30 Minutes of Mobility per Day for 30 Days [My Results]

Hypothesis (Day 1)

1. I will not have a dramatic increase in range of motion in any single joint.
2. My day-to-day movement quality will improve dramatically almost immediately upon starting the program, and will last several days to several weeks after I terminate the program.
3. Almost all of the immediate changes will be related to the nervous system’s regulations of muscle tension.  While these nervous system changes are short-term, they can help facilitate long-term change at the tissue level.
4. The impact of mobility of Sports performance will be two-fold.  
   1. First, there will be an immediate improvement in performance that occurs due to less residual tension in positions that demand high mobility: barbell overhead & front rack, bottom of squat, compression in hinge, etc.
   2. Second, improvements in positions result in improvements in immediate performance, which results in driving changes in physiology over the long-term.
      1. e.g. Better Squat Mechanics → Heavier Squat Today → Stronger Squat Next Year
5. I will have a positive experience and reinforce to myself the value of mobility work, yet the actual process will continue to feel like a chore day-to-day.

The Results (Day 30)

As predicted, my mobility did not dramatically increase. 

Objectively, the joint ranges I measured when cold didn’t improve more than 5-7 degrees (ankle dorsiflexion, knee flexion, shoulder flexion and elbow flexion). 

Subjectively, my quality in movements that demand high mobility (e.g. snatch, clean, jerk, squat, ring muscle-up) had mild improvements.  However, the time it took me to warm-up to express this level of mobility was often 50% or even less the time.

---

Throughout this experiment I was discouraged at times because I know an article published about a guy NOT making crazy mobility progress is unlikely to be looked favorably upon from the “search engine gods.”  

After all, a single search in Google or YouTube makes me want to believe I can achieve a Straddle Split in a single day.  This is the world we live in. 

But it’s so far from reality; it’s just click bait.

While an article on lots of long, boring, tedious work for marginal gains will never be that popular, it’s the truth.

So, as we both seek out diminishing returns in mobility, here’s some of the things I’ve learned that can help you in your journey.

Takeaways

(1) Short vs. Long-Term Changes: State vs. Structure
(2) Expressing Strength: The Impact of Tension
(3) Damage & Irritation Can Conflict with Range
(4) The Role of Personality & Temperament on Mobility

(1) Short vs. Long-Term Changes: State vs. Structure

One of the first truths about mobility we need to understand is the difference between state and structure.  Nervous system state will be closely tied with systemic tension and the extensibility of the muscle.  In other words, there is a distinct difference between a muscle that is short and a muscle that is tight.  

Experiencing knots in your back, is one way this relationship can be illustrated.  Often people who get knots along their spine are hypermobile (length), but their body creates tension (tightness) to create stability and protection.

If you are a person who has chronic tightness but not issues with shortness, you will likely experience very rapid improvements in your mobility.  However, if you actually lack length, the process for change will take much, much longer.

While changes in state take moments or minutes, changes in structure take months or years.

Remodeling muscle and connective tissue is an incredibly slow process.  

Most people think that our muscles and tendons are like rubber bands, and while we do have elastic components, thinking that we can create long-term change by stretching for a few minutes is hilariously false.

Our bodies only adapt when a stimulus is strong enough and repeated often enough. 

In other words, there is a minimum effective dose for mobility work, which when reached will allow you to slowly, consistently drive adaptation over the long-term.

(2) Expressing Strength & Endurance: The Impact of Tension

If you are a person who doesn’t understand how to manipulate and regulate tension / stiffness, you will always be a one trick pony.  

Low tension people will find themselves self-selecting to do yoga or dance.

High tension people will find themselves doing powerlifting or strongman.  

For athletes in the Sport of Fitness, you need to be able to control and manipulate tension if you want to be able to express strength, endurance and mobility in unique combinations based on the task at hand.

Most elite CrossFit athletes naturally or intuitively can manipulate state and tension based on what is ideal for the given moment.

An athlete like Tia Toomey understands how to “tension up” and generate high degrees of trunk stiffness to pull a max deadlift, but also knows how to breathe and carry herself in an environment that requires a more relaxed, methodical type of power for efficiency and endurance in a swim endurance event.

My point is, if you want to learn how to be flexible, strong and enduring concurrently, then you need to teach your body how to manipulate state and tension.  

For my athletes, I regularly program trunk stiffness and plyometric activities as a way to tension up before strength work. 

And before building into endurance activities, we will limit sympathetic tone and systemic tension by mandating low heart rate zones and other tools like nasal breathing only.

(3) Damage & Irritation Can Conflict with Range

This is another important way that the nervous system dovetails with the expression of your joint freedom.

Basically, training hard on a daily basis, in a way that generates some amount of damage, soreness and joint irritation can temporarily reverse many of your mobility gains.

Most athletes know that when your tissues are damaged, the muscles are less capable of generating force and producing high metabolic output.  

However, your brain also will deter you from moving through the entire range of motion to prevent further damage.

Practically, it’s more challenging to hit depth on your squats the day after a leg and joint destroying workout like “Murph.” 

This an aspect of mobility that needs to be accounted for.  If you plan on doing hard, punishing workouts, you will need to do significantly more mobility work just to maintain range of motion and prevent regression. And on the flip side, if your workouts are in low-eccentric modalities that don’t create lots of damage, less mobility work could produce positive results.

(4) The Role of Personality, Temperament & Culture on Mobility

Too often people, myself included, want a biological or scientific explanation for why they don’t have the mobility they want.  However, often it’s really not necessarily.  

If you sit at a desk all day and then go pound yourself at the gym for an hour, your evening ROMWOD isn’t going to save you from your habits.

Often I have found that athletes are more limited by their personality, temperament and cultural norms than their mobility routines.

If you have a type A personality and never “turn off” and unwind, you’re going to have a hard time expressing the deep relaxation needed to improve mobility over the long-term.

If your temperament is more bubbly and outgoing you’re more likely to avoid the time needed in quiet solitude necessary for systemic changes in mobility.

If you align with common cultural norms for your sex, then you’re likely to experience some holes in mobility for specific bodily areas simply because you avoid certain movements and positions.  

The bottom line is, don’t overthink it.  Don’t get paralysis by analysis.  Getting more mobile is simple, it just takes more time and intention than most people are willing to give.  

But then again, if it was easy, everyone would do it.