The one thing the average guy can learn from weightlifters is the importance of mobility work. The main takeaway from the whole paleo movement is the emphasis on how sitting is horrifically bad for your mobility. Some people also make claims that sitting for long periods of time is actually deleterious to your health. This infographic is a nice looking image which sums up all of these claims. To me it looks like many of those claims are correlations where other factors such as lifestyle choices are to blame for the negative health consequences of sitting such as downing gourmet donuts and 700 calorie “coffee” drinks.
Anyways, much has been written by people more knowledgeable than I on the topic of mobility work. If you lift I highly suggest you incorporate some basic drills to fix the tightness caused by sitting all day. Here are my top four mobility links:
4. Mobility Basics
70s big has helped me a lot in my lifting and one of the most important articles was this one. It gives the basics of when and why you should do mobility work and provides links to some of the most important mobility drills for lifters. One of which is the ‘infamous’ couch stretch. If you’re as inflexible as I was you’ll probably last 5 seconds then fall over the first time you do it. Here is a bonus post on mobility from the site. Lift Big Eat Big: Mobility For Sitting On Your Ass All Day is another article which breaks down and shows some good drills you can do to loosen up your posterior chain.
3. Foam Rolling aka Self-Myofascial Release
I usually roll everything out as a warmup before my workout. It loosens everything up , gets the blood flowing, and relaxes tight muscles.
This is the wrong way to roll.
2. Agile Eight
About halfway down the page is the list of the “agile eight.” It’s a warmup routine which incorporates the movements from the previous links. Do this before every training session and I guarantee they’ll go much smoother.
1. Mobility WOD
Mobility WOD is a website with a new mobility drill every post so if you’re looking to add new drills to your routine this is the place to go. Posts are tagged by what muscle they target and even by sport specific drills.
Read Also: Does Your Posture Suck?