d.) Which drills you do are doing should be SPECIFIC TO YOUR NEEDS.

Ideally, they should be

prescribed to you by a competent physical therapist or other medical sports expert. Just doing a
bunch of “must do” mobility
mobility work is a great way to waste your
your time.

3.) Mobility is ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE SPORT-SPECIFIC.

When someone asks asks you if your mobility is good, a great response
response is “good for what?”
what?” Unless you
work in the Chinese Circus, infinite mobility is a goal that will distract your efforts (and compete
with them on a time, recovery, and adaptive direction
direction front) from your ACTUAL
ACTUAL SPORT. If you’re
a powerlifter and you have 10 hours a week to train, any amount of that time spent becoming
MORE MOBILE THAN THE SPORT DEMANDS is time you could have spent actually training
for powerlifting and getting bigger, stronger, and/or more competent with limit weights. How
much mobility is enough for powerlifting? If y ou can squat with your preferred stance and hit all
the positions to depth without rounding your back or caving your knees or lifting your heels,
that’s as much lower body mobility as you need. Any more is cool for its own sake, but won’t
transfer to the lifts. Same idea goes for the bench and deadlift. If you’re trying to get mobile
enough to be able to overhead squat, and you’re a powerlifter, you’re likely wasting your time. If
you’re a weightlifter, overhead
overhead squatting is important
important and mobility work for it should
should be
prioritized, as should being able to hit all the other more extreme positions, and the same applies
to every other sport; train for the mobility you NEED, not just “as much as I can get.”

4.) Foam rolling and other tissue compression techniques might mask pain or work through
other neural mechanisms, but they almost certainly don’t literally break down the tissue and
make it more flexible directly. If you feel way better foam rolling certain areas before you begin to
train, go to town. But if you’re foam rolling your entire body and you have no idea why short of
“that one guy on YouTube said so,” you might want to back off and put your training time
towards things like getting stronger or faster or having better technique for your sport.

5.) How do you find professionals (online and in-person) that aren’t likely to fuck you over and
take your money in exchange for BS mobility panaceas? Here’s a good start for a checklist:

a.) The individual should be credentialed by some formal institution of medicine or sport… not
mandatory but helpful.

b.) The individual should

should NOT think that every
every problem has a mobility
mobility or activation solution. If
they do… run.

c.) The individual should be VERY wary of making fast diagnoses and offering fast solutions on
minimal evidence. Most of the best folks in this industry will need to chat with you at length and
likely do at least a video consult where you move around for them and describe your issues in
depth. If you’re getting diagnosed via a 30s clip you posted to IG, be very wary. Even the very best
can’t do that with confidence.

d.) If someone is offering you shotgun diagnoses without you asking them (they just comment on
your videos or posts), they are less likely to know
know what they’re doing. Qualified
Qualified professionals do
their work for money in a personal setting, not for free in public.