How much mobility do you need?
Human joints can move in predictable ways that are more or less the same for all of us.
More or less the same means we do not move in exactly the same ways.
Why is this?
First there's the mobility you're "born with". It's the mobility determined both by the shape of your bones and your soft tissue make up.
Then, there's the mobility you nurture (or don't) through the activities you do (or don't do).
How these two intersect results in your mobility. The exact path and quality of your joint movement is specific to your skeleton and your life.
Let's say you want to be an Olympic gymnast. But you're also 6'3".
You might be able to manage the feat, but your training would need to accommodate the extra foot of height that you'd bring to the sport.
Or say you love to run. But you have lax ligaments and "wobbly" joints.
You can run, but you'll need to engage in targeted strength training to avoid injury.
Not every factor can be trained away.
Take my ballet example from a few weeks back: I don't have the hip joints for professional ballet. That is, I can do ballet, but I can't create the look that is competitive in a professional sphere. All because my hip joint structure is the way that it is.
No biggie, but important for me to know so I don't go pushing my body into shapes it just. cannot. create.
Herein lies the danger of "more" for the sake of more...
At some point you've got the mobility you need to be you and do the thing you love in a way that honors your unique skeleton. That's flexibility. That's enough.
Missed the Mobility Worksheet?
To help you learn a few things about your own joint mobility, I made a chart of the movement expectations of your spine --the center or starting point of all whole-body movement.
Download it now to learn about your own movement!
Observing with you,
