Overcoming Mobility Plateaus: A Guide to Pain-Free Performance with Primal Mobility

 If you’re reading this…you get it. The gym can be the most empowering and therapeutic place. It’s a place where most of us go to unwind, leave our stress behind, and occasionally rage war on the weights.

It’s an unfortunate thing; at some point in our lives, we all will experience some kind of prolonged pain that will often hold us back in the gym. While this is completely normal, what’s unfortunate is how most people will feel helpless during this time period. They’ll do all their stretches and corrective exercises but don’t feel like they’re making the progress that they should. 

This is exactly why we’re creating this article. To make sure that you have the tools to help you avoid these issues before they happen and to give you a new perspective on how to approach them when they do. 

In this article we’ll cover:

• The top 3 challenges barbell athletes face when it comes to mobility
• Answer questions that we frequently get about these top 3 challenges
• Explain the 5 Pillars of the Primal Method
• Give you a mobility exercise to try for each one of the five pillars (I bet you haven’t tried mobility training like this before..)

Common Mobility Challenges

Let’s dive into 3 common mobility challenges that most (if not all) barbell athletes will struggle with at some point. You may be struggling with one or more of these too.

1. Can’t escape the discomfort when under the bar, so you spend 30+ mins warming up

Over 65% of clients that first join Primal Mobility claim to be spending roughly 30 minutes per workout to warm up. By their second month with us, the majority of them have been able to drop that by 50%...As much as we love being in the gym, what we’re truly in love with is the real work. We don’t want to spend 30% of our time warming up and preparing to crush shit; we just want to buckle up and throw down… Spending anywhere near 30 minutes to warm up, only to STILL be met with the same discomfort we are trying to escape, can be insanely frustrating. 
 

2. A discomfort builds up into pain, and you’re struggling to figure out how to address it

You’re stretching, you’re foam rolling, and you might even already be following a mobility protocol…but you’re stuck, and the issue is building up. If you’ve been in the gym for a hot minute, you already know that discomfort is a part of the process. Unfortunately, many athletes will find that these discomforts eventually build up into something more troubling, and it ultimately starts to impact their training in a big way. Little niggles are a completely natural part of the process when you’re pushing yourself in the gym. What isn’t necessary is for them to grow into something that ends up holding you back, ultimately creating even more obstacles to mobility.

3. Everything you’re attempting to do to resolve the issue only seems to offer short-term relief

Most athletes won’t struggle with pain and discomfort due to a lack of effort. After all, you’re in the gym throwing down with some heavy shit…you’re not afraid of hard work. The problem is often a lack of knowledge. You’re just not sure what to focus on when you’re trying to get this issue sorted out. So you focus on the symptom. The root cause is likely located somewhere else, which causes the symptom to flare up, and without the appropriate understanding of why it might be happening, you end up giving the oil to the squeaky wheel. This is why the efforts most athletes are making are very short-lived, and the discomfort or pain will often build up throughout the workout, causing athletic performance barriers or coming back within a couple of hours. 

Your Burning Mobility Questions, Answered

Q: How can I shorten my warmup and still make progress with my mobility issues?

A: We like to guide our clients to focus on the “big ticket items”...Focus on the areas in the body that will have a large influence on how other areas perform. For us, we use the Primal Big 3 - the ankles, hips, and thoracic spine. These three main areas have the biggest play in how the rest of the body moves. If you spend your time here, everywhere else will feel the work.

Q: Regardless of how long I warm up, I still don’t feel as good as I used to once I get under the bar..what should I do?

A: Make sure your warmup is highly active and primes the nervous system for WORK. It’s very common for athletes to spend their time stretching before a workout so that they can feel less “tight”. While this definitely helps to reduce the perception of tightness, it’s not actually offering much benefit to your workout and how you feel within it. Instead, put those muscles to work through various different ranges of motion. Instead of just stretching your glutes through a pigeon stretch, get your glutes to engage and work hard in that stretched position by actively pressing your knee down into the floor and pressing your body weight up. This perspective will help you reframe your warmup and have your muscles supporting your lifts instead of still figuring out how to “turn on” during the workout.

Q: Every time I get injured in the gym, the issue starts small and grows into something bigger. How should I take action to avoid this?

A: The trick is catching the issue early. You’re already well aware that an issue is building, so once it catches your attention, it’s important to find out where it is originating from. The symptom will be distracting. It’s uncomfortable and makes you want to find a way to get rid of it fast, so stretching and rolling are the obvious choices at the moment. But if we want the issue to be gone for good, we need to take a step back and approach the area where the symptom is rooted within. This is how we stop the issue from building up and how we achieve long-term results.

Q: How do I know where to find the root of my discomfort to actually make long-term progress?

A: This is a common question we get, but a tough one to answer. Unfortunately, the solution is simple but not necessarily easy. It comes down to knowledge and awareness around addressing mobility concerns. The better you understand the mechanics of your positions and movements, the better you’ll be able to address the root of the issue. Think of it this way, if you’re sitting in a boat with a hole in it in the middle of the ocean, you can sit there and endlessly scoop water out of the boat to avoid sinking. Or you can find a way to plug the hole and stop the leak from the source. If you didn’t know about the hole, that option becomes impossible until you figure it out. This is the same as the root cause approach. You have to better understand the situation before you can solve the problem logically. We have tons of articles and resources that can help you understand common problems, but hiring a Primal Mobility coach (or educating yourself through our courses) for expert advice will always be the best approach to getting the answers!

Mastering Mobility Techniques for Immediate Relief

Now let’s dive into the practical stuff. We all want immediate relief, and Primal Mobility will do everything possible to get you that, but we also want that relief to stick. There's a method to our madness, so let me break it down👇

In this section, I’ll briefly explain the 5 Pillars of the Primal Method and give you a mobility exercise that pairs up well for each! For this, I’ll provide a few videos from our exercise library of our step-by-step techniques.

5 Pillars of the Primal Method

1. Awareness & Connection

This right here is often the “missing link” in other mobility approaches. It’s common for athletes to simply go through the motions with their mobility exercises, but taking a step back, focusing on the intention and truly connecting to your body during the movement can drastically increase the speed of your results. Awareness & Connection are our first pillar, as it is something that we weave into every single exercise and pattern that we do in our programming.

Try this exercise for Awareness & Connection

2. Build New Ranges

Build New Ranges is our pillar that is directly focused on improving not only the amount of range of motion you currently have, but also the quality of that range of motion. This pillar opens the doors for us to create a new foundation of mobility that will have you moving free from restrictions. This is where most people spend all of their time in their mobility training. The technique they will often use is static stretching. While we believe that there is a time and place for static stretching, there are other techniques that may be even more helpful (and less boring) in your effort to improve your mobility.

Try this exercise for Build New Ranges

3. Stability

Stability is the first step in fostering an influence on the nervous system. With stability, we are now training the muscles to begin engaging within the deepest ranges of motion, where they were previously “confused” and weak. This approach creates a neurological connection to new ranges of motion and helps your body hold onto the results for longer, as your muscles are now “learning” how to use those deeper ranges.

Try this exercise for Stability

4. Movement Control

Now is where things start to get interesting. When it comes to mobility training, it’s common for people to notice that they’re getting stronger in particular positions but seem to struggle to apply those ranges of motion to their movement. In life and in training, we will be moving ourselves into positions that may be weak or unfamiliar. With this pillar of the Primal Method, we can now start to train our body to become more comfortable using our deepest ranges of motion while applying movement so that we feel confident when those ranges are exposed in our training. 

Try this exercise for Movement Control

5. Strength 

The glue that holds it all together is strength. When it comes to long-term results, strength truly is the key. The reason strength is so crucial is that our nervous system requires trust to allow us to hold onto our ranges. If it doesn’t believe that we can manage our deepest ranges when they are loaded and put to the test, then it won’t allow us to hold onto them for longer than a few hours. If we want to rebuild a new mobility foundation, then we need to foster strength in our deepest ranges. This is the key to long-term results. 

Try this exercise for Strength

From Plateau to Performance🏋️

Meet Jamie, a 33-year-old Olympic Weightlifter and mother of 2 who was suffering from daily knee pain. The pain had gotten to a point where it was affecting her training. She would often wrap her knees as a method to hopefully reduce the pain, and occasionally even have to stop her training sessions early because of it. 

After only 4 weeks of working with Primal Mobility, her knee was 75% better. She no longer needs to wrap the knee for lifting or stop lifting due to pain! Jamie noticed improvements in the bottom of her squats and overhead positioning when lifting, and now feels a lot more in tune with her body. 

Conclusion 

Listen, we’re all the same when it comes to our results…we want them, and we want them now. I get it, but mobility training takes work. The exercises are challenging, it’s tough to remain consistent, and there are ups and downs throughout the process, but it’s one of the most rewarding things you can do. At the end of the day, I know you’re not afraid of hard work, and the results are just on the other side of it.

If you’re feeling stuck with your mobility, I want you to keep putting in the effort! You definitely can and will see results if you just stick to it and find the approach that works best for you.

If you feel like you need more support to finally get rid of your discomfort and master your movement so that you feel confident AF in your body's ability when you get under the barbell, book a call with our Head Coach, Bekah, to see if Primal Mobility is a good fit. She’ll give you all the details of our strength-based mobility training programs!

Let’s go!🤘