Magnificent Mobility

Having optimal joint mobility where it’s needed can reduce your risk for injury

Your skeleton is essentially a stack of joints. By design, certain joints are meant to move more while others are meant to stabilize. Prolonged sitting while at work or when travelling to races can leave you feeling stiff and creaky. If you lose mobility at one joint because of a tight muscle or previous injury you’re increasing your risk for injury.

The Joint-by-Joint Approach

I’m a big believer that being stronger (weight training, jumps and sprinting) will make you a faster runner. But equally as important as being strong, is having optimal f lexibility and joint mobility. To help outline what our body needs, we can refer to the joint-by-joint approach to training and stretching.

Expanding on the stack of joints idea, your body is layered from the feet to the ankles, the knees, hips, lumbar spine (lower back), thoracic spine (upper back), scapula (shoulder blades) and gleno-humeral (shoulder) joints. Each joint or series of joints has a unique function and movement allowance based on how it’s designed.

As you can see in the table above, the joints listed alternate from wanting mobility or stability as you move from the bottom of the skeleton to the top. If a joint has a problem and does not move appropriately, pain is usually seen at the joint above or below. For example, following an ankle sprain, the ankle joint tends to stiffen and lose mobility. But remember, the ankle wants mobility. So if you’re running with one stiff ankle, your body will look for mobility elsewhere, in most cases, the knee. But the knee is designed for stability. Placing unwanted stress to the knee by making it track outside of its normal design will lead to an overuse injury.

Similarities can be found with tightness in the hip. A recent study published in the International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy found that those with patellor-femoral pain (runner’s knee) exhibited significantly less hip extension range of motion compared to those without knee pain. Therefore, oftentimes the site of pain is different from the origin or cause. You can treat the knee for knee pain but it may also be caused by a stiff ankle.

Minimizing your risk for gett ing injured requires more than just strength. You need appropriate ankle, hip, thoracic spine and shoulder mobility to run at your best. Don’t be a statistic and address your mobility issues with these mobility drills.

Mobility Drills

These drills are designed to improve the mobility at the joints that need it (ankles, hips, thoracic spine and shoulders). These can be performed pre- and post-run or race and also in a hotel room after checking in. Keep the stretches short (10 seconds) pre-run and long (60 to 120 seconds) post-run.