The Importance Of Mobility Exercises In Your Training
We have been taught to train within very short ranges of motion to protect the joints. It is very good to prevent premature wear or injury to your body, but this one is prepared for much more than we imagine.
Shortening the routes and always working on the same planes when training, makes us protect our joints and be strong in those movements. But what happens when we need to expand them for a sport, for a gesture of everyday life or for an unforeseen event?
We will probably get injured. The joints must be strong in all their travels and movements. For this, it is important to improve their amplitude without weight through mobility exercises. Then you will be putting a load (weight) in those gestures little by little.
The load can be our own body since it is enough to stimulate said joint strength and stability.
When we submit to different movements and exercises we are learning, growing and developing . Therefore,we should not always do the same routine where we are comfortable or in the comfort zone.
Leaving this will guarantee us to advance in terms of the connection with our body and the domain of it.
Benefits Of Mobility Exercises
We have already mentioned many but we are going to summarize them so that you can take away this interesting information and so that you can start including this routine in your workouts from today.
Some of the benefits are:
- Strengthens the muscles involved in joints and movement.
- Improves joint stability avoiding injuries in unexpected gestures.
- Increases joint travel improving the efficiency of our body in wider movements.
- Improves the nervous and neuromuscular system making our body more functional.
- It stimulates our brain and trains it to send higher quality signals to our muscles.
- Train concentration and control of our own body and movement, being in the present and quieting the mind of toxic thoughts.
- It helps us to connect with ourselves , with our essence and our nature through movement.
- Improves proprioception and sensory points of the feet and hands (if we train barefoot). This causes the receptors to stimulate each other and send information about how our body is located in space. In turn, this makes us have greater control of our body.
- Calms the nervous system, releasing stress. Especially if we practice it in nature and / or barefoot on grass, sand, etc. This will connect us with it, landing us to the present. It will take us away from the past (depression) and the future (anxiety).
When To Do The Mobility Exercises
If they are gentle exercises, you can introduce them in the warm-up to start greasing your body. If mobility exercises are going to be part of the main structure of your routine, it is interesting that you do them at the beginning, before strength, cardiovascular, etc. work.
The reason is because being a job where concentration and connection with movement and our mind are important , fatigue can turn against us.
If we intend to do these exercises after intense weight training or strenuous cardiovascular work, fatigue can cause our body to not respond as it should and we are injured by a bad gesture or muscle collapse.
Therefore, if you want to do mobility exercises with loads or combined with strength exercises in the main part of your training, I recommend that you do them before the work of weights, plyometrics, power, etc.
The Mental Work Of Mobility Exercises
These types of exercises require, as I said before, great concentration. We are not always used to moving the body in such a global way so we must also train for this.
When we exercise we usually choose a muscle and work it in isolation. However, this mobility exercise routine requires the action of many muscles working simultaneously.
This implies a greater neuromuscular activation and a greater demand on our brain . Therefore the importance of being concentrated, in a calm environment and consciously enjoying the present.
If we have elements that distract us, we can hurt ourselves by not being in the NOW. In the same way, if we are flying with the mind instead of being concentrated and enjoying the practice.
Therefore, when you decide to carry out a routine like this one of joint mobility exercises and stretching it is important that you look for that moment of the day that you want to give yourself.
Final Thoughts
As we have told you in this article, it is vitally important to include mobility exercises in our training routines . You can do it as part of the warm-up or as the main part of your routine to obtain the benefits mentioned above.
Improving your joint quality will improve your health. The trigger for not having healthy joints will be suffering from muscle decompensation, overuse injuries, joint pain, premature wear, etc.
Remember not to always work within your comfort zone. Giving a different stimulus to your body will make it change and improve, but it must be done progressively.
On the other hand, in this mobility exercise routine we have included a final part of stretching , which although it is not the main topic of this article, is essential for good exercise practice.
Now that you know the importance of mobility exercises, it is time to put them into practice. We hope you enjoy this routine as much as we do.
Remember that you should not work with pain and if this happens you can look for alternatives that allow you to progress little by little towards the final result.
If you want to put other mobility exercises into practice, we leave you this article with a different routine so that you can continue adding exercises to your life.
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