Mobility Frequency

Is it preferable to complete the mobility exercises more than once per day, assuming that mobility is the bottleneck for progression?

If you can do more than your mobiliy will progress faster. Stretch series is only once a week as it is more intense.

Hey Mark or others, Along these lines of Jamie's mobility question... Do you ever recommend focusing a 1 or 2 month bloc of extra, daily mobility for ONE physical aspect of focus?

 For example, if stuck on MN PE2. Daily pancake or similar MN PE2 mobility work focused on achieving this one physical skill. (Side note: it is easy to get wrapped up with needing: pancake, bridge, pike, shoulder extension, flexion, opened hips ect, and I have found sometimes while attempting extra mobility work for all of them, some of them do not get addressed well enough) hope this makes sense.

Basically, do we ever take a 2 month focus for daily extra mobility of one skill while still keeping with the well rounded weekly foundation schedule workouts?

Thanks for any advice.

Ryan, my pancake didn't progress until I started working it daily. I did MS series once per week throughout 2015, and while I saw progress on all the supporting stretches, my actual pancake attempts looked almost unchanged a year later. So now I am working it "every damn day" and am finally seeing real progress now. 

Awesome Stephen, today I've done: holds, elevated limber in/out of position, wider low squats, low hip rotation.  do you have specifics that is working well?

3 hours ago, Ryan Bailey said:

Side note: it is easy to get wrapped up with needing: pancake, bridge, pike, shoulder extension, flexion, opened hips ect, and I have found sometimes while attempting extra mobility work for all of them, some of them do not get addressed well enough

Especially the part highlighted. Didn't realise that until now though.

Strangely, it never occurred to me either until just now that it might be an option to pick just one or two to focus on right now *insert facepalm-pic of your choice here*

For intermediate/advanced students, those who have a “mobility foundation” or previous experience with mobility work, I’d say the body responds well with more frequency of a particular element, especially if it is lagging behind.

There’s something to be said for multiple exposures for less intensity/time. If not daily, 3-4x/week. It seems like if you keep doing it without over doing it, the brain adapts by increasing its "tolerance" response:

For beginners, it would have to be very gentle so it doesn’t backfire. Coach has the SS programing as is, among other reasons because the series are pretty intense and include many different positions in a particular order. Don’t forget you need mobility in every joint AND direction so a balanced approach is key! For instance, if I were to prioritize my middle split gains, it messes with my pelvis’ stability, whereas focusing on my front splits seems to work better for me. 

I usually do general mobility throughout the day that is less intense than the stretch series. For example I will watch TV or read in a pancake. I can only just feel a mild stretch. After a few minutes I change to another position. This way my body gets variety of movement, rather than just sitting in the same position.

Our body is adapting at all time to what forces we place on it. So if you sit with hips and knees at 90 degrees your body adapts to this position. Then when you try to go into pike it nearly kills us. Imagine how much easier the pike or pancake stretch would be if you sat in these positions for 6-8 hours a day for 20 years. We get good at limited range of motion. So the only way to counteract the stiffness is to constantly move in new ranges. 

That said it can of course be very useful to prioritise a lagging area. I've done well by myself by focusing on improving my pancake for the past couple months, but then again i already have a reasonably good bridge and splits, so its not like i was taking time away from developing those.

Pancake is high on my list because good straddle flexibility is necessary for good press handstand work, straddle L, manna, as well as greatly smoothing the learning curve on straddle static levers and planches.

But when there's a lot to be fixed at the same time, as in ye average adult beginner, better to average your effort over the assorted areas and progress a little slower, but in a balanced, sustainable fashion, than to neglect one which badly needs attention in favour of drilling another twice as hard

On 10/5/2016 at 5:43 PM, Stephen Majerle said:

Ryan, my pancake didn't progress until I started working it daily. I did MS series once per week throughout 2015, and while I saw progress on all the supporting stretches, my actual pancake attempts looked almost unchanged a year later. So now I am working it "every damn day" and am finally seeing real progress now. 

So do you mean doing your stretch series daily or just basic pancake mobility?

I assume then that is common advice to work daily mobility for those progressions were we are stuck?

36 minutes ago, Xabier Errea Mayo said:

So do you mean doing your stretch series daily or just basic pancake mobility?

I assume then that is common advice to work daily mobility for those progressions were we are stuck?

Just basic mobility daily. I still do MS stretch series once a week at a higher intensity, and the daily stuff is lower intensity. Kind of like what Mark said, if I watch tv in the evening I sit on the floor in a straddle instead of on the couch. I've also been doing more bent knee pancake work. Bending the knees slightly reduces the stretch and allows my pelvis to tilt forward. From there I work on straightening my legs while focusing on keeping the pelvis in the same spot. 

I have started doing this also - sitting on the floor and think it's a great idea.  Some cultures still do this on a daily basis - such as middle eastern countries e.g Iran, they will sit on a Persian rug & even eat dinner sat on the floor as a family - constantly changing their positions.  The people that I've met that do this have great flexibility.