Current Mobility Training

I've been starting my workouts with a mobility warmup, starting with a warmup of the legs and hips. For my hip/leg warmup I've been doing most of the exercises from the GMB Muay Thai mobility routine. They make my hips feel good.

I occasionally change up my hip/leg warmup by instead doing prying goblet squat for 5 reps, then cossack squat until my legs/glutes start to feel a little burn - with the 8kg kettlebell held bottoms up.

I then move on to kettlebell arm bar and bent arm bar for t-spine mobility and loosening up the chest and front of the shoulders. T-spine mobilization seems to loosen up my lats despite not directly stretching the lats all that much. This article by Jon Engum lists 4 items on which to focus for the kettlebell arm bar, with the 4th item being the arm on the ground, which is supposed to be moved to your rear as much as possible and stretch the lat.

One of the latest mobility exercises I've added to my routine is the kettlebell pullover, which is supposed to help improve mobility for overhead lockout. There are straight leg and hip bridge variations taught in this video:


Doing the hip bridge variation first for about 3-5 reps seems to increase ROM (Range Of Motion) for the straight leg variation.

I did passive hangs in the past, but gave up on them because I thought of hanging as a lat stretch and found the quadraped side bend to be more productive for getting the lats to loosen up. This FitnessFAQs video inspired me to try hanging again. I don't agree that total hanging time per day should be 5 minutes, as that looks like an arbitrary number rather than a number backed up by research. However I do agree that the 2 sets of 20-30 second holds I was doing 3x a week might not have been enough to improve grip strength or lat mobility. 2 weeks of hanging 5 days a week, 3 or more sets per day resulted in my left elbow being less susceptible to tendonitis pain from playing guitar. However this week I'm taking a break from passive hangs because of accumulated soreness in my forearms - which might be caused by hanging combined with bottoms-up goblet squats and other work with the 24kg kettlebell.


My hamstrings are not particularly flexible. I've tried various stretches and other mobility exercises in the past with some improvement, but have admittedly not focused much on improving hamstring flexibility, other than the Muay Thai routine above. One of the exercises that I attempted was pike compression - aka "pike pulses" - which were just too hard for me. In the below video, Eugene Teo shows easier pike pulse variations, and how to progress in difficulty. I've been doing 3 sets of pike pulses on my recovery days, as well as after my Easy Muscle calisthenics days.