Mobility Issues

I want to know what you guys are doing to improve mobility. I see it everyday. Lack of Ankle dorsi flexion, Hip Mobility ( IR and ER restrictions) and Thoracic Spine concerns. Also another issue I see is poor scapula retraction. We know what it leads to... knee pain, low back pain, and of course a number of imbalances in the body. Posture is a another terrible thing we see. I am kind of going to leave this open. I want to hear your thoughts. I will reply with what we do. But as far as concepts as injury prevention, rehab work, mobility circuit, routine (how often) and etc. Let me know how you guys work this into your programming.

NIELSEN

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Comment by TJ Nielsen on April 8, 2011 at 7:49am: @ John - Good stuff. We use all these things. I am a fan of scapula wall slides and we do a complete broom stick warm up. I think having a well balanced dynamic warm up and then a specific mobility sections to target major areas is crucial and will solve many problems, also limiting amount of adjustments to programming.

Comment by John Winstanley on April 8, 2011 at 5:06am: Things like Form rolling are very good to loosen the muscles around the thoracic spine and would also use this with general stretching around the shoulders and upper back. Side lying arm crossovers are good but I tend to find that hip mobility limit the amount of stretch in the upper back areas, the opposite to this using dynamic movements such as scorpions are also effective. General stretching for example, find a door frame stand underneath raise your arms straight above your head and use the top of the door frame to provide a stretching resistance are also good as it mimics the typical movement patterns seen in overhead pressing and the end position of the snatch. Also using broomsticks, using overhead squats going as far as the athlete can go down holding at the bottom for a few seconds then returning, and repeating are also good.

Hope this helps

Comment by TJ Nielsen on April 7, 2011 at 6:56pm: @ John - What do you do for Thoracic spine issues? Those are great assessment tools. What are the best ways to correct? I like side laying arm crossovers, I stole it from Nick Tumminello.

Comment by John Winstanley on April 7, 2011 at 5:53am: I also see Thoracic Spine flexibility issues often and have these myself. Thoracic Spine mobility issues link extremely heavily with a whole host of movement patterns. A good example of poor Thoracic Spine issues are through the overhead squat screening athletes. With poor thoracic flexibility there is a tendency for athletes to leave the bar in front of the head overhead and not in the correct position behind the head. Although this movement does indicate poor thoracic flexibility it cannot all be attributed to this area solely and also requires hip mobility, and also ankle dorsi flexion. Please note that this is an advanced movement skill, but movements such as this will identify potential problems. Movements such as stepping over a hurdle with a broomstick resting in the back squat position are also good indicators.

Comment by Cat Wade on April 6, 2011 at 4:40pm: We have stolen some stuff off of this site: www.mobilitywod.com and have gotten a lot of good things that have given us some help in those areas. From here we have made up 10-15 minute routines for kids who need extra work (and those that will actually take the time to do it) and for all of my athletes I put mobility stuff throughout their entire training session that day.

The other thing we use is some of the corrective exercises from the FMS, which as also given us some good results.

Hope that gives you some ideas.

CWade