When you hear the word ‘mobility’, what is your initial thought? Stretching? Yoga? Flexibility? While mobility training can and does consist of stretching and flexibility, it is quite different from yoga and here’s why.
I’d like to preface this article by first saying that this is in no way me bashing yoga. Yoga can be a fantastic way to move and whatever workouts keep you moving consistently and having fun are alright in my book. However, with that being said, if you are looking to achieve specific results when it comes to improving how your body and joints move, yoga is not your best option.
Yoga focuses on fitting people into different poses or positions, rather than fitting the position or pose to the specific individual. And what I mean by this is scientifically, there is no data showing that a specific warrior 2 pose done just so is garnering any specific improvement when it comes to your joint and body control. What it can help is for you to be able to do that very specific, very localized, warrior 2 super well. If every single person in the class looks the exact same in a pose, I can almost guarantee you that not every single person is feeling the “right” stuff that they “should” be feeling in that pose. What Sally may feel in a position, could be very different than what Jim is feeling in the exact same position. Wouldn’t it make more sense to adjust the position to the specific individual so they can actually feel what needs to be felt?
Because yoga focuses on poses and movement patterns, that is what you are going to get really good at. By you moving from warrior I to downward dog to chaturanga to upward dog, you are going to get really good at moving through these positions and hopefully getting better form each time. However, improving your form in an upward dog is not going to help you with that nagging shoulder impingement. Improving your crescent lunge is not going to improve the rotation of your hips in every direction. And improving your chaturanga could be putting a lot of undue load into your shoulders and neck that your body has not yet been prepared to accept.
Yoga does not have a high enough percentage of maximum voluntary contraction to make lasting changes in the joint capsule or tissues. What does this mean? It means that when it comes to strength training for your muscles, tissues or joints, you need to be contracting anywhere from 70%+ to achieve true strength development, with yoga being on the lower end of 15-20%.
Yoga focuses on improving your passive range of motion, or rather your flexibility, which is only a small piece of the puzzle in developing one’s mobility. Because here’s the thing, client 1 may already be incredibly flexible, but what they are lacking is strength in their end ranges. Client 2 may be stiff as a board and could massively improve from not only strengthening their end ranges but developing more flexibility to create more room to even have varying end ranges. Picture a dancer. Flexible right? Yes, but how strong do
they have to be to get in and out of those high kicks and splits. Now, picture a linebacker in football. Probably a bit stiffer, yeah? Both athletes can benefit from mobility training, but they will no doubt be training it in slightly different ways. Yoga is far too generalized to improve the specific demands of sports, life and injury rehab/prehab.
Isometrics, one of the training methods utilized when working to improve one’s mobility, is one of the best tools to get your brain talking directly to your joint capsule. Compared to eccentric and concentric movements (think of a squat, the down part of the squat is the eccentric portion, the coming up part is the concentric portion and an isometric would be if you held the squat at the bottom), isometrics do not inflame the tissue or the joint. It’s the safest, most effective way to create more usable workspace in your joint capsule while still challenging your body enough to make lasting changes.
Now, to tie everything up in a neat little bow, if you are looking to make long-term changes and improvements to your joint health, you need a specific training protocol. Mobility training can help to improve your yoga practice, the vice versa cannot be said. My recommendation to you would be to give one mobility class a try and see for yourself how you feel afterward. You’ll also see just how incredibly different it is from yoga.
Happy moving friends!