you’ll find something.