How to Balance Mobility, Strength, and Endurance for Longevity…The Devil’s Triangle!

As opposed to commenting about the Bermuda Triangle or B-rated movies…this is a little op-ed piece I’ve been wanting to put together for quite some time. 

My version of the Devil’s Triangle involves over 4 decades of experience and observation in athletic and fitness training. It’s a story of temptation, seduction, success, and calamity. 

Actually that last statement sounds like another B-rated movie and is probably a bit overdramatic. But I think there is some real substance in here that’s worth discussing.

If a picture really is worth a thousand words, take a look at this graphic and we’ll illustrate a few points. We’ve got an equilateral triangle and the apex of each corner contains a term that generally describes a training behavior. Let’s go through each type of training, define it, describe its incredible benefits, and consider some potential pitfalls associated with overinvesting in the training.

The 3 types of training depicted in the graphic represent the most common types of exercise utilized by fitness enthusiasts worldwide. Each pursuit can take on multiple forms but they are readily recognized by those one-word descriptions.

It’s important that we make a subtle distinction between human performance (athletic) capacities and training types. At TLA we recognize 5 Capacities of Athleticism and they are strength, speed, power, agility, and endurance. These are attributes found in athletic humans. Training types are actually the modes of exercise which develop those capacities. For the purpose of this academic exploration, we can assume that both the capacity and the training are relatively synonymous. 

We’ll begin with mobility. At TLA, we include mobility as a component of agility, along with stability, reactivity, and fluidity. Agility is the skilled expression of the MOVEMENTSMITH. This is someone who owns every position and who has mastery of motion in every direction. But today we will parse out only the mobility component, and focus on it. 

Mobility is essentially the flexibility and range of motion necessary to move without restriction in accordance with the design and biomechanics of the human body, in the presence of any demand. Mobility is perhaps best described as the representation of the “stiffness-looseness” continuum. If you don’t have enough mobility, you are restricted in movement ability/options and your motions take on robotic or ineffective patterns. This is known as hypomobility (not enough) and is often referred to as moving like a “brick.” Conversely, you can have too much of a good thing (and that is the major point which is often overlooked). Excessive mobility, known as hypermobility or instability (these are not quite the same things in the PT world but they’re close enough for today), yields a “wet noodle” property to movement and exhibits poor management of gravity, force, alignment, and joint congruency. In common sense terms, nobody wants or deserves to be either a brick or a wet noodle. 

Mobility training includes static and dynamic stretching, positional and corrective exercises, breathwork, and yoga, to name just a few. Every type of exercise has multiple benefits. That’s true for the ones I just mentioned and several others in this category, but those interventions are usually applied to affect mobility. Every human body (varies somewhat between specific body types) needs a reasonable amount of mobility. Some people require quite a bit of mobility training to address their body and sport requirements. Others need just very small doses of mobility training to stay at their ideal point on the stiffness-looseness continuum. 

Mobility is both an essential asset and an incredibly valuable training tool. It should be a part of every Lifetime Athlete’s repertoire. However, if a person lives at the mobility corner of The Devil’s Triangle and does extreme amounts of mobility exercise – and forsakes the other types of training – he/she is at great risk of eventually getting into trouble. If you exclusively do a lot of mobility training, for long enough (often decades), you can end up with joint laxity, especially in the spine and pelvis. This results in a lack of relative stability and movement control, shearing on the articular cartilage surfaces of the joints, and a significantly increased risk of pain and arthritic degeneration. In this way hypermobility is a silent killer. 

My intention here is not to shame, humiliate, or piss off any exerciser. Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m trying to provide information, empowerment, and inclusiveness in our community. But I know this is a powerful educational opportunity because I’ve seen it over and over professionally. People think “you can’t stretch too much.” Well, I’m here to tell you that you can do, or be, too much of anything if you take it far enough, and that’s very true of mobility. 

There’s some deep psychology in all of this as well. We tend to do things that feel good and which we are “good” at doing. This drives intrinsic motivation, self-confidence, and happiness. Take a look at a yoga class for example and I’m not picking on the practice. The person up front in the class is probably a young-ish (you define) female who is already naturally a little hypermobile and for whom most of the poses are relatively easy. She’s reinforced by her success and eventually becomes an instructor. Over time she neglects all other types of training because she gets so much enjoyment and satisfaction from her yoga. Until a couple decades go by. Then seemingly all of a sudden (although it was going on in subtle fashion for years) she begins to develop lower back, sacroiliac, or hip joint pain. Diagnostics reveal degenerative changes and indicate the need for potential surgical intervention. Activity patterns now need to be drastically adjusted. She has to curtail or even give up the yoga that she loved for so long and is quite emotionally distraught. All of this could have been avoided if she simply did some strength and stability training in addition to yoga.

The yogis get defensive about those statements and will say that some of the yoga positions work on isometric strength. They are correct. It’s just not enough in the context of global human conditioning. Or they’ll say that a hot flow series is a good cardio workout. I’m gonna say that’s decent but not quite good enough. The challenge for all of us as intelligent humans, and it’s true for any sport (not just yoga) is to be careful not to turn it into a religion and pursue it exclusively and with blind faith. Do what you love. Just keep a little balance in there. Stay in the green zone of the triangle. In this mobility example, you can still do a lot of this training. Just make sure you are keeping your strength, muscle mass, and joint stability in a good place.

And speaking of strength, since that’s another corner of The Devil’s Triangle, let’s talk more definitively. Strength is maximum force development capacity. Pretty obvious. How strong are you? What’s your max? How much can you lift, one time, all out? There’s also power. How quickly can you generate that force and how long can you sustain it before it drops off appreciably? Then we’ve got hypertrophy, which is muscle mass or size. This is also highly related to bone density. All of these qualities are developed through RESISTANCE TRAINING. This can be done in a variety of ways including bodyweight, bands, machines, and free weights. I’ll openly admit that I’m biased toward the iron. Some amount of weight lifting is incredibly valuable and, in my opinion, absolutely necessary for any human who wants to be optimized in the strength realm. I put “strength” in the triangle to represent resistance training because I think it resonates well with more people. Plus, resistance was a longer word that didn’t fit into the triangle’s corner as well.

One of the questions that’s often asked in the strength and conditioning world is “How strong is strong enough?” This is in context to the particular athlete and sport, as well as the “everyday human,” whatever that means. I’ve got two answers here. “It depends” and “pretty damn strong.” Each deserves a little attention.

When we look at athletics – and remember that I consider everyone to be an athlete – we have to identify the demands or requirements of the chosen sport(s). So whether you are a pro football player (this is of course position dependent), a backpacker, or a pickleball enthusiast, there is a certain amount of strength that can be identified to correlate with best performance. This of course is also adjusted relative to body type, or each athlete’s unique morphology. Put simply, there are no sports that require a complete absence of strength. Our challenge is going after the desired amount of strength while also building the speed, power, agility, and/or endurance necessary in the specific peak performance mixology of the individual athlete.

The best example to examine here is the sport of powerlifting. It’s actually a bit of a misnomer because strength (not power) is both the objective and the measure involved. 1-rep maxes in squat, bench press, and deadlift are pure strength. This is the target of the powerlifter and it’s even more so than with Olympic weightlifting (snatch, clean and jerk) which has a high power component, and bodybuilding, which of course concentrates on hypertrophy. Powerlifters and Strongman competitors are the strongest humans on the planet. 

The challenge in longevity for the powerlifter is in balancing peak performance with long term health. As the triangle demonstrates, living deep in one corner of that geometric analogy leads to adaptations that make one really, really, good at that one thing. And not so good at the other two. What happens with powerlifters who don’t occasionally do a little balanced training and restore those mobility and aerobic fitness properties to baseline is the SpongeBob problem. They become bricks and look like SpongeBob. They can squat, bench, and deadlift better than anyone else, but they eventually lose much of their mobility and often get out of breath walking up a flight of stairs. They are extreme specialists and not exemplifications of athletic versatility. 

Of course the argument that ensues is that if someone loves a pursuit, and is really good at it…shouldn’t  we just admire their impressive ability and say nothing? I just recommend that they mix it up a little. Just like I have friends and clients who are yogis, I have the same that are powerlifters. The goal is to help and encourage them to pursue their passion, but to provide just enough balance in training to avoid a hip replacement or a bypass surgery (both of which occur with statistical significance in this population). Adding a very small percentage of mobility and endurance training can keep lifters healthy and high-performing for life. That’s my goal.

Now we can look at the general statement that every human needs to be “pretty damn strong.” Being weak sucks. Nobody needs to blow out their back lifting a sack of mulch or pet food. Overall strength has a high correlation with both length and quality of life. Muscular strength has relationships to fall prevention and functional independence. Muscles are in essence a metabolic organ that act as a glucose disposal “sink.” Strong muscles look good and give us confidence that we can survive, thrive, attract mates, and a whole lot of other mojo. 

I’ve worked on ideas of what makes a functional human for many years. There are some thought leaders who’ve come up with a few parameters, such as how much of your bodyweight can you lift and carry, and for how far, etc. Ultimately, though, “pretty damn strong” is what I build into the programming that I design for the Training Tribe and all my coaching clients. Yes, it’s a little different for each person, but everybody takes some “iron supplementation,” and we are all the better for it. I actually look at life as a succession of short sprints more than a “long grind,” and that’s also a great way to look at dosing strength training for most people. 

But since I mentioned the grind, let’s broach the subject of endurance training. By definition, endurance encompasses both cardiorespiratory fitness and muscular fatigue resistance. Narrowing down a bit for our current triangulation, let’s mainly focus on aerobic conditioning, or “cardio.” 

It is very useful to classify aerobic and anaerobic training using a zone-based model. Most popular is the 5-zone model and I both talk about and use it often. You’re probably familiar with this very simple table, or a similar version.

I’ve created tables over the years that add all sorts of parameters to the zones. Work to rest ratios. Correlations to Rate of Perceived Exertion. Percentages of max heart rate, functional threshold power, VO2max, etc. I usually color-code them. But if we focus on the row for Zone 2, which is italicized, that’s the type of exercise which is pertinent to our devilish discussion. 

We are talking about the practice of exclusively doing long, slow distance-oriented training. Obviously, this is very common in recreational running, swimming, and cycling. There are many, many people who find health, fitness, meditation, and socialization in going out for a long, slow, steady anything. Interestingly, though, this description doesn’t describe the training patterns of elite athletes in any of those sports. High-level athletes lift weights, do mobility training, and use sprints and intervals to prepare their bodies for peak performance in endurance sports. It’s the average Joe and Sally Fitness that fall into the trap of chronic cardio or Zone 2 jail. Let me be clear here. I’m being critical of doing high volumes of only this type of training and nothing else. I’m not suggesting that people who fall into this trap are lesser beings who have character flaws or anything silly like that. 

We live in a society which encourages participation in long-distance exercise, at least to some extent. It’s a busy world and we all have demands on our time, budget, and the like. Chronic stress levels are too high. It’s pretty easy to just head out the door and cruise along in an easy mode for a while. Doing so is therapeutic and uncomplicated. It builds the aerobic base. Helps with weight management (although this is a can of worms for a different day). Has proven cardiovascular health and longevity benefits. It’s all good. As long as the athlete maintains adequate mobility, strength, muscle mass, and at least some level of athletic prowess. 

But what tends to happen in a lot of these cases, is the person gets more and more endurance-fit, and tends to seek out going longer and longer, at the expense of all other training and capacities. If they keep this pattern up long enough, they eventually become these aerobically fit beasts who are exceptionally weak and stiff. They can only move slowly in a straight line and are at risk of hamstring or ankle sprains if they try to move quickly or multi-directionally. I’ve seen this a lot in my sports and orthopedic physical therapy practice over all these years. It’s a case of people doing only that one thing and such behavior led them to gradually being unable to do the thing, because the body became unbalanced and broke down. 

Fixing broken runners and other endurance athletes is fairly easy if you catch them early enough. Repetitive motion isn’t necessarily absolutely insidious, although a little variety in movement patterns is always a good idea. The thing that’s important is that movement, especially if it is repetitive, needs to be very biomechanically sound. It has to look and feel “right, smooth, artistic, poetic, natural” and the like. Problems arise when movement becomes awkward, inefficient, or wonky. Now, this can certainly happen in the case of joint trauma or acute injury, but what we’re talking about here is more of that subtle stiffening and weakening which occurs as a result of doing the slow grind all the time. Repetitive suboptimal (will you let me say “ugly” if I frame it with kindness?) movement is a serious problem. 

So we don’t want to encourage anyone to sacrifice their strength, stability, and mobility in pursuit of only endurance. That’s like having a car with an incredible engine but a chassis and body that are crooked, clanky, and falling apart. Metabolics matter but so do mechanics and I always help my endurance athletes to preserve their orthopedic health and improve their movement economy. In the long run (pun intended) that’s what keeps them able to do what they love for a lifetime. 

This brings me back to our demonic diagram. My message here is not that you can’t go right to the extreme apex of any corner of The Devil’s Triangle. You just shouldn’t stay there forever. When we have the most invested, and competitive of athletes and fitness enthusiasts, especially if they are young (you define), we want them to explore the limits of their potential. But with coaching and program design, we must periodically dance away from the extremes, even if only a little, and sprinkle in some of the other 2 missing elements. That’s how this model applies to the most passionate of sports and exercise participants.

But you probably noticed there is a smaller, inner triangle that happens to be green instead of red. It’s sort of an arbitrary, “safe middle zone” which is somewhat generic and different for each person. The green triangle represents a range of training and capacity mashups that are possible for every Lifetime Athlete. You can be at any corner of the green triangle, probably be capable of 85+% of your potential in the red corner, but enjoy better all-around capacities and potentially greater long-term health. 

I’m aware that this baby turned into a rambling diatribe. If you are still with me…thanks. I think I’ll sum up my message with a few bullet points.

• Every sport or fitness pursuit has merit.
• You should be able to choose anything you want or like.
• Every person is an athlete.
• Every athlete is unique and awesome.
• Those who perform at the highest levels impress and inspire us.
• Staying at any corner of The Devil’s Triangle indefinitely may potentially be problematic.
• Long term health needs to be valued most and it should drive training and sporting decisions.

In the beginning I spoke of temptation, seduction, success, and calamity. It is indeed tempting to invest all of one’s training into one corner of the Triangle. It can be very seductive when the dopamine gets going and the corner starts to give you a return on your investment. You can have success your whole life with your training if you spend some or even most of your time in the green zone. Calamity can be avoided.