I’d like to take a look at what I consider the five pillars of a complete mobility practice. Thankfully, optimal mobility seems to be on everyone's radar a bit more these days. However, I still feel that many are missing out on some of the more important aspects of mobility work.

I consider mobility to be the most important physical quality to develop for a number of reasons. You will never display your true potential for strength or endurance if you are "hamstrung" by poor mobility or alignment. Your risk of injury will always be higher. This is pretty well known and understood.

Better mobility and alignment will benefit you all day in everything you do. Though a triple bodyweight deadlift or a 6:45 2K row may be nice to have, these abilities won't benefit you very often in your daily life. Being able to move freely and pain-free certainly will. When it comes to training purely for health and longevity, mobility again is at the forefront. How can you tell the age of someone at a significant distance? You simply watch how they move. Quality of movement and range of motion typically degrade as we age, but that doesn't have to be the case. The elderly that have been observed in hunter-gatherer groups still move easily and with mostly full range of motion. The decline we observe in the modern world is primarily from disuse, adaptation to unnatural movements (such as sitting for prolonged periods), and high levels of inflammation (from diet and stress).

An optimal mobility practice constantly evolves and changes as you progress. Your needs early on will differ from what you will benefit from after a few years.

Let's look at my five pillars. I'll review each briefly, and then share a few tips, resources, or techniques for each. Some we will explore further in future articles.

1) Joint Mobility:

By joint mobility, I mean unloaded, open chain movements of the joints through full range of motion. This type of exercise reduces tension and short-range stiffness in the muscle, lubricates the joint surfaces, prevents calcification, moves the lymph and can re-educate faulty movement patterns. It can also break up scar tissue, increase blood flow and remove waste products.

If you aren't familiar with joint mobility work, I'd suggest looking at some of the programs by Scott Sonnon, Steve Maxwell or Dr. Eric Cobb. There are many others available these days as well.

Joint mobility is best done at the start of your day, before breakfast. You will be energized by this practice, and may be able to reduce your caffeine intake! Morning mobility work resets the nervous system's regulation of the length of your muscles, so some of the range of motion you develop will stay with you throughout the whole day. It then makes sense to do it as early as possible. Joint mobility is also very beneficial to do at the start of your warmup prior to training.

Progress your practice starting from simple, single joint movements to recover your range of motion. Progress over time to more complex, multi joint movements. Do not merely go through the motions, though. Focus on smooth, quality movements. Practice in a range of motion that you are able to do smoothly and, over time, it will increase.

The more your mobility practice develops, the quicker your body will be ready for anything. After a while, you may find that you only need a very short warmup to perform well. You will eventually need to devote less time to your joint mobility work, as once you have progressed to complex, multi-joint movements, you can cover the body quickly and efficiently.

If you are already doing this type of work, always try to challenge yourself. Instead of doing your mobility work standing, try it lying down, for example. As your relationship with gravity changes, the same movement will have different demands.

2) Soft Tissue Work:

Self-administered soft tissue work has gained great popularity over the last few years, and rightfully so. I am referring to foam rolling, lacrosse ball work, or any of the many self massage tools available on the market today. With this "pillar", we are addressing tissue quality. If you have adhered or "stuck" tissues, joint mobility work or stretching will be unlikely to effect change until the adhesions are resolved. It is also quite possible to have optimal range of motion in a muscle, but still have poor tissue quality. Adhesions or scar tissue will prevent optimal function and force transmission. Trigger points or chronically contracted muscles will reduce neural firing to the muscles and inhibit strength. Soft tissue work can address all of this. If you are new to this concept, I still think T-Nation's "Feel Better for 10 Bucks" article is a good start.

There are many resources available to learn techniques, so I won't cover too much here. However, make sure you have a purpose for what you are doing. I always see people either rolling around aimlessly, or else sitting on a problem area for 15 minutes. Neither approach is getting you anywhere! Educate yourself on the muscles you are working and techniques to release them. I have specific protocols for every part of the body. Don't hang out on a painful spot too long; once the pain has diminished significantly, you have made all of the progress that you can for that session.

Staying in one spot too long can actually cause your muscles to tighten or spasm, making it worse! In his excellent book "Science of Sport Training," Thomas Kurz quotes Eastern Bloc authorities that recommend scaling the length of massages to the athlete's bodyweight. Keep this in mind during your self-massages; don't spend too long in one place! As you progress in your soft tissue work, move to progressively harder implements. I eventually like to move to using PVC pipe instead of a foam roller, for example.

I find frequent application is the best approach when you want to make quick progress - several mini-sessions per day. Some authorities have recommended up to 12 mini sessions daily to deal with an acute problem.

3) Stretching:

By stretching, I am referring to any of many protocols out there for increasing the resting length of a muscle: PNF, contract/relax, isometric, A.I.S., static, active, loaded stretching, relaxed stretching, etc. This is a fairly well understood area, so I won't go too deeply into it here. This may be a centerpiece of your mobility practice for the first few years, and it will always play a part.

I have generally found the best results from stretching methods that strengthen the joint at the new range of motion, such as loaded stretching or isometric holds. I prescribe these as reps and sets. This type of full ROM strengthening may result in longitudinal growth of muscle fibers. My friend and colleague Ido Portal emphasizes the importance for strength athletes to send as strong a signal to the muscles to lengthen as they are being sent by the primary strength training. (You cannot expect a few static stretches to counteract the tightness resulting from all of the heavy work sets you do.) I couldn't agree more.

I also employ a goal or target for each stretch. This can be an object to touch or a spot to look at in the case of neck or trunk work. If you give yourself a challenging, but achievable goal, you'll find that your body will find a way to reach it.

4) Support:

Enlisting the help of qualified professionals will be necessary at times if you wish to truly function at your best. Though you can make great progress and resolve many issues on your own, you may well have complex problems that may take a long time to sort out without help. Consider this option if you have any long standing, chronic issues. Some very good modalities are ART (Active Release Techniques), Graston, Rolfing, deep tissue massage, chiropractic, osteopathic, physical therapy and even acupuncture. These can all be of great benefit in the right situation. If you have an acute issue, I recommend getting in to see someone quickly, as you can often get the issue resolved much faster and get back to training sooner.

I go to my support crew regularly for routine maintenance as well. I would suggest scheduling "tune-ups" often as an important piece of your mobility practice.

The trick is to find the right practitioner who understands what you do. One piece of advice I can offer coaches or facility owners is to establish a working relationship or trade with a good practitioner. In addition to having a good therapist available for routine maintenance, you'll be training them, so they will understand what you are asking your body to do.

5) Integration/Flow Work:

This is the most unknown or misunderstood area. It is also where the great reward lies, both in benefit and enjoyment. Flow work is really an integration of all of the above. It involves moving in 3 dimensional patterns designed to strengthen the joints, increase or strengthen range of motion, or improve movement quality. It can also involve moving an external object or weight in this way.

This type of whole body, organic movement has been around all through history. Martial arts practice is but one example. Some of our modern methods come from the former Eastern Bloc countries and may include blends of dance, martial arts, yoga and more. Flow work in the early stages involves learning and refining set sequences of moves. Over time, the movements become more complex, and finally one can improvise movement on the fly. Some movement patterns will even provide a massaging of the tissues similar to foam rolling.

This is where you want your mobility practice to go - you'll now have joint strength and integrity in extreme ranges of motion. You'll possess a large vocabulary of movement possibilities, have stability at the end of your range of motion, and be supple and relaxed when resting. You'll truly be ready for the unknown, as almost every real life physical challenge involves improvising movement.

Organic movements such as this can be used to speed recovery from your regular training, as it can be programmed intelligently to counter condition any negative effects.

In the next installment of this series, we'll go deeper into this type of practice: what it is and how to implement it. We'll look at it as compensation work, as metabolic conditioning, strength work, improving movement quality, and finally, how to build it into training sessions and classes.