Range of motion refers to the full movement potential of a joint.

Sometimes it’s useful to look at joints in and of themselves, like the three bones that come together to make the knee joint. Other times it’s more useful to look at joints as they combine to create an overall structure, like the 75+ joints that combine to create the spine or the 33 joints that come together in the foot. In these examples, we likely can’t feel every single individual joint in a structure (unless we’ve done a ton of range of motion training, in which case we may be able to decipher more nuance), but what we can feel is the sum total of the joints working together when we move. 

Joints don’t move themselves. They need muscles and connective tissue to move them through their range of motion. Therefore, the conversation about range of motion is largely about tissue capability. 

When it comes to tissue capability and range of motion, there are two questions at play: 

(1) What range of motion can my tissues passively endure? 

(2) What range of motion can my tissues actively control? 

The answer to the first question will determine our passive range of motion and the answer to the latter determines our active range of motion.

Active V. Passive Range of Motion

Active range of motion refers to the range of motion we can muscularly control with our strength. Passive range of motion refers to the range of motion we can withstand using momentum, gravity or leverage. 

For the most part, we can passively endure more than we can actively control, which makes our passive range of motion broader than our active range of motion. 

For instance, we may be able to utilize gravity to go from standing to a squat position, but if we were to stand up and try to squeeze our leg into our chest actively, we probably won’t be able to recreate the same depth of motion. Why? Because in one instance we are using gravity to create a shape, and in the other instance we are using strength. 

We can also use leverage to develop our passive range of motion. As in, if I place my hand on the floor and lean over it, I may easily be able to endure the 90 degrees of wrist extension that is passively created by the floor pushing into my hand. But if I now reach my arm out in front of me and try to create that same degree of wrist extension using only my muscular strength, I might be less capable. 

Both passive and active range of motion are great things. For one, having passive range of motion means that our active range of motion has room to graduate. Bridging the gap between what we can actively control and what we can passively endure is the key to prevention and rehabilitation when we are looking to build up the capacity of a body structure. 

If we consider that the definition of an injury is when a load exceeds our body’s ability to resist it, then we might conclude that injuries are more likely to happen when we are in a passive range of motion that we can’t control with our strength. 

My own personal history in yoga had me exploring my passive range of motion almost exclusively for the better part of a decade. And because I didn’t know much about range of motion--in fact, I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as active v. passive ranges--I never considered the gaps in my practice...until I started injuring myself. And it was precisely in those passive ranges--where my joints were in positions that they could withstand but not control--where my injuries started happening. Hence my recent interest in active range of motion and why my personal practice and teaching has shifted towards heavier doses of controlled movement. 

This is not to say that active range of motion is inherently better. Without passive range of motion, we would lack the flexibility to adapt quickly to new demands. There is a time and place to work on both, and if our movement habits offer us a balanced mix of the two, we’re probably doing great. The real test is whether our joints work and feel better as a result of what we’re doing, and in my experience, amping up my active range of motion training has been immensely useful.

Training Benefits

So what exactly are the benefits when we start training our active range of motion? In my eyes, they are 3-fold: Mobility, Stability and Strength. These are three key movement nutrients that our body needs regularly to feel and work better as we age. 

Mobility

I think of mobility as my hips’ ability to do hip things, my shoulders’ ability to do shoulder things, my spine’s ability to do spine things, and so on. 

Once we understand what range of motion is possible for each joint or structure, we can ask ourselves: How well are my shoulders adapted to do their six joint actions (flexion/extension, internal/external rotation, abduction/adduction) without other structures jumping in to help? 

This last part of the question is important to consider because if my shoulders aren’t able to perform their joint actions without other structures moving in compensation, then I have a gap in my mobility that I need to consider. 

Let’s put this into context. Let’s say that I am developing my active range of shoulder flexion--the arm’s ability to lift overhead. I need to ask myself: How well is my shoulder adapted to move into flexion without my ribs, spine or pelvis moving to accommodate that action? To figure out the answer to this question, I need to assess my shoulder’s ability to flex. So I find a comfortable seat (or I stand, or I put my legs into another position where I can feel and control my pelvis), I softly fix my pelvis in neutral (or whatever I can sense of neutral in this moment), I softly fix my ribs, spine and head into neutral, and I begin to slowly move one arm forward and up alongside my ear without disturbing any other structures. At some point I max out--I can no longer move my arm overhead without other structures moving--and so I hold for some time. I may find that the arm has more slack the longer I hold the position (or I might not, we’re all different :)), in which case it finds another bit of lift up by the ear. 

When we become interested in developing more active range of motion, what we really want is more mobile structures--where our hips do hip things and our shoulders do shoulder things. 

Mobility is not just that our joints can move, it’s that our joints are able to control and articulate all of their potential actions in progressively deeper end ranges. A mobile structure is one that works well and feels good. Isn’t that the best?

Stability

If mobility is my ability to move, stability is my ability to control. Control is a huge aspect of active range of motion--control is what makes active range of motion different from passive range of motion. 

Control can be tested in a few ways. 

Let’s use the example of working on active shoulder flexion from the section above. In this example, stability is being trained in two ways. 

The first is stability training in my lifting arm--when I move slowly and with control, I am resisting the urge to move my body in easier ways by using gravity or momentum. This results in a more stable structure in the arm and shoulder as I learn to control my full range of motion. 

The second way I’m training stability is in the rest of my body. When I set my body in neutral and start moving my arm into shoulder flexion, what I’m doing is adding a disturbance to my neutral body that it needs to resist. The moment my arm starts lifting in front of me, my neutral head, spine, ribs and pelvis would all have an easier time if they were allowed to move with the arm. When I ask my body to remain still through the entire action, I am training it to resist being disturbed, which is another aspect of stability. 

Strength

Lastly, when we commit to developing our active range of motion, we are likely to build some strength. Strength refers to our ability to exert muscular force against resistance. 

Let’s continue using our example of shoulder flexion. In order to lift the arm overhead, the tissues need to be strong enough to counteract the resistance of the weight of the arm. Moreover, the tissues need to be strong enough throughout the entire range of motion, through every degree of movement. 

No doubt that when we start training shoulder flexion, we will likely find patches of movement that we’ve actually never done before (or at least never done with this level of specificity). When we haven’t done something before, it presents a new challenge to the tissues, and the tissues will be asked to adapt to get strong enough to control the weight of the arm as it lifts overhead into true shoulder flexion. 

As we get stronger and our ranges of motion become deeper and easier to control, we will adapt to the weight of our body parts. At this point, we will need to add more resistance if we want to continue getting stronger (that’s how strength works). We can achieve this by adding external load, like velcro-ing on some wrist weights, or holding a dumbbell or gripping a resistance band. And if we do this throughout our entire range of motion and train our end ranges to be this strong...phew, watch out world, because we just turned ourselves into a confident, competent bad-ass!

Active Range of Motion in Practice

I hope by now I’ve sold you on the idea that active range of motion is a great thing to train for all the major joints in our body. Training range of motion is articulate, detailed sometimes microscopic work of getting our joints to move the way they are designed to move, rather than letting something easier move for them. 

There’s lots of places to go from here, and my hope is that this article has helped you frame the bigger picture around why and how to move our bodies. 

I can send you to a million places from here if you’re looking for your next step. If you’re a self-learner, I might direct you to YouTube and Instagram to look up posts from the Functional Range Conditioning community. If you like to be guided through the process, I can refer you to my own free online yoga program called How To Move Your Body, which takes us step by step through every major joint in the body. Yes, we’re working on passive range of motion, but for the most part we are working on active range of motion and learning to discern the different elements of our experience that make movement sometimes very confusing. 

The best part? No fancy vocab, no experience required--we are simply learning what our body should be able to do, and then we’re figuring out what our roadmap is for getting there. Join us in your inbox every Sunday with a brand new class--all you need to do is carve out 20-30 minutes each week to do the practice. (All previous videos are in a playlist on our YouTube channel). By the end of 2019, you’ll know exactly how your body is designed to move, and you’ll have a roadmap for what to work on to get there. 

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