In my seminars I teach principles of mobility to help keep lifters/trainees/athletes healthy and soldiers operational. What we call “mobility” is just a general term to mean “maintaining or improving mobility to achieve proper positioning to perform well and prevent injury”. Overall, it’s a means to an end of not eradicate static and dynamic positional inhibition. Mobility is necessary for efficient and productive lifting. Mobility has several areas of emphasis:

– Soft tissue work
– Positional stretching
– Joint approximation

These areas can be effective by themselves, yet are best used to augment one another. One way to think of the results of mobility training is that it reduces tension on muscle systems. For example, a trainee’s neck hurts from a car wreck. They like to compete in Olympic weightlifting, yet when the volume of their lifting goes up, their neck hurts more. Without soft tissue work, they feel helpless and hopeless about their condition. This is a real world example because it happened to me (minus the hopeless/helpless part). Mobility training reduces that tension to alleviate pain at the neck, and could even improve existing anatomical assymetry (in this case, a temporarily rotated cervical vertebrae).

“The Stick” is a useful tool to work on soft tissue: muscle bellies, tendons, and fascia. When soft tissue is tight, it can cause dysfunction in the muscle or apply tension and subsequently pain at a joint (like the knee, hip, or shoulder). The stick is most effective when a friend uses it on you because they can reach areas you cannot and apply more force than you can solo. Be sure to purchase the “stiff” version of the stick, and not just for the laughs; I’ve put my whole body weight on it and it didn’t deform or break. The following video shows some general tips on using the stick as well as one specific example of how to use it on the upper shoulder and neck area. This would be excellent for Olympic lifters, anyone doing any overhead lifting, soldiers or back packers who carry a heavy pack/ruck, and anyone with a tight or painful neck.



“The Stick” can be found on Amazon or at Rogue Fitness. A future video will include calf, hamstring, lat/teres major, serratus anterior, triceps, and forearm work. The Stick is best used on any segment and has a much different (i.e. better) effect than just using a lacrosse ball, PVC pipe, or rumble roller. I highly recommend it.