Flexibilty vs. Mobility and Importance in Fitness

There are different schools of thought in the fitness community when it comes to the importance of targeting and increasing flexibility and mobility. To determine how each one ranks in a fitness program, it’s important to make sure we define the terms. Mobility is describing how a joint moves through a normal range of motion - for instance, if you’re lifting or lowering your arm, or doing arm circles, that would be a measure of mobility. Flexibility is the ability of a muscle to stretch temporarily. Now that we know what these terms are referring to, we can figure out what role they play in our fitness programming,

We’ve all seen the big bodybuilding types walking around seemingly unable to move their necks - in these cases, the athlete has done a great job promoting muscle hypertrophy, but a poor job maintaining mobility in the joints. This is example is one outward display of why it’s important to incorporate mobility promoting exercises into your training program. Internally, there are many more reasons, including the correction of muscle imbalances, as well as increasing range of motion, and decreasing injury. Strength alone is not enough to promote decent mobility, but certain exercises can help strengthen muscles around joints and improve range of motion. Some mobility exercises would include leg swings, twisting reverse lunges/world’s greatest stretch reverse lunges, and band pullovers. These exercises are bodyweight only to help improve ROM and strength before building muscle.

As far as flexibility is concerned, any trainer should be encouraging their clients to stretch before, during, after training sessions as needed. Personally I like to have a client warm-up, then do some light stretching before their workout, with more time at the end to stretch the muscles once they’re warm. With mobility training, the exercises generate heat and energy in the muscles, so waiting until the end isn’t necessary. The big reasons to include flexibility are injury prevention, increased ROM (which leads to efficient movements), and decreasing muscle imbalances, which can also lead to injury. Flexibility moves also help with recovery of the muscles, often decreasing delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) and stiffness following a workout (and the days following).

Though fairly simple concepts, flexibility and mobility practices have the potential to drastically improve performance. People often skip over these ideas to get to the meatier parts of the fitness regimen, leading to less well-rounded muscle gains. Cue yoga!