"You're not tight, you're just weak"

I hear it all the time, a lifter will say they cant perform a movement or get in a position because...

“I’m not flexible enough.”

“My mobility sucks.”

“I’m too tight.”

But what if the issue wasn’t mobility at all? What if the problem was that you’re just weak?

Let me rephrase that.

What if the problem was the muscles you need to hold you in those positions or complete those movements were weak?

I attended a seminar this weekend hosted by Max Aita in which he helped my setup by letting me know that it wasn't my ankles that were immobile, it was my quads being to weak to support the position I was trying to get into, which reminded me of a realization I came to last year.

Nothing has helped my mobility more than getting stronger.

I used to have a laundry list of what I thought were mobility problems, my knees would buckle on heavy squats/cleans, my lumbar would round at the bottom of a squat, my back would cave on the way up from those same movements.

I did mobility every day, anywhere from 20 mins to an hour of working on positioning and stretching and pretty much doing everything I could find online to fix all my problems.

But then I stopped, I got fed up with stretching, I got annoyed with spending hours a week on mobility and seeing no result.

So I told myself "fuck it, I'm just gonna train".

Instead of focusing on what I though were mobility issues I started focusing on my strength imbalances. I had a weak low back, my glutes weren't firing, and my hamstrings and upper back were lagging. So after months of posterior chain work I noticed something, my positioning was better. I was bouncing out of the hole faster and with more stability, my knees weren't caving as much. All of the issues I thought were due to tight hips and back were really due to my body relying on stronger muscles because the ones necessary to complete the movement properly weren't doing their job.

I wasn't immobile at all, I was just really fucking weak.

Since then I have cut my stretching and mobility work by at least 80%, and increased my accessory work about the same. I've never been healthier as a lifter, and I've never been more confident in my positions.