How to use this list
These nine drills cover the three areas most people are actually chasing when they buy a mobility stick: hips, thoracic spine and shoulders. Run them as a block for a full session, or pull two or three out as a warmup.
Every drill here is standing or half-kneeling. Nothing needs a door anchor, a mat or a rack.
A note on tools: these positions work on a rigid stick, a broomstick or a flexible bar. What changes is the feedback. On an oscillating resistance bar the shaft keeps loading and rebounding through the rep, so you get continuous tension instead of one held shape. Cues below are written for that, and translate fine either way.
Shoulders and upper back
1. Wide-grip pass-overs
Hold the bar in front of the hips with a wide grip. Travel it slowly overhead and behind you, then reverse. Ten slow reps. Widen your hands if your shoulders hunt for room. This is the single best diagnostic drill in the list, where it gets sticky tells you what to work on.
2. Overhead side bends
Bar held vertically, pressed overhead. Bend slowly to one side, return through centre, then the other. Ten per side. Keep both feet flat so the movement stays in the ribs rather than the hips.
3. Reach-and-row
Split stance, bar at chest height. Press one end away until you feel the shoulder blade travel forward, then pull it back and down. Eight per side, slow. Trains the scapula to move rather than just brace.
Thoracic spine and rotation
4. Standing thoracic rotations
Bar across the collarbones, hands wide. Lengthen up, then rotate slowly to one side as far as is comfortable and return through centre. Eight per side. Rotate from the rib cage, not by yanking with the arms. Full breakdown lives in the thoracic rotation warmup.
5. Half-kneeling rotations
Same movement from half-kneeling. Hips square and glutes gently engaged so the lower back cannot borrow range from the mid back. Six per side. This is the one drill worth keeping if you only have two minutes.
6. High-to-low chops
Bar diagonal, travelling from above one shoulder to outside the opposite hip. Eight per side, controlled tempo. Golfers and racquet players should read the pre-round warmup guide for how to sequence this before play.
Hips and lower body
7. Standing hip circles
Bar in front for balance. Drive one knee up, then out and around in a slow arc. Six each direction, each leg. Detailed version in the standing hip opener.
8. Lateral lunges with the bar across the chest
Step wide, sit into the hip, keep the trailing leg straight. Six per side. The bar across the chest stops you folding forward at the waist.
9. Overhead-carry walks
Bar pressed overhead, ribs stacked over hips, walk slowly across the room and back for ninety seconds. Deceptively hard, and it ties the whole session together by asking the shoulders, spine and hips to hold position while you move.
Putting it into a session
- Five-minute warmup: drills 1, 4, 7
- Ten-minute mobility block: drills 1 to 6
- Full session, roughly fifteen minutes: all nine, in order
Progression
Progress by slowing down and adding range before you add resistance. Once every rep looks the same at the end of a set as it did at the start, move up a resistance level. On the BendyBar that means stepping from Light to Medium, or Medium to Max, and the resistance guide on the product page walks through which suits you.
Anything sharp, pinching or new is a stop signal, not a challenge. This is general movement education, not medical advice.
Common questions
Do I need a door anchor for these mobility stick exercises?
No. All nine drills are standing or half-kneeling and need nothing but the bar and a few feet of clear floor.
How often can I run this list?
Daily is fine for the five-minute warmup version. Most people run the full fifteen-minute block three to four times a week.
Will these work on a rigid stick rather than a flexible bar?
The positions do. What you lose is the continuous loading and rebound, so a rigid stick becomes more of a stretching and alignment tool and less of an activation tool.
Exercises in this guide
Keep reading
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The full BendyBar exercise library
Written routines plus follow-along video series, grouped by goal and body area.
BendyBar vs Stick Mobility
How leverage sticks and oscillating resistance differ in practice.
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