Have you noticed how stiff you feel after sitting in a chair, driving, or cycling for several hours? This is because while seated, your hip muscles are in a shortened position causing excessive pressure on your lumbar, glutes, and hamstrings. The result is chronic overall body tightness, reduced mobility, pain, and injury.
If you spend long hours in a seated position, you may be developing a poor posture along with a body dysfunction called kyphosis, which is a condition that includes the following characteristics:
Back in a C-shaped posture
Shoulders slumped and rounded forward
Neck and head in a forward lean position instead of stacked over the shoulders
Before starting strength training, any body dysfunctions should be identified and addressed up front by a qualified fitness trainer. This will help you avoid injury and get the full benefit from your training program.
Mobility or Flexibility - What’s the Difference?
A complete training program should include both mobility and flexibility training. Mobility training focuses on increasing joint range of motion. Flexibility training focuses on increasing muscle length. You should start every workout with mobility exercises to prevent injury and correct dysfunctions that result in pain in the neck, lower back, hips and knees. You do not want to build strength on top of immobile joints, which leads to injury.
Static stretching to improve muscle flexibility is best performed when muscles are warmed up at the end of a workout. One of your main training goals should be to prevent or repair dysfunctions likely resulting from immobile joints and shortened muscles.
A Joint-by-Joint Approach to Mobility Training
Your body is comprised of a stack of joints with each one having a specific function and prone to predictable levels of dysfunction. For example, difficulty in squatting is likely related to poor ankle and/or hip mobility. As a result, each joint has specific training needs, and your training should follow a joint-by-joint approach.
Mobile Joints - Be aware of how your joints are intended to perform. Joints alternate between the need for mobility and stability. Mobile joints are your shoulders, upper (thoracic) spine, hips, and ankles. Mobile joints should be addressed during the warm up phase of your workout with foam rolling, (light) stretching, and mobility exercises (see examples below).
Stable Joints - Your stable joints are your scapula (shoulder blades), lumbar (lower back), knees, and feet. These stable joints should be addressed during the strength phase of your workout with core work, squats, dead-lifts, upper body pushing and pulling movements.
Lumbar– The lumbar is really a series of joints needing stability and not mobility. Therefore, exercises such as crunches, seated trunk rotations, and the scorpion are ineffective, and can result in injury and pain. The most effective training for the lumbar that I recommend are core stabilization exercises such as static and dynamic planking, and chopping and lifting exercises.
Painful Joints - Dysfunction in one joint will predictably show up as pain in the area above or below the joint. When a mobile joint becomes stiff or immobile, the stable joint that is nearby is forced to compensate, becoming less stable and painful. For example, low back pain is likely a result of tight hips and/or a tight upper spine. Knee pain may be a result of tight hips and/or immobile ankles. Neck and shoulder pain may be a result of a tight upper spine.
