Mobility Micro-Dosing
An Athlete’s Guide to Mastery of Movement.
What is mobility micro-dosing?
My definition:
A daily practice of mastering all movement patterns of the human body in multiple, short training sessions to increase total body preparedness in any situation of life or sport. These sessions enhance human performance by increasing mobility, stability, form, technique, flexibility, strength, and total body awareness. Strength and motor control throughout the full range of motion and reinforces the structure of the joints and prepares the body positions needed in sports-specific strength and conditioning programs. By incorporating a Mobility micro dosing routine on top of normal training one develops a greater understanding of the human body’s full capabilities during daily and sport-specific movements.
Why Micro-Dose?
First, one must understand the proper techniques of moving through foundational movement patterns. Along with understanding the movement patterns, an implementation of mobility sequences, dynamic and static stretching, and an injury should be combined with any training program. These types of exercises are planned and performed during training sessions that counteract overtraining of sports specific isolated movements. Mobility, dynamic flexibility, pre-hab, pre-strength are all tools I use with my gymnasts to help them develop a complete understanding of the movements and body positions needed in skills they have already learned, skills they are trying to learn right now, and for more advanced skills they need to learn in the future. For example, Strength elements for the Still Rings place is a lot of “push” motion. Therefore, when I program my pre-hab for rings, I make sure to offset this imbalance with various, pull exercises of the upper back and shoulder.
Mobility micro-dosing takes all of these movement methods and training aspects a step further. This program develops a deeper, more personal scale of mastery of one's movement to build a more complete understanding of all the body’s movement capabilities at any given moment in any situation. An extensive understanding of the body’s capabilities from a mindset of mastery of one’s movement is a very powerful skill the top athletes in the world have. Elite athletes practice mastering their movements daily and are on a never ending quest to unlock more athletic potential and movement capabilities. Movement mastery can be the difference between a win or loss against your opponent, the difference between a season-ending injury or just a tweak/strain, the difference between that spot on starting line up or getting your spot taken. Mastery of movement is something that takes dedication, commitment, and consistency.
Mobility, strength and conditioning, or any other aspect of training all revolves around athletic performance. Improving performance begins with an understanding of how well the body can move, stabilize, and produce force. If there are limits in movement from muscular imbalances, compensations, lack of motor control, lack of joint stability, tightness, and/or weakness, then performance will be compromised. The goal of mobility micro-dosing is to restore, optimize, enhance, and maintain the proper technique of the movements needed by athletes to reach top level performance in sport and life.
What Are These Movements?
Different variations of squat, hinge, push, pull, lunge, step, trunk rotation, and core stability are the foundation for all of these mobility movements. Most of these are movements a coach would use as a multitude of warm-up exercises. Mobility micro-dosing movements, however, go past the confines of a general 10 to 15 minute warm up with a team. However, these are normally sport-specific and a coach or athlete may not go through each movement through possible ranges of motion that the athlete will encounter during a training session in a quick 10 to 15-minute warm-up for practice or strength and conditioning session. (gymnasts may spend up to an hour of warm-up, stretching, and floor basics time every day of practice).
Obviously, this is completely standard, because there are limited training hours in team sports and you want to spend the majority of practice time doing sport-specific needs and team coordination of plays and game strategies. Strength coaches will incorporate more of this work in between sets of a lift, that is very beneficial and I do it in all of my workouts, but that is normally used as a breather, or break exercise to get ready for the next lift or series of exercises, not completely focusing on mobility work. This can lead to performance decreases if there are
Increase intermuscular coordination
Background
This idea of performing small training sessions throughout the day came to me during the time we were all in quarantine when watching a Kobe Bryant motivational/Inspirational video (link provided below). In this video, Kobe explains that he would train 4 -5 times a day in the gym most of them alone, working on and perfecting the basics all the way up to his elite moves that he would use to dominate his defender. A true master of the movements of his body on the court. From basic basketball handling drills to his high flying game moves, he knew how to move effectively to get separation from his defender in any situation. This quote from the video (a voiceover of him speaking on stage) really stuck with me.
“If your job is to try and be the best basketball player you can be. To do that you have to practice and you have to train, right? You want to train as much as you can, as often as you can. So, if you get up at 10 in the morning, train at 11 or 12, let’s say 12. You train at 12, train for two hours, 12–2. You have to let your body recover, so you eat, recover, whatever else. You get back out, you start training at 6. You train from 6–8 and now you go home, you shower, you eat dinner, you go to bed you wake up, you do it again right? Those are two sessions. Now imagine you get up at 3, you train at 4. You go 4–6, come home, breakfast, relax, so so. Now you’re back at it again, 9–11, relax and now you’re back at it again 2–4. And now you’re back at it again, 7–9. Look how much more training I have done by simply starting at 4, right? So now you do that and as the years go on the separation that you have with your competitors and your peers just grows larger and larger and larger and larger and larger. And by year 5 or 6, it doesn’t matter what kind of work they do in the summer, they’re never going to catch up because they’re 5 years behind.
Kobe always had the mindset of, “how can I get an advantage” over the opponent. A lot of these training sessions was just him, alone on the court, locked in, mastering his movement. So I began thinking and asked myself, “how would an athlete with limited access to a training facility of their sport due to COVID quarantine situations begin to develop an advantage over their opponent? How do my gymnasts get an advantage over their competition like Kobe did when everyone is away from the gym?” What would 5 or 6 training sessions a day look like?
Even if high school, college, and even amateur athletes would train like this, they are limited with time constraints such as school, work, family commitments, and the list goes on. There are only so many hours of true practice time and time devoted to strength and conditioning that athletes have each day to maximize performance in the specific skills and abilities needed in their sport. Also, there are various restrictions of the NCAA and other governing bodies of athletics that put limits on how much athletes are allowed to train in the confines of the “team” training hours. However, that should not and does not prevent athletes from working on their craft and mastering their movement patterns alone throughout the day.
Without having a willingness to constantly improve and master approach to all of the athlete’s movement capabilities, there is a decrease in potential performance and a greater risk in of an increase in misalignments, dysfunctions, and asymmetrical range of motions. So why not dedicate multiple mini doses of time devoted toward dynamic stretching, position reinforcement, deep flexibility with added diaphragmatic breath work, and mini soft tissue care circuits for the athlete to increase understanding of the body as a whole. There is a common saying in sports, “a team is only as strong as its weakest link. This is true for the body and mind itself. If something out of the ordinary occurs, and the body is placed in an unrecognized position in regards to the normal movement needs of the sport, and the structural components of that movement have a “weak link,” the athlete will not be prepared to handle the force of the movement. be more prepared and understand that I’m okay, my body is used to moving this way each week.
How I Break it Down:
These micro training sessions consist of 3x per day each day of the week. This may seem like a lot, but setting aside 10 minutes in the morning, at some point in the afternoon, and right before bed, at the end of 1 week you have had 21 separate training sessions that perfect and protect all the movements of your body that your opponents have not.
Each day is broken down into 3 types for 3 parts of the day:
- Mobility: (Morning)
- Position Reinforcement: (Afternoon)
- Deep Stretching: (Night)
Each of these 3 mobility sessions is further broken down into 3 different blocks of exercises categorized by starting position. In that starting position is a series or sequence of movements/exercises that aim to flow together or contrast in body shape. All these movements are created from a wide range of sports specific movement patterns, joint stabilization techniques, yoga, gymnastics skill-specific movement needs, gymnastics flexibility needs, and my own creations that I have developed through the years of coaching gymnastics, trail running, and Olympic lifting.
Side Note:
Most of the contrast in body shape movements are from gymnastics and studying how the Japanese develop young male gymnasts. Most movements in gymnastics demand the body to rapidly change shape from an arch position to a hollow position (flexion and Extension) to develop power and torque on or off of an apparatus to complete a skill. The Japanese are absolute masters at teaching this. They develop so many different drills and ways to master the body transition between an arch and a hollow from many different starting and ending positions. By using slow controlled wave patterns of the total body, while specifically focusing on spinal control and manipulation, the young gymnast is able to master how the body should properly move while doing the high-level skill on the apparatus.
The details of these shaping techniques are out of the scope of this article, but I will discuss more on that in another article. I just wanted to demonstrate to you how incredible and effective these methods are for mastering the movements of the body through repetition and extreme focus of technique and form through specific movements to achieve high-level skills. These kids are 7 or 8 years old and are able to perform unbelievably difficult skills, generate extreme amounts of force relative to their body weight, and are durable enough to do this over and over again through many training hours in the most difficult sport in the world because they value and instill a mastery of proper movement and mobility at a very young age. It is astonishing, I wish more strength coaches understood the spectrum of strength, detail to proper technique, and form required to develop a complete male gymnast.
If you want to see some of these gymnastics specific drills from a Japanese coach just check out. yuji.miyake.754 on Instagram. Prepare for your mind to be blown.
What it looks like on paper:
Here you can see how a day is organized on one page.
Morning Mobilility’s purpose is to get the blood flowing, wake the body up, and prepare the body for the movements it may need to perform in the day. These exercises are mostly dynamic mobility sequences that will encompass a wide range of movements in a short time. These mobility sessions also work very well for a warm up before a resistance training workout.
Afternoon position reinforcement focuses on joint stability, motor control, and reinforcing proper form and technique for resistance training while also combining basic athletic movements. As mobility improves from the morning sessions, the afternoon session’s focus is to strengthen neuromuscular control and strengthen weak synergistic muscle groups through slow eccentric motion and holding isometric positions in order to direct force in the desired planes of motion relative to proper body shaping. Stability is the ability of a joint system to maintain a position in the presence of change. This session will mainly consist of the shoulder and hip stability in the presence of controlled change through basic combinations of movement patterns consisting of the lunge, squat, hinge, push, pull, and rotation.
Night Deep Stretch is a form of stretching consists of holding various positions for a long period of time while also including certain specific fluid transitions through movements. I feel this type of stretching at night before bed has allowed me to push myself further than normal in a workout. This type of stretching aids in understanding how to be comfortable while extremely uncomfortable. While practicing diaphragmatic breathing and counting breaths instead of seconds or time during these stretches, the body and mind have an increased state of interconnectedness. This teaches the body and mind to work together and relax in extremely uncomfortable positions.
Going through these nightly stretches and position holds is also an incredible way of winding down at the end of the day. Instead of wasting the last half hour to an hour on the phone or watching tv or whatever the normal person does nowadays, spend that time contributing to and investing in an increased ability to move. Including small movements and transitions after holding a position for a long time is a great way to have an increased understanding of what the body can do at the end range of motion. This can also aid in recovery and work out certain tightness or kinks brought on by the training session or tasks from that day.
Tri-phasic Training Added In:
What is tri-phasic training? This method is from the great Cal Deitz and Ben Peterson. They made me rethink everything about how I program strength for my gymnasts when I read, Triphasic Training: A Systematic Approach to Elite Speed and Explosive Strength Performance. This book explains the importance of separating and breaking down each phase of muscular contraction into individual training cycles. Most of the exercises athletes do in these individual blocks that are separated by 3 weeks focus on eccentric, isometric, or concentric
The aim should be to become equally strong in all 3 phases throughout the full range of motion. This will aid in decreasing inefficiencies and weaknesses caused by a lack of training of isometric and eccentric exercise work.
A lot of small consistent training adds up over time. Continually practicing most if not all movements the body will encounter during any sport in separate, condensed training sessions multiple times a day can add up to a huge advantage over competitors.
Perfection of Movement
If you practice many different multi-planar movements every day of the week, the mind will be more in touch with what the body wants to do and is doing at any given time during play or competition. When performing these micro training sessions of mastering the body’s movement, you must proceed with extreme attention to detail. Your intention and mindset with every exercise and movement should be to feel improvement. Be completely present! Get rid of any distractions that you may encounter during these micro-dosing sessions. This is a time to advance your athletic ability without competition or anyone around. There are no goals to achieve other than to be guided on a path of personal mastery of your own movement.
There is always room for improvement and you have to approach these training sessions with that mindset. I go into some of my deep nightly stretches with no goal or method of tracking my progress at all, I just do what my body feels necessary and most of the time a multitude of positions and stretches improve because I listen and feel and am fully present. I do not try and push hard as I can to get my splits down or are frustrated when I feel tighter than the night before even though I do all this mobility and flexibility work. A quote from George Leonard’s Mastery explains this well,
“Goals and contingencies, as I’ve said are important. But they exist in the future and the past, beyond the pale of the sensory realm. Practice, the path of mastery, exists only in the present. You can see it, hear it, smell it, feel it” (48).
During these micro-dosing mobility training sessions, do not think of end goals or how bad you are at certain positions. Improvement only comes with consistent repetition with an understanding of proper technique.
Joe Montana Story:
Repetition and Consistency are Key:
Some of these movements are not simple. They require a high level of understanding of manipulating and rotating joints in a very specific way. By practicing this level of joint manipulation will help unlock movement capabilities and aid in injury prevention by allowing a joint to absorb force more efficiently as well as create better torque to produce force.
The key here is not to focus extremely long on an inefficient movement or tightness, but to create a constant short practice sessions of focus on all movement that will eventually lead to great improvement through repetition and consistency over time. An athlete or anyone could go their whole athletic career without doing some of theses basic movement patterns consistently This could cause burnout, overtraining, or injury from doing too much too soon from too much time away from training.
When you practice anything, it takes many repetitions and progressions daily in order for improvement. This is the same with mobility and flexibility. It takes many strenuous worouts to get stronger and so is the same for mobility and stretching. It takes consistent effort paired with a desire to improve and create a better understanding of even the most simple movements over a long period of time. DO not expect to be perfect or be able to perform every movement exactly correct at first. Do your absolute best and always improve on technique. Even the best gymnasts in the world can feel and have a desire for improvement in a simple handstand. Remember, mastery of movement is a continued flowing journey of ups and downs.
This Does NOT take Place of Sports Specific Training or a Strength and Conditioning Program.
Rather, it is meant to aid in the performance of and recovery from both. If you are an athlete that is just coming back from a full spring and summer of quarantine plus limited practice or access to any equipment or weights that you would normally be training with, whenever you begin full practice sessions for your sport to get “season ready” it is going to hit HARD. Even if your coaches are smart, focus on basics, and have a well structured training program, there could still be gaps or weaknesses in your body’s ability to move.
In summary, this additional method of training is to develop a greater understanding of the body’s ability to move effectively and efficiently. This is practice of the joints to move about full range of motion smoothly without any pain or tightness along with control. This program is also for learning and developing a greater understanding of the proper body positions needed to withstand the accumulative forces caused by sport.
This allows for a decrease in dysfunction, loss of power and strength, joint stiffness and soreness, and chances of injury. IF we focus on the awareness of and the increasing of the body’s full range of motion by increasing the total number of training sessions without risking overtraining, we will be able to optimize performance and decrease the chances of injury when returning from limited sports-specific movements at full intensity due to restrictions we have all had to face due to COVID-19.
“All human beings should be able to perform basic maintenance on their bodies. It is both a human right and a responsibility to understand how your body works.” (Kelly Starrett, Becoming a Supple Leopard. 49).
I highly recommend this book if you want to dive deeper into understanding the importance of mobility and proper body shaping reinforcement for athletic performance. Becoming a supple Leopard
My full 3x a day 3days a week, no equipment needed micro-dosing mobility program.
Contact me: ryant@mtnmobility.com
If you have any questions or more ideas on the topic. I would love to help out and/or discuss.
