Tight All Over?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Injuries and Rehab
1

The way I understood things, if you were tight in one area (for example, lack of hip extension), you should be ‘loose’ in the opposite area to compensate (like loose in hip flexion) - therefore you are unbalanced…

But, for some reason, I have poor hip extension as well as hip flexion, and poor hip internal rotation as well as poor hip external rotation. I am stiff across the board. A while ago I saw a physio who said I had tight hip flexors as well as tight hamstrings. I asked if my hamstrings only appeared tight because I was in anterior pelvic tilt, thus they would always be ‘pre-stretched’ in my normal posture - bu, no, apparently my hamstrings are tight even taking into consideration my anterior pelvic tilt.

So anyway - how does someone who is stiff in ALL planes of movement gain mobility?

I have done long hold static stretches (4 minutes at a time), agile 8 mobility drills 3x per day and foam rolling every day now for years, but never have seen any increase in mobility…

Thanks in advance for your suggestions…

2

You are not “loose” on one side if you are “tight” on another.

Compensation is not “linear”. Muscles are not “linear”.

No two people are exactly the same, so don’t compare yourself to others.

Did your physio therapist tell you why you are tight? hamstring is two muscles, which one is tight? Where the hamstring are connected are a slew of muscles. Is he/she sure? Or did you do a lot of Q and A and test?

You see, (this is personal opinion) a physio therapist would be the first person I would call if I got in a serious accident and needed to re learn basic motor skills. But, to diagnose a problem, they are the last people on earth I call.

I prefer people with sport therapy background. Chiro’s, ART, reflexologists, etc.

Basic questions: Do you sit all day? If yes, what kind of chair? Ergonomic position? etc. Are you a labourer? Do you bend a lot at the hips? How is your squat? etc.

3

Are you familiar with mobilitywod? If not, become so.

4

What are you afraid of or were you afraid of ?
Often the mental/psychological stresses get stored in our body(muscles, soft tisues…).
Relaxation twice daily and or meditation, walks in nature barefoot or as close to it as possible. Visualisation, deep breathing are likely to be helpfull. Your problem might be decades old so the solution is like a person building a house by adding a brick daily.

Maybe moving, a new work is in order. Family situation probably needs to improve.
There is no need for you to write about your personal stuff, i am giving you food for toughts.
Stretching, mobilitywod are tools but fear might make them close to non effective. It is a bit like showering daily, if you work in a stinky place it might not solve your situation.

Also eating lots a vegies and i mean LOTS, fresh/steamed and other alkaline foods(search that) will flush some stress out(avoid salt).
What is your blood pressure?
What is your morning heart rate?
My guess is you could lower both by 15 each.

5

On one side of the spectrum we have gymnasts who are inherently flexible, can fold in half like a paper clip. On the other side of the spectrum we have you, someone who makes tying his shoe laces look like an effort.

Maybe it’s genetics…

I’d suggest getting tendon releases throughout your entire body as this is surely the only way you’ll regain your flexibility and remove your anterior pelvic tilt.

6

[quote]lunk wrote:
The way I understood things, if you were tight in one area (for example, lack of hip extension), you should be ‘loose’ in the opposite area to compensate (like loose in hip flexion) - therefore you are unbalanced…

But, for some reason, I have poor hip extension as well as hip flexion, and poor hip internal rotation as well as poor hip external rotation. I am stiff across the board. A while ago I saw a physio who said I had tight hip flexors as well as tight hamstrings. I asked if my hamstrings only appeared tight because I was in anterior pelvic tilt, thus they would always be ‘pre-stretched’ in my normal posture - bu, no, apparently my hamstrings are tight even taking into consideration my anterior pelvic tilt.

So anyway - how does someone who is stiff in ALL planes of movement gain mobility?

I have done long hold static stretches (4 minutes at a time), agile 8 mobility drills 3x per day and foam rolling every day now for years, but never have seen any increase in mobility…

Thanks in advance for your suggestions…[/quote]

DO DEFRANCOS AGILE 8

7

[quote]lunk wrote:
The way I understood things, if you were tight in one area (for example, lack of hip extension), you should be ‘loose’ in the opposite area to compensate (like loose in hip flexion) - therefore you are unbalanced…

But, for some reason, I have poor hip extension as well as hip flexion, and poor hip internal rotation as well as poor hip external rotation. I am stiff across the board. A while ago I saw a physio who said I had tight hip flexors as well as tight hamstrings. I asked if my hamstrings only appeared tight because I was in anterior pelvic tilt, thus they would always be ‘pre-stretched’ in my normal posture - bu, no, apparently my hamstrings are tight even taking into consideration my anterior pelvic tilt.

So anyway - how does someone who is stiff in ALL planes of movement gain mobility?

I have done long hold static stretches (4 minutes at a time), agile 8 mobility drills 3x per day and foam rolling every day now for years, but never have seen any increase in mobility…

Thanks in advance for your suggestions…[/quote]

Forget Mobility WOD its overcomplicated BS. It can be helpful at times but doing that stuff is not the cornerstone to good function.

Here is how it works.

The glute is almost always the biggest issue.

Your body is not going to open up hip flexion if you have poor hip extension. Why should it? Why would your body allow your hip to flex if it cannot extend out of that position?

I doubt your hamstrings are really tight. That is pretty rare.

Your glutes are weak and that is the main issue. Agile 8 will do nothing for you until you get your glutes going.

8

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

[quote]lunk wrote:
The way I understood things, if you were tight in one area (for example, lack of hip extension), you should be ‘loose’ in the opposite area to compensate (like loose in hip flexion) - therefore you are unbalanced…

But, for some reason, I have poor hip extension as well as hip flexion, and poor hip internal rotation as well as poor hip external rotation. I am stiff across the board. A while ago I saw a physio who said I had tight hip flexors as well as tight hamstrings. I asked if my hamstrings only appeared tight because I was in anterior pelvic tilt, thus they would always be ‘pre-stretched’ in my normal posture - bu, no, apparently my hamstrings are tight even taking into consideration my anterior pelvic tilt.

So anyway - how does someone who is stiff in ALL planes of movement gain mobility?

I have done long hold static stretches (4 minutes at a time), agile 8 mobility drills 3x per day and foam rolling every day now for years, but never have seen any increase in mobility…

Thanks in advance for your suggestions…[/quote]

Forget Mobility WOD its overcomplicated BS. It can be helpful at times but doing that stuff is not the cornerstone to good function.

Here is how it works.

The glute is almost always the biggest issue.

Your body is not going to open up hip flexion if you have poor hip extension. Why should it? Why would your body allow your hip to flex if it cannot extend out of that position?

I doubt your hamstrings are really tight. That is pretty rare.

Your glutes are weak and that is the main issue. Agile 8 will do nothing for you until you get your glutes going.

[/quote]

Mobility WOD.

I actually did a phone consult with the guy. No real complaints. It’s hard to get much out of one phone consultation for a nagging problem.

But I have the same feeling. There is simply too much information on the mobility WOD site. Am I going to watch hundreds of videos, not knowing which ones will help, hoping pick the right ones to do consistently and hopefully get some result? Hell no.

9

[quote]darsemnos wrote:

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

[quote]lunk wrote:
The way I understood things, if you were tight in one area (for example, lack of hip extension), you should be ‘loose’ in the opposite area to compensate (like loose in hip flexion) - therefore you are unbalanced…

But, for some reason, I have poor hip extension as well as hip flexion, and poor hip internal rotation as well as poor hip external rotation. I am stiff across the board. A while ago I saw a physio who said I had tight hip flexors as well as tight hamstrings. I asked if my hamstrings only appeared tight because I was in anterior pelvic tilt, thus they would always be ‘pre-stretched’ in my normal posture - bu, no, apparently my hamstrings are tight even taking into consideration my anterior pelvic tilt.

So anyway - how does someone who is stiff in ALL planes of movement gain mobility?

I have done long hold static stretches (4 minutes at a time), agile 8 mobility drills 3x per day and foam rolling every day now for years, but never have seen any increase in mobility…

Thanks in advance for your suggestions…[/quote]

Forget Mobility WOD its overcomplicated BS. It can be helpful at times but doing that stuff is not the cornerstone to good function.

Here is how it works.

The glute is almost always the biggest issue.

Your body is not going to open up hip flexion if you have poor hip extension. Why should it? Why would your body allow your hip to flex if it cannot extend out of that position?

I doubt your hamstrings are really tight. That is pretty rare.

Your glutes are weak and that is the main issue. Agile 8 will do nothing for you until you get your glutes going.

[/quote]

Mobility WOD.

I actually did a phone consult with the guy. No real complaints. It’s hard to get much out of one phone consultation for a nagging problem.

But I have the same feeling. There is simply too much information on the mobility WOD site. Am I going to watch hundreds of videos, not knowing which ones will help, hoping pick the right ones to do consistently and hopefully get some result? Hell no.
[/quote]

There is a search engine and recently he set up categories like ankle, hips, and whatnot.

10

I had issues and it motivated me to do some searches, that is how i found this site. Maybe searches at mobility wod and searches at youtube might give you a probable direction to improve.
All the best !

11

Mobility WOD is a scam. Either he is knowingly scamming people or he doesn’t understand how the body works.

There are people who lift alot of weight, put on muscle and feel great doing it. Your goal is to be like them. And guess what. They aren’t doing any of that shit.

Why the fuck would evolution create a body that has to be aware enough of itself to put a rubber band around a pole, attach it to your hip then sink into a stretch, in order to work properly?

There is a dude in Burma right now carrying a 50lb basket from a salt mine on top of his head that has a better squat than anyone on this site.

Shirley Sahrmann is one of the leading physical therapists in the world. Here is a quote. Movement fixes movement.

This whole mobility WOD thing is going to come crashing down. It’s not that complicated. But you need to understand the way the body works to really get it.

Here is another quote from Bret Contreras. “Myofascial work is a band aid”

I would disagree, a band aid has more use than myofascial work. Which I do use with my clients but you have to understand that in the big scheme of things it is not very important. It’s an add on, not the key to good function.

12

[/quote]

There is a search engine and recently he set up categories like ankle, hips, and whatnot. [/quote]

Here is the thing.

Working directly on issues at the:

Shoulder
Neck
Knee
Ankle
Elbow
Wrist
Thoracic Spine

Does very little. I have never. EVER. Noticed any result from working on those areas directly in a vacuum. HOWEVER. When you get the hips working properly. All of these areas get better immediately. THEN adding some extra mobility work at the ankle or whatever, seems to help it come around a bit more, but only a little bit. The majority of the fix comes from the hips. When they start working, stress is completely distributed differently over the whole body.

13

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

I did a ton of hip mobility for low bar wide stance squats. Then I moved to a shoulder width stance with a lot of knee travel. And whaddya know, my ankles couldn’t pull it off. This led to lower back rounding. I already had the hip mobility. So I started focusing hard on my ankles. This helped a bunch, but there was something missing. My hip flexors were way too tight and when I opened those up, I was not just able to do a squat with more knee travel shoulder width stance but I could do it hip width and I can nearly sink it all the way to the bottom.

The mobility wod stuff is what helped me do it. I found the bands helped a ton because of how tight I was. Just using my own weight wasn’t enough.

And there are strong powerlifters and people who are extremely fit for the their sport (olympic medalists) that make cameo appearances on his videos.

He actually does say that things don’t work in a vacuum and harps on how the body works as a system.

I get the feeling you haven’t paid close attention to his videos.

If what you’ve done has been working great for you awsome, but I swear by mob wod at this point and there’s people in the PL section who are pretty strong who do as well, and he’s had cameo appearances from some extremely strong lifters on his vids.

14

[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

I did a ton of hip mobility for low bar wide stance squats. Then I moved to a shoulder width stance with a lot of knee travel. And whaddya know, my ankles couldn’t pull it off. This led to lower back rounding. I already had the hip mobility. So I started focusing hard on my ankles. This helped a bunch, but there was something missing. My hip flexors were way too tight and when I opened those up, I was not just able to do a squat with more knee travel shoulder width stance but I could do it hip width and I can nearly sink it all the way to the bottom.

The mobility wod stuff is what helped me do it. I found the bands helped a ton because of how tight I was. Just using my own weight wasn’t enough.

And there are strong powerlifters and people who are extremely fit for the their sport (olympic medalists) that make cameo appearances on his videos.

He actually does say that things don’t work in a vacuum and harps on how the body works as a system.

I get the feeling you haven’t paid close attention to his videos.

If what you’ve done has been working great for you awsome, but I swear by mob wod at this point and there’s people in the PL section who are pretty strong who do as well, and he’s had cameo appearances from some extremely strong lifters on his vids. [/quote]

Well if it works for you then great. I’m not saying that stuff doesn’t work at all, but that it is focusing more on symptoms than the true problems and that the results from it are not as long lasting and as effective as the true fixes but hey if it works for you then great.

15

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

I did a ton of hip mobility for low bar wide stance squats. Then I moved to a shoulder width stance with a lot of knee travel. And whaddya know, my ankles couldn’t pull it off. This led to lower back rounding. I already had the hip mobility. So I started focusing hard on my ankles. This helped a bunch, but there was something missing. My hip flexors were way too tight and when I opened those up, I was not just able to do a squat with more knee travel shoulder width stance but I could do it hip width and I can nearly sink it all the way to the bottom.

The mobility wod stuff is what helped me do it. I found the bands helped a ton because of how tight I was. Just using my own weight wasn’t enough.

And there are strong powerlifters and people who are extremely fit for the their sport (olympic medalists) that make cameo appearances on his videos.

He actually does say that things don’t work in a vacuum and harps on how the body works as a system.

I get the feeling you haven’t paid close attention to his videos.

If what you’ve done has been working great for you awsome, but I swear by mob wod at this point and there’s people in the PL section who are pretty strong who do as well, and he’s had cameo appearances from some extremely strong lifters on his vids. [/quote]

Well if it works for you then great. I’m not saying that stuff doesn’t work at all, but that it is focusing more on symptoms than the true problems and that the results from it are not as long lasting and as effective as the true fixes but hey if it works for you then great.
[/quote]

So what’s the takeaway?

You’ve made a few points about mobility wod being a “scam” and what not (FTR, I haven’t checked mob wod out yet but was referred to it by a top level powerlifting friend of mine) which is fine…however the only thing you have suggested so far is to “get the glutes going”. Can you elaborate on this? Doesn’t the agile 8 get your glutes going?

Also why does the guy in Burma hauling 50 lb loads on his head have better squat form than anyone on this site?

16

The point is that there are a few things that make you strong and make your body work well.

These few things are responsible for the vast majority of function and dysfunction.

I don’t think mobility wod is complete BS but alot of people don’t understand that everything I have ever seen them do is just icing on the cake at best.

The amount of people that are doing the basics well enough to need to worry about mobility wod stuff are few and far between.

Proper function is not attained through ridiculous stuff like mobility wod, you can get some results with some of that stuff, but you need to ask yourself why are those things issues.

Basics of the body is this. If you have an area that is locked up or tight or strained, it is almost always because something somewhere else is not doing what it should be doing.

Look back years ago, how were olympic weightlifters executing lifts with perfect form back then without mobility wod? It’s because their bodies work better than most, but what makes their body work well is what you want to strive for, and it’s the strength and function of certain muscles.

Soft tissue work and stretching is always back seat to improving function which I have a hard time finding in mobility wod. It seems to be a bunch of stretches and some release techniques, which have limited value.

No seriously though. Think about this for a second. Why are we the only animal that has to do all this stupid shit to be able to use function we are just supposed to have.

That goes back to the point about the guy from Burma is that there are millions of people just living their lives that have the function mobility wod is trying to attain. Mobility WOD attacking symptoms of dysfunction, not dysfunction itself.

17

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

No seriously though. Think about this for a second. Why are we the only animal that has to do all this stupid shit to be able to use function we are just supposed to have.

That goes back to the point about the guy from Burma is that there are millions of people just living their lives that have the function mobility wod is trying to attain. Mobility WOD attacking symptoms of dysfunction, not dysfunction itself.
[/quote]

For the first paragraph above, that’s because we don’t live in the same environment evolution tailored us for.

That kid in burma isn’t living more than half his life sitting at a desk hunched over a computer. We’re pretty much born with great mobility but modern life style slowly deteriorates those motor patterns and makes thing tight that need to be lose and vice versa.

18

[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

No seriously though. Think about this for a second. Why are we the only animal that has to do all this stupid shit to be able to use function we are just supposed to have.

That goes back to the point about the guy from Burma is that there are millions of people just living their lives that have the function mobility wod is trying to attain. Mobility WOD attacking symptoms of dysfunction, not dysfunction itself.
[/quote]

For the first paragraph above, that’s because we don’t live in the same environment evolution tailored us for.

That kid in burma isn’t living more than half his life sitting at a desk hunched over a computer. We’re pretty much born with great mobility but modern life style slowly deteriorates those motor patterns and makes thing tight that need to be lose and vice versa. [/quote]

I get that. So instead of trying to get back the missing pieces that create proper function, you wrap a band around a pole and stretch with it.

The funny thing is alot of people have the same response as you did.

We don’t live like that anymore!

I know that. I realize that.

So instead of acting like we aren’t still animals, finding what it is ABOUT living naturally keeps our bodies working well.

Thats the whole point. Extract the most crucial parts from natural living to keep our bodies working properly. And it’s not stretching. And it’s not myofascial work.

MOST of the time.

19

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:
It seems to be a bunch of stretches and some release techniques, which have limited value.
[/quote]

If this is your view of MobilityWod, you have failed to understand the concepts at all. MobilityWOD is a movement based system that is designed to correct the dysfunction we acquire through our unnatural way of living. The reason we need to work on our mobility is because we are not functioning in the environment we evolved in. As Fletch has patiently pointed out, animals and your stereotypical Burmese man do not spend their days hunched over desks or behind the wheel of a car.

20

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:

[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:

No seriously though. Think about this for a second. Why are we the only animal that has to do all this stupid shit to be able to use function we are just supposed to have.

That goes back to the point about the guy from Burma is that there are millions of people just living their lives that have the function mobility wod is trying to attain. Mobility WOD attacking symptoms of dysfunction, not dysfunction itself.
[/quote]

For the first paragraph above, that’s because we don’t live in the same environment evolution tailored us for.

That kid in burma isn’t living more than half his life sitting at a desk hunched over a computer. We’re pretty much born with great mobility but modern life style slowly deteriorates those motor patterns and makes thing tight that need to be lose and vice versa. [/quote]

I get that. So instead of trying to get back the missing pieces that create proper function, you wrap a band around a pole and stretch with it.

The funny thing is alot of people have the same response as you did.

We don’t live like that anymore!

I know that. I realize that.

So instead of acting like we aren’t still animals, finding what it is ABOUT living naturally keeps our bodies working well.

Thats the whole point. Extract the most crucial parts from natural living to keep our bodies working properly. And it’s not stretching. And it’s not myofascial work.

MOST of the time.
[/quote]

So what is it?

In addition to mobility drills and stretching, I’ll often just hang around in a squat position for a few minutes and whatnot to stay mobile and the position less uncomfortable but it’s still nothing like how it is in some places in the world where you actually stay in a squat to take a cramp, or eat while kneeling on both knees, or just talk with a group for a long time in a squat.