How important is mobility in aging athletes?

Question

Gina Grain · Answer

When I'm training an aging athlete, okay, so say for example, let's put a number out there over 40. There's a lot of conversation around, I'm feeling stiff in the morning or I'm feeling stiffer, I'm not feeling as mobile as I was when I was 20, and et cetera, et cetera. And there's a number of reasons for this, but we do get stiffer as we age. And also as the years build up of being in static postures or the same posture all the time, we tend to get tighter muscles in certain areas, okay? So it becomes a big topic. So mobility then becomes a priority because if somebody's not feeling good moving through a range of motion, how can we expect ourselves to push ourselves in that range of motion, okay? So whether it's strengthening or doing activities. So you wanna feel good through that range of motion to give you the confidence to do the strengthening or your activity through those range of motions. So mobility is very important. Now, having said that, our goal isn't necessarily to bring ourselves to the mobility that we had when we were 20 or five, but is constantly bettering ourselves and working on that mobility to help ourselves feel as good as we can through those ranges of motion.

Mike Guevara · Answer

There is a common adage in the field of movement and health and wellness. If you don't use it, you lose it. So as we age through our lifespan, life, style, behavior, environment, all these different factors dictate our movement practice frequency as well as how often we're getting into specific shapes, squatting low, flexing, hinging, side bending, which determines whether or not we're able to maintain and keep our ability to move in those types of ranges. So we have to be vigilant and be intentional about keeping that movement practice daily. It's no different than brushing your teeth, washing your face. You know, we have personal hygiene, but we need to have movement hygiene as well. We're human. We're designed to move and just because we live in a very comfortable environment and space doesn't mean that we shouldn't maintain our innate human ability to move because a few hundred years ago our survival relied upon the ability to move throughout the lifespan.

Lee Sommers · Answer

How important is mobility in aging athletes? I would say it's extremely important and it goes back to if you don't use it you lose it. And so if you want to continue to be an athlete or just a functioning human being, maintaining mobility is going to be kind of a primary thing that you want to focus on. It doesn't mean that you need to spend an hour a day stretching. It means that you want to try and use as much of your ranges of motion as possible. You want to own those ranges of motion and you want to try and maybe even increase them in some scenarios. But mobility is very important. If you don't have it you have a higher risk of injury and you also probably have poor movement quality at segments of your body that you want to move well if they're lacking in mobility.

Dan Daly · Answer

How important is mobility for aging athletes? You can't train the ranges of motion you don't have. Here's a toe touch assessment. There are correlational studies linking the range of motion of something like a toe touch or hamstring extensibility with longevity. So the compliance of your muscles is similar to compliance of your heart tissue and other wellbeing. But you don't just want to stretch muscles, you want to load them as well. And oftentimes training and loading through a full range of motion is an excellent way to restore or maintain those ranges of motion while also having strength and vitality in that range. So load the range of the motion that you need.

John Sinclair · Answer

How important is mobility in aging athletes? It is crucial to the function of the human body. Our body needs to create mobility and joints and to be able to be stable or to be able to control motion in that particular range of motion that is targeted towards that particular joint. So if we're thinking body-wide, if I'm trying to create as much mobility and stability body-wide, then I need to think about what movements are going to facilitate challenges to that joint so that that joint has to communicate back to the nervous system. So it's not just enough that we have the space in the joint, it's how do we create environments in which that nervous system and the proprioceptors or the signaling system sends information back to the brain to let us know that we're safe. As we age, joints start to become compressed. So we have to not only just do mobility strategies to try to increase space, but we also wanna increase circulation because if I increase local circulation to a joint, that'll create space. But I also must move in a variety of different means in order to train that joint to stay mobile and stable when we need it, how we need it, and for the purpose of which we need it.

Paul Edmondson · Answer

How important is mobility in aging athletes? This is really important because if you have the range of motion at key joints, the stability and the control over those ranges of motion, and you have the inbuilt strength mechanisms in play, i.e. load bearing capacity in odd positions that are gonna be playing out during your sport, then theoretically your performance is gonna go up and stay up for a longer period of time. So it's gonna develop the age and duration at which you can play that sport. So your function, your capacity, your performance goes up. Because you have more tissues contributing to that task, then theoretically you have more defense against injury. So your performance goes up, your defense against injury goes down, or your defense goes up, your risk of injury goes down. And as a side benefit, you're also gonna work on the health and the longevity of that client, because working on mobility is gonna develop joint capsules, the connective tissues, elastin, reticulin, and collagen that are responsible for three-dimensional motion. And because you are looking after those tissue qualities, then your risk against osteoarthritis is gonna go way down. So performance goes up, risk of injury goes down, so that's your performance training taken care of. But also you've got health on the other side. So very important.

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"How important is mobility in aging athletes?"