Today we’re going to talk about the difference between mobility and motor control and what you need to be including in your work and your work with clients, uh, to improve both. So mobility is this huge concept around the world. People talk about building mobility and I was guilty of that for many, many years myself and there’s nothing wrong with improving mobility.
So let’s state that up front, but by definition, mobility is simply the, the capacity to take a joint through its. expected full range of motion. So when we look at different athletes, we’re going to see mobility levels that differ greatly depending on the sport and the requirements. And we look at people in general, we’re going to see differences.
It is easy for people to consider mobility. The same thing as flexibility. They’re not exactly the same. But ultimately, we are talking about the capacity to take a joint or specific area of the body through a full range of motion. Now, if you have limitations in mobility, that can be extremely problematic in some cases.
So that’s why we have all these amazing tools out there for improving mobility. However, what we cannot confuse is the idea that improving mobility by itself, so just Increasing our capacity to go through a full range of motion does not automatically translate into control. It does not translate necessarily into strength or coordination.
It’s simply one skill or one capacity that we are developing. So we like to talk about as brain based practitioners, the progression from mobility is into motor control. Motor control is a much broader, and yet more specific term that’s all about how well can you command different areas of your body to do things and have them do it well.
So it’s about movement efficiency. It is about coordination. It is about skill development. It’s about motor learning. And one of the huge things that sets motor control apart from mobility, Is that kind of by definition, motor control is designed or, uh, involved in decision making. So here’s what I mean by that. Uh, one of my pet phrases is that, uh, every movement has a meaning.
So if I am working on my mobility, let’s say I’ve grabbed a band and, you know, I’m doing some work to try and increase the mobility of my right shoulder, right? I’m working different ranges of motion. I’m bending and extending my elbow. So I’m I’m doing different things with my head. I’m doing different things with my thoracic spine.
I’m, you know, I can do PNF style contractions. I can throw wraps on. I can use vibration. I can do a lot of different things. Only decision I’m really making during that process, however, is am I going any further? And in the real world, decision making around movement tends to be much more complex than that.
In other words, if something’s over there and I’m going to go get it, There’s actually a lot of things that have to occur for me able to do that accurately, especially if it’s my coffee, right? I’ve got to go through my little obstacle course to get to my coffee and be able to pick it up. So how do we approach this as brain based practitioners?
Well, it’s pretty simple. If you want to transfer your work from basic mobility to And just include something that will improve your brain’s capacity to control your body. You have to involve decision making in the process. So as a silly example, uh, one thing that you could do is do all of your current mobility work, whatever that might be.
Just use a metronome. So right now I have a metronome set to 120 beats a minute. So let’s say I was working on my head and neck. I could do progressively larger ranges of motion, trying to stay on the beat, and work through all my different planes. Now why does that, why is that different than just doing, you know, neck mobility?
The addition of the outside stimulus that I have to hear, I have to match. I want to make sure that I’m ending and changing my motion on the beat. That involves another layer of activity within the brain, and in essence, it’s a form of decision making. Meaning, am I going to match the beat? Am I going to be off beat?
What am I going to have to do? Am I going to have to speed up? How quickly do I have to transition off the beat in order to get to the other side? Quickly, do I want to match it 1, 1 1, or do I wanna go 1, 2, 1, 2? I can do all kind of different things just using a metronome or different rhythms and apply that to my current mobility training and actually increase the difficulty, improve other cognitive features as a result of that, and overall make myself better at motor control while at the same time improving my range of motion, right?
So there’s lots of cool little things that you can begin to add in as long as you consider the idea of. I want to link what I’ve been doing previously for mobility and just include some type of decision making process in it. Another simple example would be, let’s say I am using a band and I’m working on trying to improve my, uh, let’s say, you know, horizontal abduction, external rotation, mobility for my shoulder, but I want to turn it into a motor control exercise.
Well, I can be here and I can have, you’ve probably seen these blaze pods or, uh, different apps that give you reds and green blinking lights, right? So I can be here and it can be okay. If I see a green, I’m going to actually mobilize a little bit more. If I see a red, don’t go. And then I can reverse it.
Right? So I can add these little cognitive games or cognitive tasks while I’m working on the mobility. And like I said, this is a higher payoff, a bigger return on investment for many people than just spending all the time trying to improve just joint range of motion. We want to improve the brain at the same time.
This is a really kind of simple overview of how to do that. Uh, we’re gonna be covering a lot of this material in far, far, far more depth, along with a lot of specifics in an upcoming course that we have called No More Mindless Mobility. Most importantly, I just want you to remember we love brain based training and we coach coaches because we want people to succeed.
All right, we want your clients to be more successful. We’re going to have a better return on investment. And like I said, all the fitness, all of sports, all of rehab, it’s all evolving and it’s evolving very rapidly. So what we’re trying to do is always give you the cutting edge to make you indispensable to your clients.
If you’re new to Z Health, I’m Dr. Eric Cobb. Uh, we’re a brain based education company. We specialize in working with doctors, coaches, and therapists. So if you are looking to bridge the gap that currently exists between anatomy, kinesiology, biomechanics, and neurology, make sure to check out our free course and subscribe to the channel.
All right, have a great day.
