Do You Need Stability or Mobility?

Stability and Mobility are two of the most common terms within health and fitness.  

What the heck do they mean in a fitness context anyway? 

Stability is a joint’s ability to withstand force without compromising position.  I.e: A stable knee joint is able to land from a jump without blowing out ligaments, crushing cartilage and creating a lifetime of pain and suffering.

Little extreme… take it easy Kev, it’s been awhile.   

Mobility is a joint’s ability to access range of motion again, without compromising position.  This could look like a hip being able to get to the bottom of a squat position without crying out in shame, or a shoulder being able to reach behind for the seatbelt without reading you a list of demands prior to blinding you with pain.   

If you read closely, one can argue that these two words could have similar meanings in a movement context.   

Ideally, good movement has BOTH mobility and stability within it.  

Yikes… I thought english was hard enough already.   

A term “mostability” was coined by Dr. David Tiberio back in the 80’s and 90’s and while it has yet to break into our current dictionary, the concept of applying both words to movement is still present in the pursuit of high performance or pain-free movement.   

You can watch a vlog on the concept by Mr. Tiberio here.

When it comes to writing training programs - trainers tend to throw around the term “stability” when they see joints waving in the breeze and “mobility” when they see a grimace when asking someone to scratch their forehead.

How can we actually determine if the issue is a stability issue (lack of joint integrity) vs. a strength issue (lack of muscular strength surrounding the joint)? 

How can we determine if the issue is a mobility issue (lack of active range of motion) vs. a flexibility issue (lack of passive range of motion)? 

These are questions that accomplished trainers, PT’s, OT’s and physios can answer through thorough assessment.  

Hint: The answer is more complex than “you need to stretch more”.

Asterisk: Rarely has someone gotten to end of life and said “I wish I had stretched less”.‍ ‍Please, do not use this article as a reason to avoid stretching.  

Use it as a reason to dive deeper into your training plan. Continuing to learn about your body can help you more fully understand why your knee hurts all of a sudden, or why your body just doesn’t bend that way right now!

If you want to learn more about how our experienced staff of coaches assess and program at Soma VT, reach out to book a free consultation or reach out to our staff at train@somavt.com and we are happy to share more! 

Thank you for reading.