William Smith - The Mobility Workout Handbook Over 100 Sequences for Improved Performance, Reduced Injury, and Increased Flexibility

T o our family and friends, we thank you for your support throughout the development of this book. To the athletes and clients who have allowed us to use many of the principles in our training programs with you, we thank you. To our mentors, coaches, and role models who have made us who we are as educators, teachers, and coaches, we thank you.

As professional trainers and strength coaches, we have seen our clients and athletes struggle to maintain the work-life balance. On a personal level, we are working fathers with full family lives and realized we are everyday athletes, too! We can relate to many of the same goals and responsibilities that you, and so many other everyday athletes, encounter on a daily basis. Weve taken our personal experiences and our professional knowledge to create a plan that is manageable, effective, and will help you reach your fitness goals.

So finally, we dedicate this to you, the reader. Thank you for entrusting us with your health by purchasing The Mobility Workout Handbook. We hope the information contained herein will be as helpful to you as it has to the many, many clients and athletes we have worked with over the years.

M obility is essential for the everyday athlete. Who is the everyday athlete? Its the weekend warrior, training for their next sprint distance triathlon while holding down a full-time job, to the busy mother of three with limited free time who dreams of running a marathon, to the recreational tennis player competing in the local doubles league with their neighborsthe everyday athlete is your neighbor, your co-worker, the person you sit next to on the bus every day who just wants to get better at what they enjoy. Through it all, there is one commonality, one aspect of their experience that is the same: mobility.

Mobility is involved in every daily activity and exercise you perform. Your ability to squat down and pick up your kids; your ability to lunge down and pick something up off the floor; the ability to perform a complete push-up; the ability to achieve full rotation while swinging a bat at the weekend softball game; these are all great examples of the role mobility plays in your life.

Mobility also applies to the day-to-day life at your workplace. Over 90 percent of Americans sit at a desk for most of the day, not to mention our long periods of inactivity in transit, sitting in a car or train on the way to work. Over time, all that inactivity can create a mobility deficit, one which results in an increased chance for potential injury at the gym, at the game, or during the sudden, unexpected movements of an active life.

Essentially, mobility can be thought of as your bodys ability to perform all your daily activitiesalong with the movements in your daily workoutswith a full range of motion, pain-free. As such, mobility is the foundation for efficient, pain-free performance. Your daily workouts will become far more effective and consistent as your mobility improves. If you currently dont have the ability to perform normal, everyday movements with a full range of motion, know that this book also includes exercises you can practice to improve each specific area of need. And, as mobility obviously applies to every single sport and physical activity, this book also includes specific movements and specific workouts for many of the most common athletic activities.

How many times have you hurt your back? Pulled a hamstring? Had soreness in your shoulder? These are injuries that can happen during activities youve been enjoying for years, seemingly out of nowhere. And the only difference is time: as we age, we begin to lose our mobility. The good news is, we can take steps to maintain, and even improve, our mobility.

The goal for every active person is to have a full range of motion (proper mobility), allowing each and every one of us to be pain-free, injury free and perform at our most effective and efficient level. Whether its out on the field, on the track, on the courts, in the weight room, it doesnt matteryou owe it to yourself to be able to perform at the highest level possible. A very common phrase in conditioning is, The best ability is durability. I believe we can take that phrase to the next level: The best ability is durability. The best durability is mobility training. Your best ability to stay durableto stay in the field, stay on the courts, to stay active in your kids livesis to stay mobile.

We realize that everyone is training for something different, be it a race, improvement in functional movement, being able to lift the kids up/down, etc. It is for this exact reason that we wanted to create a book that has a little something for everyone, offering specific guidance on 20 activity-specific workouts.

MOBILITY VS. FLEXIBILITY

In recent years, mobility has become something of a buzzword in the fitness and strength communities, and often replaces flexibility in the common fitness vernacular, all for the sake of sounding currentso much so that most athletes (and many trainers) dont realize the difference between the two terms.

Flexibility is the narrower of the two terms, referring to the ability to move a joint through its full range of motion. If a joint is inflexible, muscle tightness is generally the culprit, and stretching or soft tissue therapies (like massage) provides the solution.

Mobility, as the term is used in this book, refers to the more general ability to accomplish movement tasks. Mobility can be limited by much more than flexibility alone: while flexibility (or the lack thereof) is often the reason for compromised mobility, other attributes, such as strength, muscular endurance, and skill, often play a role.

To give a real world example, the inability to perform a squat through a full range of motion is a mobility issue, one which is often treated with stretching; however, flexibility may not be the problem. The muscles may lack the necessary strength to carry through the full range of motion. Or, perhaps you simply lack the coordination to execute the skill properly. In either case, stretching would provide only limited benefit.