Mobility training – that’s why it should be part of every training plan!

Mobility training, flexibility, mobility – What does that actually mean?

According to many fitness guides, your mobility is one of the 5 basic motor skills. It is the basis for your athletic success. However, most people lose this mobility with increasing age. The basis for good mobility is proper mobility training, because mobility means:

• The optimal interaction of muscles, ligaments and tendons.
• The possibility to exploit the range of motion of your joints.
• The best possible coordination in order to be able to exploit this range of motion at all.

A regular mobility training helps you to maintain these properties. For you, that means: Your muscles stay elastic, can relax better, and help you train more effectively.

Specific types of flexibility

Mobility training distinguishes between general and sport-specific mobility. Especially in Functional Training, you work towards a sport-specific agility. That means you deal with what mobility you need to make progress in certain sports. This is, for example, the mobility training for your thighs and your ankles when you do squats regularly.

General flexibility, however, is equally important: it describes the range of motion of your joints and is necessary for you to move as needed in everyday life.

Flexible muscles and mobile joints

Mobile joints and flexible muscles are important at any age: they allow you to move actively. The difference is mainly that you can train your flexibility passively. For example, by stretching your legs. In mobilization, on the other hand, you initiate a movement with your muscles: For example, through specific pelvic movements for the mobility of your hip flexor.

Mobility training – three reasons why it pays

Regular mobility training improves your performance in all sports. The reason for this is that with such sessions you support your entire musculoskeletal system in the long run

1. Staying healthy: Mobility is one of the basic motor skills. It is responsible for the fact that you can use your full strength, speed and coordination. Even in old age, you thus benefit from more freedom of movement and a more flexible musculature.
2. Aesthetic movements: Bad posture occurs when your mobility suffers. Here, an upright body posture as well as light movements are clearly more aesthetic than a stiff gait.
3. Better strength training: Most exercises in strength training require good mobility and coordination. Only if this is the case, you can ideally perform your workouts.

How mobility training affects your body

Your mobility training, such as with a suspension trainer, sends specific stimuli to your body. This helps you to compensate for the one-sided stresses of everyday life and to reduce stress. At the same time, the targeted training has the following effects:

• Your overall muscle tone.
• Your tendency for muscular tension is reduced.
• Your flexibility increases.
• Your muscles can relax better.
• Your muscle remains elastic without reducing titin filaments.

How to improve your flexibility

The best way to improve your mobility is with regular mobility training. This includes yoga or mobility classes, as well as full-body stretching. Ideally, you simply incorporate this mobility training into your normal fitness workout and add stretching exercises at the end. Dynamic stretching, on the other hand, is great for your warm-up or as a break from any sedentary activity.

By the way, fine-tuning your muscle fibers is also part of good mobility training. Therefore, you should stretch properly and not rush to adopt particularly difficult stretching positions. Rather, it’s about steadily moving yourself forward. For stretching while standing upright you can use our elastic bands for the home gym.

Mobility training and muscle building don’t contradict each other!

If you want to improve your mobility, this intention is in no way contradictory to muscle building. Because: Your body needs a good mobility to perform different exercises perfectly. Only then can you reach your maximum performance and increase your strength levels. However, mobility training also depends on the right combination. After all, great mobility without the right strength and stability won’t get you to your goal either.