When we experience pain or tightness in an area of our body we have been told we must stretch, massage and loosen the affected area to regain the lost mobility of the joint or muscle. This is the typical approach of health therapists, corrective exercise and most rehabilitation programs. And in most cases it is the most logical place to start, and often pain will subside and things go back to normal quite quickly with this approach. However in some cases this can be the worst thing you can do! For the person who has too much flexibility, otherwise known as hyper-mobile, they will not respond well to this approach, for they lack stability and need to be tightened up, not loosened. For 20 years I have worked with over 1000 people with all types of injuries and when I first started I rarely came across this case. However, in the past few years I have seen a huge increase in these cases, and many times people come to see me after having tried several therapists, trainers and various health modalities that did not work, or even made the condition worse. I am not sure as to why this seems more common, and I see this problem mainly in females, but I believe one big factor is the rapid growth of Yoga and Pilates style training that emphasize more flexibility. And while both these are great forms of exercise, they have the potential to ruin the joints of a hyper mobile person if not used wisely, and especially if you do not move well standing up.
How Do You Know If You Are Hyper-mobile?
Sometimes you can easily tell by just looking at someone and how they move. Other times it is not so clear, for it may not even be their entire body but only certain joints. If you are someone who is addicted to Yoga, stretching and trying to be as flexible as you can be, there is a good chance you are hyper mobile.
One simple test I use when I first meet clients that can give you a rough idea of a person’s flexibility is using what is known as the 9-point test.
Here is how you do this.
1.Pull your little finger back. If it makes a 90 degree angle with the top of your hand when pulled back, score one point for each little finger.
2.Try to push your thumb towards your wrist. If you can touch your wrist with the thumb of the same side, score a point for each thumb.
3.Straighten your arms as far as possible. If your arm hyper-extends ten degrees or more, you score a point for each arm.
4.Straighten your legs as far as possible. If either leg goes past straight to hyper extension of ten degrees or more, give yourself a point for each leg.
5.Finally while standing, if you can put your palms on the floor with your legs held straight, you score an additional point.
Score: 0-2
Stretching and yoga classes are recommended. Interestingly, many of the people rehabilitated from joint injuries are loose jointed and have been going to yoga regularly. Yoga is better suited for those that are tight jointed and show poor flexibility. People with this low score tend to tear muscles, and have sprains. Treatment using stretching and massage is highly effective for this person and should be consistently be used to prevent further injury.
Score: 3-4
This is someone with traits of hyper mobility at certain joints. Pay special attention to which joints were loose. Participating in resistance training may result in joint injury if you train that joint through excessive ranges of motion. Often people who have loose elbows have loose shoulders. If these people are not aware of how to create good movement and stability injury is very likely. This person may not always tear muscles but suffer from dislocations, broken bones and joint problems where excessive mobility is present. A program that combines stretching for tight areas only with stability and strength exercises for unstable joints is recommended.
Score: 5-9
This score confirms you are a hyper mobile person. All exercises and stretches encouraging excess mobility of the joints should be avoided. A carefully designed stability and strength program MUST be provided to teach the body how to correctly stabilize itself. This person will often break bones or suffer from dislocations, popping and clicking of joints. Stretching, massage and exercise modalities such as Yoga should be avoided.
Understand that there is nothing wrong with you if you are hyper-mobile. This is just your genetic make up, and means your body has the capability to outstretch itself. It is more common in females as their anatomy is designed to be more flexible to allow for childbirth, but also due to lack of overall lean muscle and with wider angles at the pelvis creating weaker and longer muscles. This is not necessarily a bad thing and can be a huge advantage if you learn to control it as this allows for more mobility with movement. The problem is if it is not controlled as it expose joints to instability, which can lead to serious injury and pain.
I myself score 6 on the 9 point test and I am male. All of my 6 points come from the upper body, and it is no surprise that I have broken numerous bones in my wrist, fingers and suffered several shoulder injuries. Whereas my legs have suffered from several muscle tears, but no broken bones and an ACL tear from a sporting accident, but other than that my legs are much more stable and more prone to tearing muscles than instability at joints.
Where To Look For Potential Problems
To know where to look for instability, first you must understand which joints need mobility and which joints need stability. The video above gives you a good explanation of this.
If you read Gray Cook’s book titled “Movement” he discusses what he refers to as the joint by joint approach where each of the main joints in the body share different roles and affect the following or preceding joint. What you will see is that every second joint needs flexibility and mobility, and the other joints need the exact opposite being stability and strength.
Here is how it works.
1.Feet – The feet have a tendency to being lazy, and easily losing strength and motor control. The feet need exercises to make them stronger and more stable.
2.Ankle – The ankle tends to develop stiffness very easily and needs more focus on mobility in order to provide all the multi directional movements of the lower limb.
3.Knee – The knee is basically a hinge joint and incapable of multi directional movement like the ankle. It needs Stability and strength work to ensure it does not get injured as in ACL tears.
4.Hip – This joint is a bit like the shoulder in that it needs a mixture of both stability and mobility. However like the ankle it provides multi directional movements but for reasons we will look at shortly they have a tendency towards stiffness and as a result benefit from mobility work in the beginning and eventually more strength.
5.Lumbar Spine – The lumbar spine needs stability to prevent unwanted flexion or extension. A bit like the knee joint this is just a hinge and incapable of rotation.
6.Thoracic Spine – Requires mobility and like the hips is pivotal in providing the athletic rotational movements in tennis, golf etc.
7.Glenohumeral Joint – Requires a mixture of stability and mobility. This along with the scapula are very unique joints in that they require both. Another reason why they are often injured and difficult to treat.
To see a detailed explanation of how to go about assessing your body correctly watch the video below.
The main areas of concern are obviously the knee, lumbar spine, and shoulder/neck complex.
These three joints all require a fair amount of stability in order to protect the joint from dislocation or to keep it centered within the socket. Without enough stability at these areas, there is a good chance of injury and if abused with excessive stretching and loosening exercises, osteoarthritis and chronic pain is guaranteed. The joint may even begin to lose it’s mobility as it uses a protective mechanism of “stiffness” to protect the joint.
I would say that the neck and lower back are almost guaranteed problems with hyper mobile people especially if they participate in regular Yoga classes, or activities promoting excessive mobility.
A quick word on Yoga and Pilates, I have nothing against either of these methods, I have many friends who run businesses in both of these models. I myself am qualified in Pilates with mat and reformer, and I appreciate the breathing and mental aspects of Yoga. I do however know that these methods are sometimes abused, or prescribed to people who should not be doing them. Just as Crossfit and body building is an obsession creating multiple problems with many young males, I see Yoga and Pilates creating problems with many females.
It is always amazing to hear hyper-mobile people tell me how stiff and tight they feel yet on assessment they are more mobile than anyone I have met for the entire week. They have become so used to feeling loose that this is their normal. Also because they are good at stretching they tend to do more things like this because they feel good being great at it. This is very common in dancing, gymnastics and especially Yoga, and I have had to ban many clients like this from participating in Yoga classes or stretching. I actually need to stabilize and strengthen them, not loosen them with more stretching! And in all these cases they improved significantly.
Below is a story of a client who came to see me for neck and low back problems who scored a 9 on the 9 point test!
“I’ve been coming to No Regrets for 10 months now and I honestly cannot believe the results I’ve gotten in this short amount of time! I came to No Regrets after to mainly to tone up my legs and arms and get a better bum! But I was never able to exercise much for I was constantly having neck and back problems. I had seen physios and chiropractors, and while I felt good afterwards it was short lived for none of these seemed to help long term. My exercise mainly consisted of pole dancing and yoga and surfing when I could. I had spent much of my youth dancing and I stretched everyday.
I had never tried weight training before and nobody had ever explained that my joints were too flexible. Nick explained to me that I needed to stop stretching for a while, give up the Yoga for a bit and concentrate on learning to move with stability and control loads.
At first it was hard but within a few months I noticed my neck and back stopped clicking so much, I no longer had headaches and I actually felt really strong! I now am a super keen gym junkie and I was super stoked to be getting compliments on my bikini bod and bum over summer with one of my mates even saying I was starting to get model abbs woooo! I really cannot thank Nick, Nathan and Mel and the rest of the team enough – their passion and commitment to the job is so inspiring and makes it so easy to get out of bed early!”- Emily Crosbie.
You can read over 100 more stories like Emily’s by going to our testimonials page.
Stop Trying To Be More Flexible
Now don’t get me wrong their are people who do need to devote some time to improving flexibility but these people you will almost have to bribe them to do it, for they HATE stretching. The people who really need it, avoid it as much as they can because they suck at it, do not enjoy it at all and show very small improvement for a lot of work. These people will get a zero on the 9 point test and fail every stretch test we throw at them. If Pilates and Yoga classes were full of these people it would be a great thing, unfortunately these people will rarely be seen in a Yoga or Pilates studio. But you will find them at the gym doing exercises to make them even tighter.
The people I am more concerned with in this article are the ones who love stretching, spend a lot of time with stretching, and always looking to become more flexible.
These people have no method for selecting stretches, they believe everything should be more flexible, but like I already discussed some joints need to be kept quite stiff. When you loosen a joint that needs stiffness, you now open the floodgates for potential injuries and pain. Stretching does not make you stronger, it makes you weaker.
Always remember that if there is a tight and stiff muscle then there is an opposing weak and lengthened muscle. And it is usually the weak muscle that is the source of the problem and until that is resolved nothing will change.
A great article to read about this is – Mobility & flexibility which comes first and why
Watch the video below that explains the concept of how mobility and stability are intimately linked to each other. You cannot have one without the other.
I have found in recent years more and more females using Pilates and Yoga as their only form of exercise has in turn created more hyper mobile people who in turn develop some chronic injuries from their lack of stability. People who have used strength training in combination with Yoga and Pilates tend to keep their stability much better, as their body learns to keep it’s stability with load, although they may not be the most flexible in the Yoga class. But who cares if you are not the best at touching your toes and you have no pain.
Stretches like the ones pictured above and the one below will result in poor stability, and poor motor control. These are great ways to ruin your lower back, with either facet joint or SIJ problems, and lastly a bulging disc injury.
Now I understand that some sports and hobbies require this flexibility like gymnastics, dancing, maybe even Yoga is your professional job. Even weight lifters require their elbows to hyper-extend when lifting weights overhead. The difference between these people and the everyday person at the Yoga class is they devote considerable time to strengthening as much as improving mobility. They learn how to control their mobility and not abuse it.
When you understand that if you continually expose joints like the knees, the lumbar spine, the neck and the shoulder to excessive mobility training then you must also train these joints to keep their stability and what we call “good stiffness”. Without this training there is a good chance you will end up in pain, it is just a matter of time. Many gymnasts and dancers when they are in the 40’s often experience many problems in their spine from excessive extension that they got away with in their youth but now their body feels the affects of this instability in later years.
Stiffness Versus Stability
This is also when I see people who are super stretchy lying on the floor, but move exactly the opposite when they stand up. They move with a lot of stiffness.
For example, I see people all the time with incredible ankle, hip, quad, hamstring flexibility with our lying on the floor stretches, but when I ask them to squat they can barely reach 90 degrees of hip flexion!
They are so flexible on the floor but extremely tight when they try to squat! It looks as though they need to stretch to get deeper but this only makes matters worse. This was a paradox I faced for many years and could not get my head around.
What was really happening was that they lacked stability, and also strength. Not flexibility.
Because they are so overstretched the muscles cannot protect the joint from damage so the body creates it’s own version of stability, a plan B if you like, and that is called STIFFNESS! But you will only see this when they stand up and move. Lying on the ground there is no need to stabilize so the muscles let go and relax.
When you stand up you now need stability, and because your muscles are not able to do this, your body creates the stiffness instead. Stiffness is the body’s attempt to restore stability using prime mover muscles instead of stabilizer muscle and restricts movement in order to protect joints.
True stability is being able to react with perfect reflexes to be able to maintain joint alignment ready for efficient and smooth movement. As soon as we stand or need to move stability must be present but the stiffness will disappear as soon as we lie down or relax. The only way to get rid of the stiffness is to learn stability and strength drills, and how to move correctly.
Here is a quote that sums this up by John Gibbons in the book The Vital Glutes –
“Tight muscles reveal themselves lying down, weak muscles reveal themselves standing up”.
As I have said many times in this article I see this more and more in the last few years. Maybe I am looking for it, or maybe it was always there and I was not good enough to see it. But one thing is clear we must treat stretching with more caution. This is where the current model of health practitioners also must look at treating pain and injury in the same way. Our instincts tell us when a joint is sore it gets tight and stiff, and that we must restore it’s full range of movement with stretching and massage. But sometimes this is like throwing kerosene on a fire. The joint could be creating the stiffness for it does not know how to move.
Often it is the joint above or below the one in pain that is the real source of the problem.
For example, knee pain is often a result of the foot or the hip not providing the correct alignment and throwing the knee into a bad position for patella tracking, ITB friction to ACL tears. The knee itself has little influence over the alignment as this job is done by the other joints.
Watch the video below for an explanation of this and an exercise to correct the weakness.
How Do You Maintain Flexibility Without Compromising Stability?
Simple. Learn how to move correctly.
When you know how to move well you never need to spend too much time stretching, for you will do this within the movements themselves. You know exactly how to achieve great range of movement with squats, lunges, bending and even pushing and pulling with the upper body, by perfectly timing mobility with stability. This is how the joints remain free from stiffness and able to do amazing movements without fear of injury.
Every now and then you may need to address tight areas specific to you, but if your workouts are well balanced and designed specific to your weaknesses then this will not be a problem.
Watch the video below that gives you several examples of these fundamental movements.
I highly suggest to read the article – Functional Movement Is Everything & This Is Why for a detailed description of all of the fundamental movement patterns.
Do You Need More Help?
If you currently suffer with hip, knee, or back problems you will find our online programs as shown below are a great resource that take you through all of the assessments and corrective exercises to get you back to full strength and out of pain.
Summary
I hope this article gives you some insights into flexibility and mobility, and in particular what it means to be hyper mobile. Remember you may not be hyper-mobile at every joint, it could be just your elbows, or your knees or even your lumbar spine. Just recognize that where you have excessive flexibility you will create stiffness to counter this. If you don’t create stiffness joint injuries will occur, and osteoarthritis is also not far away as you continue to wear out the cartilage and wear and tear at ligaments and tendons.
Learning how to stabilize, improve strength in weak areas and most importantly learn how to move STANDING UP, is where you will become bullet proof and remain flexible with strength.
Too much flexibility is just as bad as not enough. You must strive to achieve a perfect balance between strength and flexibility. If you get this right you can do anything and live life full of fun and enjoyment.
About The Author
Nick Jack is owner of No Regrets Personal Training and has over 20 years’ experience as a qualified Personal Trainer, Level 2 Rehabilitation trainer, CHEK practitioner, and Level 2 Sports conditioning Coach. Based in Melbourne Australia he specializes in providing solutions to injury and health problems for people of all ages using the latest methods of assessing movement and corrective exercise.
References
•Functional Anatomy of the Pelvis and the Sacroiliac Joint – By John Gibbons
•The Vital Glutes – By John Gibbons
•Movement – By Gray Cook
•Corrective Exercise Solutions – by Evan Osar
•Back Pain Mechanic – by Dr Stuart McGill
•Diagnosis & Treatment Of Movement Impairment Syndromes – By Shirley Sahrman
•Low Back Disorders – by Dr Stuart McGill
•Ultimate Back Fitness & Performance – by Dr Stuart McGill
•Anatomy Trains – by Thomas Meyers
•Motor Learning and Performance – By Richard A Schmidt and Timothy D Lee
•Assessment & Treatment Of Muscle Imbalance – By Vladimir Janda
•How To Eat, Move & Be Healthy by Paul Chek
•Scientific Core Conditioning Correspondence Course – By Paul Chek
•Understanding & Preventing Non-Contact ACL Injuries – American Orthopaedic Society For Sports Medicine