5 MOBILITY TIPS FOR CROSSFIT ATHLETES

Mobility is an important aspect for CrossFit athletes to maintain and optimise their bodies to ensure they perform at their peak for longer.

The WOD Life had the opportunity of catching up with Australia’s Kelly Starrett in Jon Park from WOD Health. Jon shares these fantastic five tips for your 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 postures 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!

I see clients mobilising their shoulders repeatedly but complaining 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 WOD’s 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.

3. IT’S NOT ALWAYS ABOUT HIP TIGHTNESS!

If you are one of those CrossFitters that always has tight hips, mobilising with bands, massage ball into the gluts and doing the couch stretch, yet you still have hip tightness!!! Mobility works 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 the 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 bones (top of your pelvis at the front) and the sternum changing?

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

4. DO NOT FORGET YOUR ANKLE!

Can you place your toes 10cm (4 inches) from the wall keep your heel 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 constantly surprises me. 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 loss of 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 optimally 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 3 years and has been a CrossFitter for more than 3 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 4 years treating CrossFit injuries
• CrossFit addict for more than 3 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