5 Mobility Tips for CrossFit Athletes

mobility

Mobility: it’s crucial that athletes maintain and optimise their bodies to ensure they perform at their peak for longer. The WOD Life had the opportunity to catch up with Australia’s Kelly Starrett and Jon Park from WOD Health. Jon shares these five fantastic tips and hints for better mobility.

1. Use mobility to recover and prevent injury, not just once you have pain

Using different mobility tools can help!

  • Improve your joint range of motion from chronic poor posture or previous injuries.
  • Regain normal joint range and function following intense workouts — this allows you to achieve good positioning in your next WOD.

2. Mobility does not fix everything

Some people mobilise their shoulders repeatedly but complain that they are still getting shoulder pain. In some cases, it is not their shoulder mobility that is the problem but their thoracic spine. In other cases, people are not maintaining good shoulder control during WODs; so no matter how much mobility they do, they keep impinging the joint. Mobilise to restore normal joint range, then control movement to maintain joint function.

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3. It’s not always about hip tightness

Are you one of those CrossFitters that always has tight hips — mobilising with bands, massaging a lacrosse ball into the glutes and doing the couch stretch — yet you still have hip tightness? Mobility works, plain and simple; so you are either doing it wrong, or you are moving your pelvis in a way that closes down the front of your hip joint, creating anterior hip tightness as you get deeper into the squat. Go back to basics and check your hip hinge: can you squat without the gap between your pubic bone (top of your pelvis at the front) and sternum changing?

Sometimes, mobilising the hips just allows you to go deeper with poor technique!

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4. Do not forget your ankles

Can you place your toes 10cm (4in) from the wall, keep your heels on the ground, knee over the foot and touch the knee to the wall?

The number of CrossFitters working hard to achieve a good squat technique and mobilising every other area of their body but not the ankles is constantly surprising. It is very hard to keep your centre of mass over the middle of your feet if your ankles don’t allow you to move forward. To compensate, you will increase trunk angle or lose midline stability. Either of these will lead to loss of strength and power due to poor efficiency.

5. Your thoracic spine likes rotation as well as extension

The thoracic joints require extension and rotation to function optimally. Your upper back is the most important area needing mobilisation for all overhead activities. You need to achieve good thoracic extension to actively position the shoulder blades for optimal shoulder movement and strength. Thoracic extension and rotation muscles help create tension through the trunk, increasing the midline stability. Optimal thoracic extension and rotation will assist your performance with jerks, handstand pushups, pushups, pull ups and overhead squats, just to name a few.

ABOUT WOD HEALTH 

Jon Park is an APA Sports Physiotherapist and a CrossFit addict. Jon has been involved with treating CrossFit related injuries for more than three years and has been a CrossFitter for more than three years.

Jon has been teaching mobility and movement techniques since 2012 to the CrossFit community. These workshops came from the love of CrossFit and the number of preventable injuries that Jon was seeing. These workshops help the individual athlete or coach recognise problematic joint restriction and/or movement patterns that lead to injury and how to correct these problems.

Qualifications

  • APA Sports Physiotherapist
  • Masters in Sports Physiotherapy
  • Certified FMS
  • Level 1 CrossFit Trainer

Experience:

  • More than 10 years working as a physiotherapist
  • Over four years treating CrossFit injuries
  • CrossFit addict for more than three years
  • Ex AFL physiotherapist for St Kilda FC 2008- 2011
  • Current Australian Motocross and Supercross championship physiotherapist

Consulting:

Langwarrin Sports Medicine Centre and Elsternwick Physiotherapy Centre

Top 5 Mobility Tools for CrossFit

Rumble Roller Mobility Tools

Mobility and recovery is one of the most overlooked factors by CrossFit athletes. Requiring a consistent effort over time, mobility should be viewed as a work in progress, a vital element contributing to your performance. Stepping up the time spent on mobility will allow you not only to maintain your current mobility and flexibility, but start to work your way to becoming a supple leopard.

But my box does mobility each day? That is true, many CrossFit Affiliates incorporating mobility, warm up and activation into the daily WODs. These are particularly geared towards the movements in the workout to get you warm and firing. It’s also important that you invest a minimum of 15 minutes each day to work on your own mobility. Identify your weaknesses and start incorporating mobility drills each day to make these your strength.

Isn’t it expensive to have these tools for yourself outside of the gym? We are asked this question all the time, so we have put together a list of the top five mobility tools for CrossFit. For the price of a massage or a treatment you can pick up a wide range of effective mobility tools that you can incorporate into your daily routines to get you moving well and keeping you injury free!

Top 5 Mobility Tools for CrossFit

1. Foam Roller (From $24.95)

The foam roller is the perfect place to start for your mobility tools. Giving you the ability to work the larger muscles of your body, including quads, hamstrings, upper back and lats. A simple mobility tool with an endless amount of movements you can perform to work  your way to mobility mastery.

Tip: Avoid purchasing the cheap, low density foam rollers. They are often too soft and do not have the longevity required.

Recommendations: Textured Rumble Roller or the Trigger Point Grid Roller allow you to really get deep into those muscles.

2. Lacrosse Ball ($5.95)

Arguably the best bang for your buck. The lacrosse ball pairs nicely with a foam roller, allowing you to get into those more hard to reach places. Hips, calves, pecs and deltoids are some great areas that the lacrosse ball can access where the larger foam roller cannot.

Tip: Keep a lacrosse ball in your gym bag and one at work. When you are on the phone, or on your lunch break get to work!

Recommendation: Lacrosse Ball

3. Armaid ($129.95)

Often your elbow, biceps, triceps, wrist, forearm and hand are difficult to reach with conventional tools such as a foam roller, massage roller or even lacrosse ball. The Armaid is a perfectly designed device, aiming to treat these key areas and reduce both strains and tendonitis. The tool relieves pain through dual massaging techniques, focusing on reducing muscle tension and tightness.

Tip: After a big WOD with pull ups, put the Armaid to work on your forearms. Recovery will be supercharged!

Recommendation: Armaid

4. Crossover Symmetry – $340 with Free Shipping 

Crossover Symmetry is the ultimate system gear towards improving shoulder activation, recovery and plyometric training. With many of the CrossFit workout movements going through your shoulders and scapulars, this system provides high intensity strengthening activities to keep you moving well and injury free.

Geared towards reducing the risk of shoulder injury, the Crossover Symmetry assists to build improved overhead performance, develop bulletproof shoulders, eliminate shoulder weakness and gain stability through safe and efficient shoulder mechanics.

Tip: Offering a range of options from novice to elite, Crossover Symmetry also provides a booklet movements with the system to help you achieve the benefits.

Recommendation: Crossover Symmetry

5. Mobility Compression Floss Band ($19.95) 

Flossing every day keeps the doctor away! Made popular by Kelly Starrett of MobilityWOD, floss bands are effective mobility and recovery tools. Compression bands can aid in improving range, restore joint mechanics and unglue matted down, previously injured tissue. By compressing the swell of tissues and joints, a compression tack can work to perfuse tissues that have grown to be cold and stiff after injury.

Tip: Apply the compression floss band when performing the movement, to help bring blood flow, oxygen and nutrients to the muscle.

Recommendation: Mobility Compression Floss Band

So there it is, the top 5 mobility tools for CrossFit! These tools offer a wide range of options to help you improve your mobility. Keeping these tools at home, at work or at the CrossFit gym will give you more motivation to put that extra time in to your mobility each day. Whether it is when you wake up, before bed or relaxing infront of the TV, there is always time to mobilise!

Want more information? Check out our Mobility & Recovery section!