Speaker 1: Welcome to healthy Ish. Thanks for joining us on the
Speaker 1: Body and Soul podcast. I am Felicity Harley. Hope you
Speaker 1: are having a healthy ish day. It seems everyone is
Speaker 1: talking about mobility right now, and with good reason. But
Speaker 1: I'm joined today by exercise physiologist and author of Stretch
Speaker 1: Yourself Strong, Glenn Phipps, and I say, but because he
Speaker 1: is here with a new perspective, he's going to give
Speaker 1: tips on how to increase range of movement in your body. Now,
Speaker 1: make sure you listen in to our sister podcast, Extra
Speaker 1: Healthy Ish, where he explains how to increase mobility on
Speaker 1: those desk bound days. You can search for that wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. Glenn, Welcome to healthy Ish. How
Speaker 1: are you?
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I am awesome.
Speaker 1: I'm actually excited to talk to you about well, mobility.
Speaker 1: What is mobility? Talk to us about the important But
Speaker 1: perhaps you don't like this phrase.
Speaker 3: I shouldn't have primed you on that, and I'm glad
Speaker 3: you're excited about it because I guess it's an exciting
Speaker 3: topic for some people, isn't it. So yeah, mobility, really
Speaker 3: it's a word.
Speaker 2: That just means movement, and in some.
Speaker 3: Regards, I guess it's a word that's been a bit
Speaker 3: hijacked by the fitness industry and it's really come about.
Speaker 3: I don't really have a good timeline on it, but
Speaker 3: let's say over the last decade is really when the
Speaker 3: words really risen the prominence over the last few years. Right,
Speaker 3: No one spoke about mobility ten to fifteen years ago,
Speaker 3: and it came about to kind of discern this difference
Speaker 3: between flexibility training that involves movement and flexibility training that
Speaker 3: is static, so obviously stretching and then mobility opens itself
Speaker 3: up toward is different movement based things. And it's a
Speaker 3: very flawed view of how flexibility training works because different
Speaker 3: types of flexibility training favor different types of addicts and
Speaker 3: they're all good, they've all got their place, which is.
Speaker 2: Where I'm coming from with what I do.
Speaker 3: So, but to answer your question, people talk about mobility,
Speaker 3: they're really talking about anything that works around improving our
Speaker 3: range of movement, our.
Speaker 1: Capacity to move Do you what can we refer to
Speaker 1: it as then? I mean, is it flexibility? I mean
Speaker 1: it's almost increasing strength and it's just movement. But how
Speaker 1: can we differentiate it from you know, movement of running
Speaker 1: and walking and exercise, it gets a heart rate up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think range of movement training.
Speaker 3: Is a good way to talk about it, and you
Speaker 3: know then kind of talking about those different types of
Speaker 3: training within that. So obviously we do have static type
Speaker 3: training like stretching, we have usually when people talking about
Speaker 3: mobility are talking about dynamic.
Speaker 2: Types of exercise, and there's this thing that.
Speaker 3: Exists online where they say, and you'll look up the
Speaker 3: definition and you may even been compelled to do this
Speaker 3: after the chat, and there's things that say mobility is
Speaker 3: active range of movement, where stretching is static or passive.
Speaker 3: And the thing is that dynamic stretching is movement based
Speaker 3: range of motion training as well. But the mobility of
Speaker 3: definition also misses a fact that we can have active
Speaker 3: and passive dynamic movement, you know, so whether we're controlling
Speaker 3: it or it's being controlled by something else. So there's
Speaker 3: all of these different types of range of motion training
Speaker 3: and we can name them within that subset. You know,
Speaker 3: whether we're stretching, we're doing dynamic stretching, we're doing things
Speaker 3: like eccentric training or ballistic stretching or in range isometrics,
Speaker 3: all these things can have their name. I think fits
Speaker 3: under the umbrella somewhat. But I think the problem with
Speaker 3: the word ability is it's there to kind of sit
Speaker 3: itself above other types of training that have been said
Speaker 3: to be detrimental by some people.
Speaker 1: So how can we increase our range of movement? I
Speaker 1: mean it's almost like an afterthought. A lot of the
Speaker 1: time we focus on the you know, getting the heart
Speaker 1: rate rate up and then I'll just do some stretching
Speaker 1: on the side. How do we actually go about increasing
Speaker 1: this in our day to day.
Speaker 3: So it's the same thing when you're talking about other
Speaker 3: types of exercise, right, Like, if you want to improve
Speaker 3: your cardio fitness and you can easily walk a kilometer,
Speaker 3: easily walking a kilometer is going to lag it.
Speaker 2: To maintain that fitness, but not necessarily improve it.
Speaker 3: So it's all about, you know, putting our body under
Speaker 3: adequate stress so that it wants to adapt. Same thing
Speaker 3: goes for strength strength training. You're not going to get
Speaker 3: biceps like Arnie by curling five kilo dumbbells your whole life.
Speaker 2: You need to get some more stress on.
Speaker 3: Top of that, right, So you know, it's all about
Speaker 3: adding intensity so that we can create change.
Speaker 1: So what should out perhaps let's got routine look like
Speaker 1: in a week. I mean, what are some things we
Speaker 1: can do to increase our range of movement? So we're
Speaker 1: actually making a difference, not just ticking a box.
Speaker 3: So it's a good question, and I guess all good
Speaker 3: questions come with it. It depends, So it depends what
Speaker 3: you're trying to make a difference in, right, So if
Speaker 3: you're simply trying to make a difference in your range
Speaker 3: of motion, or you want to do to split so
Speaker 3: you have some sort of goal that looks good on Instagram,
Speaker 3: then you can certainly get in that position, sit in it,
Speaker 3: add some load, and you will definitely make a difference
Speaker 3: to that position. But it's not necessarily going to make
Speaker 3: a difference to your movement outside of that position. So
Speaker 3: my take is all about how do we make our
Speaker 3: gains transferable. Otherwise we're just getting good exercise. We want
Speaker 3: to get good at movement outside of our exercise, and
Speaker 3: particularly I work with a lot of athletes, so we
Speaker 3: want to get better at our sport. We want to
Speaker 3: be able to draw a line between here's what we're doing,
Speaker 3: here's our sport.
Speaker 2: We get better at that.
Speaker 3: So then we need to make sure that our training
Speaker 3: firstly is actually improving our range emotion. We're learning how
Speaker 3: to control it. We're paving a way to some sort
Speaker 3: of permanent change, so we don't necessarily have to do
Speaker 3: it every day to see a difference in how we
Speaker 3: feel in our movement. And we also need to understand
Speaker 3: that range emotion is different under different scenarios.
Speaker 2: So load and speed.
Speaker 3: Just because you can sit in a stretch doesn't mean
Speaker 3: if someone comes and sites wipe to you and you
Speaker 3: hit the ground and your leg comes in that position
Speaker 3: you can easily get there. So you need to train
Speaker 3: your body so it can easily get there, and that
Speaker 3: means applying different loads and doing things under different speeds. So,
Speaker 3: like most things when it comes to the human body,
Speaker 3: of variety is it's same for strength training, its same
Speaker 3: for cardio fitness, and it's the same for this thing
Speaker 3: that everyone else calls mobility.
Speaker 1: I like that that you are almost you know, setting
Speaker 1: it alongside. Okay, work on your fitness, work on your strength,
Speaker 1: and then work on your what everyone calls mobility. Like
Speaker 1: it's actually making me realize it no doubt, listeners that
Speaker 1: it is as important as the other ones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, like they're all, and which is why
Speaker 3: the word I can see why the word mobility is
Speaker 3: such a useful term for you because.
Speaker 2: It's just movement, right. Everyone wants to improve how they move.
Speaker 3: No one wants to, you know, feel like they move
Speaker 3: badly and just stay there. You've got to have a
Speaker 3: strategy to figure that out. So you know, they're all
Speaker 3: parts of the same puzzle. And the thing is they don't.
Speaker 3: They don't necessarily have to be as separate as we
Speaker 3: make them either. We can make them all work together.
Speaker 3: You don't need to go all right, now is my
Speaker 3: mobility time. Now's my cardio time, now's my strength time.
Speaker 3: Clever programming can put them all together.
Speaker 1: What do you do you know, daily or weekly to
Speaker 1: make sure you are working on your body's range of movement.
Speaker 3: So it depends on my goal at the time. So
Speaker 3: I like to each year to kick some sort of goals.
Speaker 3: At the moment, I'm training for an ex terra triathlon.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, is something you.
Speaker 2: Haven't done for some time.
Speaker 3: So part of my training is making sure that I
Speaker 3: feel confident doing that without being injured. So for me,
Speaker 3: that's a morning routine. It's incorporating some of these strategies
Speaker 3: I'm talking about in my strength routine. But one of
Speaker 3: my other sports is rock climbing. And the reason I
Speaker 3: love rock climbing is that even if I miss my
Speaker 3: other stuff, it's inbuilt into rock climbing that my body
Speaker 3: has to go in a huge number of positions and
Speaker 3: load them there because again, and variety is really key
Speaker 3: for everything in terms of you know, health and movement
Speaker 3: benefits because when we're not moving in a variety of positions,
Speaker 3: that's where compensation patterns happen and muscles don't like sitting
Speaker 3: into one spot, blood wants to return to your heart
Speaker 3: or these things. So for me, the biggest thing is
Speaker 3: making sure that I'm visiting a variety of movements every day.
Speaker 2: And you know, when I first get.
Speaker 3: Up in the morning, I put my spine through a range,
Speaker 3: you know, three planes of motion in all these different movements,
Speaker 3: because then I know, if the day gets ahead of me,
Speaker 3: I've at least done that.
Speaker 1: What can you describe those movements?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: So I like to look at the opposition between pelvis,
Speaker 3: rib cage and head, knowing that I see a lot
Speaker 3: of people in clinic who I ask them to move
Speaker 3: their rib cage and they can only move from their
Speaker 3: hips or if they if you ask them to lean
Speaker 3: forward without moving their head, they can only move their
Speaker 3: ribcage in their head as one unit. So I'm big
Speaker 3: on trying to encourage joint opposition because when joints oppose
Speaker 3: one another, it means that muscles have to move, So
Speaker 3: muscles will follow joint positions.
Speaker 2: Joints aren't moving, muscles will stay in the same place.
Speaker 1: You remind you just reminded. You took me back to
Speaker 1: like my year when I was eight year old dance
Speaker 1: class and I was doing those isolations with my rib games.
Speaker 1: Then I'm like, oh, yes, those isolations. To Glenn, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on healthy.
Speaker 2: All right, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Well listeners, what's your range of movement? Like, I think
Speaker 1: we could all get better when it comes to moving
Speaker 1: our bodies, increasing that DEARISO mobility. Anyway, I'm relabe link
Speaker 1: to Glenn's book in the show notes. It is called
Speaker 1: Stretch Yourself Strong. Anything else you know where to go
Speaker 1: Head to Body and Soul dot com dot U for
Speaker 1: us and so shores. You can DM me at Felicity
Speaker 1: Halle grab our print edition which is on your local
Speaker 1: Sunday paper and until tomorrow, stay healthy,