Mobility vs Flexibility (the actual difference & why it matters)

Liv Townsend, flexibility coach who is nowadays focusing more on mobility, explains why;

Strong & supple

So, first of all,

• Flexibility: how far a joint can move passively with assistance, such as touching your toes, bending your fingers backwards, or pulling your knee higher with your hands.
• Mobility: your ability to actively control and produce force throughout a range of motion. It combines flexibility with strength.

Flexibility alone has limitations, as once you have enough flexibility for everyday activities, gaining more passive range doesn’t offer much practical benefit unless you also develop strength in that range.

Mobility, meanwhile, takes you past those, and helps you get smoothly up from the floor, lift heavy objects safely, reach overhead, move with better control, reduce injury risk, and lessen aches and pains in your joints and back (bearing in mind that one’s back is essentially 20–30ish* joints in a long coat)

^{*If that sounds like an oddly vague and wide range, it’s because: humans normally start with 33 vertebrae which usually fuse to be something like 24ish bones by adulthood, which can further reduce if more fuse later. In any case, take this variable number of vertebrae and deduct one, to get the number of mobile joining points within the spine.}

Now, most people have slightly more passive flexibility than active mobility. The goal, therefore, is to reduce this gap enough that your body remains strong and supported throughout its widest range of motion.

For example:

• Pathway 1: improve strength alone if you already have enough flexibility but lack control of your existing range of motion.
• Pathway 2: improve flexibility first through stretching, then strengthen the new range with resistance training.
• Pathway 3: improve flexibility and strength simultaneously by performing strength exercises that load muscles while they are lengthened.

As for what exercises to do, recommended in the video are Cossack squats, Romanian deadlifts, and Bulgarian split squats.

For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

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Take care!