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If you’re tired of walking around like Frankenstein, if you’re tired of feeling so stiff in your trunk and your back, then I want you to stay tuned for this video. We’re going to talk about back mobility. But I am not going to show you a routine, and I want you to stay tuned as to why I can’t just show you a routine for back mobility.

I’m Ekemba Sooh. I’m a Soma therapist and a Soma trainer, which is kind of like a physical therapist, but more underneath the osteopathic model. I’ve been in this field for about 30 years and I’ve encountered, myself and others, a lot of immobility. Immobility is frustrating because you can’t move the way you want to, your body feels inhibited. Now I want to go through and talk about back mobility and all the different things you can do.

Mobility is having freedom in your body to allow the different joints and areas of your space in your body to move freely, to not be inhibited. Mobility is different than flexibility. Flexibility is range of motion. How far can I extend my… whatever. How far can I extend my arm is flexibility. How well I can move my arm in different planes is mobility. You can have a lot of flexibility like a yogi and have no mobility. I’ve seen a lot.

On the other end, you can have not a lot of flexibility, but have really good mobility. I always say mobility trumps flexibility because the health of your body that’s involved. How does mobility help your health? Well, mobility along with the structure of your body helps increase motility. Motility is the movement of the liquids in your body and your viscera. It is the life. If you have no motility, you have no life, you’re dead.

The biggest mobility you need in your body is called your PRM, your primary respiratory method. I won’t go too deep into it, but it’s a movement, motility of your cells. If I’m mobile and I have a good structure, then my fascia and its collagen tubes are lined up and allow fluid to go through. This increases the motility. If I’m tight and constricted, then those tubes inside of collagen become twisted or dried out or calcified, then the motility of the liquid ceases.

Then if that calcification or lack of mobility happens in the fascia that connects to your different viscera, now you go from let’s say a liver that wants to hang and be free and move around to a liver that stops short. You’re decreasing the motility of the liver, which means now the liver won’t work as well. Increasing mobility is one of the best things you can do for your body.

For your back to be mobile means your core needs to be strong and mobile. Core is the buzzword now, and generally when people say core, they equate it to abs. It’s a lot more than that. You have from deep to superficial, from in to out. You have your spinal muscles, four layers. Your rectum muscles. You have your ab layers, four layers. You have your trapezius muscle. You have latissimus dorsi, your back muscle. Your pectoralis major muscle. You have your serratus posterior, inferior and superior. Your serratus anterior. You have a lot of muscles that are involved and all these muscles have a job to do.

You also have to have a balanced spine. A balanced spine means you have four distinct curves, sacral, lumbar, thoracic, cervical. Those curves need to be even and not too big and not too small. If I lose one of those curves, let’s say my lower back becomes flat. Now my entire spine is about 16 times weaker. I think my math is okay, I’m not quite sure, but the equation is from Delma’s index. It’s R resistance equals N squared plus one. You use that equation and then you multiply it by the number of curves plus one.

If you lose one of those, you can’t multiply by as many curves equals less resistance. Less resistance means more fragile means definitely not mobile and definitely not strong. Now take a quick break. I know I’m putting a lot of information out to you, but this topic is filled, so I want you to have the full view before you take any steps.

Now I just want to talk to you for a little bit and engage. Do you have back mobility issues? Have you gone through and tried these routines you find on YouTube or some person in the gym told you to do, and have not had the success you wanted? Let me know in the comments. I’d love to know.

How do you start getting your back mobile? Let’s get to some solutions. First, we have to go back to the information I told you about the spine. You need to make sure your spine is balanced. You need to have those forty-degree curves. You need to have the space between your spine as when you go do the exercise or stretches that you’re going to do, your spine moves properly.

Again, if you don’t have that position in the spine, your spine compresses. Most movements you do, especially twisting, compress your spine. They take one bone, one vertebra, and the other one and they turn and they compress. This smashes the disc. You don’t want that because now you’re hurting your back as you’re trying to become more mobile. First, we have the space and the curves.

After that, you actually need to strengthen your body. Your body uses muscle tissue better than it uses tendinous type tissue. If you don’t have muscles in the certain areas, all those trunk muscles, you can’t be mobile. Your body won’t work as well. This is based on Hill’s muscle model. Muscles work with fascia, which work with joints. They all work together in one little happy family to produce a nice good movement at that muscle area.

You start to strengthen whatever muscles are weak in all the different directions, not just doing planks. Planks is this part of the entire scope. You want to strengthen your rectus abdominis, your obliques, your TVA, and all these different directions and all these different ways. There’s a lot of different ways your body can move. Then don’t forget the back muscles. They work with the ab muscles. Again, not just one back muscle, not just extensions, rotations, side bend. A lot of different ways. Expand that out to the rest of them.

Now, after you have muscle and you have space in your spine, now you can start to move your body in a good way, but don’t move it in any way. When you look on the internet and you see a lot of these movements to increase mobility in your back, you’re going to find a lot of funny things. A lot of cobras, a lot of spinal twisting ones. Again, remember what I told you, your spine compresses as you twist. A lot of these exercises they show you are some sort of twisting action.

Unless you have that space, unless your body’s aware, you’re going to feel something in your trunk, it might feel good, but in your spine, you’re not going to feel anything but it’s damaging. Because when you feel something in the spine, it’s too late because now you’ve got a bulge, a herniation, some sort of inhibition of an artery or nerve or a vein that’s going to cause pain.

All of that, all that is why I completely refuse to give people prescriptive routines. You’re not a cake. I’m not going to give you a recipe to follow. I want you to adapt to your body. There’s no way in heck I’m going to give you some set of exercises that’s going to potentially make matters worse.

You can go on the internet, I’m sure you can find it. You can go check 10 different videos. You’ll find 10 different videos with almost the same exercises. The biggest differentiator is they’re wearing a different shirt and have a different name. It’s all the same stuff out there. That stuff doesn’t work, right? I’ve done a lot of that stuff myself, and yes, you feel good for a little bit, but ultimately, eventually you don’t feel good and it doesn’t help. You want something sustainable.

To work with the body means you need to work with the way it was designed, holistically and a bunch of different rules that I’ve mentioned some in this video. But if you follow these rules, if you work with a friendly way of working the body, it responds beautifully. You become more mobile, you feel stronger, you feel more balanced. You feel more like you can take on life because your body’s working with you.

If you do want some more help, I got some options for you. I have a free Facebook group, which you can join. Strength, mobility and flexibility for active people, usually over 40. The description holds the link. You can click on it, answer a few questions, agree to rules, you’re in. It’s a very interactive way to engage with me. Ask questions, see mini trainings, master classes, and actually do challenges where I’ll take you through some exercises after talking about what we’re actually going to do.

Or you can get a free ebook. It’s how to get out of pain, get mobile and live the life of your choosing. Again, in the description is a link. Like just put in your name and email, you get instant access.

Or if you’re ready to go, I would love to talk to you about what this program means and how it can help you. Just use the link in the description to book a time with me and we’ll go over what you’re doing now. What’s difficult, what’s your sticking point, where you want to go, and I’ll give you valuable information no matter what. Then if I see you’re a good fit, I’ll recommend a service with me for either in-house here in Santa Fe or my personalized online program.

I hope that was helpful. I know there’s a lot of information, but unfortunately the body’s complex, so if I give you as much information as hopefully in layman’s terms that I can, so you can understand. Stay tuned for this next video on core strengthening and I’ll see you next week.