Hypermobility is an umbrella term for a spectrum of connective tissue disorders, Joint Hypermobility Syndrome & Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) are two of the most common variations. Different people are affected in different ways, but a widespread symptom of a hypermobility syndrome is excessive joint flexibility & more potential range of motion beyond what is considered normal (/boring).
If your connective tissues (including ligaments, tendons, and collagen) are more elastic, then you’ll struggle to build stability and you may experience joint pain, frequent dislocations or subluxations (partial dislocations), muscle weakness, fatigue, and increased chance of injuries.
Overall, not great fun, but! If you manage it in the right way, you can eventually turn your laxity into a strength! You’ll be able to learn some pretty cool things that us regular fridge-bricks (inflexible person) could never come close to!
Everyone experiences hypermobility differently – some will have symptoms in 1 or 2 joints, others in their entire musculoskeletal system, others will have affected organ tissue (such as skin, digestive organs, circulatory system, etc.), and many variations/combinations in between! Some will go their entire lives without ever knowing they’re hypermobile, while others are in and out of hospital. So, adjust the advice in this blog to suit your level. I’ll aim to start at the beginning, but if you need to start even more gently then that is absolutely fine, and you will still make progress with consistency!
There is unfortunate advice out there that if you have hypermobility that you should never stretch, or never lift weights, or run, etc. when you absolutely can do all those things! But you just need to do a little more preparation than the average bear.
So how do you prepare?!
1. Build Some CONTROL!
The extra joint laxity affects proprioception – your brain struggles to know exactly where your limbs are in space! Then combined with the overall reduced stability, the inability to keep your joints safely where they’re meant to be sets you up for frequent sprains, dislocations and general “silly injuries” that just happen when you’re trying to live your life!
If your joints have a habit of going walkabouts, you need to spend time in ALL positions, so you’ve built some strength & familiarity there meaning less chance of having a whoopsie.
You need to learn to move your joints through full a range of motion with control!
Start with Circles
Sounds like a lot of work, but its quite easy to start. Simple movements like joints circles are an easy place to begin, and can be enough for those with very unstable joints.
Pick a joint, such as your wrists, shoulders, knees, hips, neck – whatever! And start making slow, controlled circles. You can start with a very small circle and gradually make it bigger & bigger. The aim is to not be scared of any particular direction, position or movement, which might take time – especially if you’ve been frequently injured in the past!
Example: Full Body Circles
You can build a daily 5-10 minute habit of full body joint circles, like this video, making sure to increase the range of motion you do each time:
Or, you can split it up into different body parts or different focuses! For example, a nice mini-session for your shoulders could involve combining two different ways to rotate the same joint, with two slightly different ranges of motion:
3x 10 Scapula rotations:
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Followed by 3x 5 Wall Rotations:
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Feel free to adapt the reps to your level. A general rule of thumb is the bigger the movement, the lower the reps. So here the smaller shoulder rotations (on all fours) have higher reps than the larger rotations (standing using the entire arm) which has lower reps.
Progress Onto Other Movements
The “full range” principle can actually be done with any exercise or any movement, all you need to do is think: how can I move to my end range?
For example, a squat, an ankle roll, overhead reach, etc. You can get creative! Especially think about positions you might end up in “accidentally”, so if you’re a runner you might want to go to your ankle end ranges so that if you trip or wobble your body will have been there before and be more ready to cope with the unexpected pressure.
Start without any extra weight, start slowly and even start with assistance! Use walls, sofas, blocks, cushions, even another person to hold you if you need at first, because remember: avoiding a position will only make it weaker.
Find your starting point and go from there! You can try reps as we did with the circles or do isometric holds. Start low and see how you feel the next day to decide if you can add more volume or need to reduce!
Move Your Joints Like Joints
Your goal is to explore the full range that you have and to slowly move through it to get acquainted with it, not avoid it! Don’t push or force anything, and definitely do not move through pain, but if joints can go somewhere, you want to make sure you do it regularly enough so that you don’t get taken off guard when you find yourself accidentally.
I always say, “move joints like joints” but in the hypermobility sense, move YOUR joints like YOUR joints – don’t limit yourself to what’s “normal” or “looks right”. It’s important you know the limits you can go to and learn to be strong there.
This might seem boring, and you might feel like just “moving” won’t do all that much, but we are literally at the ‘brushing your teeth’ stage here: that is stuff you should aim to do a little bit every day to maintain healthy movement.
When you do enough of the stuff that works, you get to do the stuff that’s fun.
2. Add Some Resistance!
After daily joint movement becomes a habit, we can start adding more stimulus to create strong joints on top of our newfound control. The aim is to build up your joints from all angles so if someone was to run up and try to steal your leg from the front, back or side, you would be strong enough to keep your leg on!
Multidirectional joint strength is important for everyone, but when your joints can move in directions, they’re not meant to it’s even more essential!
These movements can be added into your daily routine, just after your circles/end range movements, or you can create a separate session for it, spending time at the gym or on your rest days working on multi-directional strength.
Resistance bands need to be a part of your life! You can get creative and hit so many different body parts just by attaching the band to something & holding it different ways and turning different directions!
I don’t mean your relationships and finances; you need to start doing more wibbly wobbliness (technical term)!
We want to teach your body to be better at correcting itself when it wobbles, which a hypermobile body does a lot! Also, to ‘switch on’ your stabiliser muscles allowing you to keep your stuff where your stuff is supposed to be while you move other stuff!
Use Balance
The easiest way to do that is to find ways of making yourself unstable and practice being there. For example, for the lower body you can simply balance on one leg!
You may need to practice just standing on one leg at first, but once you can do 30s per side you can increase the chaos by having half your foot on a step/book/ledge. The longer duration you can build yourself up to, the more you will build your overall stability throughout your legs, hips, and core:
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You can then challenge your balance in different ways by adding in different angles!
Play around with balance – try in different positions, with your legs bent, straight, on your tip toes or flat footed! There’s no right or wrong, as long as you’re getting the wobbles!
Wobbly Shoulders
Upper Body wobbles generally requires some extra equipment, but you can get started using just a sofa or chair!
Set yourself up in a plank position (top of a push up), then see can you take away one of your hands so you’re balancing on one shoulder! If this is too much you can also try with your feet/knees still on the floor or make it harder by putting your legs on a sofa/chair or even large exercise ball to increase wobbles!
If you have access to gymnastics rings or TRX, a really nice shoulder stability exercise is to simply hold yourself up in the “support” position, which is arms straight by your sides, holding your body straight on the rings. Rings are incredible for upper body stability strength because of how unstable they are! Highly recommended if you have anywhere you can hang them!
Finally for the upper body you can simply hold things overhead! The heavier you go, the more wobbles & benefits you’ll get, but of course only go as heavy as you can do safely! We only want small wobbles not dangerous shakes!
Pretty much if you can find an exercise or movement that makes you shake and you struggle to keep position then it’s a great exercise for you!
Do the Hard Things
It’s important to remember that you don’t get any benefits from things that you can already easily do. The normal stuff other people find hard won’t necessarily be the stuff you find hard, and sometimes the advice/guidance for those with hypermobility is very simple exercises that aren’t really a struggle.
You want to really explore the things that you find challenging and actually spend time with things you are bad at!
4. Lift Heavy Things Often!
Building control & stability are your foundation for feeling good, but to progress that onto feeling strong you want to lift!
It can seem scary if you’ve had multiple injuries, or never done strength training before, but you are going to build long term joint strength and (if you do the right exercises) you’ll be able to combine all of the previous points of control, resistance and stability into just a handful of exercises.
You want a combination of good full range movements like the weighted Split Squat:
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Weighted balance exercises like the Single Leg Deadlift:
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Once you nail single leg balance from the previous section you can really step that up and do a weighted version!
And the old classics like deadlifts, squats, presses and pull ups too! You want to be working on all those things to make yourself stronger.
Even if you have no interest in lifting, once a week or even once a month try to include a day where you’re lifting some sort of weight! The benefits are huge! And who knows, you may discover you actually love it 😉
5. Learn to Absorb Impact
Once you’ve been building control, strength & stability in the low-impact ways we’ve been discussing the final piece of the puzzle is learning to absorb impact. This is especially important for those of you who love running or any dynamic sport that involved lots of quick movement & sudden impacts like tennis or football.
As usual we can start small by simply testing the waters and doing small hops, either single or double leg and see how your knees/ankles feel the next day.
You can progress that on to bigger hops, you can travel forwards, backgrounds, side to side with each jump, challenge yourself to land on one leg – the world’s your oyster!
Here’s a nice jumping drill that not only challenges your plyometric skills, but also your coordination!
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As easy-peasy way to get impact training into your upper body is throwing & catching! This could be anything from games of catch with a friend, throwing & catching a ball against a wall (great for coordination as well!) or grabbing a slam ball and do some floor or wall slams!
Another example is plank hops! Starting in a plank position, keep your feet on the ground and try to “hop” your hands off the floor! If you’re less confident, you can still do them on your knees or with your hands on a box until you build up strength.
How to Fit It All In
After reading through this and realising how important all this stuff is, a mild panic might be rising in your chest: but how the heck am I meant to fit all this in?!
But don’t worry my sexible friend, all you have to do is take each concept and chose 1-2 exercises, giving you a short routine that you can do daily, or create multiple routines that focus on different areas of your body, e.g. have an Upper Body focus day and a Lower Body focus day!
Here’s an example for Upper Body (adjust the reps to suit you!)
You can chop & change exercises as you like, adjust the rep schemes, and get creative! Aim to roughly hit all the principles regularly – this can be in a single session or spread them out over the week! Don’t worry about obsessing too much about whether an exercise is weighted, or resistance, or stability etc. there’s a lot of cross over. Lots of variety, lots of end ranges, lots of wobbles and you’ll be building strength!
You might not be ready for all 5 principles yet, and that’s ok! If you’re at the stage of just working on control, then that’s ok! Meet yourself where you are now don’t rush and try to do what you “think” you should be doing or copying what you see others do.
Your body is different, you have to go a little slower sometimes but that’s ok! After building up these foundational elements over a few years you’ll find you’re able to tolerate things like jumping or running and that you won’t feel stiff or sore as much too.
If you do enjoy stretching (which you probably do coz you’re quite good at it!), as long as you’re also keeping up strength work, you absolutely can work on cooler things like the splits and backbends without getting into trouble. Tom-&-Jenni-Splits.jpg354.21 KB
None of this stuff is a quick fix, there’s just no such thing when you’re dealing with a connective tissue disorder! That’s why it is important to think long, long, LONG term and be consistent with it. You will most likely have whoopsies along the way, and that’s normal, but the more work you put in, you’ll find the gaps between whoopsies gets bigger and bigger! Eventually, you’ll get to a point that you are able to do some pretty cool stuff.
