How to Mobilize Daily and Why it’s Important

Adding mobility to your daily routine is as good for you as clean eating and regular sleep. Mobility is not just for “higher level” or professional athletes. If you are taking your fitness seriously, basic body maintenance is a fundamental building block for long term success. Performance and recovery will not only benefit, but so will long-term quality of life.

What the heck is “mobility?” Mobility is a movement-based, full-body approach to address restrictions that limit movement and performance. Basically, it’s training your body to move right. It includes stretching — making short, tight muscles longer —but maybe more importantly, mobility addresses soft tissue pain, motor control issues, and lack of range of motion. In other words, if you don’t think you are moving as well as you’d like, mobility is likely the key.

Easy Ways to to Be Mobilizing Daily

• Many of you are already familiar with a foam roller and are friends with the lacrosse ball. Working these tools over tight muscles and tissues is one way to do it, as is stretching after a workout.
• A yoga class is a workout and mobilization rolled into one.
• Use mobility bands to help improve joint range.
• Many of you will spend at least ten minutes each day watching TV, so use that time to multi-task. Those ten minutes are going to pass by anyway.
• A great resource is Kelly Starett’s Ready State (formerly MobilityWOD). His site is a comprehensive how-to guide on mobilization techniques.

Mobilization may not be sexy, but make it as important as working out and you will tap into the real benefits of maintenance and the results that you can get out of your workouts.

Andy Petranek

Andy is what you’d call a modern day Renaissance Man: a former professional trumpeter who attended the Eastman School of Music; a snowboarder, mountain biker, surfer, kayaker, outrigger paddler, mountaineer, and former Marine (Gulf War veteran); a professionally sponsored adventure racer; and the oldest participant to qualify for and participate in the CrossFit Games at the age of 43.

Andy is a certified CHEK Practitioner and holistic lifestyle coach. He holds a spectrum of certifications from CrossFit and is also a Vivobarefoot certified running coach. He has trained as a Zen buddhist and graduated with a Master’s degree in spiritual psychology from the University of Santa Monica.

Andy founded CrossFit LA one of the first and most successful CrossFit training centers in the world and the first to be featured in national media. He is the co-founder of the Whole Life Challenge, Inc, currently its president, and is also a consultant and life/business coach. Andy lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Julia, and son, Dashel.