What is Joint Mobility Training?

Joint mobility training involves actively moving your joints with the intent of restoring or maintaining your mobility. It improves the flexibility of the joints by reducing excess tension surrounding the joints and by improving the coordination - more efficient movement.

Specifically, you only move as far as is pain-free, not pushing through areas of tension. By working within these guidelines, you can reduce tension in the muscles surrounding the joints, speed recovery from exercise, and restore lost motion from past injuries.

It works to restore proper posture and increase your movement efficiency through increased control over your movements. This emphasis on posture and controlled movement helps to re-educate the nervous system.

If you have had low back pain, it can help you deal with it and prevent it from reoccurring. If you have had neck or shoulder problems from past injury, it can release tension and reduce pain.

Initially, you move every joint or group of joints in an isolated manner to help restore or maintain mobility. This is done in a standing position to enhance posture. Simple rotations to start and then gradually more complex patterns involving multiple joints.

As you progress from basic rotations to more complex figure 8 patterns, you provide a greater stimulus to the nervous system, which adapts to this stress in a positive manner.

What separates it from other movement systems is the isolation of every joint movement to start with. Both for each joint or group of joints, and then for movements that involve multiple joints. These additional moves may include elements of Tai Chi, yoga, dance, and the martial arts.

The basis for joint mobility training lies in two areas. One, it works with your body's reflexes to restore lost motion due to injury, stress, poor posture, and lack of movement. It seems that reflexes can impair joint function long after the threat of harm is gone.

Reflexes that were meant to protect the body, but are still active at a later time. The muscles surrounding a joint will reflexively spasm or tighten to protect a joint from further injury.

Meaning, movement has to be retrained after injury to restore proper function. Proprioception, which is the body's ability to sense and feel where it is in relation to movement,is often impaired after injury. It needs to be retrained in order to work properly.

Joint mobility work does an excellent job of retraining proprioception (re-educates the nervous system). By moving at a speed it can control, in a range of motion that is pain-free, avoiding unnecessary tension, movement is gradually restored. Your movements become more efficient, because you have greater control over them.

According to Dr. Eric Cobb, who introduced me to this work, you need a balance between tension and relaxation in the muscles for optimal performance. While that may seem rather obvious, it's a perfect example of how our complex bodies often function in a simple manner.

That we should be able to move through a great range of motion, but still have control and stability through that motion. "Mobility with Stability".

Brian Morgan has been a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) since 1993. He is also a massage therapist, with 5 years experience working in rehab settings with people of all ages. For more information, go to [brianmorganfitness.com]