Expert says mobility is more important than strength for longevity – here’s how to improve yours in 10 minutes

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MMobility is the ability to move freely. To trainer Darren Ellis, this represents “physical freedom” – a body that does what you want, when you want, without embarrassment. It’s an attractive prospect.

He believes that maintaining this trait is the best thing you can do for better physical longevity. And, he tells me, you can improve your mobility in just 10 minutes a day with a few simple bodyweight movements.

“You don’t need to lift twice your body weight to perform most daily tasks,” says Ellis. “I specialize in working with people aged 40 and over. As you get older, you realize that what really matters are these simple things: being able to bend down to pick up objects, lift your child, or contort yourself into an awkward space under the kitchen sink to fix a leak. It’s mobility, where strength meets flexibility.”

Below, he shares the 10-minute morning mobility routine that helped him build a strong, flexible, and robust body.

The 10-minute morning routine for better mobility

Set a timer for 10 minutes and perform each of the 10 moves below for one minute each. If you have time, you can repeat this sequence one or two more times. Otherwise, it is effective in isolation, recruiting all major joints to move in multiple ways.

Ellis likes to perform these movements right after getting out of bed. “I don’t need to count reps first thing in the morning, I can now do it on autopilot – it’s good for getting into the habit of daily movements,” he says. “I move, I breathe and I try to get in touch with my body.”

Why does this mobility routine work?

What limits mobility? Weakness and tension in certain tissues is only part of the picture, but the brain also has an important role to play. Your nervous system wants to protect you from injury, so if it thinks a movement is dangerous or beyond your capabilities, it may restrict your ability to access it.

Mobility routines are like a conversation with your body. If you can control your breathing while you perform these exercises, you are telling your nervous system that these positions are safe and that you will probably want to access them again. If you can do this regularly, your mobility will improve.

Ellis likens it to any other form of training. If you want to get stronger, you consistently lift weights that are at the upper end of your abilities. If you want to get faster, you spend time running at your threshold pace. By doing this, your body revises its limits over time and becomes more efficient.

“For mobility work, you have to slowly get to that end of the movement, then move away,” he explains. “By doing this, the body says, ‘Oh, it’s not that bad,’ and it will establish a new baseline of mobility. Over time, you can increase it.”

The key to improving or maintaining mobility is to regularly move your body in a variety of ways. In Ellis’s eyes, the best way to do this is to move “little and often.” The 10-minute flow above is a simple way to do this.

Learn more: Do these three things every week to be fitter than most Brits

Does mobility decrease with age?

Maintaining mobility becomes more difficult as you age. Your body has a richer history than someone half your age, and that often includes a lot of use, injuries, and other health issues such as arthritis. Hormonal changes can also contribute.

However, recent research suggests that mobility-decreasing conditions such as sarcopenia and dynapenia (age-related loss of muscle and strength) are largely due to decreased activity levels, rather than an inevitable consequence of aging.

“People keep proving that it doesn’t have to be if you stay active,” Ellis says. “It’s definitely not as easy as you get older, especially with kids, the stress of work and everything else life throws at us. But the body operates on a use it or lose it basis. You have to keep moving.”

Sometimes, when he demonstrates a squat or one-legged squat, people tell him that they could “never do that” and that if they did, their “knees would explode.” But that misses the point, says Ellis.

To improve mobility, there is a starting point for everyone. Simply perform movements that allow you to control your joints through the widest range of motion they can currently comfortably access.

“You can sit in a chair and push yourself up, or get up and lower yourself from the floor,” says Ellis. “It’s a mobility exercise.”

“A good quality strength training program, performed through a full range of movements with good technique, will also be one of the best mobility regimes you can follow,” he adds. “If you lunge, squat, bend, pull, and press overhead, you will become quite strong and flexible.”

Learn more: The 10-Minute Workout That Can Make You Stronger for Life