Mobility, is it foundamental to be fast?

Maybe that’s not the first aspect you will appreciate when you watch a Speed competition, you think about strength, power, speed, frequency, coordination, but how much can mobility impact your performance?

Today we will find it out!

Sometimes a photo can tell much more than a text, and so i want to show you this, Last World Cup in China, Tomoa Skip, let’s look at the angles:

Hip and Knee angles of Samuel and Ankle angle of Ryo, both athletes who attended the final at that World Cup demonstrate the capacity to reach (and probably control) extreme angles at the lower limbs and at the lower limbs in relation with the flexion of the upper body.

For example the normal non weight bearing ankle dorsiflexion for the National Institute of Health should be between 0 and 16.5 degrees, as we can see in the photo below Ryo Omasa is displaying a huge 40° of non weight bearing ankle dorsiflexion, that's a 242% more than the norm!

If you think about this when you approch to an hold it can mean many more cents of seconds in which you have time to approach, stabilize and push a hold, this can mean a huge difference in top speed and as Samuel Watson have demonstrated at the first 2024 World Cup, many world records.

The main ranges to take into account are Ankle dorsiflexion, Hip flexion, Hip external-rotation, Shoulder flexion, Shoulder external rotation.

These charateristics are trainable and has to be taken in consideration to leverage every opportunity of improvement, it may take a lot of time and effort but in the long run it’s always a good investment to take into account.

In the future we will talk about the difference between flexibility and mobility and how to train them!

See you at the next article