Articles
Daily Overhead Lifts for Mobility
July 21 2025
July 21 2025
The best general way to improve and preserve overhead mobility is to lift overhead daily. This isn’t a replacement for more direct mobility work, but it will provide results itself, and will improve the results and permanence of additional mobility training.
Mobility requires stability, and stability is essentially a skill, which requires consistent practice. You can get far more of that practice and therefore skill in less time with greater frequency of exposure, and that also means less time between exposures for your body to settle back into its less mobile, less stable condition.
In the same way that you make no progress stretching once weekly, the less frequently and regularly you lift overhead, the more of your life you’re spending outside the range of motion you’re trying to improve. Your body won’t allow you to access ranges it believes to be unsafe, and the only way for a range to be safe is to use it regularly and frequently.
The effort to move and hold the arms overhead, and to set a strong, stable position is itself dynamic, active mobility training that creates a foundation for and solidifies your more direct mobility work. In other words, it will itself improve mobility and stability, but it will also bolster the results of things like stretching by reinforcing the positions, practice the range of motion, strengthening and stabilizing that range of motion, and improving familiarity and comfort.
Double-arm exercises are generally a better choice than single because single allows more compensation, but try to include dumbbell/kettlebell work with both arms simultaneously because it’s more demanding on both mobility and stability for the arms to be independent and will improve symmetry.
Include at least one of each category at least once weekly:
JERK
Split jerk, power/push jerk, pause jerk, jerk behind the neck
OVERHEAD SQUAT
Snatch, overhead squat, snatch balance, press in snatch, push jerk in snatch
PUSH PRESS
Push press, snatch push press, push press behind the neck
PRESS
Press, snatch press, press in snatch, press in clean, press in split, DB/KB press
OVERHEAD CARRY
Snatch/clean grip barbell, barbell with hanging weights, DB/KB 1- and 2-arm, carry + OHS
VERTICAL PULL
Pull-up, chin-up, pulldown, pulldown behind the neck, 1- and 2-arm hang from bar
Include overhead activity of some kind even on your days outside the gym—this is even more critical for those of you who only train 3-4 days/week.
This of course doesn’t need to lifting or formal exercises, and won’t be if you’re not in the gym. These off days are good times to do things like hanging from a pull-up bar, or even using the top of a door jamb or similar to simulate a hang. Run through dynamic range of motion exercises like you would in a warm-up every day as well.
You can find all of these exercises and many more options for each of these categories in my exercise library.
Mobility requires stability, and stability is essentially a skill, which requires consistent practice. You can get far more of that practice and therefore skill in less time with greater frequency of exposure, and that also means less time between exposures for your body to settle back into its less mobile, less stable condition.
In the same way that you make no progress stretching once weekly, the less frequently and regularly you lift overhead, the more of your life you’re spending outside the range of motion you’re trying to improve. Your body won’t allow you to access ranges it believes to be unsafe, and the only way for a range to be safe is to use it regularly and frequently.
The effort to move and hold the arms overhead, and to set a strong, stable position is itself dynamic, active mobility training that creates a foundation for and solidifies your more direct mobility work. In other words, it will itself improve mobility and stability, but it will also bolster the results of things like stretching by reinforcing the positions, practice the range of motion, strengthening and stabilizing that range of motion, and improving familiarity and comfort.
Double-arm exercises are generally a better choice than single because single allows more compensation, but try to include dumbbell/kettlebell work with both arms simultaneously because it’s more demanding on both mobility and stability for the arms to be independent and will improve symmetry.
Include at least one of each category at least once weekly:
JERK
Split jerk, power/push jerk, pause jerk, jerk behind the neck
OVERHEAD SQUAT
Snatch, overhead squat, snatch balance, press in snatch, push jerk in snatch
PUSH PRESS
Push press, snatch push press, push press behind the neck
PRESS
Press, snatch press, press in snatch, press in clean, press in split, DB/KB press
OVERHEAD CARRY
Snatch/clean grip barbell, barbell with hanging weights, DB/KB 1- and 2-arm, carry + OHS
VERTICAL PULL
Pull-up, chin-up, pulldown, pulldown behind the neck, 1- and 2-arm hang from bar
Include overhead activity of some kind even on your days outside the gym—this is even more critical for those of you who only train 3-4 days/week.
This of course doesn’t need to lifting or formal exercises, and won’t be if you’re not in the gym. These off days are good times to do things like hanging from a pull-up bar, or even using the top of a door jamb or similar to simulate a hang. Run through dynamic range of motion exercises like you would in a warm-up every day as well.
You can find all of these exercises and many more options for each of these categories in my exercise library.
