How do you push for more mobility?

Simple every time you do an exercise that targets mobility at a certain joint such as the ankles or hips or knees, you need to push yourself to go further into the depth of it every rep. If it is causing you pain to go further and you really can’t go any further into depth try making it easier part way through the rep to where you can’t go any further. So what do I mean by that and how do we do that? A Simple way to put it is if you were performing a barbell Squat and you added chains to the bar when you’re at the bottom of the Squat the weight is lighter and thus easier but as you ascend the rep the exercise becomes heavier. We want to cause the same effect with any exercise were using to gain mobility in so for example going from a skater squat into a reverse lunge stance BUT when you start to press back up off the floor lift your back leg up while you press from the floor with your front leg in order to make the movement more challenging to further develop strength in that desired ROM. In this specific example you might initially start by dropping your back leg at about a quarter skater squat depth and it’s always your toes that touch the ground first, eventually you can change the difficulty by making it your knees and toes that touch the floor at the same time and then just your knees. From the bottom position it might be that your knee always comes up first but eventually both your knees and your toes will come up off the floor together in order to increase the difficulty in the movement. Thus overtime your mobility will improve vastly and be much stronger in that bottom range so even though when you started you couldn’t even get past a quarter skater squat now you can do full skater squats to depth with no stress on the knees, hips or ankles and build up some necessary strength for the Pistol Squat.

Read more about the Pistol Squat in my next blog post where we discuss what exercises are effective in getting you your first pistol squat.