Mobility, elasticity and flexibility are essential prerequisites for obtaining long-term results. In this article we explain why and show you the best mobility exercises to improve well-being and performance.
Joint Mobility: What is it?
Muscle flexibility and joint mobility are two elements that go hand in hand for the health and well-being of the athlete and non-athlete. By muscle flexibility, we mean the ability of a muscle to extend or lengthen to its limit without trauma and to return to its natural state of relaxation. Joint mobility refers to the ability of a joint to move up to its maximum range of motion ROM.
These elements are reciprocal in that if one of these two characteristics is compromised, the other will also be affected. Let's take an example: an excessively contracted muscle that loses its elasticity and flexibility will prevent the affected joint from moving freely with its full ROM. Conversely, a reduced ROM will prevent the muscle from working at its maximum extensibility with consequent shortening of its fibers.
Joint mobility: the advantages
By taking these factors into account during daily life and training, it is possible to obtain long term benefits:
- Prevent injuries;
- Improve sports performance;
- Help you handle greater loads;
- Keep your body and mind in a positive state at all times;
- It helps keep the skin and connective tissue elastic and therefore young;
- Relax your muscles, freeing them from accumulated tension and stress;
- Reduce recovery time between training sessions.
Joint mobility exercises
- RAPID ACTIVE EXTENSION
Ballistic method where the agonist muscle, by rapidly contracting, tends to lengthen the antagonist muscle. It is found in large swing movements of the limbs on various spatial planes. It is the least effective method because the neuromuscular spindles slow the movement by causing the muscle subjected to stretching to contract at the end of the movement, precisely in the most important phase.
According to some scholars, this technique could play an important role in the post-traumatic recovery phase in disciplines that involve very rapid movements performed at maximum joint range (e.g. Karate, Boxing) as technical training also improves the ability to attenuate the myotatic stretch reflex response (adaptation phenomenon).
Therefore, the controlled use of ballistic stretching helps to recover this ability more quickly and avoid the risk of trauma when normal training resumes and it is necessary to perform very fast technical gestures which involve the use of the full available range of motion and, at the same time, there is a violent stretching of the anatomical and functional components of the affected body region.
- SLOW ACTIVE STRETCH
Slow contraction of the agonist muscle and subsequent slow stretching of the antagonist muscle. It is a better method than the previous one but not optimal.
- SLOW PASSIVE STRETCH
It includes stretching and all methods that tend to lengthen the muscle without the active intervention of other muscles. It is the most effective method.
Joint mobility and percussive therapy
