3 Weekend Mobility Drills to Help you Enjoy Spring

The other day Lindsay and I did a walk through on our house and we’re definitely getting closer to getting into that sucker. They were installing the railing, had all of the walls painted and had all of the cabinets in, which means it’s in the home stretch to being finished and we’re on plan to move in at the beginning of June.

Now what that means is we have to set up our current house for sale and we’ll have to get some of the curb appeal up, which means some gardening and painting, plus cleaning up from the winter to make the place look spiffy as hell and make buyers want to spend the duckets so we can afford to furnish the new place.

When I do garden work, I usually exist in a deep squat simply because I can and feel like I can move better than if I were on my knees. This means the neighbours get to see a fluffy ninja in action, plus I can keep my hips loosey goosey all day long.

With that in mind, I wanted to share a couple of very simple mobility drills you could use to help you stay active and engaged for the fun stuff you have planned for the weekend, whether it’s digging through your garden, crushing some workouts, or white-girl wasted and dancing at the club like no one’s watching but where you should probably be dancing like everyone SHOULD be watching.

#1: Lunge to Back Rotation

This is a great compound movement that gets a lot of things moving all at once. There’s a long lunge position that works awesomely to help get the hips moving through flexion and extension, plus thoracic extension and rotation, and sprinkle in some arm extesnion and external rotation to boot and you have one movement pattern that can make a huge impact on everything in under the sun.

When down in the lunge, try to get the back leg glute to flex and drive into a little more hip extension. Then, make sure you can get the arm to reach through as big of an arc as possible while getting the bicep to brush your ear. Take these slow and make sure you can breathe, and hit up about 4-6 reps per side.

#2: Dumbbell Goblet Squat with Lateral Rocker

This is a great option for getting some frontal and transverse plane movement for a squat. Yes, I said frontal and transverse plane for a movement that is typically a saggital plane movement. The crux of the matter is not necessarily trying to load a movement like this to maximum, but to give sufficient loading to allow depth to be hit without falling forward or backwards, and then being able to get some movement from the ankles and control that movement without collapsing or creating some issues with moving slightly out of place.

A key component to this is to keep the weight tight to your chest and make sure your heels stay firmly placed on the floor. No letting those shiny sneaks show some sole. Hit a squat, rock left and then right, and return to the standing position again. Do this 8-15 times and enjoy the happy little ankle stuff going on.

#3: Rolling Cossack

This is a fantastic way to generate some rotational range through the hips, while also getting some rolling through the ankles and balancing so you don’t fall on your butt. Funny story: Tony Gentilcore taught a workshop in Australia and a video was leaked of him demonstrating this and giving me credit for showing it, and he said “he’s a big guy, but he’s an incredibly supple bastard,” which is probably the highest compliment I could get in this industry 😉

Think of rolling the foot without making the low back do any of the work. Keep the knee locked out so you don’t have any issues with knee torque and move through a range of motion you feel is appropriate for you. Hit up 10-20 reps per side or until your milkshake brings all the boys/girls to the yard.

These are just a couple of quick drills to help you get some more bang for your buck this weekend. For more information on drills like this as well as the thought process for how and when to use them, you should check out my video workshop Ruthless Mobility to get more mobile and become your own supple bastard. That’s about 3 levels more awesome than supple leopard, FYI*

 *Note: I own the book Supple Leopard, and that was in no way a swipe at anything Kelly Starrett talks about, but just me throwing down some sarcastic bravado. Its a joke, so feel free to laugh.