Many of the people at the Oly lifting seminar are finding out that mobility reigns supreme. Sure, technique is important. But if you can’t express that technique because you can’t put your arms over your head, or you can’t open your knees when you squat, then technique isn’t worth too much.
Take THIS GUY for instance. What do you think an overhead squat would look like? How about a snatch? Scary! While most of us are much more mobile than that guy, many of us can use more mobility.
First, let’s define mobility. It’s not the same thing as flexibility. Getting more flexibility means lengthening your muscle tissue. Getting more mobility means you’re able to get into functional positions (like squatting and deadlifting) and increasing your range of motion (ROM). That may include stretching muscles, but there are other ways to improve your ROM.
1) Self-myofacial release – a fancy term for soft tissue work. Foam rolling, lacrosse balls, and the stick are all tools you can use. Sometimes, you can’t do it on your own and you may need to see a professional, like a massage therapist or physiotherapist.
2) PNF (proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation) – you basically hold a stretch for 10 seconds, then contact that same muscle for 5 seconds. Do that 5 times for optimal results. This works much better than holding a stretch in the same position for an extended period of time. This can be done with or without a partner.
3) Mobilization – this is all about getting your joints into good positions. You can use bands to increase the movement in your joint capsules. You can bias good positions while distracting the joint (pulling the limb away from the origin). It sounds complicated, but it’s rather simple.
If you come by our mobility class on Monday at 5:15pm, you’ll get a dose of these various types of mobility. Pick up “Supple Leopard” by Kelly Starrett or check out his website, Mobility WOD.
And remember, it took you a LONG time to get tight, so don’t expect miracles overnight. Create habits by mobilizing every day. You’ll move better and feel better.
It took me a couple years to figure out how important mobility is, but now I always go to my class early so that I can spend a few minutes on mobility. At least one body part every day. And I schedule as many massages as my medical coverage will allow. Things have improved.
I hope all the OLY folks this weekend are having fun!! I can’t wait to hear all about it. I would have loved to have done it again.
Mobility is so important!
This weekend has been incredible. I can’t believe who much I’ve learned. Not only can I now correct myself on these lifts, I can correct others. The trainers were great! It was so much fun.
I got a 10# PR on my snatch I can now snatch 90# and I expect to PR more as I keep working on my technique. I have never attempted to clean and jerk more than 100#, managed 115# by the end of the day! Lots of PRs and improvements all around!
Awesome PR’s Maria. You worked really hard on your technique all weekend….and it paid off big 🙂
I would just like to say that no I didn’t get any PR’s this weekend, but I did get an enormous amount of great information and super coaching from two pros but also from my peers in the course. I would recommend this course to anyone who wants to improve! Thanks Kevin and Jo for hosting!
Mobility is so important! I totally second that statement Maria!
Oly WOD Seminar! Where to begin? The quality of the coaching from Bryan Marshall and Peter Roberts this week-end surpassed all my expectations. Their expertise and experience undoubtedly explains why they are the most knowledgeable and sought after strength and development coaches in the professional sports industry.
A few big take aways for me:
1. Mobility is key to improving technique and needs to be done before every class!
2. Focus on improving one thing at a time and do not stress about correcting everything at once.
3. Work on tecnnique with smaller percentages of weight! Once tecnique has improved then move up in weight, not before!
I feel more confident doing the Snatch and the Split Jerk after this week-end! I have tried the split jerk in the past, but not with any significant amout of weight on the bar. Today, I split jerked 125lbs successfully which is something I have never done. I still have a lot of work to do with regards to my technique on these two lifts, but I will no longer avoids doing them!
Kudos to everyone who participated in this Oly Seminar this week-end! A special congrats to Laura and Lance for winning top female and male lifters and to Terry for winning most improved lifter. You made CFM very proud!
That would be Lora lol..not Laura.
Congrats to all of you.
Awesome weekend at the Oly Cert!
As mentioned, mobility is super important. The team at Oly WOD had lots of movement-specific and body-part-specific mobility exercises that helped A LOT!
The level of expertise the team brought to the course this weekend was second-to-none. I loved the way the course was designed, so we had someone’s “eyes” on us at all times. Thanks to my lifting partners Maria and Alexa, for the constant feedback. It was invaluable.
No PR’s for me this weekend, weight-wise, BUT LOTS of technique PR’s in the bank 🙂
OLY WOD
as with the others that already commented, my take away from this weekend was about mobility. we spent a great deal of time with a lacrosse ball over the weekend and although painful as hell in some respects, when you stood back up off the floor and started into the movement it was a “wow” moment everytime as movements became much easier when the body isn’t restricting itself!!
I wasn’t able to PR my snatch lift from the open of 2011 (165 which was made with pure strength and very little skill nor did it likely resemble a snatch) and had little resemblance to the 150 that I was able to put up yesterday, with much better form. Today I was able to clean and jerk 215, which was a pr in two respects, front squat pr of 10 pounds, and a jerk pr of 10 pounds as well. super pumped about all I learned over the weekend and can’t wait to share it with all the peeps at CFM
nice sharing the bar with Chris and Lance all weekend was a lot of fun as well.
As everyone else has stated mobility is key without it getting the proper technique isn’t possible. This weekend was great for me i’ve always found it hard for me to pick out the errors when i would do these lifts specially when trying to see them in other people. With this weekend i feel much more confident in my ability to find what im missing in my technique and when watching others. I’ve also learned many more exercises to help fix technique problems as well as mobility problems. I wasn’t able to make a snatch PR on Saturday but today i got a #10 PR on my Clean&Jerk to bring it up to #250 and couldn’t be happier. This weekend was well worth it great job everyone.
The OLY Course this weekend, was excellent in so many ways. We learned the importance of mobility, drilling the motor pathways, patience and working at percentages of your max weight in order to perfect the movements. We also learned that coaching other athletes will help you improve your own technique.
Bryan and Peter are extremely knowledgeable and are truly interested in the success of the course members.
Great work by everyone this weekend.
I went into this weekend’s OLY WOD course with pretty high expectations, because everyone I asked that took the last one had great things to say about it. I have to agree with everyone that it was an awesome course.
A few points that I will take away from this:
Like everyone else said, mobility. Specifically, I liked the way it was presented. The 1st time we did it, Bryan explained the reason for every movement, next time a little quicker until the final time we were left to do it on our own with a time limit. It became ingrained kind of like our regular MOB & WU.
Another one is the start position is key to any lift and always has to be good regardless of the weight or where you are in your rep count.
The last one is try to focus on 1 thing when you’re trying to make adjustments to a lift. I’ve heard this many times before from our coaches, but it finally sunk in.
Thanks to Bryan and Peter for a great course, and thanks Kevin and Joanna hosting this again.
Brian