I’ll bet the first thing you thought of when I said joint health was being pain free. That is no doubt important, but there is so much more involved in joint health. I certainly don’t have the space here (no pun intended) to cover everything involved from genetics, nutrition, injury history, and the like. I need you to table all of these other important factors influencing joint health to emphasize the active role you play in your joint health: intentionally moving your joints. I’m not talking about a loose mantra that you chant to yourself while sitting cross-legged in organic linen pants. I’m referring to practicing how to isolate, train, and expand the specific ranges of motion inherent to each articulation you own from head to toe. I hope this helps open your eyes around the agency you have toward building your joint health through deliberate practice.

What is a joint?

(image 1)

Simply put, it is where two bones meet or articulate. There are structural classifications of joints: fibrous, cartilaginous, and synovial — along with functional classifications relating to how they move. For the purposes of defining the health component of “joint health”, I want to frame that definition around something you have the potential to practice daily: how well your joints navigate their fundamental ranges of motion. That will largely limit us to diarthrotic synovial joints. You can learn to better control the quality and quantity of movement in these articulations — because these structures benefit greatly from being specifically moved. That’s one component of joint health that you’re an active participant in developing.

Contrast this with your cranial sutures for example, which are technically fibrous suture joints and have little to no movement that we can freely express. In other words, you can’t intentionally move your cranial sutures through ranges of motion the way you can your hip or shoulder.

With this framing in mind, your role is clearer in whether you’re being general or specific in how you address the health of your diarthrotic synovial joints. At some level, you already knew you played a role. In the same way you don’t need to know the nuances of physiology to know exercise is good for you. However, knowing some nuances can help you be more specific with your training goals if you want to develop your sprinting capacities versus your long-term endurance. Those are different adaptations. You know movement is good for you. But if your goal is to specifically assess and develop the movement available at a particular joint, general exercise may not be specific enough. It isn’t that general movement and exercise don’t do a lot — of course it does. Rather, it’s that general isn’t specific.

When it comes to the joints of your cervical, thoracic, lumbar, pelvis, hip, knee, ankle, feet…and many others (as you’ll learn in my foundations class), these can absolutely be moved specifically and intentionally.

Framing things this way places you at the center and prompts a question. You either are or are not actively practicing bringing the joints that you can freely move through their available ranges of motion. These are your joints, and you both can and need to learn how to create better movements from your joints because proficiency in joint-specific movement is a skill that requires practice. The exciting part is that this skill of improving the quantity and quality of your joint movements has the potential to benefit other movement-related skills. Why? Simply put, all movement requires articulation somewhere. Movement capacities of individual joints contribute to your available movement options. If they can move better, you have more movement options to work with.

If you can’t move a joint very well, or very much, that can become a real problem. You probably don’t really know how they are supposed to move, how well they move, or how much they move. You might have a rough idea, but why not flesh that out so we can specifically intervene where we need to and make improvements?

(an example of how precise we can be with both assessments and training outcomes be using the FRS® system)

If you’ve never explored the individual motion of your joints, treat it like an experiment. Wouldn’t you want to know how much and how well your articulations are or are not moving? Better yet, wouldn’t you want to practice developing better quality and quantity movements from your joints? Nobody can do the work for you.

In framing joint health this way, I hope you can better appreciate the key role you play. If you or someone you know wants to learn more about joint health, start with my welcome video before starting my foundations class. Practice, film yourself for studying, and keep refining how your practice using the tools you learn here. This is just the start!

References

Image 1: “Joints” — Exercise Prescriptor, Joints Anatomy
https://exerciseprescriptor.com/anatomy/joints-anatomy/joints/

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Try x2-3 30s bouts at 7-8/10 intensity.

If you’re swearing, you’re doing it right.

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“How do I approach training considering I have EDS?”

A quick caveat here: EDS can look very different from one person to the next, and there are different subtypes. I’m simplifyi…

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I’d love to hear you talk about the relationship between long-term physical injury and the nervous system. When pain has been present for years, how much can guarding, compensation, and an increasingly sensitized nervous system begin perpetuating the pain beyond the original injury—and what helps someone start distinguishing between the two?

Hi Gemma

I touched on this briefly in my article Pain Relief or Tissue Health and Pain and the Predictive Brain.

If I’m understanding your correctly you have a few questions, (1) you’re asking what the role is of the nervous system in pain, and (2) how do you start to address long term/chronic pain with a heightened nervous system. And then I’ll add to your question if I may that, (3) you’re also indirectly asking me how this information helps guide what you do about it from an intervention standpoint.

Without getting too far in the weeds of neuroanatomy, my answer doesn’t really change from my initial articles. If someone has long term/chronic pain, or a genetic or neuropathic disorder that contributes to pain like CIP, or any others —these are real constraints that need to be considered. Working with a good doctor, getting bloodwork, getting hormones looked at, considering if seeing a psychologist, and being more thorough in managing all the facets that contribute to pain depending on the case. Why? Because that can help you better leverage what your starting point is in working with someone and how to manage expectations. There is a difference between getting to the root of something with a team of providers and knowing what’s going on. Those are two different things. In either case, you may at best mitigate someone’s symptoms if there is a top down neurological issue or genetic condition. Trying to keep their tissues as healthy as you can is still be a win. We know we all need to move. The question is how much, where can we start building in movement, where can we start adding load, once those individual limitations have been accounted for. All of the information you collect in an intake is to help you outline a sketch of where your leverage and starting points are. Even if that means the person lays on the table most sessions and you have it in your scope to help them with passive movement, that’s a start. So in short, in depends, but I always encourage people use the information in a case to help guide a practical starting point.

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By now, I would imagine you appreciate that exercise is great, but it is not sufficient to maintain and develop joint specific adaptations over time. That doesn’t mean you need to bail on the activities you enjoy, but it can mean that you feel like this practice is something you need to add to an already overpacked schedule.

Whether you are overwhelmed by the scope of what you need to do for your joints, the intensity, the frequency, the nuances of learning different force profiles and how to apply them, or simply juggling all the activities you want to do plus trying to navigate your joint health, I’ve got you covered.

Let’s break down some things to think about to help make this undertaking feel more manageable.

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That’s great, but how about sending more specific signals to the anatomy you’re about to rely on for the umpteenth time. Your intrinsic foot muscles, your ankle capsule, your achilles tendon, knee joint, etc. These are not ONE thing. There is a lot of …

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It is important to think about how general many of these terms are and therefore, how general many of the adaptations we get from them can be. This isn’t to take away from the general adaptations of exercise being a net positive — but more to highlight that specificity matters for the tissues of your physical health that remain unaddressed.

This is why programming can be a major bottleneck if you aren’t accounting for individual factors around you joint specific prerequisites, what your goals are, what your current training does and does not consider, etc.

I wish just as much as anyone that it were simpler, but it can start to feel like more of a relief to acknowledge this reality and start taking the steps to learn this entirely achievable goal around what your joint specific prerequisites are, what they mean for how you move, how they can influence nagging injuries and plateaus in performance, and what you can do about that. It starts with building in joint and connective tissue training into your practice —because you need those tissues to be healthy year round!

If you’re new here, check out my welcome video and foundations class, read some of my other free articles on the topic such as your diagnosis may be more of a reason to train, you don’t graduate from rehab, or clearing up the confusion around mobility and flexibility. Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe. Thanks for watching!

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ever do a training session this specific to your sport. Now, that is entirely different from making sure you first have the prerequisites which I’ve harped on ad nauseam. That said, if you do — this class is for you. If you’re a jiu jitsu athlete, this is what your strength training should be incorporating — anatomy that is specific to what you need in the sport of jiu jitsu! A bench press doesn’t make you better at strangling people, nor does a pull-up. Is there some secondary carry over that helps you in the sport? Sure, but primary and secondary training effects aren’t the same thing. Training time is limited, so get clear on your goals and be specific with your training time.

Think about this even if you aren’t a jiu jitsu athlete. As a runner and gravel cyclist, I'll be doing some kinstretch specific classes for those outdoor athletes covering some of the same tissue specific concepts.

Take these setups and keep practicing. This is just an introduction! More to come. Happy RNC’ing!

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In the CARs portion of the FRA® assessment, there is a critical opportunity to emphasize that the quality of the sensory feedback athletes develop is partly a learned skill—like a musician learning to recognize what key a song is being played in, their ear is trainable. The feedback your tissues provide is no different. Your body is constantly giving you signals during CARs practice. As you continue practicing, you become better at recognizing and categorizing sensations: pain, discomfort, pinching, burning, and more. Everyone starts with a different level of sensitivity, but consistent, high-quality practice helps you extract clearer feedback that you can use yourself and communicate more effectively to a provider. That is a powerful tool you have from day one, though its value isn’t immediately appreciated

(visual oversimplification of afference to help visualize the concept)

Contrast this with the inability to interpret certain sensory signals. There is an extremely rare group of congenital conditions, often referred to as CIP (congenital insensitivity to pain), in which individuals cannot perceive pain because of disrupted nociception. This is not something that can be trained. That capacity is absent, making painful stimuli dangerous precisely because there is no protective feedback (imagine not feeling your skin burn, a bone break, or a deep cut).

When it comes to the sensory input coming from joints and connective tissues as they move through space and manage force, that system is highly adaptable. You can improve the quality of that input from whatever your baseline happens to be. The quality of each repetition matters because every CAR is another opportunity to refine how your nervous system detects and interprets those signals. Over time, this changes both how you perceive your own body and how effectively you can communicate those observations to a provider. This cannot be overlooked when educating an athlete. They need to understand both how to build better tissue feedback and why deliberate practice improves their ability to interpret it. Too often, this is a missing piece in early education. It is ultimately the responsibility of providers to teach these concepts, giving athletes more agency and setting better expectations from the outset.

If you are a provider who isn’t having regular conversations about afferent information and what it is, this is your reminder. If you are an athlete reading this, consider this a simple introduction to something you can actively cultivate. If you or someone you know would like a great place to start, check out my intro and foundations class.

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You run. You strength train. You practice yoga on the weekends.

But are you actually training your joints?

Most people spend plenty of time training movements and activities, yet never assess or improve the specific ranges of motion, tissue qualities, and joint control those activities depend on.

Ask yourself:

• What are the fundamental ranges of motion a healthy hip should have?
• How much control do you actually have over those ranges?
• Where is there room for improvement?
• Can you actively access the motion you passively possess?
• What is mobility, really—and what isn’t?

Mobility isn’t a random collection of exercises from social media.

If you don’t understand how your joints move—or what your connective tissues need to adapt, stay healthy, and perform—the odds are you’re leaving performance, resilience, and longevity on the table.

The best training program can’t reach its full potential if you’re neglecting your prerequisites.

This clip is from an introductory Kinstretch class I taught at Steadfast Martial Arts.

The full class will be available for paid subscribers later this week!