Hi JP,
Great questions. I’m glad that you are bringing this up. We’re glad that you’ve liked the
Portal WU and the UA Yoga.
Each coach uses their own methodology for screening. With the sports and activities we tend to focus on, we’re most concerned with the movement quality with locomotion (e.g. running, hiking, ski striding, skating). For endurance oriented sports, the general ROM tends to be smaller. With the typical workout schedules in our coached programs, I think it’s common for nearly all endurance athletes to improve in their movement quality over time. There is an element of self-organization that seems to occur when athletes hold themselves to a basic standard of good movement in high volume, low intensity exercise. For time-crunched fitness industry individuals, or athletes in traditional team/individual sports it’s probably advised to have a more thorough screening.
Flexibility for flexibility’s sake isn’t necessarily going to protect you from injury or improve performance. Improving ROM might be helpful, but it definitely depends where and why you want to improve it. So understanding how you are put together is most helpful. For example, an elite sprinter needs generous posterior chain flexibility, while an elite distance runner will usually have comparably lower posterior chain flexibility. Running economy for distance runners (to marathon/HM distance) is probably different than ultra running. Mountaineering is likely different. Mobility at the ankle seems really important for safe and effective cramponing.
I’d recommend the FMS. I’ve done several hundred screens for both occupational safety and personal training, but I’m not regularly using it. The FMS is an awesome tool, and the guys behind it have really great perspective on the relative importance of various factors of mobility, stability, proprioception, balance, etc. It’s the integration of these factors that matters. But the FMS requires a lot of training to be useful – it can be easy to misinterpret the results, or even easier to misunderstand how to address the results. There are some individuals that can get a relatively high score in the screen, but be potentially at the most risk for injury (hypermobile athletes).
Kelly Starrett’s approach seems quite healthy. I’ve recommended one of his peer’s methods – Jill Miller’s Roll Model – to many athletes. I think a few other coaches have recommended the Roll Model as well, if only to develop an individual’s awareness of their own body and how to assist with recovery.
Before jumping in with any program, I would just consider what populations these programs work with, and see if their emphasis lines up with yours. The FMS team has focused on traditional team and individual sports programs. Kelly Starrett was an early adopter with CrossFit, so we can assume some bias towards olympic lift mobility (while fun, many individuals do not need or benefit from trying to get the appropriate mobility for these lifts). But I haven’t gone through much of the Ready State. I can’t speak to MovNat.
Is a focus on improving mobility even necessary? Have you had a lot of injuries? I submit that an athlete going through the ChamFit program may actually be have enough self-organizing physiological factors to be actively improving in many of the qualities that these other programs might focus on. A mountaineer or ultrarunner will definitely have a totally different emphasis on all of these qualities, as compared to a defensive end, point guard, competitive swimmer, or olympic lifter.
If warranted, each individual may need a different approach to improve mobility. Prior to strength training or high intensity workouts, I might have an athlete target a few specific movement patterns as part of their Movement Prep or Dynamic Warm Up. If we include some targeted mobility work, I often try to follow up with a loaded movement to utilize/engage the modified ROM. Many of the coaches prescribe mobility and recovery on rest days or in the evenings, at the very least to maintain/restore ROM – hence the development of the UA Yoga program.
One example of an integrated approach: With ski touring or alpine skiing athletes, we want adequate ankle mobility paired with adequate foot strength (see Janda foot exercises). For less active individuals, both these areas commonly need some work. If an athlete is near or at the end ROM in dorsiflexion in a buckled boot, and/or has a weak foot, it’s common to have alignment issues observable during boot fitting and/or in high performance downhill skiing. A weak arch will exacerbate this issue. Improving ROM at the ankle – combined with short foot exercises and calf raises – can clean up many alignment issues in high performance downhill skiing, as long as there are no structural issues with the arch or ankle. Many elite WC alpine skiers don’t need (or want) significant alignment correction or supportive footbeds because of their healthy ankle ROM and foot strength. This is an example of stability in the foot musculature and connective tissues, paired with healthy dorsiflexion in the ankle. How we get there is based on the individual.
Hope that helps!

JP, it sounds like you are doing your homework! I’m glad that you are looking to a wide range of information sources and seeing some professionals. Hopefully you can put together your own concept of what mobility looks like for your needs for sport and health.
I agree that there’s an attraction in having high mobility. I feel like there’s a bias with some practitioners that want to promote mobility to achieve something like an overhead squat, snatch, or deep squats. I also feel like endurance athletes can sometimes have the hardest times with these. I personally would love to have improved mobility to do a perfect clean and jerk or an overhead squat. But there are awesome alternatives with KBs and unilateral lifts that give huge benefit and don’t push athletes to the end ROM where they’re more likely to get hurt. And unilateral lifts are nearly always more sports specific.
My understanding with the FMS (not necessarily the SFMA) is that the screen exists to bring asymmetries and compensatory movement to the surface, not to identify a precise issue. This helps orient the process to help an athlete along the way to better movement.
It’s interesting to hear that Starrett’s course said something along the lines of some cases of durability coming from tightness – while I think that there’s some truth to that when you compare it to someone on the hypermobile end of the spectrum, I think it’s important not to hide behind tightness as a way to be durable. The wear and tear that comes with a life well-lived can sometimes lead to restrictions that contraindicate certain lifts, and as long as someone can do a majority of movements without major compensation, that might be plenty to live a healthy life and achieve most fitness goals.
Very interesting that the DPT identified greater shoulder tightness than hip tightness. Maybe that’s a great place to direct attention for now? It’s come up in more than one case that reduced shoulder mobility can be a greater factor affecting squat (even back squat) form than reduced hip mobility. I’m sure that has ramifications for sports and day to day living.
It sounds like you’ve identified a notable asymmetry with your hips, and you’ve been doing your homework (and body work). I wouldn’t neglect checking your day to day repetitive patterns and especially ergonomics. There are a lot of case studies of people identifying their workspace created issues (e.g. corner desks, reaching too far with the mouse hand, lighting issues, leaning to one side). Multiplied by hours per week, and extrapolated to months and years, it can be a lot of time exacerbating a problem.
If you are still looking to delve deeper into resolving the asymmetries, have you explored MAT? There’s a lot of people who’ve had success with MAT, especially with those who’ve experienced physical trauma. MAT is another body work technique. I did several sessions and it reduced some asymmetries as a result. Might be worth a look.