5 Ways to Be a Better Human- Part 3: Make Sh*t Work Nice

The past couple weeks when learning how to be a better human we’ve talked about breathing and eating.

This week, we’re going to dig into why mobility work is important, and why you need your joints to work the way they are supposed to to maximize performance and decrease injury. 

Our joints all have very specific jobs. My hip is designed to rotate both internally and externally, flex, extend, abduct, and adduct. While you don’t need to know what each of those things does, just know my hip is supposed to do hip things. 

So what happens if my hip can’t rotate? Do I have a hip? If my hip is lacking function, other areas such as my back or knees have to pick up the slack.

Proper running requires a hip. If my hip doesn’t rotate, I don’t actually have a hip. It’s just this crappy hinge joint. When I ask my body to run, which as humans we are designed to do for a very long time, other areas in my body have to pick up the slack. Now my knees and back have to do hip things like rotate and extend, and I end up looking like a duck when I run, and my knees and back hurt.

My knees and back already have to do knee and back things, they don’t want to worry about doing hip things too. When other joints have to pick up the slack, overuse injuries can happen since they weren’t designed to do that much work. 

It’s like when you had to do group projects in school and you had that one person who never did anything so the rest of the group had to pick up the slack. 

While proper form has some wiggle room based on bone and muscle structure, there are general guidelines accepted as efficient form. If I cannot access the proper range of motion to execute efficient form, I cannot be as efficient as possible with things such as squatting, running, biking, or anything else. 

I won't be able to get into positions to perform the movement properly, and also cannot even train the movement properly if I cannot access the required positions. 

You can’t move, where you can’t move. 

Prioritize mobility work and making sure your joints can all move well independently, before we ask them to play nice and work interdependently. Improving mobility at your shoulders, hips, and spine will not only take load off areas such as your elbow, knees, and back, but will give you more ways to move and solve movement problems, and perform movements as best as possible.

From improving your golf swing, to just making your back feel better, make sure your shit works nice before you go and compound dysfunctional movement.