Mobility is use-it-or-lose-it, and most modern dudes don’t much use it. Your body lets you get away with that in your younger years. By midlife, it shows up as a creaky, stiff body and in tweaks and strains that take a lot longer to heal than they used to.
For most of my 20s and 30s, I didn’t think much about flexibility and mobility. Once I got into my 40s, though, I realized I couldn’t afford to ignore that side of fitness anymore. After a decade of heavy barbell lifting and nearly two decades of working a desk job, I felt as stiff as a piece of plywood.
It sometimes felt like pieces of dry leather were rubbing up against each other beneath my skin. That stiffness caused me problems. I had tight shoulders that I impinged just putting on a backpack and my suit jacket.
I had tight hips and hamstrings that I tweaked playing pickup basketball with my kids. I realized that if I wanted to enjoy the second half of life, I needed to spend some time working on my mobility, not just my bench press and deadlift. Also, if I wanted to keep bench pressing and deadlifting (two things I really enjoy!) into my 50s, then mobility work was going to be essential.
So I went to my physical therapist, Chris Contois, and asked him to help me put together a mobility routine I could do before workouts. Chris is a fellow powerlifter and a middle-aged dude himself, so he understands why this stuff matters. He’s also seen plenty of middle-aged guys show up at his clinic with tweaks that come from a lack of mobility.
Below is the protocol he came up with for me. It’s two mobility programs, with six exercises each that you perform before your lifting workouts. One you can do on upper body days and another you can do on your lower body days.
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