smarter mobility gains

Movement and cellular adaption to forge lasting mobility in the body

It’s pretty common with mobility work for folks to feel like those sweet gains just never last ie, “my hamstrings feel great after I stretch them but every morning they’re tight again”, or “I got a massage and my low back tension went away but came back after a few days”. It’s like starting over each time you stretch, like a mobility Groundhog Day, only without the cheeky antics of Bill Murray.

It’s also common for folks to get stoked about what feels like a quick ‘gain’ to their mobility after doing some MFR trigger point with a lacrosse ball, or a pigeon pose while counting backwards from 10, or some other “mobility hack stretch” they saw from an Instagram influencer. It’s the age old saying, what comes easy won’t last, and what lasts won’t come easy.

Whether it is a goal to improve strength, endurance, speed, mobility, or even pain, the same constant holds true: in order to make progress, cells must adapt, and cellular adaptation happens when you send a specific signal consistently over a long period of time, using force to tell the cells how you want them to functionally respond.

There is where movement and functional range conditioning comes in. Long holds in static stretches and trigger point releases will not sustain mobility alone and man, have I tried it. Once I started prioritizing movement over depth of postures, everything improved- my overall flexibility & stability, joint stiffness, back tension; my handstands became lighter, I stopped pulling my left hamstring and I felt like I could actually navigate through postures fluidly.

Want to move better? Train movement.

Join us at Helix Alternative movement for a range of movement modalities geared directly towards improving overall mobility; Animal Flow, Alternative Movement, Sympathetic Slow Flow and Sculpt DNA.

#functionaltraining #alternativemovement #animalflow #budokonyoga #yoga