Comparing Pliability vs Flexibility for Strength, Mobility & Longevity

Have you ever watched elite athletes perform? If so, you may have noticed their seemingly superhuman ability to move their bodies. Not only can they efficiently execute jaw-dropping moves, but they also seem to possess an uncanny ability to avoid injury. While several factors contribute to their athletic prowess, flexibility training is a key element that helps these individuals achieve optimal performance. Incorporating flexibility exercises into their routine enhances mobility, reduces muscle stiffness, and improves overall movement efficiency. Nevertheless, when it comes to flexibility, there’s more to the story than simply improving the range of motion. There are different "types" of flexibility, each with distinct characteristics and benefits. Take, for example, pliability and flexibility.

Understanding the differences between these concepts can help you achieve your goals, like improved performance, enhanced mobility for lifelong movement, and reduced risk of injury. Pliability’s mobility app can help you achieve these objectives in no time.

Which is Better, Muscle Pliability or Flexibility?

When it comes to stretching, most people think of flexibility. This broad, multi-layered, and often misunderstood topic is quite complex. One lesser-used and considered modality of flexibility is pliability. Today, I’d like to discuss the differences between flexibility and pliability. Pliability can easily fall into the flexibility category, but they are not synonymous. 

What is Flexibility?

Flexibility is your muscles' ability to lengthen passively to allow a joint to move through its range of motion. Think of it as how far you can reach during a static stretch. For example, touching your toes during a hamstring stretch demonstrates flexibility. Passive yoga poses like seated forward folds also rely heavily on flexibility.  

Benefits of Flexibility
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• Increases range of motion. 
• Improves posture. 
• Reduces the risk of muscle strains.
   

Nonetheless, flexibility alone doesn’t guarantee strength or control within that extended range of motion. That’s where pliability comes into play.

What is Pliability?

Pliability refers to your muscles' ability to stay supple, resilient, and adaptable under tension. It combines flexibility, strength, and control to maintain stability and power throughout dynamic movements. For example, When performing functional exercises like squats or lunges, pliability allows your muscles to adapt to the load while maintaining proper form. 

Pliable muscles absorb and release energy efficiently in explosive movements like sprints or kettlebell swings. 

Benefits of Pliability
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• It improves muscle recovery and reduces soreness. 
• Enhances functional movement and athletic performance. 
• Increases resilience to injuries by allowing muscles to handle dynamic loads.
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In-Depth Pliability vs Flexibility Overview

Flexibility and pliability are not the same, though they are related. Flexibility refers to the range of motion around a joint, while pliability describes how well muscle tissues respond to movement within that range. 

Flexibility

Flexibility is primarily static. It focuses on elongating muscles. Flexibility is helpful for static stretches and improving passive movement. Think of a rubber band. You’re holding it with both hands, two fingers gripping each side. You move your hands further apart, and the rubber band stretches. Pull farther, and it stretches more. 

You get to a point where the rubber band doesn’t want to stretch anymore, and if you pull it, it snaps. This illustrates the definition of flexibility. 

Understanding Passive Muscle Flexibility

In the context of muscles, flexibility is the ability of a muscle to lengthen passively through a range of motion. Here, “passively” means an external force causing the muscle to stretch, like gravity pulling on your upper body as you bend to touch your toes. In other words, it’s how far a part of your body can stretch when pushed or pulled by something else. 

Understanding Passive Muscle Flexibility

If that still doesn’t make sense, look at your hands. Hold your index finger on your dominant hand like you’re pointing at something. Raise your index finger as high as possible without pulling it. That’s your index finger’s active range of motion. Now, take your other hand, grip the index finger on your dominant hand, and pull it straight back as far as possible without pain. 

That’s your finger’s passive range of motion, and the more flexible that joint is, the farther back your finger can go. 

Pliability

While flexibility focuses on the range of motion, pliability is how your muscles perform within that range. A flexible muscle may stretch far but be weak or prone to injury during dynamic activities if it's not pliable. Pliability is dynamic and functional. It focuses on strength and adaptability under tension. Pliability is essential for athletic performance and injury prevention. 

Mobility: How Well Can You Move?

This takes us straight to the following term: mobility. Mobility differs from flexibility in one simple and essential way: flexibility is how far a part of your body can move with assistance from an external force, and mobility is how it can move on its own. 

A Simple Test for Hip Mobility

Let’s illustrate hip mobility as an example. Stand up for a minute and lift up one knee as high as possible, but don’t pull it up with your hands. Now move your knee in a circle, clockwise and then counter-clockwise—as big as you can make it without feeling pain or injuring yourself. This knee circle shows you a picture of your hip mobility and how far your hip muscles can move your knee independently.

You can test the mobility of any joint by seeing how far it can reach. Try your wrist if you want to start small, or go big and test out your shoulder. In each self-test, you want to make a big circle with the joint to see how far you can actively move the joint. 

Understanding the Flexibility-Mobility Link

Mobility builds on flexibility because it requires an unrestricted range of motion. A joint’s active range of motion will never exceed its passive range. It’s always the other way around; a joint can only move actively inside the range of motion in which it can move passively. In this way, limited flexibility means limited mobility and increasing flexibility is a prerequisite for improving mobility. 

How Lifestyle Factors Enhance Pliability

At first glance, pliability seems closely related to flexibility, especially when the word pliable comes from the French plier, which means to bend.

It has less to do with literal bending and more to do with your muscle tissue’s ability to adapt to the demands of your sport. Technically speaking, pliable is a term to describe a certain kind of muscle tissue that can fully contract to 100 percent and relax back down to zero when not in use. 

We describe this kind of muscle as “long and soft” because no unnecessary tension could prevent it from doing its job. This kind of muscle is crucial for you to have because it’s prepared to absorb and disperse the forces encountered during competition. 

Pliability is the “Missing Link” in Training

You may have heard us say pliability is the missing link in modern sports training. What we mean by this is that it balances out an unbalanced system. The traditional training model says, in a nutshell, that we should always be lifting heavier, running farther, and training for more extended periods. Nevertheless, this longer/more challenging model tends to lead to injury if there isn’t something else to balance it out. 

The Problem with Overtraining

Put simply, working out as often as possible, for as long as possible, and with the most possible resistance (weight) makes muscle tissues tight, dense, and stiff. Instead of being able to contract to 100 percent and then relax back to zero, they’re stuck between, say, 25 and 75 — never fully relaxed and never fully contracted. 

This makes them unprepared to absorb and disperse the unpredictable forces of competitive sports, which means they’re more likely to get a muscular imbalance and an injury. 

How Does Pliability Work?

Pliability can be enhanced in many ways. One of these ways is through bodywork and foam rolling, and another is through your lifestyle: a combination of hydration, nutrition, and proper rest and recovery. We’re going to talk briefly about all of these. 

5 Pliability Exercises to Improve Your Range of Motion

Foam rolling your muscles is an effective method for developing pliable muscles. Consider working these pliability exercises into your post-workout routine. 

1. Hamstrings

How to do it:
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• To foam roll your hamstrings, sit on the floor and place the foam roller under the middle of the back of your upper legs.
• Place your hands behind you.
• Push onto your hands to lift your hips off the floor and place pressure from the roller on your hamstrings.
• Slowly roll up and down, putting pressure on your hamstrings from your knees to the bottom of your glutes until a tender spot is identified. 
• Once you’ve identified the most sensitive part of the muscle, press the foam roller into that spot for 30–90 seconds while relaxing until the discomfort is reduced.
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2. Quadriceps

How to do it:
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• To foam roll your quadriceps, lie facedown, placing the middle of your thighs on the foam roller. 
• Place your forearms as if you were performing a plank. 
• Your legs should be straight, and your feet should be off the ground. 
• While maintaining good alignment, slowly roll up and down, covering the quad muscles from your hips to your knees. 
• Use the foam roller to slowly roll your quads until you find the most tender part of the muscle. 
• Hold on that spot for 30–90 seconds while relaxing until the discomfort is reduced.
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3. Lower back

A foam roller can help release muscle tension in the lower back; however, avoiding putting too much pressure directly on your lower back muscles is essential. If you're experiencing low back pain, the cause may be from tight muscles or muscle knots in another part of your body. Before using a foam roller on your lower back, consider rolling your:
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• Glutes
• Hip flexors
• Shoulder blades
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4. Hip Flexors

How to do it:
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• To foam roll your hip flexors, lie facedown on a yoga mat. 
• Place the top of your left hip on the foam roller. The foam roller should be positioned just below your hip bone. 
• Place your forearms on the floor as if you were performing a plank. Your non-rolling leg should be off the floor with only your toes on the ground. 
• While maintaining your alignment, use your non-rolling leg and arms to roll up and down your hip flexor slowly. 
• Roll from the top of your quad to your hip bone. 
• Roll the front and side of your hip to cover the hip flexors. Then, switch to the opposite side and repeat.
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5. Lats

How to do it:
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• To foam roll your lats, lie on your side with your arms extended over your head. 
• Rotate your lower shoulder outward and place the foam roller under your arm toward the outside of your armpit. 
• The thumb side of your hand should be facing the ceiling. 
• Slowly roll up and down, covering the side of your upper back below your shoulder blade to your armpit until a tender spot is identified. 
• Use the foam roller to slowly roll your lats until you find the most tender spot. 
• Hold on that spot for 30–90 seconds while relaxing until the discomfort is reduced.
• Repeat on the opposite side.
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How Tissue Work Enhances Pliability

Soft-tissue mobilization is when a force is applied to your muscle tissue to increase blood circulation, oxygenation, cell permeability, and neuromuscular efficiency.

Let’s break down all these terms. Blood circulation is the blood flow rate through the muscle tissue, which has been shown to increase significantly after tissue work. Blood oxygenation is the amount of oxygen in the blood pumping through your muscles. Cell permeability refers to how easily nutrients and other essential molecules can pass in and out of your cells. 

Benefits of Tissue Mobilization

Researchers suggest that one of the reasons why tissue mobilization works is because it makes the tiny blood vessels in your muscles more permeable. Neuromuscular efficiency refers to how “strong” of a signal your muscles need to contract completely. Tissue work (especially rolling) has been shown to make our muscles better listeners, so they fire completely with less prompting from the brain. 

Why Athletes Need Both

For athletes, having both flexibility and pliability is non-negotiable. While flexibility ensures your body can achieve full ranges of motion, pliability allows you to perform at high intensities within those ranges without risking injury. By incorporating both into your training, you’ll move better, recover faster, and stay prepared for the demands of any workout or competition.

Related Reading

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• Why Is It Important for Athletes to Be Flexible
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How to Incorporate Both Pliability and Flexibility into Your Routine

Static Stretching: Your Post-Workout Flexibility Secret

Static stretches are the ideal way to cool down after a workout. These stretches increase flexibility by lengthening muscles and tendons, helping you recover from exercise and reducing soreness. Static stretching improves your flexibility by increasing your range of motion, which can enhance your performance in sports and exercise. 

It's best to perform static stretches after your workout when your muscles are warm and pliable. Aim to hold each stretch for 30 seconds and target major muscle groups, such as hamstrings, calves, shoulders, and hip flexors. Dedicate 10-15 minutes post-workout to static stretches, and you’ll reap the flexibility benefits quickly.  

Functional Movements: The Key to Muscle Pliability

Muscle pliability refers to the quality of your muscles, making them soft, long, and malleable. Improving muscle pliability helps reduce the risk of injury, enhances performance, and promotes faster recovery. To build pliability, focus on functional movements that mimic everyday activities to help your muscles perform better. 

Include dynamic stretches like walking lunges or arm circles in your warm-up. Use resistance bands or light weights to train muscles across their full range of motion. Incorporate foam rolling and massage to enhance muscle elasticity and recovery.  

Recovery with Flexibility and Pliability Training

Flexibility and pliability training go hand in hand, and practices like yoga or Pilates can combine both to improve your range of motion while strengthening and stabilizing muscles. Both yoga and Pilates include static stretches and functional movements to promote long, flexible muscles. Incorporating these practices into your recovery days will help you feel better and perform better in your next workout.

Improve Your Flexibility with Our Mobility App Today | Get 7 Days for Free on Any Platform

Pliability offers a fresh take on yoga tailored for performance-oriented individuals and athletes. Our app features a vast library of high-quality videos designed to:
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• Improve flexibility
• Aid recovery
• Reduce pain
• Enhance range of motion
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Personalized Mobility Solutions

Pliability provides daily-updated custom mobility programs for those interested in optimizing their health and fitness. It also includes a unique body-scanning feature to pinpoint mobility issues. If you're feeling limited by pain or the ability to move, Pliability aims to complement your fitness routine and help you move better. 

Sign up today for 7 days absolutely for free, on iPhone, iPad, Android, or on our website to improve flexibility, aid recovery, reduce pain, and enhance range of motion with our mobility app.

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