After close to ten years of learning from him via his various postings on Youtube (his channel is here)  it was brilliant to meet a guy I consider a friend and mentor. What Emmet brings is a deep understanding of not only mobility, circus performance and gymnastics but has a good handle on the fitness industry in general which means he’s as comfortable talking about squats and deadlifts as he is about front splits and handstands.

This article can't possible cover what he went through with us in the seminar in the three hours he worked with us, it still just acted as a short primer on his longer workshops he typically holds. however I hope it will give you some useful principles when working on your mobility.

Key Points to note

• We always want to be active in our flexibility and it shouldn’t be passive. You don’t ask someone to relax while doing a deadlift and the same goes for working on your mobility.
• Starting from the feet and working upwards
• 10mins mashing up the calves with a stick (See below)  as most people are super tight here and I don’t think any of us ever spent and entire 10mins working on this.
• There was continual assessing and reassessing of our standing pike position (stand upright and bow forwards so see how far you can lower to the floor) which allowed us to observe the improvement in that position as a result of working on the entire posterior chain. An absolute basic is to be able to place hands on the floor in standing pike so if you’re miles off that then you need to work on it and work on it some more until it's locked down.
• A really important but overlooked stretch is the big toe stretch which made a massive difference to some people so obviously if you have trouble stretching your toes as shown below while sitting like this for 2mins then you have work to do here. While in this position work on pressing into the toes which will lift you up very very slightly for 5-10secs then stretch for 20-30secs, repeat 4-5 times.
• Emmet recommended that when stretching the calves in any way that you hold for at least 2mins per side and if you’ve very tight calves for up to 6mins per leg.

This is just a taster of some of the mobility work we focused on. Contact me if you would like to work more on your mobility or to be added to the waiting list for our next mobillity workshop.