Does mobility training prevent injuries?

Over the last few years, mobility training has become all the rage on social media and in the fitness world. Passive flexibility is out; active range of motion is in.

Many supporters of this style of training tout it as the holy grail. It's believed to prevent injuries and make you a better mover. And if your mobility isn't up to snuff, well, you better "check yourself before you wreck yourself."

Being my inquisitive self, I was interested in what the research said about typical differences between active and passive range of motion. After taking a deep dive, I was surprised to find there was very little direct evidence for what even constitutes "typical" vs. "atypical."

Now, as the saying goes, absence of evidence isn't the same as evidence of absence. But for mobility training to prevent injury and improve movement, there at least has to be a plausible mechanism.

I teamed up with my friend Jenni Rawlings​, who's also been seeing these trends in the yoga world, to explore whether mobility training can possibly confer all the benefits it's been claimed to – or whether it should just be one part of a more comprehensive approach to training.

Here's what we came up with:

https://jennirawlingsblog.com/blog/end-range-training-does-closing-the-gap-between-active-and-passive-rom-prevent-injuries

Master the Handstand Walk [T-Nation]

Internet commentators love to talk smack about others’ exercise choices – as if not doing certain exercises is some sign of superiority. Their commentary often centers on how the exercises in dispute are "dysfunctional," "injurious," and other inane descriptors.

One such maligned exercise is handstand walking.

Tired of seeing such baseless criticisms of handwalking, I decided to write up a tutorial. The tutorial goes over 

• The benefits of the handwalking
• How to assess your wrists, shoulders, and core for it
• A 7-step progression (including videos) towards mastery

Here's the link:

https://www.t-nation.com/training/the-ultimate-bodyweight-challenge

The Three Dirtiest Words in Fitness

The three dirtiest words in fitness these days are "Functional," "Movement," and "Screen" -- especially when used in that order [1].

For anyone who's unfamiliar, the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) is a series of seven functional movements (e.g. squat, push-up, lunge) designed to screen (i.e. check for) for pain, movement quality, and injury risk.

By providing objective criteria for scoring the various movements (‘0’ for ouch, ‘1’ for shitty, ‘2’ for passable, and ‘3’ for perfection -- all my words, not theirs) the FMS enables practitioners to establish a movement "baseline," as well as to identify mobility/stability deficits and side-to-side asymmetries, which can then help guide program design.

The actual FMS scoring system

Sounds like a great idea, eh? In theory, yes. But it’s created a whole crap-ton of controversy.

Some trainers are diehard proponents of the FMS [2], using it on all of their clients at intake and follow-up assessments for comparison to baseline. Others think it's complete garbage, citing studies that have found the FMS’s injury prediction capabilities to be moderate at best.

It’s true: in many of the populations that have been tested, the FMS doesn’t do a very good job of separating people who are at risk for injury from people who aren’t. Potentially due to having too few data points (7 screens × 3 points = 21 total points possible), it fails to do what it was designed to do. Yikes!

Why not just change the scoring criteria to better differentiate between performance on each test, one might wonder? Instead of scoring from 0 to 3, why not make it, say, 0 to 5?

It turns out that by increasing that number, you actually decrease the reliability of each score. This is because when there are 5 possible points it’s much harder to come to a consensus about what a ‘1’ is versus a ‘2’ or what a ‘3’ is compared to a ‘4.’

Even the most skilled testers may not give a particular movement the exact same score on a scale from 0 to 5. At that point, chaos would ensue, and the results of the screen would have even less meaning than they do now. No bueno.

Podcast Ep. 12: Movement Resilience with Matt Ibrahim

Welcome back for Episode 12 of the Fitness Pollenator Podcast. On this episode, I have on my first repeat guest, Matt Ibrahim. I had Matt about a year ago for Episode 4. If you haven’t listened to that one yet, do it!

Matt is the founder of Movement Resilience (formerly Mobility 101), which has a specific mission of helping people build resilient movement and resilient strength to continue doing what they love most: move.

He's a part of the sports medicine team at Boston Physical Therapy & Wellness, where he serves as a strength & conditioning coach and physio rehab coach. This July, he will receive his license in massage therapy. 

He's also a provider for ClinicalAthlete through founder, Quinn Henoch, which is a team of healthcare professionals bridging the gap from rehab to performance for athletes.

Over the course of the episode, we talk shop on the following points:

Planning Your Attack on Recovery [ExerciseGeeks.com]

Like most men his age, Joe (age 45) keeps very busy. He works late hours and hustles to get to the gym three evenings per week while still making time for his wife and kids. With his busy schedule, Joe's lucky if he gets a consistent 6 hours of sleep per night.

Joe tries to eat well, but he has a few downfalls (primarily ice cream, beer, and soft pretzels). He knows a home-cooked meal is a better choice than fast food, but given his time constraints, sometimes he just doesn’t have any other option. The one thing he does well is drink plenty of water (and craft beer).

Joe’s always been a man on-the-go, but lately he’s been feeling more tired than ever. He wants to shed the extra pounds he gained over the holidays, build his chest and biceps back up to what they once were, and be able to keep up better with his vivacious children on the playground.

Seemingly, he’s doing everything he can in the gym to meet those goals. Yet he finds himself spinning his wheels -- and even going backwards in some respects. Lately, he’s been struggling just to get his shoes on in the morning, his flexibility limited after tweaking an old back injury while shoveling.

Why is it that Joe just can’t seem to make any progress? It’s likely because he’s barely considering the yin to the yang of hard training: recovery.

In our new article on ExerciseGeeks.com, we break down everything Joe (and you) need to consider when you’re “Planning Your Attack on Recovery:”

>>http://exercisegeeks.com/2016/02/07/planning-your-attack-on-recovery/

Gumby Goals: Takeaways from the FRC Seminar

This past weekend, I was one of some eighty-odd personal trainers, strength coaches, physical therapists, chiropractors, and other movement professionals who descended upon Pitman, NJ, for the FRC seminar at Endeavor Sports Performance (the gym where I’m currently interning).

What’s the FRC seminar? It’s not for the Finnish Red Cross, nor is it on functional residual capacity (of the lungs). Rather, it’s Dr. Andreo Spina’s “Functional Range Conditioning.” The FRC course came highly recommended by my friend, esteemed colleague, and Instagram sensation Hunter Cook, so I was very excited for the opportunity to attend.

If you’ve ever seen Hunter move, you might assume that FRC is only for circus performers and people who want to be able to overhead press while doing a split (see video below). Moreover, the name itself, “Functional Range Conditioning,” kind of sounds like a bunch of buzzwords strewn together haphazardly. At least, it did to me when I first heard it. In actuality, each word in the name has a very precise meaning, and FRC isn’t just for people as Gumby-like as Hunter.

Podcast Ep. 8 - Chris Leib

In Episode 8 of the Fitness Pollenator Podcast, I welcome Dr. Chris Leib. I met Chris about a year ago at a workshop he did at our mutual friend Tom DeVietro’s gym. (As an aside, Tom happened to be the very first guest of this podcast, so if you haven’t listened to episode 1, you should!)

Not only is Chris a doctor of physical therapy, but he’s also a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. While at Chris’s workshop, I was completely blown away by his hybrid approach to training, in which he fuses physical therapy, CrossFit, kettlebells, and more.

As I’ve gotten to know Chris, one of my favorite things about him is his voracious appetite for learning and assimilating new information. Lately, he can be found splitting his time between the physical therapy clinic, the personal training setting, and writing about exercise.

In this episode, Chris and I talk about...

Creative Solutions for Creating Balance from Asymmetry

Guest Post By Daragh Crowley

What the heck was Daragh having me do here? Read to the bottom to find out!

---

Try standing on one leg and doing a squat without shifting your pelvis or rotating. Tricky, right?

Now stand on both legs, activate your pelvic floor, squeeze your glutes on both sides, and tighten your lower abdominals. Then lift one foot, and try the squat again. Better?

On the first go-round, maybe, maybe not. But with practice, an optimally aligned single-leg squat is certainly within most of our grasps.

The thing is, if you're an amputee like Travis, you don't have the luxury of standing on both legs while engaging your pelvic floor, glutes, and abs. You see, Travis was born without a femur in his left leg. Although he ambulates well with the aid of an above-knee prosthesis, he doesn’t have the benefit of feedback from two feet touching the ground.

T Nation: 5 Ways You're Wasting Time in the Gym

If you're anything like me, you love lifting weights. It’s the best part of your day. There’s no finer feeling than the blood coursing through your veins, no finer sound than metal clanking against the floor. But when your life starts to revolve around three-hour marathon gym sessions, you’re no longer getting the most out of your training.

Though your intentions are pure when it comes to these all-day exercise affairs, your results are suffering. You see, building muscle depends on a delicate hormonal balance. Anabolic, or muscle-building, hormones are released at the onset of training, and catabolic, or muscle-wasting, hormones are released around 40 minutes in. Spend much more than an hour pumping iron, and you start tipping the scale in the wrong direction.

It’s easy to fall into this trap. We’ve all been there. One minute you’re warming up; the next you’re only halfway through your workout, it’s two hours later, and you’re late for dinner. Through a combination of improper warm-up, suboptimal exercise selection, and idle rest periods, you’ve managed to turn what should have been a gym quickie into some sort of tantric chest and triceps experience.

With a little extra attention to detail, though, you can get back to building serious muscle without the full-time plus overtime commitment. In my latest T Nation article, I chronicle 5 Ways You're Wasting Time in the Gym -- and what to do about them. Read it here:

>>https://www.t-nation.com/training/5-ways-youre-wasting-time-in-the-gym<<

Podcast Ep. 4: Mobility 101 with Matt Ibrahim

For this episode of the video podcast, I have on Matt Ibrahim of Mobility 101 to talk all things -- you guessed it -- mobility!

Matt's mission is to bridge the gap between the worlds of rehabilitation and performance. He's an up-and-coming expert with an extensive résumé that includes three years of clinical experience as well as internships at some of the best strength and conditioning facilities in the country. Matt is currently in the process of applying to school for his DPT (doctor of physical therapy) degree.

In this episode, Matt and I discuss...

Magic, or Thai Style Bodywork?

I first met "bodyworker" Daragh Crowley a few weeks back at a workshop for movement professionals. During the lecture, I asked a question about ways to address a particular movement impairment, and Daragh chimed in with a smart-aleck answer about the best way to fix it being to come see him. So I did. (To be precise, he actually came to see me on his way back to Philly from D.C., where he spends every other weekend working.)

Meet Daragh Crowley, Thai Style Bodyworker

Although outwardly, one might think me the epitome of strength and grace (see picture on left), I'm really not as perfect as I look. In fact, due to the congenital absence of my left femur, I engage in some funky compensatory strategies through my pelvis and low back. While I feel great much of the time, these compensations do sometimes manifest as low back pain. Upon meeting me, it was clear that Daragh was intrigued by my unique structure, his wheels spinning over how to address my situation.

Daragh's particular flavor of bodywork is known as "Thai Style." It's a vigorous form of manual therapy that has both practitioner and beneficiary on the floor actively engaging in the treatment (atop a comfy mat with a comfy pillow, of course). Daragh’s extensive background in resistance training and Ashtanga Yoga even further nuance his approach to the body. (Word to the wise: do NOT ask Daragh about traditional yoga certifications unless you're prepared for a 20-minute diatribe.)

DeanSomerset.com: What’s Your Favourite Position

At its core, movement is the union of just two things: positions and transitions.

In short, if you can’t even get into the beginning or ending position of a movement, then you have no business performing that movement dynamically or with weight.

The good news? Improving position can be as simple as some mobility work and a few sets of static holds.

In honor of the release of Fifty Shades of Grey over the weekend, I give you this guest blog post for Dean Somerset's site, entitled ‘What’s Your Favourite Position?’

>> http://deansomerset.com/whats-favourite-position/ <<

...But don't take my word for it! This post was also featured in the Personal Trainer Development Center's Top Fitness Articles of the Week (February 22, 2015, edition):

http://www.theptdc.com/2015/02/top-fitness-articles-of-the-week-february-22-2015/