How Good Is Your Mobility? — Try These Five Movements.

How Good Is Your Mobility? — Try These Five Movements.

While training people from different backgrounds and different goals, I’ve come across a few mobility tests that I feel you can try and gauge how mobile you are.

Before we start, what is mobility? My definition is: The range of motion we have with our joints with no outside assistance. So it’s how much you can move your thoracic spine without hanging onto a bar, or how high you can lift your leg without propping it onto something.

So the three major areas where I’m looking for mobility are the: shoulders, t-spine, and hips. These tests will be based on these three areas.

1. (Hips) One Minute Sit Squat — Can you sit in a squat position relatively comfortably for one minute? While you’re down there, try to move around and loosen up your knees, ankles, and hips. *Do not just jump into this. It will take time if you’ve never done it before.

2. (Shoulders & T-Spine) Scorpion Stretch — (You’ll see the floor is assisting in your stretch so this is not mobility) This stretch primarily focuses on opening up the anterior shoulder area and it also benefits the hips and t-spine areas. Hold this for about 60 seconds at varying arm angles and then put your arm at 90 degrees at the elbow for 30 seconds for an overall 90 seconds.

3. (Hips) 90/90 Stretch into leg extension or hamstring stretch — Get into a 90/90 position with both knees and ankles being 90 degrees. From there, with limited torso movement or help with your hands, see if you can extend your front leg straight and point the toe towards the ceiling. Go back and forth with this. Another challenge here is to see if you can transition back and forth from 90 degrees to 90 degrees. *This will take time if you’re new to this type of mobility.

4. (T-spine) T-Spine Shark Fin — This is what I call it. You’re in a deep kneeling position with your hips to your heels. Keeping your elbow on the floor in front of you, place your hand on your lower back. From there you want to rotate your upper back as much as possible so your elbow will look like a shark fin pointing up towards the ceiling. I use this with all my golfers.

5. (T-Spine & Shoulders) Half Wall Stretch — I love this one because it’s an easy gauge of how you’re doing. There are two different ways you can do this just by putting a different leg in front. This stretch is a must do for golfers.

There are many other stretches and mobility movements that are beneficial, this is just a few of the ones I feel can give you an idea of how mobile you are. If you’re a golfer, there is a TPI (Titleist Performance Institute) Mobility Screen I do with people that really gives them a good idea of their golf swing mobility. Check it out and if you’d like to learn more, please let me know.

Try these out and let me know what you think. Next I’ll be sending out some “Flows”. Which is transitioning into different stretches or movements. These are great for warming up before an intense training session, or any training session. Coming out in a few days!