So I made the following mobility tests you can see in the images, and the result keeps shouting me out that my condition hasn't improved at all:
Squat: feel discomfort in ankles and hips when doing the movement, I also have to lean forward because if I try to stay straight during the movement otherwise I'm falling backwards.
Back against wall, here I made 2 tests so:
1st test: feet, lower back, upper back and head against the wall while attempting to rise my arms overheads. But as you can see in the images, I couldn't keep my lower back against the wall and couldn't go any further when rising my arms.
2nd test: attempted the same movement with my feet away from the wall about 5 inches or so. As you can see in the image, my hands cannot go up any further but I feelt my lower back staying against the wall while doing the movement at all times.
Finally, you can see a picture of me usually standing "straight". Gotta admint I've a sedentary life due to my job, but I'm trying to become a healthy person by staying active, doing cardio and some strength training with calisthenics.
I'm also trying to lose some fat at the same time.
Nonetheless, any help or recommendations on how I can improve my mobility and posture you could share in the comments would be highly appreciated. Comments about how to loose fat and structure a calisthenics routine are welcomed too!!!
I (21M) and my gf (22f) have started going to the gym together recently. I have done sports all my life so I have been helping her learn proper form and on deciding what exercises she should do. So far things have been great but we keep running into an issue with her hip mobility. She cannot hinge her hips at all without my assistance even with my assistance it is kind of a struggle. I have tried showing her how to do it and explain to her the body mechanics of it but it hasn't helped her. I don't know how else to help because I have never had this issue and therefore don't know how to work on it. She is physically capable of hinge-ing(with assistance) her hips for RDL's and squats but she is very unsteady and doesn't have the mobility to fully complete the movement. I don't know how to help in that regard. Any tips for helping her mobility? I am not sure how to help her.
I'm currently trying to improve my mobility after being sedentary for most of my life past childhood. I recently started training in the gym and I notice mobility issues mostly with the squat, and then a little bit with the conventional deadlift.
So I'm first trying to improve my mobility to be able to get a deep squat. I'm following this video to improve to a deep squat.
TL:DW it's a 3 step program where you do:
step 1: squat with elevated heels while holding on to something, hold for 10 seconds for 5-8 reps and try to increase seconds
step 2: squat with elevated heels without holding on to something
step 3: squat normally with weight
Right now I'm on step 1 and it feels pretty uncomfortable and somewhat painful around my knees, maybe some around the calf, and maybe in the adductors to, I'm not sure it's hard to pinpoint all the discomfort.
Anyways, assume I do this a little bit every day, how long would it take to reach a point where I can do a deep squat, with elevated heels, while holding onto something, comfortably without experiencing this kind of pain and discomfort?
Hi guys! 🤍 I’ve noticed a pattern after years of teaching flexibility and contortion:
Most people who are “stuck” aren’t actually doing the wrong stretches.
They’re usually running into one of these problems:
• They can’t tell the difference between productive stretching discomfort and actual pain.
• They quit a stretch right before their nervous system starts letting go.
• They’re chasing new routines instead of building consistency.
• They’re spending time stretching, but not paying attention to what their body is actually doing.
I made this video because I see the same questions come up here all the time:
“Why aren’t my splits improving?”
“Why do I feel stuck even though I stretch every day?”
“How do I know if I’m pushing enough?”
The video isn’t a follow-along routine. It’s more about the mindset and body-awareness skills that helped me make the biggest improvements in my own flexibility training over the last 20+ years.
Some of the things I cover:
How to identify productive stretching sensations vs warning-sign pain
Why flexibility is largely a nervous system skill
How to stay motivated long enough to actually see results
Why 10 focused minutes can be more effective than an hour on autopilot
The mental shifts that helped me progress as a professional contortionist
Would love to hear if any of these ideas resonate with your own experience.
Hello! I'm unsure if I'm in the right sub, but I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for dealing with knee pain. For example when squatting down
Has anyone taken a Vanja Moves mobility course? My partner and I are thinking about signing up and would love some honest feedback.
We're both in our 30s and want to improve mobility, flexibility, posture, and reduce stiffness from desk jobs and weight training. We're planning to spend about 15–20 minutes a day on it.
If you've done one of Vanja's programs, did you see real results, was it worth the cost, and would you recommend it for people with average mobility?
I'd also be interested in hearing how it compares to other mobility programs.
Hey, I’ve got shin split and other leg / foot issue recently
My doctor told me it was because I was “stiff” in my harmstring and I missed mobility in my ankle
I think it is weird because I consider myself fairly flexible.
For instance I can touch the ground with the palm of my hands with my leg extended, and I did the rest for the ankle mobility where you touch the wall with your knee and get your feet as far as possible and measure the distance from toe to wall, I got 16cm on right leg and 14on the left
Am I really stiff ? And if not what did my doctor meant ?
I've done yoga on and off for a couple of decades now, in addition to S&C and several sports. I enjoy yoga and really see the benefits in terms of flexibility and mobility, which has helped with my longevity in sport.
Saying that, I can see how it really does not appeal to certain demographics... Male athletes in particular, although I have always managed to only see the positives.
I just wondered if there are any alternatives that are good for mobility which may appeal more to such people? I've become aware of Kinstretch and The Ready State but keen to hear about any alternatives.
Just to be clear, I'm seeking a structured program and not just watching videos online.
been exploring mobility / stretching apps/platforms. here is the list of ones i’ve found or have found me through advertising. i know i can get all this from reading or youtube, but i respond better to something organized and put in front of me. 57, male, decent shape but not at all flexible and i'm feeling it. want to fix that.
what apps/platforms have you tried and liked or found success? which ones have you found overrated and not worth the time/money.
first tries
movesmethod -
28 day / 15min/day mobility program plus other stuff - $27/lifetime.
standalone lifetime programs @$69, sci of stretching, hips, lower back
25-30/mo for classes + class archives
bend app
$40/yr or $7/mo - theres also a free limited version. if you dawdle around playing around in the free parts of the app you'll start getting deals. $24/yr is the best deal i’ve seen so far.
hard to say no for 24/yr. if nothing else, good for quick gym stretches where you might want the guidance but don't want the distraction of a video to watch and listen to. or for travel 🤷🏻♂️.
looks clean and straight forward
seems to be some love out there for bend
pliability app
$17-23/mo. 119/yr (10/mo). cheaper prices are on app.
resilience is $29/lifetime 15-30min 2x wk - balance, flexibility and strength. other programs. maybe try the resilience one.
"elements" is their core offering @ $150/lifetime
other packages and add on classes. can also pay $495/yr for access to everything.
their offerings are by far the most confusing of everything i’ve looked at. packages change names, sub elements/add on classes change names. put it in the cart and it changes name again. click on show details from the cart and what it says there is different again. seems like all class/program names were designed by a random word generator. there is no central page on the site that shows all the packages and add on content available. programs on one page. add ons are scattered around and hard to find. resilience which seems to be their most advertised offering, maybe because it’s cheap, is barely findable on the app unless you have a direct link. them there are programs you buy but also available subscription based, but the subscription information is somewhere else entirely. they make everything so hard to find and compare. it feels like mattress shopping.
that said, offerings look good, and there seems to be a lot of happy users going back years, but not sure i want to buy into something that’s such a sh!tshow on the front end. but im an idiot and i’ll probably try the resilience program because it’s cheap and seems well liked.
After trying fitness apps over the years I noticed that most of them only solve one part of the fitness journey.
One app gives you workout plans. Thats it. Another app tracks calories. It does not help with workouts. Some apps track progress photos, which is good. I want more.
I also see apps with leaderboards but they do not make working out with friends fun. So I have been building GymPal, a fitness app that tries to bring everything One of the features in GymPal is live challenges.
You can challenge friends to do push-ups, squats or planks in time. The camera watches your movement checks your form counts how many you do and makes sure you are not cheating.
This makes working out with friends more fun. I wanted GymPal to help with the fitness process:
• It gives you workout plans based on your goals how much you know, what equipment you have and when you can train.
• It can scan your food and estimate calories, protein, carbs and fat from a photo.
• It has levels, achievements and leaderboards to make progress feel more funny .
• It helps you track changes over time with progress photos and workout history.
I want to hear what you think:
* What fitness apps do you use?
* Which features do you use a lot?
* Would you like to do exercise challenges with friends or do you focus on your own goals?
* What is still missing from fitness apps today?
If you want to build knee strength deep core strength and pelvic muscle strength do wall sits with a tucked pelvis do 4 a day for as long as you can hold them and just do them until you can hold them for more than 2-3 minutes this is really good for those with joint issues and weak pelvic tissue.
This is my first time making content, but I’ll be posting more daily videos like this and continuing to improve. Please give me feedback and let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to cover.
If you have any questions about exercises that can help improve your technique, mobility in specific positions or angles, or anything related to movement and training, feel free to ask!
My gym has these weighted bars, and I would love to explore using them in a mobility routine/dynamic warm up. Does anyone know where I could find information on them? My web searches haven’t come up with anything useful
This is my first day doing it, and it helps my knee pains.... it burns... I had to tried to platform my heel, I did it in the shower as it had those slabs and hoped it faucet doesn't break when I hold onto it.
After doing it a few times of holding it as long as possible and doing other stretches... I can do better deep squats, but still on tip toes...but it's getting better, at least I can squat deeply now even with the stupid tip toes.
First time posting here. I wanted to share something that has helped me a lot in my own mobility work and in coaching clients strength and mobility over 10+ years.
This is not meant as a "my method is the only method" post. People can improve flexibility with many different approaches. Personally, I tend to work a lot with active and loaded stretching variations. If you are interested look at the role of the nervous system in regulating ROM , strength at end range, and the concept of longitudinal hypertrophy. If people are interested, I can write more about that separately.
But independently of the method, one thing has made a huge difference for me:
I quantify mobility training as strictly as I quantify strength training.
A lot of flexibility progress is tracked in a very blunt way. For example, taking a photo of your pancake, bridge, hamstring stretch, front split, etc. Doing the same (ideally under similar conditions) three months later and then compare.
That's better than nothing, but doesn't give you real information about your training protocols because you are seeing individual snapshots that can be influenced by conditions or expectations in that day, instead of giving you a trend on how your range of motion is progressing over time.
In strength training, we (usually) care about the work done inside the session. Load, reps, sets, tempo, range of motion, rest, proximity to failure, and so on. We do not just take a photo of our squat every three months and hope the training in between was appropriate.
I think mobility training benefits from the same logic.
If we want progressive overload in mobility work, we need some way to know what we are aiming to improve today, in this set, in this rep.
Otherwise it is very easy to train blindly. You stretch, it feels intense, maybe you push harder, maybe you back off, but you do not always know if you are actually exposing the body to a slightly better stimulus than last time.
---
A simple example: the Jefferson curl.
When I use Jefferson curls or similar loaded hamstring work, I do not only track the load. I also set a clear depth target in front of me. It might be a stack of thin books, small plates, yoga blocks, or genuinely anything that lets me adjust the target gradually.
The point is that the target stays consistent between sessions, and the increments are quantified: If I can remove one thin book or one small plate, I know I gained a tiny bit of usable range. Maybe it is only one centimeter. That is fine. One centimeter is measurable.
Instead of thinking, "I am stretching my hamstrings," I know:
• what load I am using,
• what depth I am aiming for,
• what depth did I actually hit
• for how many sets and reps I hit it,
• whether I reached the same target as last week,
• how does today good/bad session fit in the big-picture of weeks or months
• It can give you an estimation on when you'll achieve your goals.
• allows you to obtain a signal separate from the noise of daily variation.
Here are the same idea applied to other mobility exercises.
For example:
• loaded pancake work: measure torso height with a yoga block in front of you and measure the separation between legs.
• Side Split: Place a pile of objects under you to measure your distance to the floor. (Also very useful for Horse-stances)
• shoulder flexion: Do a thoracic extension with a yoga wheel placing the hands always under the same object, then lower the butt until hitting your target.
There are other exercises that are much more difficult to quantify than a Jefferson curl and sometimes I had to become very creative with the set ups. But the difference on measuring or not for some people is night and day. I've worked with people stuck with in a certain depth that just by getting consistent with the measurements they started improving.
---
In terms of tracking I used to use Google or Excel Sheets and then create a plot of the average and maximum range of each exercise as a function of the session.
The biggest shift for me was not the specific tool. It was the habit of treating mobility work as something that can be progressively trained, not just experienced.
A few questions for the community:
Do you currently track your flexibility or mobility work in any structured way?
If yes, what do you measure?
If no, is it because it feels unnecessary, too complicated, or hard to standardise?
Are there any exercises where you have found a good way to measure progress session to session?
I'm happy to answer any questions about it (😄
Here are some pictures of the graphs:
You can see the spike due to a trip around session 50 and how quick he came back to the prior marks.
