Do you want to lift heavier, move better, and improve your body’s resilience to injury?
As weightlifters and functional athletes, we tend to focus on the weight on the bar. Although weight increase is important in strength training, what if unlocking the true power from your muscles was heavily influenced by something else?
This is where mobility comes into play. Mobility is an umbrella term that encompasses flexibility, strength, coordination, and proprioception, or “body awareness”. In order to unlock the full capability of your muscles and maximize your progress in the gym, enhancing your mobility is the name of the game.
Addressing restricted movement is the first step of enhancing your mobility. Although you may not know specifically which muscles are limited in range of motion, it is important to have a baseline stretching routine. Dynamic stretching, which takes your body through different ranges of motion as you stretch, is known to be extremely beneficial as a starting point for mobility and in turn strength training.
After identifying your limited ranges of motion, where things feel tight, sore, or simply unable to create the proper force needed to complete and exercise, spend extra time and effort to fully unlock those muscles. Stretching, warm up reps, foam rolling, and specific dynamic warmups are all important. As the old adage says, you can’t build a house on a broken foundation!
Enhancing your body’s ability to move through ranges of motion unrestricted makes you more stable, prevents injury, and dramatically increases your ability to truly maximize the power production of your muscles.
Start prioritizing mobility today– your true strength and power is waiting around the corner!