Paul Edmondson looks at how to re-establish and develop long-term flexibility with ViPR.

The want and need to develop flexibility has always been at the forefront of every client’s or athlete’s desires in my day-to-day coaching experience and education and research background.

The misconception has always been that the fitter or more athletic the client is, the better the flexibility they possess (compared to the general client). In fact, it’s often the opposite – the fitter a person, the less flexibility they may exude, proving my founded belief that fitness does NOT equate to health. I think these are opposites, frankly. More on that later …

Let’s first define what we are talking about. Without true defining principles and guidelines you, the coach, cannot truly provide the solutions needed for those you serve.

Understanding the nomenclature of your professional topics and services guides clarity and helps navigate how to get what your client really wants.

Often, we fitness professionals confuse or merge together flexibility and mobility – they are seen as one and the same. The truth is, however, that they are separate components of trainable entities we can pursue and assist with as coaches.

Flexibility is defined as “to bend without breaking and be moved into a position/pose” – the key words here ‘bend’ and ‘be moved’ imply that flexibility is a passive pursuit, hanging out and maintaining postures and positions. Nothing wrong with this – it feels amazing and can certainly upgrade many parts of our movement systems and mind also.

The only thing missing here is the lack of an active component to these movements that means establishing, owning and developing this flexibility for life, sport and gym endeavours does not transfer very well, and so it takes years of mastery to even get close to being functionally flexible.

Mobility, on the other hand, is defined as “to move freely and be able to control one’s movement” – this requires an active component that is missing in most people’s definitions and pursuits of mobility, which often lets them down and leads to stagnation in their own movement mastery endeavours.

Simply stated, one must create and expand the capacity for a joint and/or body to move freely through an expansive range of motion. The acquisition of space within a joint is what permits mobility first and foremost. Once that mobility has been established, there must be a component of ‘control’ (movement stability) that requires co-ordination (via proprioceptors) and safe navigation (through orchestrating the appropriate muscular response – again via proprioceptors) over that range of motion to function to the best of your ability.

Mobility = the creation of motion, opening larger degrees in range of motion. Stability = the control and ownership of these movements, internally ‘steering’ the body to function in these ranges (aka functional mobility). It’s about opening up and expanding joint ranges of motion, restoring optimal slide/glide of connective tissues and fascial fibres, and allowing muscles to lengthen, control and co-ordinate movement through effective, crystal clear proprioceptive pathways – that really is the magic of the body in optimal movement.

We, as an industry, do the first part of this training sequence very well – we are good at mobility work with ourselves, our clients and athletes alike. What we often miss (and I did for years as a coach) is to teach clients to control and use the ranges of motion we create with/for them – mobility without stability equals ‘instability’, which is weakness and lack of neurological control. Think of it this way: if all I do is create passive stretching for a client’s adductor muscles and give them 90˚ per side, theoretically the side splits are in their grasp. But, if all you’ve done is the passive flexibility work, your movement brain will never permit you to perform the splits because it understands that, if you go down, you aren’t getting back up. (The brain cares about safety first – if you can’t perform or exhibit strength in a range of motion, you can’t access it and your brain will not allow for this.) Therefore, we must strengthen what we stretch for it to be utilised and accessible long term and be robust to avoid injury when we do function here.

So, in a nutshell, we must follow three steps to movement mastery for the end goal of long-term functional flexibility for clients and athletes. Earlier, I alluded to athletes often having poor flexibility compared to our more sedentary everyday folk – and research and practical experience support this notion. The athlete has spent years honing a craft, training a particular path that often leads to both repetitive stress (wear and tear – overtraining a certain line/area of tissue) and lack of mechanical tension (movement neglect along other lines/areas of tissue). Our current training is setting us, clients and athletes up for an osteoarthritic inevitability – these three steps will also defend against this pandemic.

Back to our three steps: Mobility – Stability – Strength. In that order. Using ViPR, I’m going to give you a great example of core strength (spinal mobility) that will transfer amazingly well into any person’s needs or wants for life, sport and gym because it encompasses upright function/positioning and the use of all planes of motion that we – our joints and muscles – move and control us through. Check this out.

Mobility

Stability

Strength

Master these steps in the logical sequence and order for the best bang for your buck.

Paul Edmondsonis a dedicated leader within the fitness industry, having worked with some of the leading pioneers and brands in the world, including Gray Institute, ViPR, Anatomy Trains, Institute of Motion and others. His thought-provoking sessions are designed to bridge the gap between the traditional and new sciences to better equip trainers to serve their individual clients. Paul takes pride in delivering complex content in a simplified manner and drives those he works with to become “better versions of themselves”.