People will often get caught up in the difference between mobility vs stability. They’ve become buzzwords in the fitness community, and if you’re not addressing them, then it may feel like something is being neglected.

But what on earth is mobility and what is stability? Most fitness coaches and trainers have a hard time differentiating the two and when they can, they have a hard time explaining why its so important to address.

So if these health nuts can’t even define these two concepts… Why is everyone so obsessed with them?

Let’s take some time to define mobility vs stability and explore the importance of each.

Mobility

Mobility is simply your ability to move.

In the most broad sense, it is an individual’s ability to move themselves through space. An elderly individual who has difficulty with bed mobility, standing, and walking is said to have compromised mobility. An individual who has no difficulties moving is said to have normal mobility.

In the fitness community, mobility has taken on a much more microscopic context. Mobility has become an individual’s range of motion and ability to attain certain positions for exercise or athletics.

Mobility is both active and passive range of motion, for good or for bad. While it is common to have too little mobility, it is also possible to have too much mobility and cross into the space of instability. This can happen when mobility is obsessively chased while strength is neglected. It’s also possible to have more passive range of motion than you can actively control.

Pathological hypermobility is a relatively rare problem that some individuals suffer from.

Two good examples of instability resulting from genetic disorders are Ehlers Danlos syndrome and Marfans syndrome, often characterized by hypermobility and fragility of connective tissue. These individuals can get injured very easily from seemingly trivial trauma due to the decreased strength of their connective tissues.

While most people will not have to worry about this level of hypermobility, it is a good demonstration that there is a limit to our mobility needs.

When it comes to mobility, you simply just need to ask yourself if you have the requisite ability to move to complete the task at hand.

Stability

Stability in the context of human movement is the ability to stop or control any unwanted movement. If you’re doing an overhead press, you don’t want the bar shaking uncontrollably and swaying in all directions. Your ability to control that excessive and unwanted movement is stability.

There are two types of stability, just like mobility. Active stability is the ability of your muscles to actively control and stop unwanted movement. Passive stability is the inherent stability resulting from structures like ligaments, bones, tendons, fascia, etc. We can appreciate how pathology such as Ehlers Danlos and Marfans can cause a massive lack of passive stability.

Truly pathological instability outside of traumatic injury and disease is very rare. When I hear someone say that they have an “unstable spine”, I always ask questions. True spine instability is a serious problem that most people don’t have. A weak set of abs is not an immediate precursor to an unstable spine.

Now, if you have weak abs and try and do heavy lifting, it may very well become the weak link in your lifting, but it doesn’t mean you’re “unstable”. Heavy exercise inherently requires a greater degree of stability to transmit force and control unwanted movements.

When it comes to stability, you need to ask yourself if you have the requisite strength to control your body and any weight you are moving.

Mobility vs stability: A spectrum of movement

Mobility and stability are not mutually exclusive concepts. You cannot work just one end of the spectrum and expect to perform optimally. I have many friends who are fantastic yoga practitioners who only ever did yoga and had a plethora of shoulder, hip, and back problems. Only once they started to incorporate strength training into their exercise regimen did those problems go away.

A perfect example of mobility and stability working in tandem is in Olympic style weightlifting. These athletes need tremendous levels of mobility to achieve the requisite positions in the clean and jerk and snatch while having superhuman strength and stability to keep the weight under control.

Gymnasts are another great example. Gymnastics requires high levels of mobility and flexibility as well as stability and strength to perfectly control the athletes bodyweight through space. Have you seen how jacked gymnasts are?

We cannot simply pursue one while neglecting the other. Mobility and stability are equally important for any high level athlete.

A practical way to integrate both

I will always come back to lifting weights. Most people associate strength training with bulky, slow, and immobile individuals. This is far from the truth. Proper technique in weightlifting, powerlifting, and bodybuilding requires high levels of mobility. Simply controlling your way through full ranges of motion during most lifting exercises will improve mobility. Overhead presses require good shoulder mobility. Stiff legged deadlifts require great hamstring flexibility. A full squat incorporates full ranges of motion from the hips, knees, and ankles as well as requiring good shoulder mobility.

If you incorporate a few mobility drill during your warm up, you will have a well-rounded plan that tackles both mobility and stability.

So quit freaking out about spending hours and hours on one and stick with an intelligent plan for fitness. Mobility and stability will naturally be addressed.