Mobility Vs Flexibility
Mobility and flexibility are two terms that are used fairly interchangeably. The reality is that they’re very different, different enough that using them interchangeably is irresponsible. So what is the difference between mobility and flexibility?
Flexibility is the ability of a muscle to lengthen passively through a range of motion.
Mobility is the ability of a joint to move actively through a range of motion.
The difference is important, as you can be immobile while maintaining a good level of flexibility. Focusing your efforts in the wrong area will be an exercise in futility when it comes to your training. In this article, we’re going to talk about the important differences between the two, and how you can leverage one into the other in your training.
Flexibility
Believe it or not, in addition to being a former NCAA hockey player, I’m also a former high school cheerleader. I grew up doing gymnastics as a kid and when I got into high school, my sister talked me into cheerleading because I was strong and could tumble pretty well. So, my freshman year I earned a varsity letter cheering which was well before I would earn one from hockey.
The reason I bring up cheerleading is because of the archaic practices that happen in that sport. While many sports are decades behind when it comes to training, sports like cheer and figure skating seem to be stuck in pre-sport science Soviet-era training principles. This clip is hard to watch, but this isn’t all that uncommon when it comes to “flexibility” and mobility training. These girls are holding their teammate down in a split position in an effort to help her gain the mobility/flexibility ($1000 says the coach told her she’s not flexible enough but this is a mobility issue) needed to do a split. It’s gross, if you did this to my daughter you better hope the school/county gets to you first because you’re not going to like how I handle it. Worst part of all? It doesn’t even work. And we’re going to talk about that now.
Does Stretching Work?
The short answer is actually no believe it or not. The long answer is that it’s fairly nuanced and it kind of does work in some respects. Let me explain.
The effects of stretching are incredibly short lived. One study actually found that the benefits of stretching start to diminish in as short as 15 seconds. I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to spend 15-20 minutes on something, I expect the benefits to last longer than 15 seconds. So how do businesses like Stretch Lab continue to stay in business/ I honest to God couldn’t tell you the answer to that.
Static stretching has also been shown to decrease force production by as much as 8%, and increase 40 meter sprint times by 0.04 seconds. If you’re an athlete you’ve more than likely heard of this stat in the form of “don’t stretch before you lift because it makes you weaker and slower”. While there’s some merit to this stat, it doesn’t tell the whole story. In this study stretch times were held for an incredibly long time, upwards of two minutes (30-120s). This is the amount of time it actually takes to create soft tissue changes in the muscle, and holding a stretch for this long can alter the length-tension relationships within the muscle. This can cause instability in the joint, and decrease both strength and overall stability.
In addition to holding stretches for a longer period of time, after stretching the athletes “relaxed”, which was defined as meandering or standing quietly for a period of 10 minutes before the test commenced. A 10 minute break after warming up can almost “undo” everything that was done in the warm up period prior to stretching. So perhaps the conclusions we should draw from this study is that we shouldn’t take so long to get going after our warm up period.
Ok, so if stretching doesn’t work then why even spend any time stretching? Afterall the information we have either says stretching either doesn’t work for longer than 15 seconds, or it makes us weaker and slower. Believe it or not, the answer is blood flow.
Stretching For Blood Flow And Not Flexibility
Stretching can help increase blood flow to the working muscles, and direct lymphatic flow away from muscles damaged during training or playing. For this reason, stretching is a great tool for recovery. It’s going to help shuttle in the good stuff (blood, oxygen, nutrients, etc), and help shuttle out the bad stuff (hormonal and metabolic byproducts from training/playing). This also makes stretching a great option for warming up.
The way I have my athletes warm-up involves a bunch of steps that you can see here in the Lyons Den Preparation Pyramid. We start with the general aspects of a warm-up and slowly work towards what would be considered more specific to the goal of the day’s training session. The third step is static mobility, it’s a huge part of our warm-up protocols. We spend time stretching the more problematic areas on the hips, and the goal isn’t long-term increases in flexibility, but to increase blood flow to the muscles that we’ll need more elasticity out of in the training session. We hold these stretches for about 3-5 seconds, which is long enough to temporarily increase the flexibility in those muscles. We’re going to talk about the repercussions of this increased flexibility in the next section.
Mobility
As discussed in the intro of the article, mobility refers to the joint whereas flexibility refers to the muscle itself. Mobility also refers to active movement (caused by the muscles), while flexibility refers to passive movement. While it sounds unimportant, these distinctions matter a whole lot.
In the last section, we finished by talking about the static stretching that you can do during your warm-ups. This static stretching will do absolutely nothing to increase your long-term flexibility, so why do we include it? Because it causes enough of a flexibility change in the short term to allow us to achieve better positions when we’re training. We’ll go more into depth about this at the end of this article though.
How Do We Increase Mobility?
Believe it or not, strength is actually how we accomplish increases in mobility. I know it sounds weird, but mobility deficits are often (when they’re not structural or due to injury) just strength deficits pretending to be flexibility deficits. Your brain is not going to allow your body to get into positions that it doesn’t believe that you can get out of. The reason you would struggle to get out of positions is often due to not being strong enough to do so. If you can’t squat to depth, chances are it’s because you’re not strong enough. Wild, huh?
There are other reasons for mobility deficits such as joint capsule stiffness, congenital defects, or even injury. You’ve probably seen people stretching using bands wrapped around their leg, shoulder, or some other joint. This is done to create distraction at the joint so you can “stretch” the joint capsule and not just the muscle. This is also a valid way to increase mobility if the joint capsule being tight is the culprit.
Congenital issues such as hip dysplasia where the acetabulum is too shallow to allow proper movement in the joint are not really something that you can stretch or train your way through. Injury can also cause immobility. This is because your body does something called guarding to protect the joint. Guarding is when your CNS tells the muscle around the injury to tighten down, in an effort to keep the joint from moving. Both of these examples require medical intervention, and not stretching or strengthening.
Flexibility > Mobility > Strength > Mobility > Long Term Flexibility
Alright so bear with me here, this is going to sound a little bit wild if your thought process in increasing your mobility or flexibility involves laying on the ground and stretching. I’m going to lay this down, and make my argument for why short static stretching actually leads to long-term flexibility if you do it right!
Short stretches during our warm-ups increase blood flow and elasticity for a short period of time in those muscles.
This short-term increase in flexibility allows for more movement in the joint (mobility).
This increased movement within the joint allows us to achieve better depth in our exercises/movements (think of the squat).
Being able to operate with better depth or closer to the end ranges of motion allows us to gain strength at these end ranges of motion.
This increased strength at/near the end ranges of motion creates more mobility in that joint.
This increased mobility in the joint allows for more passive stretch within the muscle. We call this flexibility.
In short, static stretching, when done properly can increase your flexibility over time. This isn’t a do-it-once thing and now you’re good to go, but you can chip away at this thing over time. Below is an example of how you can use stretching to increase your hamstring flexibility.
Let’s say you’re going to squat but you lack the mobility to get to depth. No matter what you do, you’re not getting to parallel. Here’s a way to help you eventually achieve this depth.
Prior to lifting, spend some time in the problem areas. The problem areas when it comes to our hips are typically the hamstrings, hip flexors, groin, and external rotators (piriformis, usually).
Groin - Rocking frog stretch and lateral half-kneeling stretches
Hip flexor - half kneeling stretch variations
Piriformis/EROTs - 90/90 or pigeon stretches
Hamstrings - PNF relax/contract variations
System whole - Squat to stands
If done right, you should be able to achieve a little bit more depth than you could before. You can test this by doing infant squats, bodyweight reverse lunges, t-balances, sumo squats, lateral lunges, etc.
Now that you’ve got slightly more mobility (due to the slight and temporary increase in flexibility), you should be able to perform loaded movements with more depth. Achieving this new depth with a load will allow you to gain strength.
This new strength at lower depths will allow for more mobility because your brain now understands that you have the ability to get out of these positions. This increased mobility will allow for more flexibility within the muscle, which is what we refer to as mobility.
It may look pretty simple on paper, and that’s because it is! We’ve just made it out to be this complex issue where we have to stretch for a half hour every day if we’re lacking mobility or flexibility. Now you know, strength actually helps increase flexibility.
Wrapping This All Up
Stretching can actually feel pretty good when you’re overly tight. That’s because it releases endorphins much like a massage would. That being said, stretching for long periods of time can be a total exercise in futility if you’re actually trying to create significant change in your flexibility and mobility.
If you’re looking to increase your mobility and flexibility, then watch this old Instagram video I put together talking about this very subject. You want to increase your short-term flexibility to increase your mobility, which can increase your strength, which increases your mobility, which increases your long-term flexibility!