Baffling lack of mobility... is this possible

Today a friend of mine came along to work out together.  He's been getting fit over the last year and a half and has done some great progress with functional exercises.  He recently started to delve into crossfit and got interested in bodyweight and gymnastic training.

 

I was going over the basic Hollow body / Arched body principles, shoulder retraction / opening the shoulders in some exercises, and how important they are at the core of every other movement.

 

One thing became immediately clear, he was struggling with some very basic principles.  I was at a loss because I never actually experienced the type of difficulty he was having.

 

In short he could keep a hollow hold on the floor, but had immense difficulty in pushing the pelvis forward to really have that arch in the lower back.  He could not hold a proper hollow in a plank or while hanging from a bar.  At first I thought it as a lack of core strength but it seems it was compounded by a lack of mobility. 

 

He was clearly in need of a lot of flexibilty and mobility work but I had a tough time believing lack of mobility impeding the ability to push your pelvis forward.

 

The second thing that had me at a total loss was his inability to protract the shoulders and squeeze the scapula together while keeping his arms straight.  His arms would bend at the elbows if he tried to squeeze the scapula together.

 

Needless to say we spend the rest of the day doing stretching, and trying to open up his hams and shoulders.

 

Is this even possible?  I'm thinking I was not able to get his body to 'understand' the movement, rather than lack of mobility but I'm curious to see if this can truly be because of a lack of mobility.

I think you're confusing retraction and protraction here, squeezing the scapulae together is retraction.

 

Apart from that this lack of mobility is of course possible. From my experience you will find that even more with 'fit' people than with 'average' people, because they have been training for years with terrible form but without ever stretching or stuff like that and then end up with really bad mobility. 

If he is able to rotate the pelvis lying on the ground but not in a plank for example, it might also be a lack of coordination. Many people just don't know how to do certain things, eventhough they would be able to in theory. This will even out a little with time - the lack of mobility however needs to be addressed specifically.

I agree. also, lack of mobility is just lack of strength in certain ROM's and with certain muscle groups working in unison. 

 

what he -could- do is assess his weaknesses (start with anterior or pelvic tilt, that will lead to other tightness or weaknesses along the anterior and posterior chain of the body) and work on correcting the former. 

 

though I haven't had "whoa" results by Coaches standards, I do feel my body improving weekly or from workout to workout thanks to H1 and F1 programming. 

 

addressing mobility is paramount in my scope now, especially after seeing how much "simple" movements open up and strengthen our body in ways that we weren't previously enjoying. 

 

I can safely see this person improving workout to workout after this issue has been addressed and not only becoming stronger but more aware of his body, the space around him and the way he feels within his own body. 

This lack of mobility is also a lack of activation ability.  The motor functions of those muscles is limited by the capacity of the CNS to actually activate those units.  He will have to 're-learn' how to active and use those muscles.  Band work for protraction/retraction, elevation/depression are very useful to help activate the scapula support muscles.  This will require a lot of personal motivation and consistent work in order to improve.  Good luck.

Sounds familiar to me. I've had some of the same issues. Still do. My arms still want to bend when I retract my scapulae. I have to pay close attention to keeping my arms rigid, but it's better than it was. And hollow holds are pretty difficult for me, especially with fully extended legs and arms. To improve he needs to learn what to activate and keep constant awareness of form. Tell him to squeeze his glutes as hard as he can to achieve hollow.

 

I used to do band work every session to improve scapula activation. Still use them, but now F1 and H1 mobility have me covered.

 Having worked out with a lot of crossfitters and watched a lot of them at crossfit gyms, yes this is very possible.

 

 Doing a pelvic tilt is mainly he is not used to it, ever. So that is a lot of it. It also sounds like his mobility is bunk.

Thank you so much for your feedback guys.

 

Since I am not a trainer, and don't have the education background or the experience for it, it is sometimes hard to understand this type of barriers one has.  I'm just a friend trying to give some simple pointers and that has major drawbacks.  Unfortunately where we are living, a lot of the so called trainers are so much worse.  And this compounds the problem of terrible form when doing exercises.

 

I'm trying to get my friend interested enough for him to start GST as a main and principle form of training.  If he likes it then I'll be directing him to F1 straight away.  You hit the nail on the head when you said lack of body awareness.  I'm wondering if he would be able to do the exercises in F1 without losing good form and realizing he has lost proper form.  This happened a few times in the basic things we were doing and I had to stop him to point out that his lower back had arched off the floor (for example).

Also regarding the posterior pelvic rotation, keep in mind that most systems don't even consider that to be part of planks or pushups, and outside of gymnastics, you will almost always see them done with a more neutral pelvis.

 

Personally I think this is a mistake which I believe comes from a misguided idea of what alignment is. Without the posterior tilt you're not getting everything out of the elements that is possible and at least in my experience it is actually not only more challenging but healthier.

 

No matter what for GST the posterior tilt is a requirement pure and simple.

In a similar vein, I met a guy recently who couldn't move his scapula through a full range of motion while doing pushups.  Or at all really.  I tried to teach him how to "shrug" in a plank position, and he just couldn't figure out how to do it... Baffling...