Hey Reader,

In this email, I’m circling back to a topic I touched on briefly last week: the relationship between mobility, stiffness, and stability. Many runners assume that more mobility is always better, but that isn’t necessarily true. In fact, some of the bendiest runners I meet are often the stiffest in very specific areas such as the feet, calves, pelvic floor, or neck. If you can straight leg palm the floor with ease, I’m looking at you!

Why Your Body Craves Stiffness and Stability

The body doesn’t just need mobility, it needs strength through your range of motion and typically needs stiffness and stability elsewhere to feel safe enough to perform that range of motion. Runners with hypermobility or naturally looser connective tissue often grip or hold tension in other areas to create this sense of safety. This is why a constant feeling of tightness doesn’t always resolve with stretching.

True relief often comes from generating the right kind of stiffness and stability so that the body can finally let go where it has been holding unnecessary, chronic tension.

One example is the overcoming hinge isometric.

​

This exercise requires full-body tension in a hinge position, which paradoxically allows the glutes and posterior pelvic floor to release. In other words, creating tension (safety) in the right place allows the body to let go somewhere else where it’s likely been gripping to create the feeling of safety.

And by the way, gripping in the glutes and posterior pelvic floor is such a widely common problem that I made this sign…

Rethinking Mobility: The Three Circles

It’s helpful to think of mobility as three concentric circles:

• Available Range of Motion – The range your body is physically capable of.
• Functional Range of Motion – The amount you need to fully participate in daily life or sport.
• The Most Mobility Possible – The maximum human capacity for movement.

If your available range of motion is less than what you need for running or life, then yes, you could benefit from stretching and mobility work. But if you live way out in that third circle, more on the hypermobile spectrum, stretching may not serve you even if you feel chronically tight. What you likely need instead is stiffness, stability, and control to safely manage that range.

Interestingly, many runners with above average mobility in their connective tissue, experience more limitations in other places (like the neck or pelvic floor). These imbalances highlight where stability must be built so that tension can be released elsewhere.

How Much Mobility Do Runners Actually Need?

In the Women’s Running Academy Intensive, we use a set of range-of-motion assessments to determine whether you have enough mobility for efficient running. These include:

• Ankle mobility – The shin must move over the ankle as the knee bends forward into mid-stance.
• Big toe extension – Critical for proper push-off mechanics.
• Hip flexor mobility – Needed for full hip extension during toe-off.
• Hip rotation range – Needed to load efficiently and reciprocally side to side.
• Rib mobility – Necessary for oxygen efficiency and reciprocal rotation.

If you have enough mobility in these key areas, there’s no logical reason to chase more mobility (for the sake of your running at least). In fact, stiffness in the right places helps protect your joints and transfer elastic energy efficiently through your stride.

Research even shows that less flexible joints and shorter Achilles tendon moment arms are associated with better running economy. Stiffness, when balanced, makes you faster, more efficient, and more resilient (1).

If your mobility is limited in these key areas, it still might not be stretching that unlocks that range of motion you need. Here are a few examples of what I mean:

Ankle mobility isn’t just about dorsiflexion, it’s connected to the entire kinetic chain. If your feet can’t pronate and you lack internal rotation at the tibia (and likely hip), your ankles might be limited in dorsiflexion in a way that stretching the calves can never unlock. Or if your body alignment shifts your weight too far forward, your calves will overwork to keep you upright.

Tight hip flexors or pinching in the front of your hip might be because your pelvis is tipped forward and the femur has nowhere to move in the socket. You'll stretch and foam roll forever if you don't find your proximal hamstrings to help orient your pelvis.

This is why in the Women’s Running Academy Intensive we work through a series of targeted assessments that provide information not just on isolated joints but whole-body positioning and connection. Understanding the connection reveals how one area (like poor foot mechanics) can create tension elsewhere (like the pelvic floor), so that we can actually get at the root of the issue.

The Whole-Body Approach

In my experience, after years of digging deep in the world of human physiology and running biomechanics and coaching hundreds of runners, the main thing that is stopping most runners from reaching their potential is treating the human body as just the sum of its parts.

We are one body, it works together. We need to understand how all the parts are connected.

When you don’t look at your body as a whole, you end up chasing one injury only to create another, you make progress, but then plateau, feel like you are always managing something.

When you look at your body as a whole and begin to truly understand how all the pieces start to come together, you can move more freely and efficiently overall, you can get out of your head and back into your joy with running, you can fully tap into your potential.

This is exactly the process we work through in the Women’s Running Academy Intensive, my 12-week mentorship designed to help women runners build resilience, efficiency, and confidence in their stride while becoming the expert in their own body.

Inside the program, we work through targeted assessments to uncover your unique needs as a runner:

• Where are you limited in range of motion?
• Where do you have excess range?
• What are your body’s go-to movement strategies?
• Which movements or skills are missing from your toolbox?
  ​

From there, we build a complete, personalized strategy that helps you understand and support your body. The goal is not just to follow a plan, but to become the boss of your own training, developing confidence, competence, and longevity in your running.

Round 7 of the Women’s Running Academy Intensive begins September 29th.

Public enrollment starts Monday next week.

Your Coach,
Alison

​

Reference:

1 - Hunter GR, Katsoulis K, McCarthy JP, Ogard WK, Bamman MM, Wood DS, et al. Tendon length and joint flexibility are related to running economy. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2011;43(8):1492–9.

​

Alison Marie Helms, PhD Certified Personal Trainer and Running Coach Unlock your full running potential through physics and physiology. ​Work with me.​