As someone who competed, focused on wanting size, and now getting older, I can’t stress enough the importance of mobility training. In fact, as I write that, I feel like I’m writing this article to myself as a reminder. I know that for me, it’s SO easy to just do some warm-ups for my lifts and then get right into it. I’m lazy at heart. I don’t want to spend more time than I have to at the gym. I want to lift, get big, and go home. Unfortunately, I can assure you that I am paying the price with chronic injuries. Right now, I am dealing with a shoulder impingement that is the direct result of too much volume and not enough mobility work.
THANKFULLY, for the past 3 weeks, it got so bad that I had no choice but to take away pressing movements and address it through stretching and mobility drills, and I am now reaping the rewards of my mobility work. So yes, mobility training is an absolute must if you want longevity within your lifting journey.
Injury Prevention
As my story indicates above, my chronic injury was the result of lack of staying ahead of my high-volume work. If you are lazy like me and this still isn’t selling you, then let me rephrase it in a way that worked for me. If nothing else, keep in mind how much extra time you will spend not working on the muscles you want once you DO get injured if you DON’T do mobility work.
I am now about a month into not being able to do any direct press work for my chest because I “didn’t feel” like doing mobility work. It’s not worth it. To be honest, it’s not hard to include. The lazy man’s guide is to just find your weak areas, choose 2-3 exercises, and throw them in between sets of your normal gym work. It adds zero time to your day, and gives you something to do when you are resting.
As we build up our range of motion through mobility exercises, it allows us to ultimately use more weight through a full range in our regular lifts. Another benefit from this is real-world application, where we may have external weight impacting us at a range that isn’t always normal or within what we expect.
Doing The Exercise as Intended
A lot of people start off taking the exercise and taking it through its full range of motion. Then somewhere along the line, we get caught up in beating our records so much that we start to sacrifice form for the sake of moving more weight. This needs to be adjusted. If you lack mobility, or do not take an exercise through its full range, you are doing yourself a disservice and not reaping the full benefits of that exercise. Think of it this way - do you think you’d get more muscle growth off a full depth squat or a partial squat done with more weight? The answer is the full depth. You fire more muscles, and you get more engagement the entire time. Mastering taking a load through a full range also makes sure you physically can handle the range, and lowers the chance of injury, since lifting in some sense is essentially learning to safely move heavy weight using your body.
Longevity
As we get older, the term ‘If you don’t use it you lose it’, actually applies. Mobility and training behave the same. If we don’t keep up with our mobility routines, just like with our strength routines, we will start to see a shortened range of motion, and tightness and imbalances within our muscles. This will increase our chance of injury (which when we’re older puts us at even more risk), and put us at risk for breaking bones due to improper training. Maintaining your mobility also allows you to keep your balance and strength, which helps prevent those falls and injuries.
