Developing Better Shoulder & Hip Mobility At Once!

One of the biggest challenges with mobility training is that you don’t want it to take up your already limited training time, but you also know that it will be difficult to make progress if you don’t move well. While there are endless mobility workout examples online, most are very time efficient in several ways…

-They isolate: Isolating an area of the body is always a very inefficient way to get results for just about any fitness goal. Yet, everyone wants to do it because we still think the body is a bunch of random parts that are thrown together rather than a highly integrated system.

-They believe it is just about the joint: Yes, mobility training is designed to help improve the movement of our joints, yet, it is rare that our joints are the primary reason that we aren’t moving well.

The good news is that building good mobility, especially shoulder and hip mobility isn’t overly complicated and shouldn’t take up your whole workout. If you understand a few key concepts you will see that not only can we improve shoulder and hip mobility, but we can accomplish both at the same time.

Now, I’ll be honest with you, JUST doing these exercises won’t be enough. There are other things that you have to do…

-Have good nutrition: while it may sound weird to talk nutrition and mobility training, the truth is if we are all inflamed, have gut issues, and so forth, this will impact our ability to move well. There are nerves and our nervous system that will react to these issues so having good nutrition for many people I work with isn’t about getting them to lose weight as it is to reduce inflammation. In doing so, most people experience losing body fat and they don’t feel the same pressures about diet.

-Managing stress: Like nutrition, chronic stress can cause in inflammation and as a result cause many health issues. Fortunately, instead of just tell you that you should manage stress, we are going to give you some research based ways of doing so that will also help your shoulder and hip mobility.

-Sleep well: You should start to see now, these aren’t actually independent variables, but all issues that impact one another. While there is no shortage of people telling you to sleep better, two easy ways of improving your sleep is eating more nutritious foods and managing our stress. Some of these techniques of shoulder and hip mobility can be used before bed as well to also help sleep specifically.

-Move more often: More and more research is showing that myofascial pain (pain that stems from connective tissue and muscle) occurs in 85% of people and is probably a larger problem than many realize. It is the thing that causes us to feel “stiff”, refer pain, and as a byproduct, will make our shoulder and hip mobility decrease. So, while breaking out a 60 or even 30 minute workout often throughout your day may not be possible. You should be able to do 5-10 minute “movement snacks” that we will show to help improve your overall amount of movement that will have a positive impact upon your shoulder and hip mobility, but also your energy and mood.

The take home message, before we show you how, is that good shoulder and hip mobility can’t be improved long-term if overall we are not taking care of ourselves. So, each individual is responsible and in control in how fast they can improve and making these concepts a part of your daily routine. These are “practices” because there is no point where you should stop doing them! If you think there is an end date then you will end up running into the same problems all over again.

Also, the big point is that our body and body’s systems are all interconnected, so our shoulder and hip mobility work should be as well. Below, Coach Cory Cripe shows two different types of such mobility work that we use to cover the many different aspects of improving shoulder and hip mobility work.

Don’t miss 30% off our online education and workout programs where you can learn much more about these evidence based mobility and movement solutions with code “education” HERE

 

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Physical therapist, Jessica Bento, does a great job of showing that while we can work on spinal mobility, there is a smarter way of doing so. Integrating the body, the breath, and being more deliberate of what areas of our body we are keeping stable while we move others is the way we actually develop shoulder and hip mobility that actually works.

Mobility training seems like it is straight forward, work the joint, or “just move”, but hopefully you are seeing it can and should be more thoughtful and specific. That way, we don’t get just better mobility for a few seconds or a couple of minutes, but we see our movement getting better for longer and more permanent times.

 

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