SaveYourself.ca helps you solve pain problems

Mobilizing!

An alternative to stretching that “massages you with movement”

by Paul Ingraham, Vancouver, Canada MORE
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Credentials and qualifications

I am a writer and retired Registered Massage Therapist (unusually well-trained for a massage therapist, a 3000-hour program). I’m almost done with a Bachelor of Health Sciences degree. I am a peer reviewer for The Natural Standard, and a copyeditor for Science-Based Medicine. My most important qualification is more than a decade of workaholic post-graduate study, clinical experience, and constant conversations with readers from around the world, including many experts who have provided countless suggestions and criticisms.

For more information, see: Who Am I to Say? More information about my qualifications, credentials and professional experiences for my readers and customers.


Mobilizations are basically active stretches and rhythmical movements that “massage” your tissues with movement. They can warm you up, gradually expand your comfort zone, relieve tension and muscle knots, facilitate healing, and prepare you for athletic activity. Mobilizing is an extremely easy form of therapeutic exercise, easily fine-tuned for anyone, which can be used to efficiently stimulate specific tissues with just the right amount of activity — not too much, but enough to facilitate healing.

A great deal of scientific evidence suggests that movement, especially early in healing, is a crucial part of recovery from injuries and surgeries. This is known in the rehab business as “early mobilization.” I also routinely prescribe mobilizations for:

These additional applications are all unconventional and unproven, so I’m earning my stripes as an “alternative” health care professional. In this article, I will explain why you should mobilize, and of course how.

Table of Contents

Early mobilization — a critical rehab concept

In 1966, in Vietnam, my father was shot in the leg, a terrible wound that shattered his femur from hip to knee. A progressive young doctor insisted that he start walking as soon as the bone could take it — a direct contradiction to the orders of a more senior physician, a doctor who was actually famous for inventing the traction equipment my father was strapped into. My father followed the younger doctor’s advice, and experienced a remarkable recovery. We can never know for sure if early mobilization was as decisive a factor for him as it seemed to be, but for the last thirty years orthopaedics has evolved decisively in that direction. Today, doctors often won’t put a cast on a fracture if they can avoid it — fractures heal faster when they aren’t completely immobilized.12

My father in traction

After a bullet shattered his femur, a young physician encouraged my father to get moving as soon as possible. Here he is visiting with actor Jackie Cooper. Early in the war, Vietnam veterans were treated like heroes.

Acute low back pain has been shown to respond much better to normal activity than to bed rest.34 Achilles tendon ruptures have been shown to heal faster with early mobilization after surgery.5 Whiplash victims recover much faster if they get moving right away after their accident, rather than wearing a collar.6

Too much of a good thing?

Not every injury should be mobilized immediately! For instance, in early 2009, new research showed that using excessively early mobilization for severe ankle sprains simply doesn’t work.7 This experiment clearly showed that sprains heal much better if put in a cast initially, contrary to the almost universal practice of using braces and tubular compression bandages. Obviously it’s not a great idea to mobilize unstable tissue before it’s ready. Mobilizing “as soon as possible” does not include wiggling joints that are hanging by a thread of ripped connective tissue!

For all the evidence that early mobilization is a crucial concept in rehabilitation, the prescription is easy: just do as much as you can, as soon as you can, and let the pain be your guide. It’s not a type of exercise, just a sensible idea, no different than it was in 1966 — it’s just “let’s get you moving as soon as possible.” It didn’t seem like common sense forty years ago, when “bed rest” was the first thing physicians recommended for practically everything, but it does seem straightforward these days.

Bourne concentrated on rest and mobility. From somewhere in his forgotten past he understood that recovery depended upon both and he applied rigid discipline to both.

The Bourne Identity, by Robert Ludlum, p137

But mobilizations — the way I usually prescribe them — do not exist in mainstream rehabilitation theory, and exactly how and why to do them needs to be spelled out. It’s not exactly radical, but it’s not exactly obvious either. What is it? And why am I recommending something that doctors and other physical therapists do not?

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Good for prevention, too!

Mobilizations aren’t just for rehab — they are also good for keeping you from needing rehab in the first place!

For one athletic season, over a thousand female footballers — that’s “soccer” to many of us — participated in a warmup routine.8 Their goal was to “improve strength, awareness, and neuromuscular control” — coordination practice, basically. Many of the exercises were similar in principle to the kind of mobilizations I teach.9

Several hundred other players did no such exercises.

The difference between the groups was remarkable. The athletes with the coordination-o-centric warmup had fewer traumatic injuries, and fewer overuse injuries, and the injuries they did have were less severe. This evidence strongly suggests that mobilizations are generally a useful tool for preventing athletic injury.

Massaging with movement

Mobilizations as a therapeutic exercise system are best understood as “massaging with movement.” That phrase neatly summarizes most of this article. Feel free to skip down to the practical sections now, if you don’t need to read all the details. “Active stretching” is roughly equivalent.

Mobilizations are an easy, cheap, safe, efficient way of stimulating tissue — and stimulating tissue has many benefits. I prescribe mobilization exercises extensively to treat just about all kinds of pain problems, even in cases of pain where there is no reason to expect any significant relief by any method. Mobilization is still useful, I think, even then.

I prescribe mobilizations for just about all kinds of pain problems.

Unfortunately, there is little direct scientific evidence to support that opinion, although I suspect that it will emerge steadily over the next twenty years. Evidence is emerging around the edges. Just as it is now more or less established that early mobilization is an important part of rehabilitation, it will probably also be established that it is more broadly beneficial. Meanwhile, a sound rationale will have to suffice … and the indirect evidence.

And the indirect evidence is pretty good.

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The Goldilocks principle

We know from research that regular moderate activity is generally a good thing,1011 tissue stagnancy is bad news,12 and that overexertion is dangerous to healing tissues.1314

That pretty clearly implies a need for some kind of in-between exercise intensity, something not too easy nor too hard, but a Goldilocks “juuuust right.”15

But conventional therapeutic and rehabilitative exercise tends to hit only the extremes. For serious injuries, there are the gentlest of exercises, such as pain free range of motion (PF-ROM) exercises, like dangling and swinging your arm in a six-inch circle when you’re recovering from a shoulder dislocation. That’s your only option when you can barely move your shoulder. But what if you have more or less normal use of your arm, but have nevertheless had chronic, nasty shoulder pain for three years?

The therapeutic intensity mobilizations is not too easy nor too hard, but a Goldilocks “juuuust right.”

That’s when your physiotherapist will almost inevitably prescribe endurance or strength training exercises — which are often too intense, and aggravate the problem or simply don’t help it, even while your continuing difficulties are interpreted as a sign that you “really need” the exercise. What you “really need” is a compromise. You need mobilizations! This is where they fit into the scheme of rehabilitative exercise:

Spectrum of intensity of rehabilitative exercises
RepetitionsLoadingChallenge
PF-ROM Exercises 25–100 extremely low painless
Mobilizing! 25–75 low mild discomfort
Endurance Training 12–50 low to moderate moderate exertion discomfort
Strength Training 6–12 moderate to high strong exertion discomfort

Mobilizations fill in the gap in conventional rehabilitation exercise between PF-ROM and endurance training. They are ideal for a wide range of patients, the neglected masses of people who are not exactly acutely “injured,” but not exactly feeling good either:

These are enormous groups of suffering people for whom PF-ROM may be too gentle and endurance training too much.

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Sick muscle syndrome

I feel like a stuck record, sometimes. As my clients and regular readers will know, the words “myofascial pain syndrome” and “trigger points” are a constant refrain in my office and in my articles. Why? Because muscles knots — everybody together now! — cause, complicate, and/or replace nearly all pain problems. Including the spooky pain syndromes, including severe cases of low back pain that your doctor blames on strains, herniated disks or arthritis, including weird pains that people mistake for appendicitis, heart attacks, and tooth cavities.

What’s more, as important as it is, doctors and physical therapists of all kinds are pretty much oblivious to the clinical significance of myofascial pain syndrome.

Muscles knots — everybody together now! — cause, complicate, and/or replace nearly all pain problems.

See Save Yourself from Trigger Points & Myofascial Pain Syndrome! for much more information, and the evidence to back up what I’ve said so far. But it’s necessary to say a few words about it here, because mobilizations and muscle knots were made for each other.

I call myofascial pain syndrome “sick muscle syndrome,” because muscle knots are a muscular dysfunction that makes muscles weak and quick to fatigue. They ache and feel gross. Overstimulation or overexertion in the form of strength training, endurance training, or even stretching can irritate them.16

Overstimulation or overexertion irritates trigger points.

Yet they will also be aggravated by stagnancy! Life in a chair, for instance, is probably one of the primary causes of myofascial pain syndrome.17

Muscles with active, cranky trigger points must be stimulated, exercised … but they must be exercised gently. (And there’s the Goldilocks principle again.) Mobilizations to the rescue!

Now, let’s get practical …

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How to do mobilizations

Mobilization exercises are easy to invent for yourself! One of the main reasons that I am enthusiastic about mobilizations is that nearly anyone can do them with only a small amount of instruction.18 To create a mobilization exercise, you need the following elements:

Mobilizations depend on movement to get the job done. Choose a joint, perhaps one closest to the pain if your pain is in a specific location, and begin to explore its range of movement. Which directions can you move it? How far? See, you’re already mobilizing!

Start to move back and forth in the joint’s range. Visualize the muscles attached to it: are they shortening and lengthening? The muscles do not have to contract hard, but they do have to contract, enough for metabolic activity. Imagine the muscle being squeezed out like a sponge every time it contracts. Picture the bones “stirring” your muscles.

A mobilization squeezes a muscle like a sponge every time it contracts.

Is it easy? If you are injured or in pain, usually there is some limitation to the movement. Find the “edge” of your range. Approach your limits, feel the edge, and retreat. You don’t have to test it hard. Achieve results with repetition, not intensity.

How much repetition? Quite a lot …

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Repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition …

The real power of mobilizations is in the repetitions. Every repetition of a movement is like a message to the body, asking it to function, to do its job. The message is mild-mannered, but persistent. Repeat it enough, and the body will start to respond. Most pain and stiffness will yield sooner or later if you just … keep … asking.

Most pain and stiffness will yield sooner or later if you just … keep … asking.

How many times should you repeat the exercise? Lots. Enough that you should be thinking, near the end, “Wow, this is really quite a lot of these.” Once you have found a satisfying movement, you should repeat it approximately 25–75 times in a single set, and you should do approximately 1–3 sets per day. For example:

There is one really important thing to avoid with repetitions: don’t try to split up a large batch of mobilizations into pieces over the whole day. Remember, every movement is like a message to your tissues. The message must be repeated, or the body seems to “forget” what you were asking for. If you split your mobilizations up into three smaller batches at breakfast, lunch and dinner, then your body won’t get the message at breakfast, won’t get it again at lunch, and still won’t get it at dinner.

Very generally speaking, most people’s bodies don’t seem to start to respond to the “message” until somewhere between 25–50 … and definitely on the higher end of that for older and more severe problems.

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Troubleshooting: make it easier!

A common mistake is to give up instead of just making it easier.

If mobilizing feels exhausting to your muscles, make it easier.

If you start to tighten up, make it easier.

If it hurts to much, make it easier.

Make it as easy as necessary to allow lots of repetitions! If you’ve tried this and a mobilization still feels like a Bad Thing in any way — or just pointless — then please listen to your instincts and stop. Mobilizations aren’t good for every situation, just most of them.

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Trust your instincts (or “The Squirming Method”)

Although a knowledge of anatomy is required for cooking up the very best mobilizations for certain problems, most worthwhile mobilizations are obvious, intuitive, almost instinctive

The body abhors stillness.19 Most of us tend to start mobilizing by instinct. Everyone squirms when they are uncomfortable, when we’ve been sitting for too long. Wrenching the neck or rolling the head in a circle, swinging the arms, opening the chest in the morning, swinging the hips, a quick toe touch … these are all common, natural “mobilizations.”

Everyone squirms!

But these movements tend to be brief, and are often negative, even desperate if you are in chronic discomfort. Instead of mobilizing, people try — often unconsciously — to squirm, wriggle and wrench their way free of pain and stiffness. They rarely do more than take the edge off, at best.

To convert these anxious movements into therapeutic mobilizations, simply make them more deliberate, positive, and thorough. Don’t just pull your neck to the side once or twice: do it ten times, or a hundred times. Convert the instinct into an exercise! Watch for how you tend to squirm, and use it as the basis for a mobilization.

Mobilizations versus squirming
Squirming Mobilizations
instinctive rational
desperate optimistic
takes the edge off therapeutic
1–3 repetitions 10–50 repetitions

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Use your favourite stretches as inspiration

Mobilizations are probably more therapeutic than stretching, in my opinion. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. If nothing else, your favourite stretches are a good source of inspiration: any stretch can be converted into a mobilization simply by entering and leaving the stretch rhythmically.

People tend to “accidentally” mobilize when they meant to stretch anyway: impatient with slow stretches and craving the stimulation of more movement, stretchers often hold their stretches only briefly, and then repeat them haphazardly trying to “scratch the itch” of stiffness. All that is needed to turn this kind of stretching into a more effective mobilization is simply to make it more rhythmic and deliberate. You can even think of mobilizations as a kind of stretching, or as “dynamic stretching.”20

People tend to “accidentally” mobilize when they meant to stretch anyway.

And, of course, static stretching may have some value as well. It’s a bit dubious, but holding a stretch often feels so good that I recommend including it in your mobilizations. Simply pause the mobilization in a stretched position for as long as you like, and then resume moving when you are ready.

But bear in mind that classic slow or static (still) stretching is physiologically boring — not much happens. Indeed, evidence and reason show that stretching cannot achieve the goals that people usually have in mind for it.21 It is possible that stretching may be useful for relieving some stiffness and pain caused by trigger points, but probably not much in most cases.22

Meanwhile, mobilizations are more stimulating, and almost certainly affect more tissue, more efficiently. They probably have both significant general benefits, as well as a more direct effect on trigger points.

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Not a life sentence

One of the nice things about mobilizations is that they are so efficient that it is often not necessary to do many of them for long. This is much different than the typical physiotherapy model! Clients have often brought me their exercise prescriptions from physiotherapists: a regimen that takes a whole page to outline, several more pages of diagrams …

Differences between mobilizations and typical physiotherapy prescriptions
1–5 exercises 3–20 exercises
usually no more than a few minutes per day commonly at least a 30-minute daily commitment
a few days is usually sufficient several weeks of regular exercising is often considered normal
not a life sentence kind of feels like one …

The advantage of mobilization is that it is relatively easy to prescribe just a few relevant exercises that efficiently address the tissues in need. And there is little need to do them without knowing if they are doing any good: the benefits should be obvious within three days at the most. If there are no obvious benefits, stop. If the benefits are obvious, it won’t matter much to you whether it takes three days or three weeks. But in any case, mobilizations rarely need to be continued for long.

Unless, of course, you just like them …

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Mobilizing for pleasure … and prevention

Like stretching, mobilizing just feels good, and mobilizing regularly is an ideal way to maintain musculoskeletal health as well as restore it. A set of your favourite mobilizations can easily be the meat of a pleasing daily regimen — like a little yoga ritual, but more dynamic and less about stretching, or like taiqi but without all the tradition and demanding technique.

Mobilizations are most of all like qigong, Chinese “calisthenics,” but are much more Western in style: practical, efficient, “just do it.”

Mobilizing can be a lot like taiqi … but without all the tradition and demanding technique.

If you’re not actually trying to fix something, mobilizations do not have to be done in large batches. “Small batch” mobilizations are more useful for maintenance and prevention, primarily because you can quickly do a wider variety of mobilization exercises. This is better for body awareness and distributes stimulation more evenly throughout your body and your day.

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Microbreaking

Probably no group of people can benefit more from regular, small batches of mobilizations than chair-bound office workers, followed closely by cashiers and others who are more or less stuck in one position and/or activity while working.

For all of you, “microbreaking” — taking small, regular, stimulating breaks — is the most important new concept in ergonomics. Stop worrying as much about how your workstation is arranged, and start thinking about how you use it!

Mobilizing is an ideal way to spend your microbreaks. Three or four times an hour, even if it’s only for thirty seconds or a minute, you should not just be getting up and changing your position, but dousing your nervous system and cranky muscles with movement.

For more information, see Microbreaking.

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Conclusion: one more time, why and how in just a few words

Let’s wrap up by condensing this whole article into one brief explanation:

The most efficient exercise method for helping muscles and joints heal is to “massage them with movement,” providing just enough stimulation to facilitate healing, but not so much to aggravate. Mobilizing as soon as possible is proven to reduce recovery time from injury and surgery, and these benefits probably extend into recovering from chronic pain problems as well, especially those that involve muscle knots (which is most of them).

To do it, simply move rhythmically, shortening and lengthening muscles — basically, stretch one way and then the other, neither fast nor slow, pushing hard enough to be interesting but not hard enough to make anything worse. This is very much like squirming when stiff, only more repetitive and optimistic. The following numbers are roughly appropriate for most rehabilitation:

For maintenance and prevention, smaller and more frequent batches of mobilizations are ideal.

Oh, and one more thing …

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My favourite mobilizations!

The possibilities are literally infinite, and nearly any kind of rhythmic movement is useful. Nevertheless — with decades of practice, clinical experience, and knowledge of anatomy — I have cooked up some pretty good mobilizations! A complete reference to mobilization exercises for many common conditions is published in Appendix C. But here are four favourites, great examples of “feel good” mobilizations that I always look forward to doing …

Have fun!

Deep Gluteal Mobilization — Starting from a seated position, place your ankle on the stretch side over your knee on the other side. Let your lifted knee relax downwards for a moment, and then begin to lean forward from your pelvis. Avoid simply slumping forward, which is useless. The image that is the key to this stretch is to “push your belly button between your legs.” Now do this on the other side, to even yourself out, even if you have symptoms only on one side. Now, to complete the mobilization for both sides, place your feet widely on the floor, and drop your knees straight down towards the floor.

diagram of the Deep Gluteal Mobilization exercise

Stick-Yer-Bum-Out — This unusual mobilization reaches the low back and gluteus maximus in a way that no other exercise can, stimulating that hard-to-reach spot in the very bottom “corner” of the low back, just above the dimple. Stick your bum out as though you are going to sit down on a stool that is well behind you and off to one side. Your knees must bend. Round your low back like the top of a ball, lean your torso in the other direction (i.e. bum goes left, torso goes right), and twist your shoulders to face back towards the middle. (The further you lean and twist, the further the stretch will “reach” into your upper back.) To conclude, stand up and lean back a bit, clenching your gluteal and low back muscles firmly. Now alternate from side to side: left, clench, right, clench, left, clench, etc.

diagram of the Stick-Yer-Bum-Out exercise

Forearm Mobilizations, seated — Sit on the edge of your bed or any other firm surface where there is space to put your hands down on either side of you. Stretch the hand back by placing the palm face down with your fingers towards you. Lean into it a bit and then release. Repeat this on the other side. Now go back to the first hand again and do the opposite: place the back of your hand downwards, fingers still pointing towards you. Lean into it for a moment, and then switch to the other side. Now just rhymically move back and forth: right, left, right, left, and so on. Keeping your elbows locked helps.

(No diagram for this exercise yet, I’m afraid. It’s on the to do list. Somewhere.)


Chest Opening and Closing Mobilization — This exercise duplicates a familiar natural stretch that most of us do automatically in the morning or after getting up from a lot of sitting: spread your arms way back and lift your chest up. Now, to turn it into a mobilization, simply reverse the movement: reach your arms strongly across your chest and go “hunchbacked.”

diagram of the Chest Opening and Closing Mobilization exercise

Appendix A: The Chinese influence

I have been practicing taiqi and qigong since I was fifteen years old, when I first took lessons from an unlikely teacher, Prince George’s Sam Masich. Not much older than I was at the time, just twenty or so, Sam had recently returned from China, where he had won an international competition. Prince George, despite being a bit of a rednecked, backwater place, has a surprising way of producing talented people!

I am grateful to Sam for getting me off on the right foot with taiqi. I learned early that taiqi was practical as well as artful. Sam loved the martial aspects of taiqi, and would gleefully demonstrate how various poses related to the fighting stances of kung fu. To this day, I still notice how practically every taiqi student — they can often be seen on downtown Vancouver’s waterfront — still overextend themselves, reaching and leaning much too far, not realizing that taiqi is all about balance and grounding.

Taiqi is also all about movement. The Chinese really get the idea of “use it or lose it.” In fact, taiqi is just one ingredient in a vast stew of ideas called “qigong,” which is basically “Chinese calisthenics.” Mobilization is qigong: gentle, rhythmic exercise.

The Chinese really get the idea of “use it or lose it.”

Qigong, less well-known in the West, is extremely popular in China. The Chinese do it because it is a really smart form of exercise: stimulating enough to be useful, gentle enough to be useful into old age.23 While I was still in school, I recognized the similarity between qigong and the “early mobilization” of acute injury rehabilitation. Yet the Chinese don’t just use qiqong for recovery from recent injuries: they also use it as preventative medicine, to treat chronic health problems (which traditional Chinese medicine is so generally adept at treating), and as a lifelong constitutional24 with the intention of extending longevity.25

I started prescribing qigong exercises as soon as I was in practice, in 2000, but I didn’t call them qigong exercises. I just took the Eastern mysticism out of it — there is plenty of “woo woo” in qigong! — and started selecting exercise that specifically stimulated the joints and soft tissues I felt were most relevant to the pain problems and injuries my clients were bringing to me.

Another nice short article related to this subject is Another Kind of Exercise.

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Appendix B: Case study of mobilizing a “neck crick”

Let’s look at the case of a neck crick in a little more detail. Why mobilize a neck crick? Neck cricks are caused by a combination of joint and muscular dysfunction, and usually respond well to stimulation. Neck range is limited by definition, and almost invariably increases with repeated gentle neck circles.

For a fresh, 2-day old severe neck crick, I would prescribe multiple large sets of neck circles each day, probably 3 sets of 80 (40 in each direction), with a good prognosis: based on my clinical experience, most people should be feeling much better after the first day of mobilizing, and will be almost completely recovered by the third day of mobilizing.

Most people will be almost completely recovered from a neck crick by the third day of mobilizing.

Is that actually any better than normal recovery time? It’s true, neck cricks generally do resolve on their own. However, it’s extremely common for them to bother people for three weeks, so getting that down to three days is a pretty good deal.

The neck circle is one of the simplest of all mobilizations: rolling the head around is pretty easy! I caution patients about the back of the circle, because the neck can feel uncomfortably crunchy in extension. But if it’s not distressing, it’s not a concern.

The trick is just to get the right intensity. If you only have 20˚ of right sidebending … then that’s all you do. With every circle, you just nudge the edge of that range. Somewhere between thirty and forty turns, that range will probably increase to 25˚, if not on the first set, then on the second; if not on the first day, then on the second.

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Appendix C: Mobilization Exercises Reference Chart

The following chart summarizes 21 mobilization exercises I commonly prescribe to my clients, and what they are best used for (other than mild pain and stiffness in the area, which is obvious).

Mobilizations Reference
MobilizationSummaryThis mobilization is especially good for …
abdominal liftBlow your breath out, and then suck your gut in strongly while holding your breath. More …• stress
• constipation
• mild digestive disturbance
• practicing good diaphragmatic breathing
Cats and DogsStraight from yoga: flex and extend your back while on your hands and knees. More …• low back pain
Chest Opening and Closing MobilizationSpread your arms wide — a classic “good morning” stretch — and then collapse and give yourself a hug. More …• low back pain
• upper back pain
• chest tightness
Chest RotationsRoll your chest in a slow-motion hoola hoop movement. This one is difficult for the coordination-challenged, but rewarding. More …• low back pain
• upper back pain
• tight chest
Deep Gluteal MobilizationSit, cross one leg over the other, and lean forward. Then spread the feet and push the knees in and down. Far superior to a common physiotherapy stretch prescribed for sciatica and piriformis syndrome. More …• low back pain
• sciatica
• piriformis syndrome
Doorway Pectoralis Major MobilizationAlternately stretch and contract the pectorals with the help of a doorframe. More …• chest tightness
Foot CirclesJust roll the feet in circles. Simple, surprisingly difficult, and helpful for a wide variety of lower leg and foot problems. More …• plantar fasciitis
• splints
Forearm Mobilizations, seatedSit on the edge of a bed and alternately bend your wrists forward and back on the mattress, with locked elbows. A deliciously stimulating sensation for computer users and cashiers. More …• tennis elbow
• typists
Forearm Mobilizations, standingBend your wrist back and forth with a locked elbow. Not as satisfying as the seated version (see Forearm Mobilizations, seated) but often more convenient. More …• tennis elbow
• typists
Iliopsoas MobilizationAlternate between flexing and internally rotating the hip, and then doing an ordinary lunge with the back foot turned in. Great for chair-bound office workers especially. More …• excessive sitting
• low back pain
Iliotibial Band MobilizationThis is a complex walking stretch derived from taiqi. Far superior to other iliotibial band stretches! More …• iliotibial band syndrome
Neck CirclesRoll your head in a circle. Incredibly useful for a huge array of common upper back, shoulder, neck and headache problems. More …• neck cricks
• tension headaches
Neck Flexor MobilizationsAlternate between pulling the chin towards one side of the chest, and then tilting the head backward and to the opposite side. Sort of … More …• tension headaches
• neck cricks
Pelvic CirclesSwing the hips in a circle. This is a simple but powerful mobilization for low back pain and sciatica. More …• low back pain
• iliotibial band syndrome
Rotator Cuff MobilizationsRotate the humerus back and forth in the shoulder joint with a complex alternating motion. A complex but important mobilization. More …• frozen shoulder
• arm pain
Spinal Twist MobilizationWhile standing, turn your upper body back and forth, twisting the spine. More …• low back pain
Standing Forward BendStraight from yoga: touch your toes and then stand up with a rolling motion of the spine. More …• low back pain
• iliotibial band syndrome
• tension headaches
Stick-Yer-Bum-OutStick your bum backwards and out to one side while twisting the spine. This reaches deep into one side of the low back. Then reverse the motion, and do the other side. More …• tension headaches
• low back pain
• iliotibial band syndrome
• sciatica
Supine Lumbar TwistsLying down, roll your pelvis and shoulders in opposite directions, back and forth. Supine lumbar twists are really pleasant, almost luxurious. More …• low back pain
• iliotibial band syndrome
Wide Arm CirclesSwing the arms in wide circles. One of the simplest of all mobilizations, and very helpful for many shoulder problems. More …• tension headaches
• rotator cuff injuries
Wrist CirclesRoll your wrists around in circles. Just like ankle rolls, this is surprisingly tiring! More …• carpal tunnel syndrome
• tennis elbow

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Further Reading