Anybody hypermobile here?

[Bucktown Beast]

Does anyone here have loose/hypermobile joints? In other words, if your joints extend farther than normal, like your elbows and knees can hyper-extend a little bit. Its fairly common, varying in race and genetics...but its a ***** when you have this and are active/athletic.

I have them and it sucks. Causes me extra soreness from workouts and gave me an unstable patella. Dislocated the knee twice...once I found out that squatting and leg work etc. was only strenghthening the muscle and not the joint, I changed my routine and focused more on strengthening the knee joint itselft have been pretty successful in building up stability.

You may be hypermobile in some areas and not even know it...A quick way of knowing is basically if you can bend your thumb backwards to touch the forearm.



Anybody have this or similar issues with their joints? I had to alter the way I threw my right hand because sometimes I would overextend and cause my elbow to hyperextend a little bit. Basically making me lose some power in the punch and strain my bicep.

I am very active and this issue really only causes me some limitation in the area of soreness and arthritic type pain in some joint regions.

[Pork Chop]

yeah i can touch my thumb on my forearm
i can also pop my shoulders out of socket
i get bad tendonitis in my knees sometimes- usually if i do stuff with deep knee bends
i still blame most of my pain on my club foot though- kinda hard to be balanced when one leg's smaller than the other.

[fraidycat]

I'm going to have hypermobile ribs on my right side once I heal up from this back injury. The cartilage holding the floating ribs to the true ribs is ripped to ****. Gonna learn to fight orthodox to keep them out of left-hook range. **** it; onward.

[Bucktown Beast]

yeah i can touch my thumb on my forearm
i can also pop my shoulders out of socket
i get bad tendonitis in my knees sometimes- usually if i do stuff with deep knee bends
i still blame most of my pain on my club foot though- kinda hard to be balanced when one leg's smaller than the other.

Yea, same here with the tendonitis in the knee...Hypermobility is not debilitating but its rather annoying. I dislocated my shoulder (although I believe that was from poor technique and too much weight lifting) but my left patella has always been unstable. Hypermobility has a lot of side effects, it even causes flat feet (which I have). Are you active in sports?

U got asymetrical legs? I knew some kid who had surgery for that, he had like a metal halo surgically placed in his leg. Think he had to wear it for like a year or more.

I'm going to have hypermobile ribs on my right side once I heal up from this back injury. The cartilage holding the floating ribs to the true ribs is ripped to ****. Gonna learn to fight orthodox to keep them out of left-hook range. **** it; onward.

I get what youre saying but I don't think its possible to have hypermobile ribs. I think you mean more fragile/unstable?

[fraidycat]

I get what youre saying but I don't think its possible to have hypermobile ribs. I think you mean more fragile/unstable?

It's the word my doctor used. What I know for sure is, when I do a chinup or a twisting crunch, I can hear the ribs pop. It's not hyperextendable like hitchhiker's thumb or being "double jointed," but it's certainly capable of moving in a direction that it's not supposed to.

[Pork Chop]

My feet are completely flat- especially my right.

I can shift my legs in and out of my hip joints (ie suck 'em up in to make my legs seem shorter), so I really couldn't tell you if my legs were exactly the same length, but my feet are different shoe sizes, my ankles, calves, & thighs are significantly different in girth. I don't think the halo operation would help me much because it's more a limitation in strength & structural integrity. I don't think any amount of training could really make it go away either.

The shoulder thing is kind of a pain- I have a very hard time doing overhead lifts. My bench press has always been incredibly weak, but my military press is pathetic. My shoulders just don't feel good in the socket bearing any sort of weight, especially angled overhead. Also, if I try to military press without something supporting my spine it feels like it's gonna collapse. hehe

As far as whether or not I'm active in sports- I've always been a kickass swimmer. I've never really been able to run fast. If I work at it I can build up to run far & not get tired, but I'll never be able to go very fast. I've lifted weights onn and off since I was 16 but have only achieved reasonably strong numbers in the deadlift- all the other lifts have been borderline feeble. A lot of times it's a structural thing: like I can't squat weight that I can move easy coz it's too hard to keep my balance and I don't want to fall towards the bottom of the movement.

[Bucktown Beast]

My feet are completely flat- especially my right.

I can shift my legs in and out of my hip joints (ie suck 'em up in to make my legs seem shorter), so I really couldn't tell you if my legs were exactly the same length, but my feet are different shoe sizes, my ankles, calves, & thighs are significantly different in girth. I don't think the halo operation would help me much because it's more a limitation in strength & structural integrity. I don't think any amount of training could really make it go away either.

The shoulder thing is kind of a pain- I have a very hard time doing overhead lifts. My bench press has always been incredibly weak, but my military press is pathetic. My shoulders just don't feel good in the socket bearing any sort of weight, especially angled overhead. Also, if I try to military press without something supporting my spine it feels like it's gonna collapse. hehe

As far as whether or not I'm active in sports- I've always been a kickass swimmer. I've never really been able to run fast. If I work at it I can build up to run far & not get tired, but I'll never be able to go very fast. I've lifted weights onn and off since I was 16 but have only achieved reasonably strong numbers in the deadlift- all the other lifts have been borderline feeble. A lot of times it's a structural thing: like I can't squat weight that I can move easy coz it's too hard to keep my balance and I don't want to fall towards the bottom of the movement.

I feel you man...it can limit some people, in fact it by all means should have significantly limited me but I refused to let it to. I have learned all the workarounds and shortcuts to help my issues. Its funny u say that you are a swimmer cuz when researching hypermobility it says that it can actually benefit swimmers and I even inhertited it from my dad who was a swimmer. And it says that contact sports should be avoided like boxing and football, yet those are the two sports I most excelled in lol. But god damn my body pays a price, all the tendonitis and arthritis these joints have caused me take a damn toll when training hard. I need extra rest time in between training and have to sometimes finds alternatives.

Forget about overhead presses, I cant **** with them either. I had shoulder surgery 8 months ago and the doctor said the tear could have arised from having hypermobile joints. But looking at me youd never know I had a limiting issue, luckily lifting weights have kept the effect of that condition as low as it can be. I also can get bigger and stronger rather easily...For you I think theres way you can improve your results, if you are interested I can share some of my routines.

[platinummatt!]

Think so.........

[Warhawk_1]

How do yo do exercises to strengthen your joints?

[Pork Chop]

For you I think theres way you can improve your results, if you are interested I can share some of my routines.

I'll take whatever help I can get.
I got some advice earlier this year from PunchDrunk and am about to finally put it into effect.
Most of this year i've been training kinda "old school" without weights and while I did alright with weight management, i lost quite a bit of strength.

I think you're on to something with the planning extra rest idea. I get severely bad DOMS when I lift, lasting up to 5 days, and i don't stop getting it after i've been lifting regularly for a month or two. I don't know if it's related to the hypermobility, but planning more rest in my routine, and charting a slower progression would probably do a lot to help me stay more consistant.

The routine we came up with has 2 separate workouts:
day 1 is cleans, lunges, military press, dips, and bent rows
day 2 is deadlift, squat, bench, pullups

boxing wise, i do alright. i wish i had a better left cross as a southpaw so i wasn't quite so right-handed and 1-dimensional.