Iris Chen — Mobility & Recovery Coach

The coach

The work that keeps you here.

The work

Iris does not chase the loud wins. She coaches the thing nobody posts about: range, control, and the breath that ties them together. Her view is simple — the strongest, fastest version of you is worth nothing if it is on the bench.

She works across all three disciplines, so she sees the whole athlete — the boxer's hips, the runner's calves, the lifter's thoracic spine. Her sessions undo the week and prepare the next one. The 12:00 mobility flow is the club's reset button.

Almost nobody books Iris first. They book her after a tweak — and then they stop leaving: I came in to fix something and stayed because everything else got better. That is recovery doing its real job.

The 1:1 movement screen

Five things she checks first.

01 Ankles

Ankle dorsiflexion

Barefoot, toe four inches off the wall, knee travels forward until it touches. Both sides, heel down.

Clears

Knee touches with the heel flat, and the two sides are within a centimetre of each other.

Doesn't clear

Heel lifts, or one ankle is visibly shorter. Loaded calf work three times a week and a wedge under the back squat until the gap closes.

02 T-spine

Thoracic rotation

Seated, hips locked, arms crossed on the chest. Rotate as far as the ribs will go — not as far as the lower back will let you.

Clears

Roughly forty-five degrees each way, even left and right, and the breath keeps running.

Doesn't clear

The lumbar spine borrows the range. That is the boxer's hips and the lifter's back paying for it in six weeks. Open-books before every session, and rotation added to the warm-up rather than the stretch.

03 Overhead

Overhead position

Back against the wall, ribs down, arms travel to overhead without the lower back arching to help.

Clears

Wrists reach the wall with the spine still flat against it and the elbows straight.

Doesn't clear

Ribs flare or the elbows bend. Pressing moves to a landmine angle until the range is genuine — this is almost never a strength problem, and loading it harder makes it worse.

04 Single leg

Single-leg control

Five slow step-downs off a twelve-inch box, one leg, no hands. She watches the knee and the far hip, not the height.

Clears

Knee tracks over the second toe, pelvis stays level, and the fifth rep looks like the first.

Doesn't clear

Knee falls inward or the opposite hip drops. Runners fail this one most. Split-squat progressions plus a lateral hip block twice a week, and the mileage holds where it is until it cleans up.

05 Breath

Breathing mechanics

Hands on the lower ribs, breathe in. The question is where the movement starts.

Clears

Ribs widen sideways and into the hands; shoulders stay quiet the whole way.

Doesn't clear

Chest and shoulders lift first. Everything above sits on this, so it is the thing she fixes before any of the others — and it is most of what the 16:00 reset session is actually for.

Thirty minutes, and you leave with a page: what to keep, what to park, and the two drills you genuinely have to do. None of it is a verdict on you — it is a map of where your range ends today. Iris re-runs the screen every eight weeks, and the second one is the interesting one.

Train with Iris