The Ready State Review: A Professional Virtual Mobility Coach

The Ready State lives on the flip side of the Calisthenics you perform, namely it is the sort of Calisthenics and Mobility Program that your coach or instructor has taken. But few know about The Ready State Mobility App, the Virtual Mobility Coach. As a certified Mobility exercise course, constructed by Dr. Kelley Starret and following the very latest cutting-edge science, Virtual Mobility Coach aims to grow and discipline the next generation of healthy, fit amateurs as well as coaches, instructors and drill sergeants. Major players in the field of sports, corporations and government institutions have put their faith in The Ready State to ready their teachers for the task at hand. In that light, we became interested in a The Ready State review and its Virtual Mobility Coach.

What is The Ready State?

Did you know The Ready State has its own Mobility app? The Ready State’s professional grade course teaches coaches how to coach effectively and safely, and The Ready State certification is recognized widely. Names like the U.S. Marine Corps, Washington Nationals and Arsenal F.C., to name a few, have had their P.E. instructors and coaches undertake The Ready State course. 

But The Ready State also boasts a fully-fledged, professional Mobility app called the Virtual Mobility Coach, that you can download and use.

The Ready State Virtual Mobility Coach

You don’t have to commit to following the certified instructor course. Instead, you can benefit from The Ready State’s industry-leading expertise when it comes to Mobility exercises for yourself. The Ready State Virtual Mobility Coach is an app that follows the principles set out by Dr. Kelley Starret. It has at its foundation in the same principles taught in The Ready State Mobility 101 course, but then made readily practical and actionable in app form. All you need to do is follow along the 1000+ hours of high-quality guided videos. Our article focusses chiefly on the Virtual Mobility Coach as it is the most accessible for you and me.

Who is Dr. Kelly Starrett?

Dr. Kelly Starret, or just Kelly as he likes to be called, is the co-author of the New York Bestseller “Becoming a Supple Leopard” and two other high-ranking books on Mobility exercise and workouts. Kelly is consultant to many professional and top-tier athletes in the NHL, NBA, NFL and MLB, as well as to coaches and athletes for U.S. Olympic teams. He also advises military organizations of some minor rapport, like the U.S. Air Force as well as true tier one forces like the U.S. Marine Corps, elite Army units and (allegedly) the U.S. Navy SEALS. 

The books Kelly authored or co-authored should belong on your (digital) bookshelf of Calisthenics Books:

The Ready State Review: Virtual Mobility Coach

The Virtual Mobility Coach is a Mobility App that can be downloaded for both Android and Apple devices. As usual, we will divide our review of The Ready State into multiple parts following a logical order that makes collecting our thoughts on this Mobility App easier while also making it more digestible for you. At the end, you should be left with a very good impression of The Ready State Virtual Mobility Coach, but it does require reading all the elements we review and viewing them together. We have recapped our findings in the conclusion at the end of this article as well for your convenience.

Setting the Virtual Mobility Coach up is easy.

Mobility App Overview

The Ready State is a very feature rich app that offers a full solution to all matters concerning mobility, flexibility and pain reduction. There are over 1000 hours of guided videos and an educational library to learn about everything mobility related. The app comes with a mobility test that will result in a personalized Mobility workout or recovery/recuperation plan. These plans include warm-ups, workouts and working on the foundational mobility of 4 key areas of the body. The app is very comprehensive in all regards and will require some breaking down for you by us. In general terms, the Virtual Mobility Coach consists of 5 core elements;

• A Mobility Test, testing your foundational mobility in 4 key areas namely the trunk, shoulders, hip and ankles. This results in a Mobility Plan drawn up for you.
• Workouts, either your personalized workout based on the Mobility Plan OR in preparation of a specific sport you practice. Currently there are specialized workouts for 22 different sports.
• Pain relief exercises, by clicking on a diagram area of the body where your pain is located, the Virtual Mobility Coach recommends a set of exercises to relieve that pain.
• Daily Maintenance, consisting of upkeep exercises to maintain your desired level of mobility.
• The educational MobilityWOD archives.

The Virtual Mobility Coach’s Mobility Test. Through 16 exercises, you rate how well you did. 

Requirements

There are no requirements to start with The Ready State Virtual Mobility Coach. Anyone can start. You are best served with this app if;

• You are a professional or amateur athlete who combines the Virtual Mobility Coach with your sport.
• You live a sedentary lifestyle, for instance due to a sitting day job, and you can be consistent in using the app every day.
• You are suffering from joint pain, and you have consulted your physician beforehand to relieve that pain through Mobility exercise.
• You are still fit but notice a decline in fitness due to a sedentary lifestyle or ageing and wish to remain healthy and flexible.

The main reason you may not want to use the Virtual Mobility Coach is that you won’t be using it regularly and consistently. Mobility exercise is meant to be a daily routine, one to be followed with very good consistency. If you don’t have the discipline for it, then a beginner Calisthenics workout that also teaches you the right frame of mind might be the better fit for you.

Form & Function

Being an App, the Virtual Mobility Coach will have to pick and choose what information to display and what to leave out or hide in sub-menus, to avoid crowding the limited screen real-estate of mobile phones. Due to its very comprehensive nature, there is a lot to digest, and the Virtual Mobility Coach is more information-dense than most other Mobility apps. However, it does divide its exercises and all the functionality you need along two axes;

• The type of exercise; personalized workout, sports workout, pain relief or mobility maintenance
• Part of the body to be exercised; trunk, shoulders, hip, ankles

Combined, this never floods the screen space with too much information or elements that you need to pay attention to. After you’ve selected the type of exercise, typically (in case of a full-body exercise), the workout is also divided into several constituents; for example, the trunk, shoulder, hip and ankle exercises being split into their own categories which you exercise in turn. 

This keeps the process that you are currently going through streamlined and simple to follow, despite the Virtual Mobility Coach’s ability to offer many different processes parallel to one another. If you just stick with one area of the app and work on that until you are satisfied with the result, it is simple enough to navigate.

What helps is the use of diagrams and circle bars to show functionality and progress. This makes the selection of workout types or functionality you want simple (for instance, finding a pain relief exercise fit for you is as simple as tapping on the body area of a diagram where you suffer that pain).

The videos are downright excellent, both in quality and how they describe and show each exercise. Kelly Starrett’s explanations are also dense with information, often succeeding in condensing a book worth of knowledge in a 15-minute video.

Effectiveness of the Exercises

The Mobility exercises border more to the realm of physiotherapy and to make a valid claim about their effectiveness you need a licensed physiotherapist to do so. All other The Ready State reviews we’ve seen are made by people not trained as physiotherapists. We do have this expertise available at CWW, I AM a physiotherapist myself after all. From our point of view, exercise within the Virtual Mobility Coach is effective and conducive to promoting the mobilization of the joints and muscles. These exercises come in three major groups;

• Stretching to activate and elongate the muscles to increase their ROM (range of motion) and make them more supple.
• Rotational movement exercises activate the spine, hips, shoulders and ankles to promote supple movement, strength and prevent deterioration.
• Light bodyweight exercises where the muscles are put under stress using (part of) the body’s own weight, to build strength and endurance.

Resistance bands and balls or rollers are used in a variety of techniques. The Resistance Bands increase the load on the muscles and joints and serve to increase their strength and endurance. We found this load to be on the light side and very much meant to promote agility and mobility as opposed to building considerable muscle mass.

Balls and rollers are used to massage muscle knots deep within the tissue, but also to increase the depth of various stretches (for instance by placing them under the armpit or under the thigh during a stretch). These implements are simple to use and do not require professional instruction outside of the guiding video being shown.

The Ready State’s Virtual Mobility Coach does a good job providing the user with a wide variety of appropriate and physiologically responsible exercises. They increase existing mobility, help to slowly activate a lacking mobility and its workouts also go well parallel to many other sports you may be exercising; including Calisthenics.

Progression

After your self-assessment test, you are given mobility scores. Based on this, a personalized mobility plan is made. Progression is largely up to you and how well you respond to these exercises. Being a Mobility program firmly rooted in physiotherapy, there is no preset notion of becoming so and so fit in this and this amount of time. To our estimations, workouts are responsibly fast in that their progression ought not give you any problems. That said, if you suffer from mobility issues, especially when due to injury or disease, you should consult with your doctor or physiotherapist first before doing any type of exercise.

The first workouts offered are always without any equipment being used. You are also explained what all the terms mean, easing you into workout routines and teaching you what it all means for you. The first two weeks, we feel, are very accessible both where it comes the types of exercises as well as explaining the program and various terms.

The Ready State Virtual Mobility Coach is very much meant to be a healing and recuperation program. The exercises can cause pain, especially the stretches if followed to their end as shown in the videos. The human body is capable of this, but to prevent any possible injury or unnecessary strain, you should never stretch beyond mild discomfort. Some discomfort is alright but stop when it hurts.

How Much Does The Ready State Cost?

The Ready State is by no means the cheapest program available. For their medical approach and their always up-to-date use of cutting-edge medical science, you pay the following;

• $12.99 per month with an annual subscription
• $14.99 per month with a monthly subscription

The subscription is preceded by a free 7-day trial where you can try out the full scope of the app. Not to your liking after all? Then cancel the subscription before the 8^th day.

The Major Alternatives to TRS: GOWOD vs ROMWOD vs MobilityWOD

Other, very popular Mobility Apps in the same category as The Ready State Virtual Mobility Coach (whose educational archives are called MobilityWOD) are GOWOD and ROMWOD. WOD or W.o.D. stands for “workout of the day”. These are both also Mobility Apps which work to increase your mobility, flexibility and range of motion with one workout every day. The workouts, like with The Ready State Virtual Mobility Coach, are entirely personalized. Another excellent alternative to The Ready State is the Cali Move Mobility Program which you should definitely check out (link below).

• Cali Move Mobility 2.0
• Pliability Mobility App
• GOWOD Mobility App

Equipment You Need for The Ready State

The Ready State makes use of a few simple tools that you can acquire on their website as well. Since these are integrated into the Virtual Mobility Coach, it is more convenient and cheaper to buy them as a set from The Ready State as opposed to sourcing each individual piece elsewhere. Recommended is the Basic Leopard Mobility Tools set for all newcomers to the program or app. There is a more extended set as well, the Jaguar Mobility Tool Kit which is not only more fully stocked but also includes other items not found in the basic set. 

We recommend you get the Basic Leopard Mobility Tool set, as it is cheaper and almost all exercises either make use of these tools or offer ways to use these tools instead of some of the tools found in the Jaguar set. That said, we leave that decision up to you as the Jaguar set is more convenient after all.

Alternatively, you may also source these items yourself after all, if you’re looking for a specific brand you like and of proven quality or if you are searching for Calisthenics Equipment suitable for more than just Mobility exercise.

Basic Leopard Mobility Tool Set

• 3 Lacrosse Balls
• 1 Leopard Roller
• 1 roll Black Kinesiological Tape (VooDoo Tape)
• 1 roll Floss Band
• 1 Resistance Band

Why Use a Mobility App?

There are many Mobility Programs, some of which come in app form. The advantage of a Mobility App is that the place and time of your exercise are as well, mobile. The whole Mobility Program is contained in the palm of your hands through your smartphone. Mobility Apps offer a clean user interface with easy to follow and often high-definition video instructions. If you want to increase your mobility, work on your flexibility and range of motion, or even recuperate from injury then a Mobility App fits right up your alley.

Another reason to use the mobility of a Mobility App is work related. If your work demands long hours of sitting or very little in the way of bodily movement, having that Mobility App right at hand is useful. You can do your daily mobility exercise during a break while using only your phone as guidance. A Mobility App like The Ready State Virtual Mobility Coach does wonders combatting and integrating into a sedentary work life that so many of us lead.

Conclusions From Our The Ready State Review

With an almost 5-star Trustpilot score based on over 1000 reviews, The Ready State is universally liked by its users. The few negative reviews dealt with its price or some outside technical problems that had nothing to do with the working of the app or the program itself. After reviewing The Ready State, we don’t find this very high trust surprising at all.

The Ready State is a different kind of animal altogether in the realm of fitness apps, Calisthenics apps and Mobility programs. This is the stuff that teaches coaches how to coach. It uses up-to-date science in the medical realm to create both its certificate courses, as well as its Virtual Mobility Coach App. Looking at it from our own background as physiotherapists, we can recognize the amount of expertise that was poured into The Ready State. Dr. Kelly Starret’s long repertoire as an academic and a bestselling author in this area, as well as his consultancy to quite spectacular institutions like the U.S. Marine Corps and many athletes of (inter)national renown, also speak to the validity of The Ready State and the Virtual Mobility Coach app. He regularly travels the world as a highly respected speaker at seminars revolving around physical fitness, healthy lifestyle and coaching.

The Virtual Mobility Coach app is very well designed, featuring high-quality videos and over 1000 hours of it. Information is kept tidy and under wraps enough so that you can focus on the exercise and workout at hand. The app is very comprehensive, ranging from activating your mobility after an injury or being sedentary for too long, to pain relief, to aiding and improving your mobility for other sports you actively pursue. 

Despite this “complexity”, things are kept simple to navigate through smart compartmentalization. First, you select the type of exercise and following that, the workout is split up into the various parts of the body to be exercised. 

Progression depends on you and the factors surrounding your current level of mobility. The Ready State does a good job keeping this progression healthy and safe, although your own discretion when it comes to painful stretching is still advised. 

We can very much recommend this Mobility app to people who are struggling with a sedentary lifestyle such as a sitting job, people want to regain lost mobility due to injury, illness or age, people who suffer from pain due to old injuries or bad posture and for people who practice sports and want a complementary Mobility program.

Frequently Asked Question Surrounding Our The Ready State Review

Here are the most prying frequently asked questions we found that surround our The Ready State review and the Virtual Mobility Coach app.