One of the things I have been chewing on lately is this: Training Mobility vs. Displaying Mobility. The exercise below (Ring Rollovers) got me started down this rabbit hole.

I had never really attempted this exercise before. I saw it on Instagram and gave it a shot. It didn’t take long for me to do it, which would imply I have the requisite mobility (and strength) to do the exercise. However, many people probably cannot just randomly decide to do this exercise and successfully complete it (especially without hurting themselves). Therefore, my initial thought was that I was “displaying” what I already have instead of “developing” or “training” something to get better (in this case shoulder/upper-body mobility). If I only ever did this exercise for “upper-body mobility”, I may never lose the ability to do the exercise, but I wouldn’t necessarily improve anything either (especially if I didn’t progress it in any way).

This goes for a lot of exercises that you may see on social media. Hell, even if you read my previous article on “Seated Hip Rotation Flow” (HERE), you may look at it as simply displaying the mobility that I (or anyone else) already have.

The question then becomes how do we IMPROVE or TRAIN mobility instead of just displaying it? First and foremost, more mobility is not always better. In fact, improving mobility for the sake of improving mobility may actually be detrimental for people (a worthwhile topic for another article in the future). Let’s say you do decide that improving mobility will have a direct positive impact on health and/or performance. I believe that improvement would come from working at the ends of your current ranges of motion to improve said ranges, and then trying to strengthen those new ranges with stability exercises (or other strength exercises to help those ranges “stick”). Again, this isn’t necessarily for everyone, but if it is deemed worthwhile, your best bet here is to check into Functional Range Systems and all the work they’ve done with Functional Range Conditioning.

Overall, the primary message I am trying to portray in this article is this: When you see other people doing something, are they trying to train or improve their mobility, or are they simply displaying what they already have? Actually training to improve mobility may look surprisingly different than what you would expect, especially if you only view mobility “training” through what you see on social media.