What You’re Craving is MO’bility
It’s not flexibility you’re craving, it’s MO’bility. Functional Range Conditioning (FRC) defines mobility as strength and control of our usable ranges of motion, building our articular load-bearing capacity while expanding our available range of motion for any given joint.
Let me rephrase that for you. MO’bility is when you have both strength and control with how your joints move. This is done building the capacity of what each joint can bear while expanding your available range of motion.
What’s behind this concept are you mechanoreceptors. Each of your joints have mechanoreceptors deep in the capsule of your joint that provides your nervous systems with afferent feedback. This is important to your body for survival because you need to know if you are overextending any of joints. You need a signal that says, “hey, STOP, you’re gonna hurt yourself”.
However there’s a catch. Our bodies are all about energy allocation. If you aren’t providing the stimulus (movement) your brain will start to “erase” those mechanoreceptors. You’ll hear me say we are “drawing a more detailed map” for your homunculus. If you don’t move, you don’t have enough detail in that drawing that tells your brain where you can move.
That map now provides efferent output to your musculoskeletal system allowing you to make those movements. So if you don’t move–you’re in big trouble when you add in length of time. If there’s no path drawn on your map, your brain is telling you you can’t go there. As if your GPS erased an available road.
One of the best ways to maintain your motor maps is the principle of CARs (Controlled Articular Rotations). CARs are both an assessment and a workout. A practice you can participate in the Waffle Membership. If you’ve never done CARs before, it does not mean there’s no hope. It just means you begin where you begin!
For a more in-depth way to recover from burnout and perform at your best, join our yearly course The Magic of Mistakes: Your Performance Lab or join us for daily practices in the Waffle Membership.
