Mobility — what it actually is, and what you can do yourself

What do I actually mean by mobility?

This text is part of the Thrive Zone Academy — my open knowledge format for everyone who doesn't train 1:1 with me but still wants to understand, on a solid basis, how their body works.

Before we get into exercises, let's briefly fix what this is all about. My goal — for myself and for everyone who trains with me — is not a particular number on a flexibility test. It is this: to be able to move well, for a long time, and ideally for a whole life without problems.

Because so many beautiful things you can experience need a body that moves well.

For me, concretely, that means: climbing trees with my son. Surfing. Martial arts. Springing up off the floor without it turning into an awkward three-point operation. And — no joke — being able to tie my shoes standing up ;)

Sounds trivial. It isn't. Anyone who has ever sat at home for two weeks with a foot in a cast knows what I mean.

But wait — does that mean more mobility is always better?

Here comes my most important message right away. And it's the one that's missing from 95 percent of the mobility content on Instagram.

If my shoulder moves too far, it pops out of the joint. That's called a shoulder dislocation — and it's exactly what happens when mobility simply keeps growing without control.

On the other hand, I obviously have to be able to move my arm behind my back — in case a mosquito bites me and it itches. So that I don't end up like my great-grandfather, who needed a stick with a fork on it for that ;)

Somewhere between these two poles lies the sweet spot. Enough mobility for everything you want to do in life — and enough control so that your body can safely go along with it.

This interplay of optimal mobility and optimal control, that is, stability — that's what we call a continuum. It's the central term that everything else in this text orients itself around: the continuum of mobility and stability.

How does the body actually do this? A look at the system

Let's take a closer look at the system. Once you understand how the body is built, you also understand why mobility work is so much more complex than copying yoga poses.

Roughly speaking, there are four types of structures in the body that work together:

Bones — the most stable structures. They absorb forces superbly, but may only deform minimally before they break. I know what I'm talking about — I once had a complicated lower-leg-and-ankle fracture, the result of considerable stupidity, more on that later.

Muscles — the counterpart. They move everything, they hold everything stable, and they have a lot of room for deformation before they tear. Muscles can stretch to well beyond their resting length — and shorten by a great deal when they work.

Tendons — the connecting pieces between muscle and bone. They're a fascinating in-between: elastic enough to allow movement, stiff enough to transmit force efficiently. When you run, your Achilles tendons store and release elastic energy — the reason running is so energetically efficient when the movement pattern sits cleanly.

Ligaments, capsules and fascia — the stabilizers and the connective tissue. Ligaments connect bone to bone and limit movements in defined directions. Joint capsules enclose every joint and hold the structures together. Fascia is the great connective-tissue net that links everything together — from the sole of the foot to the forehead.

Spanning all of this is another layer that's often forgotten: the nervous system. In each of these tissues sit receptors — stretch receptors in the muscles (muscle spindles), tension sensors in the tendons (Golgi tendon organs), position-sense receptors in the joints (proprioceptors). These sensors constantly report to the central nervous system what's happening right now. And on the basis of these reports, the nervous system decides how much tension each muscle is allowed to hold, how far a movement may go, and when a protective reflex fires.

The most important thing you need to understand about the whole system: maintaining static posture while simultaneously allowing movements — sometimes under extreme load — is an extremely finely tuned system.

How finely tuned? Here's a concrete example.

What actually happens under anesthesia?

Anyone who, like me, has been in the OR a few times — in my case the aforementioned complicated ankle fracture, I'll spare you the details of the stupidity ;) — may already know this. When you're under general anesthesia, you can suddenly do things that would be unthinkable while awake.

The surgeon can rotate your leg into positions you couldn't assume while awake. Not because the muscles have suddenly gotten longer. Not because the fascia has dissolved. But because the nervous system is switched off — and with it the protective tension that runs constantly while you're awake.

This has two important consequences.

First: what you experience as immobile is not set in stone. It's a state controlled by your nervous system. And states can be changed.

Second: stiffness is influenced by many factors. Stress is one of the biggest — under mental strain, the baseline tension of the musculature rises measurably, especially in the shoulder-neck area. Add to that sleep, hydration, temperature, time of day. And of course: regular training.

Whoever trains regularly into certain ranges signals to the nervous system over months: "This range is safe, I have control here." And the nervous system answers by releasing the range. Whoever additionally works on their stress level — through sleep, breathing, fewer stimuli — gets a second lever for free.

That's the reason mobility work isn't finished in a week. And the reason it works at all.

People who start with mobility usually have one of these four problems

In my practice, people rarely come to me and say "Andreas, I just want to get more mobile." They come with concrete issues. Four of them keep coming back:

• Tension
• Immobility
• "Shortenings"
• Posture problems

And the first thing most of them then try: stretching. A few loosening exercises. A bit of yoga. Sometimes that helps in the short term — almost never does it help lastingly. Why, we'll see right away with the most common practice example of all.

Example: neck tension — what's really going on

When someone comes to me with neck tension, I almost always see the same pattern.

Strongly contracted, extremely tight portions of the upper trapezius — that is, the muscle that runs from the back of the head over the neck and shoulder down to the spine. Usually with trigger points, that is, painful, pressure-sensitive spots to the side of the neck. In part, overly developed portions of this upper trapezius — it has become downright hypertrophic because it's working constantly.

Why does it work constantly? Because it responds to stress with tension. That's an ancient, natural protective reflex — the shoulders are pulled up to protect the arteries in the neck in case of danger. The mechanism comes from a time when "danger" meant: saber-toothed tiger in the bushes.

But since very few of us actually have to reckon with a colleague mutating into a wildcat during the stand-up — and the stress is rather a permanent presence at the desk — that obviously makes little sense. You often don't even notice that you're pulling your shoulders up right now. It just happens. All day long.

And at exactly the same time, the counterpart is switched off. The rhomboids — the muscles between the shoulder blade and the spine that align the shoulder blades and pull them back. The middle and lower portions of the trapezius, which should actively pull the shoulder blades down and together. The rotator cuff, which centers your upper-arm head in the shoulder joint.

All these muscles: too weak. Underdeveloped. Inactive.

This is a vicious circle: weak muscles tense up more, the tension leads to muscular tightness, the tightness is experienced as pain, the pain leads to less movement, less movement leads to even weaker muscles. And so on.

Whoever, in this situation, simply stretches is treating the symptom. The muscle is indeed softer for a moment, but the tension comes back, because the actual driver — the weakness of the antagonists — has not been addressed.

What I really do in cases like this

Now it gets concrete. When someone with such a finding lands in my studio or in one of my workshops, the process goes roughly like this:

Step 1: test. How is the mobility set up? What does the strength look like? What's compensating where?

The typical picture usually reads: pec minor very short — that is, the small chest muscle that pulls the shoulder blade forward and down. Rhomboids and middle trapezius too weak. External rotation of the shoulder likewise too weak.

Step 2: serve the continuum — open the range and stabilize within exactly that range.

One of the best exercises for the shortened pec minor are Banded Shoulder Dislocates — you take an elastic band shoulder-width, arms straight, and guide it in a controlled way from the front over your head to the back. The range opens up, the nervous system registers: clean work is being done here.

Directly afterward we train stability in exactly this opened range with static Banded External Rotations — mini-band around the wrists, elbows at the body, holding the forearms outward against the resistance. Static means: you hold the position. When you can hold this for longer than 15 seconds, cleanly, without the shoulder slipping forward — then we go a step further and actively raise the arms in this external rotation. That's the moment when range and stability really come together.

The whole thing is rounded out by two more exercises that complete the picture: Wall Angels — you stand with your back to the wall and guide your bent arms up along the wall and back down. Plus circles with straight arms — the simplest exercise in the world, and yet one of the best for the daily shoulder reset.

These four exercises — Banded Shoulder Dislocates, static Banded External Rotations, Wall Angels, arm circles — are extremely effective in the long run. But the word "long run" is decisive. And that brings us to the next point.

How often do I have to do this? And from when do I see something?

Structures that have been shortened and weakened over years don't become long and strong again overnight. It takes regular practice.

The honest answer on frequency: mobility exercises like the ones above you can in theory do every day — it does no harm. Three times a week, several rounds each, is the scientifically well-supported lower limit for visible changes.

The research on this is relatively clear: a systematic review by Thomas et al. (2018) on static stretching shows that cumulative stretching volumes of around four minutes per session and about ten minutes per week mark the lower threshold for demonstrable mobility improvements. For strength-based mobility work (external rotation, wall angels and so on) a similar frequency applies — Alizadeh et al. (2023) and Warneke et al. (2025) show in their meta-analyses that two to three training sessions per week with two to three sets per exercise over six to eight weeks produce measurable range improvements.

In my practice I often see the first noticeable changes after just three to four weeks — if the client stays consistent. Structural adaptations come later, after several months. But the nervous system responds quickly. The first "ah, this feels different" moments often happen as early as the second week.

Patience is the invisible part of the solution. Consistency is the visible part. You need both.

But Andreas — if my neck hurts, why should I work on my hip?

Good question. Brings us to the next insight: In the body, everything is connected.

When something pulls in the lower back, the cause can lie in the hip — for instance because a shortened hip flexor tilts the pelvis forward and chronically pulls the lumbar spine into a hollow back. It can also lie in the knee — a limited knee flexion forces you, when bending, into the lumbar spine instead of the hip. It can even lie in the arch of the foot — a collapsed longitudinal arch changes the leg axis, and via the kinetic chain you feel the consequences at the knee, the hip or in the back.

The picture is always the same: One spot is restricted, another spot pays for it.

This is exactly the reason I particularly love two exercises in my workshops that make this connection tangible — the Lunge Rotation and the Squat Rotation.

Both rotate the thoracic spine under load. Both simultaneously require: a stable hip, a mobile thoracic spine, a controlled shoulder. Both show you when one of these components is weak — because the movement then wanders to the next spot and compensates there. That's exactly what makes them teaching exercises.

And in everyday life, thoracic-spine rotation is almost completely missing for us. Most people rotate properly exactly once a day — when they have to glance back at the workplace to make sure no one's looking at the screen while they're secretly scrolling ;)

That's not enough.

Static stretching vs. strength training through full range — what really delivers?

Here there's a scientific answer that surprises many.

Static stretching has its place. It works. When you want to come down into the parasympathetic state after training — that is, from the activated into the relaxed state — it's a good tool. It lowers muscle tone, calms the nervous system, helps with recovery. And yes, it also improves range of motion if you stay with it.

A meta-analysis by Afonso et al. (2021) compared both approaches and arrived at comparable mobility improvements — with a clear strength advantage for the strength-training group. A more comprehensive meta-analysis by Alizadeh et al. (2023) in Sports Medicine confirms this with a larger data base. And Diong et al. (2022) showed in their meta-analysis (27 studies, 911 participants) that eccentric training in particular — that is, the slow, controlled way down in an exercise — significantly improves joint mobility (g = 0.54), while simultaneously building strength; the systematic review by Vetter et al. (2022) arrives at the same picture.

The two best examples from my training practice for this:

Elevated Bulgarian Split Squat. Rear foot on an elevation, front foot flat on the floor, slowly lowering into the depth. In a single exercise you train: deep hip flexion, mobility of the rear hip, stability of the front knee, ankle range. Whoever can do it cleanly has mobility gains in four areas — and has developed single-leg strength on the side.

Scapula Pull-Ups. Hanging from the bar, actively pulling the shoulder blade down without bending the arm. This mobilizes the shoulder girdle in full decompression and at the same time strengthens the lower trapezius and serratus — exactly the muscles that are underdeveloped in people with neck tension.

And hanging? The underrated exercise.

One exercise I want to talk about specifically, because it's so unfairly overlooked: simple hanging from the pull-up bar.

30 seconds up to two minutes, with straight arms, body relaxed, active grip. That's all it takes.

What happens: the shoulder girdle is decompressed — you give the shoulder joint space that it rarely gets in everyday life. The lat musculature and the shoulder capsule are stretched into end-range. The grip is strengthened. The thoracic spine extends. And on the side you train a strength quality that has almost completely been lost in everyday life — the ability to hold your own body weight for a moment.

Whoever hangs regularly — daily, cumulatively one to two minutes — gets freer shoulders, a more relaxed upper back and better posture. Without it looking like a "mobility exercise."

I have clients who came to me with shoulder problems, to whom I prescribed exactly three things: Banded External Rotations, Wall Angels, and daily hanging. After eight weeks their problems were gone. Stable to this day.

The biggest mistakes when stretching — in case you decide to stretch after all

Three mistakes I see again and again.

Mistake 1: wrong breathing. Many hold their breath when stretching or breathe shallowly. That's suboptimal, because deep belly breathing activates the parasympathetic system via the vagus nerve — exactly the system that lowers muscle tone. Whoever breathes shallowly while stretching is fighting against their own physiology. Tip: four seconds in, six to eight seconds out. The long exhale is the actual lever.

Mistake 2: too short a duration. "A quick stretch" has almost no effect. If static stretching is meant to work, you need at least 30 to 60 seconds per position, ideally several times. The review by Thomas et al. (2018) shows: four minutes of cumulative stretching time per session is the lower effective threshold.

Mistake 3: wrong timing. Static stretching is a wind-down exercise. It belongs after training, in a warm state, in a calm phase. Right before a strength or endurance effort, prolonged static stretching measurably dampens maximal strength. Whoever wants to warm up before sport uses dynamic stretches — controlled, rhythmic movements that actively run through the range. That's activation, not calming.

Two different tools, two different applications.

What you can take away — and where your limit lies

If you've read this far, you now have an understanding that most people lack:

• Mobility is a continuum with stability, not an isolated goal
• Stiffness is to a large extent nervous-system controlled, and therefore trainable
• Tension is often not the problem, but the symptom of weakness
• Strength training through full range is usually the better investment than stretching alone
• Consistency beats intensity — three times a week, several weeks, and you'll see something

With the exercises from this text — Banded Shoulder Dislocates, static Banded External Rotations, Wall Angels, arm circles, Lunge Rotation, Squat Rotation, Elevated Bulgarian Split Squat, Scapula Pull-Ups and hanging — you have a toolkit that takes you far. Really far.

And at the same time: there's a limit beyond which you can't get any further on your own.

The untrained eye doesn't recognize where mistakes are happening. You don't know what you don't know. If your shoulder blade slips slightly forward in the external rotation — you won't see that on your own body. If your lumbar spine compensates during the Bulgarian Split Squat — you'll only feel it once the pain comes. If the Lunge Rotation actually only happens in the shoulder and not in the thoracic spine — that's a classic beginner's mistake that often only surfaces during live coaching.

That's exactly what my workshops are for: live, hands-on, with individual correction. I test you, I show you exercises that fit your specific finding, and I go through the movement pattern with you directly until it sits.