10min of Mobility Every Day

Written by Kyle Ligon - MovementLink Head Coach

Your body needs some love and 10 minutes a day in addition to warming-up, working out, and cooling-down using full range of motion, functional movement patterns and mobility exercises accumulates in a major ways over time:

10 minutes each morning x 7 days a week
+
5-10 minutes warming up for each workout x 4+ days a week
+
5-10 minutes cooling down from each workout x 4+ days a week
=
2+ hours of mobility work every week!

This is easily enough time to improve recovery, develop full and functional ranges of motion across our whole body, and resolve nagging pains. When we are strategic about it, there is just no need for multiple, heroic, hour-long yoga or mobility sessions…consistency always wins and a little bit here and there goes extremely far.

Because We Prioritize Daily Exposure to Quality Movement, End Ranges of Motion, and Targeted Mobility Exercises

• We start the day off with increasing blood flow which:

  • Improves recovery of muscles, tissues, and central nervous system.

  • Improves brain function.

  • Burns off adenosine which is a molecule that makes us feel tired.

  • Promotes wakefulness at the right time, improving our circadian rhythm.

• Mixed with how we warm up, work out, and cool down, with just 10 minutes each morning, we develop:

  • mobility (strength through full ranges of functional movement patterns),

  • flexibility, and

  • stability.

• When we add in targeted mobility work, we resolve or stay out ahead of nagging pains.

Do we need an hour of yoga 3-5 times a week to improve your flexibility??? No!!! Is an hour-long yoga class 3-5 days a week bad??? No, we just feel that because full ranges of motion can be developed through 10 minutes of functional yoga and mobility each day when added to a quality functional fitness workout program, our time is better spent elsewhere: with friends/family, at work, on a hobby, or adding in extra skill or easy work. If we just love yoga, then we add it in:) BUT, consistency is the key. Even if we are doing 3-5 yoga classes each week, our bodies still need daily exposure to end ranges of motion, so we would still need to be doing our 10 minutes of mobility each morning. If you do a little every day…the impacts are extraordinary. Add in a little extra specific mobility work with a foam roller or a lacrosse ball and you’re a super hero!

We talk a lot about habits and strategies to make your life easier in our MOMENTUM Results Program and one tid-bit we can pull utilize here is the Trigger > Rule > Reward system. It’s one thing to WANT ourselves to do 10 minutes of daily stretching routines or mobility programs, but we’re dead in the water if we forget or wing it on when we’re going to do it! A tip we use is to set-up something like a note by the coffee maker that reads, “Do Mobility, you’ll be happy you did!” When we’re making coffee in the morning, we’d see the note and get triggered, reminding us of the habit we want ourselves to do. Triggers lead to rules and our rule is, we have to do 10 minutes of yoga-ish movement and/or mobility BEFORE we get to have coffee. Following through on rules helps if here’s a reward and the reward here is that we get to have coffee! Even after all these years and knowing how much we like having it be a daily habit, still, most mornings, we do not WANT to do it. But, as soon as we get triggered and get started, the brain follows the body and we forget all about not wanting to, and every single time, we are glad we did it.

Imagine if you had done 10 minutes of stretching routines or mobility programs consistently for the last year? Imagine how you would feel and what you’re body would be capable of!!! Let’s get going!

Take Action:

Perform 10 minutes of Movement and Mobility every morning.

Want some help figuring out what to do? Check-out our follow along mobility videos here!