Tightness Has a Purpose
Mobility Training Tip #4: Tightness Has a Purpose
You've probably met someone who's incredibly flexible but gets injured constantly. Meanwhile, you know people who are tight as a drum but never seem to get hurt. What gives? Here's the uncomfortable truth: tightness isn't always the enemy. Sometimes it's your body's intelligent response to instability.
The Better Approach: Before you aggressively stretch that tight muscle, ask yourself why it's tight. Your nervous system creates restrictions for a reason—often to stabilize a joint that lacks motor control or to protect against a movement pattern you can't safely execute. If you strip away that protective tension without addressing the underlying instability, you're not unlocking performance—you're creating injury risk. The solution? Always pair mobility work with motor control training that teaches your body to own and stabilize that new range of motion.
Why This Works: Your body craves stability above all else. If it doesn't trust that a joint is stable, it will create tightness as a protective strategy. Think of tight hip flexors in someone with a weak core, or chronically tight hamstrings protecting a lower back that lacks stability. When you only focus on stretching, you're fighting against your body's protective mechanisms. But when you combine mobility with motor control—teaching the nervous system that you can safely move through and control that new range—the protective tightness naturally releases because it's no longer needed.
How to Apply This:
Earn your mobility through strength and control
After stretching, immediately train movement control in that new range
Use slow, controlled movements before explosive ones
Progress from supported to unsupported positions
Test stability before adding load or speed
Ask: "Can I control this range, or just access it passively?"
Example: You've worked on hip mobility and gained 20 degrees of flexion. Great. Now prove you can control it: single-leg balance drills, controlled step-downs, split squats with a pause. Show your nervous system that this new range is safe and functional. Only then will your body allow you to keep it—and actually use it in athletic movement.
Mobility without motor control is just instability with extra steps. Build both, in that order.
