How Do I Know If My Pain Is From Weakness or Mobility Issues?
You’ve probably asked yourself this question at some point — maybe after a workout, maybe after sitting too long, or maybe after realizing that your left lunge feels like an entirely different exercise than your right.
A quick, oversimplified answer could be:
“Do you strength train?”
Boom. Done.
But let’s be honest — it’s rarely that simple.
When Your Body Sends Mixed Messages
I’ve personally wrestled with this question for years. Split stance movements — things like lunges and Bulgarian split squats — have always been tricky for me. One side felt off-balance, or I’d start feeling the work somewhere I shouldn’t … like in my back instead of my quads or glutes.
My right side always felt “different.” Even during runs, it felt less connected — like it wasn’t firing the same way as my left. I ignored it for a while, until one day that “off” feeling turned into an “Oh, crap” moment. Let’s just say I regretted that decision for about six weeks.
And here’s the thing: I see the same patterns in my office all the time. From shoulder imbalances to hip shifts in squats to someone dropping one hip slightly during a plank — these tiny variations reveal whether the root cause is mobility or weakness.
Why We Can’t Reduce the Body to Parts
The body doesn’t think in pieces — it thinks in patterns.
Your brain doesn’t activate a single muscle in isolation. It fires groups of muscles that work together to achieve a task. That’s why thinking of pain or dysfunction as one weak or tight muscle oversimplifies the problem.
Let’s use an example outside of exercise: nutrition. If you focus only on calories, you ignore enzymes, fiber, and micronutrients that play huge roles in digestion and metabolism. Similarly, if you focus on one joint or muscle group, you miss the broader coordinated pattern involving your posture, balance, and breathing.
That’s why reductionism — breaking everything into smaller pieces — can backfire in health and movement. Yes, it brings clarity in some areas, but if you never zoom back out, you lose sight of how the pieces interact.
“A pattern presents multiple single movements used together for a specific function.”
So, while analyzing parts is helpful, understanding patterns creates wisdom.
Strength vs. Mobility: The Fine Print
Here’s where it gets nuanced:
What looks like weakness may actually be muscle inhibition.
What feels like tightness could actually be protective tension — your body guarding against instability or poor coordination.
That’s why your best friend’s “tight hamstrings” and your “tight hamstrings” might not mean the same thing. His could come from genuine stiffness; yours could be your brain throwing the brakes on because it doesn’t trust your pelvis to stabilize properly.
The trick is identifying whether you have a hardware issue (mobility restriction) or a software issue (neurological weakness or inhibition). Both limit performance — just for different reasons.
Case Study: My Bulgarian Split Squat Saga
Let’s go back to that Bulgarian split squat I mentioned earlier. I’d set up, get into position, lower down, and — boom — my low back would take over. I could feel everything shooting from my hip to my shoulder blade.
Now, logically I know I should feel this in my quad and glute. When those aren’t doing their job, something else compensates.
If you’ve been told to “just do glute bridges” to strengthen your posterior chain, please take this as your friendly PSA: it’s not always a strength problem! If you can’t access the right motion in the hip joint, your brain will find another strategy — even if it’s an inefficient or painful one.
That’s why mobility and stability tests are so revealing. They tell you whether your body has access to the positions it needs before asking for strength in those ranges.
Movement Screening: The Power of Patterns
A few fundamental movement patterns appear over and over in both daily life and my screening process. One of the most telling? The squat.
The squat isn’t just a leg exercise — it’s a window into how your hips, knees, ankles, and spine cooperate. When assessing it, there are dozens of checkpoints:
Range of motion (ROM)
Hinging pattern
Posterior chain activation
Pelvic tilt (over-tucked or over-arched)
Chest and head position
Hip shift left or right
Foot mechanics (toes lifting, heels drifting, arches collapsing)
Each small piece of feedback tells a story. For instance, someone whose heels lift might have limited ankle dorsiflexion; someone with a hip shift may be compensating for a mobility loss or weakness on one side.
When we spot a deficit, the process doesn’t stop there — it’s an invitation to dig deeper.
The Hidden Culprit: Internal Rotation
One of the most common (and most underappreciated) mobility restrictions I see is in hip internal rotation.
It almost always connects back to low back pain. And—no surprise—it’s often masked as “tight glutes.” You may think your glutes are just chronically tight, but that tone is protective tension.
What’s really happening? Your femur — that big thigh bone — sits slightly forward in the hip socket and rotates outward over time from prolonged sitting, one-sided posture, or repetitive movement patterns. That creates a capsular restriction in the back of the hip — a tightness in the connective tissue that can’t be “stretched out” with a foam roller.
You might feel relief for a moment when rolling your glutes, but the restriction remains. Since the hip can’t internally rotate well, the low back tries to rotate instead — and that’s where pain and compensations start stacking up.
So, in this case, your pain looks like “weakness” in the lower back or glutes, but it’s actually a mobility problem in the hip capsule.
When It Is a Weakness Problem
Now, before mobility takes all the blame, let’s acknowledge the other side: yes, true weakness does exist.
When mobility is lost or movement patterns break down, certain muscles don’t activate effectively. Over time, that underuse turns into weakness. Likewise, if one side of the body is chronically tight, the opposing muscles may lose strength because they’re never fully lengthened or loaded.
Think of it as a partnership: mobility and strength constantly communicate. When one lags, the other adjusts — sometimes helpfully, sometimes not.
That’s why I always start with mobility testing before strength testing. We need to know whether your body has the space to move before we test whether it has the strength to move. If mobility checks out and you still can’t stabilize under load, then we know we’re looking at a neuromuscular weakness or coordination issue.
If it’s both — well, now we know the full story.
So How Do You Know What’s Going On?
Here’s a simplified version of the thought process I walk patients through:
Does the position feel restricted?
If your range feels blocked or “bumpy,” likely a mobility issue.
Do you feel unstable or weak in the position?
If you can get there but can’t stay strong, it’s probably a stability or strength issue.
Is one side drastically different than the other?
Asymmetries often reveal a mobility limitation on one side and compensatory weakness on the other.
Do you feel your back taking over for your hips or core?
That’s usually your body using global muscles to make up for local control that’s missing.
A good clinician won’t guess — they’ll evaluate both. The cause might surprise you.
The Brain-Body Connection
Here’s where things get fascinating. The more we study neuromuscular rehab, the clearer it becomes that muscle activation starts in the nervous system. Your brain chooses how to move based on safety and efficiency.
So, if your brain senses instability or threat — maybe your hip joint feels “stuck” or your balance is off — it will reduce movement options in that area and lock it down with tightness. This is a built-in protective mechanism.
That’s why stretching tight muscles sometimes backfires: you’re fighting your brain’s protective reflex instead of addressing the underlying signal. When you improve joint control and proprioception, the nervous system relaxes the unnecessary tension on its own.
In short: the body protects before it performs. Safety precedes strength.
A More Productive Way to Think About Pain
Pain is rarely about one bad tissue or weak muscle. It’s a communication pattern — your body’s way of saying, “Something isn’t coordinating correctly.”
When you improve movement literacy — understanding the why behind your compensations — pain stops being mysterious. It starts being informative.
So the next time your trainer, chiropractor, or YouTube video prescribes glute bridges for back pain, ask yourself:
Do I have the hip mobility for my glutes to fire properly?
Is my pelvis stable enough to load my hamstrings and glutes without my back stepping in?
Have I earned the right to strengthen in that pattern yet?
Because if not, strengthening may only reinforce dysfunction.
The Takeaway
Mobility and strength are teammates, not rivals. One gives you access to motion; the other gives you control over it. You can’t truly develop one without the other.
When you feel pain or imbalance, treat it like data — a clue that invites curiosity instead of panic. Test your mobility. Assess your stability. Build new strength on top of restored motion.
And please remember: glute bridges won’t fix your back pain if the root cause is a hip stuck in external rotation. Don’t waste weeks doing exercises that target the symptom while ignoring the system.
Your body isn’t weak — it’s communicating. Your job is to listen, test, move, and respond intelligently.
Because when mobility meets strength, that’s when real resilience — and real freedom — begins.
