How Mobility Is Like Weeding Your Garden
Think about the last time you let your garden, or maybe just your lawn, get away from you. A week or two of neglect, and suddenly it looks like a jungle. The weeds multiply, the grass shoots up, and what could have been a quick ten-minute tidy now feels like a back-breaking Saturday project.
Your joints are a lot like that garden. Ignore them for too long, and you don’t just end up stiff, you end up with a mess that takes far more effort to sort out. But keep on top of the small stuff, and maintenance becomes simple.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: mobility work isn’t optional. It’s not the “bonus round” after your real training. It’s not what you do when you have extra time, or something only older people need. It’s maintenance. Just like brushing your teeth, servicing your car, or yes, weeding your garden.
And like most people, I’m guilty of skipping it myself. If I’m short on time, the first thing to go is usually mobility. Strength training feels more important. Running miles feels more satisfying. Mobility? It’s easy to justify leaving it out. Until the stiffness creeps in, the aches nag louder, and suddenly I remember why this work matters so much.
I’m not writing this as a lecture, but as a reminder for both of us: mobility isn’t optional. It’s the kind of maintenance that makes every other form of hard work possible.
Why We Skip It (And Why That’s a Mistake)
Let’s be honest: most people don’t skip mobility because they’ve decided it’s pointless. They skip it because it doesn’t look or feel like “real” training.
When you picture a tough workout, you imagine sweat dripping, lungs burning, muscles pumped. Mobility doesn’t give you that. Foam rolling your calves isn’t Instagram-worthy. Stretching your hips doesn’t impress anyone in the gym. And in a culture where workouts are often measured by how wrecked you feel afterward, mobility looks suspiciously easy.
Then there’s the time excuse. “I’ll do it later,” we tell ourselves. But later rarely comes. In the moment, cutting mobility feels efficient: five or ten minutes saved, on to the “main event.” Except those minutes add up. Skip them consistently and you’re not saving time, you’re borrowing it with interest. Because eventually, the bill comes due in the form of aches, stiffness, or injury. And then you’re not losing ten minutes, you’re losing weeks in physio.
Another reason people skip mobility is boredom. It’s not flashy. It doesn’t have the same endorphin rush as a hard run or heavy lift. Sometimes it even feels uncomfortable, not in the satisfying way of pushing through a tough set, but in the irritating way of revealing how stiff you really are. Nobody likes being reminded of their limits.
I’ve seen this in countless clients. Desk workers who roll into the gym with hips locked up from sitting all day, only to skip the very movements that could help. Runners who log kilometre after kilometre but never take five minutes to look after their calves until shin splints appear. Strength athletes who hammer squats and deadlifts but can’t touch their toes without wincing. All convinced they don’t have time, until their bodies make the time for them.
And yes, I’ve been there too. I know exactly how tempting it is to skip the mobility piece. But here’s the mistake: just because mobility work doesn’t leave you drenched in sweat doesn’t mean it isn’t training. It is training, it’s just the kind that pays you back later rather than right away.
Skipping it is like skipping dental care because your teeth don’t hurt. Sure, you save a few minutes brushing and flossing, but eventually, you’re sitting in the dentist’s chair for a root canal. Which would you rather choose?
Chronic Problems Need Chronic Solutions
One of the biggest mindset shifts people need to make is this: if a problem shows up because of what you do every day, then the solution has to show up every day too.
Think about the habits that shape most people’s bodies. Hours hunched over laptops. Scrolling on phones with heads tilted forward. Sitting in cars, at desks, on couches. Moving through the same limited ranges of motion over and over. If your joints and tissues are stiff, it’s not an accident. It’s the predictable result of repeating the same positions for thousands of hours.
That’s why the occasional stretch class or one-off physio appointment doesn’t cut it. Those things can help, but they don’t rewrite the story your body is living every single day. If your hips are locked up because you sit for eight hours at work, twenty minutes of mobility once a week isn’t going to undo it. If your shoulders are tight because you spend hours driving, texting, and bench pressing, a couple of doorway stretches every so often won’t magically balance you out.
I often remind clients: your body is always adapting. It adapts to the training you do, but also to the postures you spend time in, the way you move (or don’t move), and the stresses you place on it. If you live in a chair, your body adapts to sitting. If you only train in straight lines, your body loses rotation. If you never ask your joints for their full range, they gradually stop offering it.
And because those patterns are chronic, the fix has to be chronic as well. You don’t brush your teeth once a week and expect a healthy mouth. You don’t water your plants once a month and expect them to thrive. You do it consistently, in small doses, because that’s what maintenance requires. Mobility is no different.
I’ve seen this most clearly with clients who come in struggling with nagging issues that won’t quite go away. A stiff lower back that flares up after long car rides. Tight calves that make every run feel like a grind. Shoulders that ache after a day of desk work. They usually start out hoping for one magical stretch or exercise that will “fix” them. But what actually works is boring consistency: five minutes here, ten minutes there, every single day. Over weeks, those daily deposits compound, and suddenly the chronic pain starts to ease.
Personally, I’ve fallen into the same trap. I’ll go through phases where I ignore mobility because it doesn’t feel urgent. Then the little aches creep in: hips that don’t quite loosen up on runs, shoulders that pinch under the bar, a stiff back after sitting too long. When I finally get back to a consistent routine [short flows, a bit of rolling, scraping my feet] the difference is striking. Not overnight, not dramatic, but steady and undeniable.
This is also where it helps to remember what I wrote in What Counts as “Hard Work”?. Hard work isn’t just about sweating through big lifts or long runs. Sometimes the hardest work is the quiet, repetitive stuff that no one else sees. These are the small, unglamorous actions that add up to real change, and mobility fits squarely into that category.
That’s why I hammer this point home: quick fixes don’t work for chronic problems. Consistent, repeated effort does. Ten minutes most days will outwork an hour once in a while.
If that sounds frustrating, flip the perspective. It means you don’t have to overhaul your life to feel better. You just have to do something small, regularly. The same way you eat meals every day, not once a week. The same way you brush your teeth morning and night. Chronic care for chronic problems.
The Benefits That Go Beyond the Gym
Mobility is often sold as a performance enhancer, and it is. Move better, lift better, run better. But the benefits go way beyond the squat rack or the trail:
Fewer aches and pains. Chronic tightness in your hips, shoulders, or back is usually a symptom of neglect. Consistent mobility work relieves those nagging aches before they snowball.
Better posture. Not in the “stand up straight, shoulders back” military sense, but in the real, functional sense of feeling comfortable and aligned in your own body.
Improved sleep. Looser tissues and a calmer nervous system mean fewer restless nights spent tossing around trying to get comfortable.
Higher energy. When you’re not battling stiffness or discomfort, daily tasks feel lighter. Movement feels easier.
Quality of life. This is the big one. It’s not just about today’s workout. It’s about being able to walk, run, bend, carry, and live without pain into your 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond.
So yes, mobility helps you deadlift more weight and recover faster. But it also helps you get out of bed in the morning without creaking like an old staircase. It helps you chase your kids, play golf, or hike with friends. It keeps you capable.
Practical Tools and Approaches
The good news? Mobility doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need a two-hour routine or a physiotherapy degree. Here are the approaches I return to again and again.
Movement Flows
Think of these as short, structured routines that take your joints through multiple ranges of motion. They can be yoga-based, but they don’t have to be. What matters is that they’re efficient and repeatable. Ten minutes of flowing through hips, shoulders, and spine can do more than a single static stretch ever will.
Here’s one of my favourites, a flow we’ve used many times in the gym: BTG Mobility Flow.
Self-Myofascial Release (SMR)
This is the technical term for foam rolling, lacrosse ball work, and massage gun therapy. Done consistently, SMR reduces tension, improves blood flow, and helps tissues slide more freely.
Some techniques feel pretty spicy (massage gun on the peroneals, or rolling your piriformis on a lacrosse ball come to mind) while others feel genuinely good (like rolling your traps with that same lacrosse ball). A little discomfort is fine, but sharp, stabbing pain is not. If you’re wincing like you’ve hit a nerve, you probably have, and it’s time to adjust.
If you want a practical guide, I recommend Australian physiotherapist Grant Frost and his YouTube channel, Your Wellness Nerd. His videos show clear, effective ways to use these tools to address everything from tight calves to cranky shoulders.
Gentle Fascial Scraping
This one is personal. Years ago, I tore my plantar fascia and worked with my physiotherapist, Dan Bos, to rehab it. He introduced me to a simple, gentle style of fascial scraping (nothing extreme like Graston or traditional gua sha) and it made a huge difference.
The contrast was remarkable: at the beginning, my fascia felt crackly, almost like Rice Krispies under the skin. After several sessions, that gave way to a smooth, pliable feel that held up even under the many kilometres of running I was doing every week. These days, I still use a stainless-steel gua sha tool I bought on Amazon to keep my plantar fascia supple. It’s not glamorous, but it works. And it’s another tool in the box for anyone dealing with stubborn tightness.
This technique can also be effectively applied to other areas as well, like the Achilles tendons and soleus muscles, and the forearm flexors and extensors. Bigger, meatier muscles like the quads, glutes, etc. likely won’t benefit as much.
A Note on Static Stretching
It has its place, but I’m not a huge fan of static stretching as the main approach. Holding a stretch can feel good in the moment, but most of the time it doesn’t create the same long-term change as flows, SMR, or scraping unless you’re holding each stretch for a minute or two, and that minute or two times several different stretches each side equals a LOT of time. If you’re short on time, prioritise the active work.
A Relatable Struggle (Yes, Mine Too)
Here’s where I’ll be blunt: I’m not perfect at this. I skip mobility more often than I’d like to admit. And I know most of you do too.
But I can tell you this. The difference when I do stay on top of it is night and day. Less stiffness when I wake up. Fewer nagging aches after long runs. More energy during training. Even my sleep improves.
That’s why I’m writing this. Not from a pedestal, but from the same place you are. I know what it feels like to skip. I also know what it feels like when you don’t.
And if you’ve ever wondered whether a few minutes of mobility actually matters, I’m here to tell you: it does. It’s the kind of thing you don’t notice when it’s working, but you notice in a hurry when it’s gone.
The challenge, then, is finding ways to make mobility practical enough that it actually happens.
Making It Doable
I get it. Mobility can feel like just one more thing on an already long list. The truth is, even a little bit done consistently can make a real difference. It doesn’t need to be a full workout, and it doesn’t need to be perfect.
Here are ways to make it fit:
Pair it with TV. Foam roll, scrape, or stretch while you catch up on your show.
Use it as a wind-down. Ten minutes before bed can relax tissues and calm your nervous system.
Sneak it into warm-ups. Dynamic flows before lifting or running make mobility part of your training, not an add-on.
Do it in pieces. Two or three small chunks throughout the day add up.
The principle is simple: frequency matters more than duration. Five minutes a day beats an hour once a month.
This ties directly to what I wrote in Minimum Effective Dose: The Busy Person’s Guide to Getting Fitter Without Burning Out. You don’t need to overhaul your schedule. You just need the smallest, consistent input that moves the needle. With mobility, that input is usually tiny, but powerful.
Tend Your Garden
Mobility work isn’t optional. It’s maintenance. Just like brushing your teeth or servicing your car, it’s the thing that keeps everything else running smoothly.
The mistake most of us make is treating it like extra credit, the thing we’ll do if we have time. But here’s the truth: if you don’t make time for mobility now, your body will force you to make time later through pain, stiffness, or injury.
Think back to that garden. A few minutes of weeding each day keeps it thriving. Ignore it, and you’re soon knee-deep in work you could have avoided. Your joints, your muscles, and your connective tissues respond the same way.
So start small. Roll your calves while you read. Flow through a few hip openers before your run. Scrape your feet before bed. None of it is glamorous, but all of it adds up.
Do the small stuff consistently now, and your future self will thank you. You’ll move better, feel better, and stay capable longer. And at the end of the day, that’s what all the hard work is for: not just to look fit, but to live well — in a body you’ve taken care of, like a garden you’ve tended with patience and consistency.
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