At Fitness Lab, we are redefining what mobility training means.
At Fitness Lab, we’re passionate about taking a holistic approach; in other words looking at the big picture of your health and fitness. Which means we’ll help you to build on your mobility, flexibility and stability as well as your strength and fitness.
Flexibility is defined as the amount of passive range of motion you have. It relates to how much a muscle can lengthen passively (i.e., with assistance). So if you’re on your back, and someone picks up your right foot to stretch and gently push your leg towards you, the point at which the leg stops moving indicates your flexibility.
Mobility, on the other hand, is how far you can move a joint through its range of motion under your body’s own control (i.e. without any external influence). If you lie on your back and use the strength of your muscles to lift your right leg, flexing at the hip, the point at which you couldn’t move the leg anymore would be considered your active range of motion – your mobility.
While being flexible is great, our focus as personal trainers is to improve your mobility. We want a good range of motion in each joint, as well as the ability to master control of your body. Dynamic mobility exercises help to provide you with the strength and stability for improved range of motion, great posture and comfortable movement for life. This means being able to move easily, pain-free, into your later years.
When people are looking to become more flexible, they often think this means doing lots of stretching and yoga classes. It can be tempting to join lots of yoga classes and jump into fancy moves like handstands! This might feel fun but it’s not the best use of your time. In our experience, it’s super important to first take some time learning a bit about your individual body and what help it will benefit the most from.
Specifically, it’s key to know which areas need stretching, which need strengthening, and where your mobility is most limited. Our coaches will be able to assess your body and spot what different areas need work. They can support you with a program unique to you, designed for you and your body.
If you’re someone with lots of natural flexibility but little strength, your coach will tailor your program to develop strength that you can use to improve your control of movement and help you develop more mobility.
If you have little range of motion, but good control – then chances are you will need to work on improve both your flexibility, via a personalised stretching routine, AND your mobility. This will happen as your coaches introduce new movements. They will continually assess your performance and movement and adapt your exercises as you progress.
Many of us spend far too much time sitting at a desk all day (especially thanks to online working in lockdown!), which we all know isn’t the best thing we can do for our health and fitness… In fact, our increasingly sedentary behaviour is the number one cause for lower back issues. It’s vitally important that you make an effort to get up and try to move a bit every hour.
As well as staying active during the day, incorporating mobility training will make a world of difference with lower back pain. Lots of our clients feel like new after just a few weeks of combining targeted strength training and intelligent stretching and mobility work.
In a way, these kind of mobility exercises are about training our body how to “be human” again and use our body in the way it was designed to be used. It can take some practice to learn and get used to moving your body in a new, different way, but it’s undoubtedly one of the best ways to support your joint health and work towards pain free movement for life.
Absolutely. Whatever health and fitness goals you have, including mobility work in your training is crucial when it comes to working towards easy, niggle-free movement, both now and in your later years. At Fitness Lab, we encourage people to think deeply about what “fitness” means. Sure, we all have aesthetic and performance goals to achieve in a short or medium time frame, and our coaches will make sure your training plan covers those as a priority. But let’s also think in a different way and look at our longer term health… We all want to be able to run around with our grand kids and pick them up without having to feel worried about “doing our back in”, or having to stand on the side lines when they play because of “dodgy knees”.
Our personal training team in London can support you both in-person and online. The best first step is to book in for a free initial consultation. Our coaches are all trained to assess your movement and will be able to explain to you what kind of support you need in terms of mobility. They can recommend a specific yoga and stretch routine that you can practice outside of your training to improve your movement and drive your performance outside of the gym.
Contact us today to find out more and book in your consultation!
