If You Only Have 10 Minutes to Train Mobility, What Should You Do?

100 Year Athlete founder Ben Van Treese leads a mobility class in Park City. Eight students facing away from the camera work through the cat-cow movement.

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A lot of mountain athletes join Off The Mountain because they’re experiencing joint pain while doing the sports they love. Often, they chalk it up to “old age.” 

In reality, most of them have been neglecting mobility – which is about actively moving your joints through their full range of motion. It’s not flexibility, the ability to passively lengthen soft tissues. 

The big payoff of mobility is that it improves two-way communication between your nervous system and your tissue. When communication is poor, your joints don’t move the way they need to move, and you’re more likely to experience pain and injuries. When communication is strong, you can move your joints with precision and avoid being stuck in positions that increase pain and limit your performance. 

It doesn’t matter whether you’re super mobile or super tight – to maintain healthy communication, you must regularly move your joints the way they like to be moved. And no, mountain sports don’t move your joints through their full ranges of motion.   

I know everyone is busy. So, if you can only spend 5-10 minutes on mobility 3-4 times a week, what should you do?

I’ll walk you through three drills that offer the most bang for your buck. To learn these well, first watch the video, Then do the motions with the video playing so you can hear my cues. We’ll cover three sets of exercises covering the three most important joints:  

VIDEO

Questions? Want more personalized mobility drills? Hit us up.

Ben Van Treese

Ben Van Treese

FOUNDER

Ben is the Founder of OTM and an expert on injury prevention and training for longevity in mountain sports. His approach starts with the joint health and mobility athletes need to perform their sport with technical precision and safety. He has worked with Olympic athletes and X Games competitors as well as professional athletes in the NFL, NBA, and NHL. He is the author of A Cyclists Guide To Back Pain: Why Stretching Won't Work And What To Do Instead.

Ben earned a BS in Human Nutrition and Exercise Physiology from Ohio State University. He has 15 years of experience in the field and is interested in the balance between performance and staying power in the mountains. These days, Ben is an accomplished rock climber (for a big dude) and chases fresh powder all over the Wasatch.

Born in Ohio, Ben grew up in a family of professional water skiers. His mother, a national champion several times over, raised Ben around elite coaches who fueled his interest in the power of training. By the end of college, though, Ben’s spine was fried from too many water skiing wrecks. That’s when he discovered Functional Range Conditioning (FRC), which not only enabled him to return to sport but motivated him to train people for longevity, not just short-term performance.

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