Hierarchy of Movement: Mobility
January 2025
Welcome to the second installment of the newsletter. Last month, we identified demands in cycling that lead to common musculoskeletal impairments, and outlined how to triage these impairments. The new year offers a great opportunity to establish a routine to help mitigate these impairments. The aim of this newsletter is to provide a basic framework for adding tools to your toolbox to build a more plastic, resilient, durable cyclist.
We are all familiar, and some obsessed, with the mechanics of pedaling a bicycle. And while we have come to love the predictability of pedaling repetitively in one plane of motion (on average 4800 revolutions in one hour), it is easy to lose sight of the foundational movements that brought us to ride our glorious steeds. The hierarchy of movement is built on mobility, flexibility, stability, strength and skill/ functional proficiency. The off-season is a time to redirect efforts away from the apex (skill/functional proficiency) and back to basics, rebuilding weak spots in the foundation, starting with mobility. Future newsletters will address flexibility, stability and strength.
Mobility is described by the “3 Fs” (by me and nobody else, so don’t bother Googling 3-Fs as it may indeed take you down a dark path, requiring you to clear your search history): control of movement freely and fluidly through a functional range of motion (ROM). The best illustration of this is to watch an infant as they gain control over their arms and hands, moving freely and fluidly through a functional ROM to suck their thumb. The infant lacks sufficient stability to hold an object of appreciable mass, strength to launch it, skill to aim it, but is mastering mobility. Aging and injuries can hinder mobility by changing the articulating surfaces of joints. Synovial fluid, nature’s WD40 for joints, decreases with age (think about the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz to help visualize the effect of aging and injury on mobility), making us feel a bit creaky.
The key to maintaining mobility is to ensure each link in the kinetic chain is functional, starting with the foot- ankle complex and working up through the cervical spine. Cyclists are often aware when they lack mobility in the sagittal plane at the hip or knee, as it becomes difficult to pedal, but often ignore loss of mobility in other planes and other joints. Loss of mobility at one segment can affect the structure and function of the segments above and below, greatly altering their ability to function. For example, cyclists often neglect ankle mobility, given the non-impact nature of the sport. Limited mobility at the ankle joint requires greater mobility at the knee or hip joint in order for the kinetic chain to complete the pedal stroke. Excessive or aberrant motions cause unwarranted stress at these more proximal joints, increasing the potential for injury.
Mobility exercises can be easily incorporated into a dynamic warmup routine prior to aerobic or strength training. Deep squats with arms overhead, hurdle step-over and back, lateral hurdle step-over and step-under, lunges in 3 directions (forward, backward and lateral) with arms overhead are lower extremity mobility exercises. The master of mobility (and all things movement related), Steve Myrland, has shared some videos called “Happy Hips and Hamstrings” and Strength and Length with Jungle Gym that are extremely helpful. Upper extremity mobility exercises can be facilitated with a dowel, PVC tubing, broom or other stick like device that can be held at arm’s length. Steve has dubbed one such exercise “hayforks”; starting in a staggered stance, using the stick (pitchfork) for the lower arm to drive the upper arm overhead, alternating sides. Windmills, side lean and lengthen can also be facilitated with the dowel. More aggressive mobility exercises include skipping forwards, backwards and laterally and leg swing heel touches with opposite arm. As tissue temperature increases, these movements progress with increased ROM and speed through successive repetitive motions until end of the range is achieved.
In order to execute the more aggressive mobility exercises safely, adequate flexibility is required. Flexibility is defined as ability of muscle, tendon and fascia to lengthen passively (in the absence of muscle contraction) through ROM. Flexibility training will be the topic of the next newsletter.
