Hey MobKids,

I was recently hanging out with the freaky strong Rob Orlando, and we started having a discussion about dead-lifting (of course). You see, Robbie-O is a pretty good puller and not accidently a strong man competitor. I recently watched some footage of Rob competing at the Arnold and was blown away at how much energy he is effectively able to transfer from his hips to his trunk (and from his shoulders to his trunk when he’s upside down.) You see, Rob is a fence post, which is the highest degree black belt midline stabilization you can achieve. He’s a tank.

In my PT practice, I see a bloody ton of trunk related errors and weakness amongst really good athletes. Your spine is always the weak link. And, when you lose spinal position, you loose the ability to stabilize your hips and shoulders. That’s right, your shoulder knee pain can be coming from your crappy trunk stability.

So, when I had a chance to pull the sword out of the stone today (it’s deficit pulling to be sure), I immediately thought about my need to practice some stone/deficit pulling AND work on my trunk.

So today’s Mobility mission is to try and improve your deficit pulling position with the hip mobs 4-5 minutes a side.

THEN you need to work your way through 150 hollow rocks. Here is Carl Paoli’s hollow rock drill if you need a refresher from gymnasticswod.com.

Kstar