3537: Hyperflexibility and Joint Pain by Rachel Trotta on Strength Training

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[00:01:00] This is Optimal Health Daily. Hyperflexibility and Joint Pain by Rachel Trotta of racheltrotta.com. And I'm Dr. Neal Malik. Welcome back to Optimal Health Daily or welcome for the first time if you're new here. This is the podcast where I act as your very own personal narrator and read to you from some of the most popular health and fitness blogs online. So with that, let's get right to it and start optimizing your life.

[00:01:29] Hyperflexibility and Joint Pain by Rachel Trotta of racheltrotta.com. When I first started going to yoga classes in college, I found that despite being terribly out of shape in other ways, it was incredibly easy for me to reach my toes and perform other feats of flexibility. It was effortless. I was naturally flexible. However, several years later, in better shape and a lot smarter about my body, I could still touch my toes and bend into all sorts of inhuman poses.

[00:01:58] Even when I had shooting sciatic sensitivity in my hip from a running injury caused by muscular imbalances. Even at the time, I had to ask myself, how is this possible? Anytime I googled sciatic pain, there were no immediate results for exercises. Instead, the suggested treatments were stretches. What's wrong with this picture? I could stretch. So why was I still in pain? Despite lots of advice to the contrary, stretching alone often does not relieve pain.

[00:02:28] Instead, strength training is essential to correct muscular imbalances and to protect potentially unstable joint areas. Hyperflexibility is not really flexibility. In order to explain this in depth, I'm going to include an excerpt from my book, Injury Proof, Moving Better, Training Smarter, and Building an Invincible Core. Quote, Yoga advertising often puts hyperflexibility or hypermobility on display,

[00:02:57] while true flexibility is simply the ability to move through the full range of motion without pain. Flexibility does not have markers except for feeling and motion. It cannot be captured in an image, and it is not impressive. It is simply a lack of restriction or pain in free movement. Hyperflexibility and hypermobility are terms that, often used interchangeably, refer to a quality that some people, mostly women, have,

[00:03:23] in which collagen fibers are weaker around joints and ligaments are looser and more relaxed than is typical, usually due to genetics. These people are hyperflexible, and they often gravitate towards certain activities in which their unusual, natural ability to bend, reach, and stretch give them an edge, like swimming, dancing, and yoga. However, hyperflexibility, while inherently harmless, can become problematic in practice. End quote. So what?

[00:03:52] If some people are naturally more flexible than others, why is that a problem? Keep listening. Quote, Hyperflexible people naturally, if unconsciously, promote an unrealistic, competitive image of yoga and make it more difficult for people of average flexibility to participate in yoga practice. Extremely difficult deep poses, which are unattainable for most people, are relatively easy in a short period of time for the hyperflexible

[00:04:19] and become the gold standard of flexibility thanks to social media and athletic retailing. You may be hyperflexible if you, a natural gymnast or dancer as a child, and or if as an adult, you have gravitated easily to yoga and learned the postures quickly. The normalization of hyperflexibility through yoga advertising and athletic retailing creates an expectation that yoga is only about stretching and total bendiness,

[00:04:47] which is not entirely true and can be harmful for people who are experiencing chronic muscle tightness as well as to hyperflexible people who eventually become injured due to weak ligaments and unbalanced muscles. If someone has muscular imbalances in their hips, that puts pressure on their lower back, for example, and doing any kind of forward fold can be inherently harmful to that person's lumbar spine region. It is more likely that they will experience increased tightness and an increased risk for injury

[00:05:17] than they will reap any kind of flexibility benefits. However, many people who have tight, restricted muscles think they should be doing these stretches and push through intense pain to develop flexibility, or they simply quit because of the pain of deep stretching. On the other hand, hyperflexible people, unless they work on building strong muscular support around their joints, are actually more prone to injury than the typical population because the collagen and ligaments that support the joints

[00:05:46] and help the body to move through the full range of motion are weaker than they should be. A good friend of mine who is a yoga teacher and in superb physical shape recently sustained a serious sacroiliac joint injury, practicing a balance pose. Even yoga teachers aren't immune. In other words, just because someone can pop into a quick pretzel shape doesn't mean that they are truly flexible. The two are almost unrelated. End quote. True flexibility. Movement without pain.

[00:06:16] Stretching does not fix pain. Only strength can fix pain. If you are experiencing pain in any joint area, you do not need to yank on the soft tissues through stretching. Instead, you need to strengthen the muscles that are responsible for stabilizing and protecting vulnerable joint areas. Why do we worship flexibility? Because we can see it and measure it. We can Instagram it. We can like it and share it. True flexibility is not measurable or likable.

[00:06:45] It is simply enjoyable because it is unrestricted, balanced movement. Quote, I remember the fitness tests for physical education in middle school and high school. Part of the test was flexibility, and there were clear markers for measurement. When we sat on the floor and reached for our toes, the score we received was based on the inches past our feet to which our fingers crept. This creates an unrealistic method of measurement that, again, promotes hyper-flexibility.

[00:07:12] If true flexibility lacks visible markers and relies on the feeling of the individual, how do you cultivate it, practice it, and measure it? My answer is this. There is no flexibility without strength. This dictum includes the hyper-flexible as well as the tight and constricted. Strength training and flexibility training together are essential both for the yogi and the anti-yogi, and the injury-proof workout is designed to address this balance. End quote.

[00:07:42] Keep in mind that strength training does not mean that you need to purchase Olympic weight plates. Strength training can be simple calisthenics, or strength-based yoga practice, and or any kind of well-programmed bodyweight training. You just listened to the post titled, Hyperflexibility and Joint Pain, by Rachel Trotta of racheltrotta.com, and I'll be right back with my commentary. Now, it's just me and a small team behind this show,

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[00:09:40] Dr. Neil here for my commentary. I know someone who is naturally flexible, and it's so funny because this person was a competitive swimmer in high school and college. And what I learned way after the fact, which was really alarming to me, was that the coaches never required the athletes to balance out all that swimming with any kind of resistance training. So what ends up happening to not everyone, but a lot of competitive swimmers, is that their scapula become really weak.

[00:10:09] And so that means they're more prone to having neck problems because when we think about the neck and all the muscles that are attached there, we'll find that those muscles connect to the scapula, the trapezius, even down to the latissimus dorsi or the lats. So without well-developed trapezius muscles and muscles around the scapula and the latissimus dorsi, well, that could lead to long-term neck problems. And sure enough, this person has horrible neck problems.

[00:10:40] And so after seeing a physical therapist for over a month, the physical therapist recommends that those muscles around the scapula especially need to get stronger. And so I'm helping her develop those muscles so that hopefully it relieves some of that neck pain. But again, doing yoga is no problem for this person. They have no problem with sitting and reaching. They have no problem with some of the more intense poses that most people cannot do, but yet constant neck problems.

[00:11:09] And so yes, it is vital that we understand why a person might be hyperflexible. Now, maybe not for everyone, but it may be a sign for some that there are weaknesses in their muscular development. And this shouldn't be ignored, especially if we want to promote long-term health and wellness. All right, that's it from me for today. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your Tuesday. Thank you as always for listening, and I'll be back here tomorrow as usual. So I'll see you there where your optimal life awaits.