Hey, I'm Hyper Mobile and if you're listening to this, I'm
guessing that you might be too. Hi, my name is Alex, I'm your
Hyper mobile host. And today we are talking all
about my favorite topic. We're talking about
hypermobility and fitness. This is a topic that's near and
dear to my heart. If you know me personally or you
follow any of my social media accounts, you might see what I
get up to at the gym and you might see what a big part of my
journey, fitness really has been and finding ways to not only
safely exercise, but to happily exercise.
So for today's episode, what I thought we'd do is we are going
to pretend like there's a little time machine.
And I'm going to think of all the the rules and all the the
guidance and like the wisdom and professional expertise that I
have now. And I'm going to think of what I
wish I'd known a decade or two decades ago or three decades
ago, back when I was struggling to exercise safely and happily
in a hypermobile body. But before we do that, I want to
give a shout out to the HQ crew, the members of the Hyperbole
Private Membership Community Discord.
Last week we had an amazing live with a fabulous guest speaker.
So basically every week we do a live on Sundays with yours
truly. Once a month we have on an
incredible guest and we occasionally do special events
and it's just the community's been growing.
It's awesome. I think of it like my second
high profile brain. If it's something that you want
more info about, please do check out the show notes.
But without further ado, let's get into today's episode Rule
#1, and there are 6 rules total. By the way, do what makes you
happy. I really get frustrated when I
hear about people having all of these exercise plans that they
hate. Even the most boring exercises
can be made to be fun, so I think do what makes you happy.
I know it sounds like it's not important, but it is.
So if there's one thing I've learned from all my years of
experience now working with the hypermobile community is that
hypermobile people tend to have strong feelings on things.
Maybe it's the neuro divergent, maybe it's the fact that I just
give my patients a safe space where they can have strong
feelings about things. But hypermobile people tend to
either, you know, like this type of exercise or not like this or
love this for whatever reason. And I think so often, you know,
we're trying to focus on what's the best exercise and that's
important that clinical rigor, you know, this looking at like
the evidence thinking what's the, the safest and best way we
can help this person exercise. That is important, absolutely.
But patients are people first and foremost, and they have
thoughts and feelings and ideas about what they do and when.
I think back to my fitness journey, so I was a swimmer, I
raced a butterfly and freestyle and that was my thing.
I swam with the London Aquatic Club growing up for about a
decade in Canada. So if you're if you're listening
to this and you're on that club, please do let me know.
That would be so cool. But anyways, I fell in love with
swimming. My mom saw me in the water and I
just it it was my happy place from a young age.
I'd be swimming in like the most freezing cold water.
There was this story of when we went to a cottage on a holiday
and nobody was in the water but I was there splashing and my mom
was like, this girl needs to swim.
So I I got into swimming and it like it did so much good for me.
You know, I was a child who was always a little bit heavier.
I wanted to find ways, you know, of course, that I could safely,
like use all this energy I had and a lot of other sports.
Like I I tried them, but I kind of didn't really like them.
So swimming was something I just fell in love with.
For me, it's always been a quiet and happy place.
It's a place where the the water is like a different world, like
you can just go in the water and it's like it's peaceful.
For me, it's peaceful. Every shavasana I've ever done.
If you don't know what shavasana is in like a yoga practice, it's
when you kind of just lie at, like, on your mat at the end and
kind of take a minute just to appreciate where you are.
Obviously it's not doing it justice, but it's like a mini
meditation, OK? Anyways, with the shavasana, I
would always imagine just lying on the bottom of a swimming pool
or on the bottom of, you know, underwater in a sandy beach on a
sunny day. Because for me, I think I just
always felt that wonderful in the water.
So in a way, I'm kind of grateful at the time that, you
know, we didn't have quite as much information coming in
because I worry that my mom might have been told like, Oh
well, swimming's not good and she should do something else.
And for me, like, it was really important.
It was an important part of my journey that I swam and it
helped me, although it did harm me.
Of course, I ended up getting injuries long term.
I had to stop swimming because of my injuries and I think it
actually led to quite a few issues.
It's something which I think had a net positive effect on my life
and it's something that I'm so grateful I was able to do.
That being said, of course, no exercise is perfect.
So I mean it is certainly not the perfect hypermobility sport
that it's hyped up to be. We'll talk more about that in a
minute, but I want to get back to the rule, which is do what
makes you happy. I have had patients come see me.
There are patients who have wanted to do sports like
CrossFit or they've wanted to go rollerblading or they've wanted
to attend. There was one patient in
particular who wanted to attend a sports day themed bachelor
party. And you know there there are
risks to everything in life. If you're hyper mobile and
you're listening to this, you will know that sometimes doing
nothing at all has risks. My worst injuries have come from
walking or sleeping. So when it comes again, going
back to that assessment of physical activity in the
hypermobile patient, or if you're someone listening to this
and you're thinking about yourself like I'm hypermobile,
what sport should I do or what physical exercise should I try
and do? I think it's important to sit
down and ask yourself, what do I love?
What do I kind of enjoy or have an interest in and want?
Want to try to see how I feel about it?
Or if you hate all physical activity, you don't get on with
sports. It's not your thing.
That's OK. I want you to ask yourself the
question. I ask my patients who have those
feelings about physical activity which are valid and acceptable.
You know, I'm not here to be. Like, yeah, it's the best.
Like you should love sports. You don't.
You don't have to love everything or you don't have to
love anything. I should say.
But what I want you to ask yourself is what do I hate the
least? So rule #1, do what you love.
Or at the very least, do what you hate the least.
And that leads us straight into rule #2, which is.
But don't overdo it. So if there are any swimmers out
there listening, you might be familiar with the high volume of
training in most competitive swimming programs.
You know, I started out swimming, was very happy, got a
bit faster, you know, got promoted to a higher level in
the club, did more and more and more practices because this is
just normal for the sport. Like it's a sport where it there
is a very high volume of training sessions.
I think at the end of my decade of swimming competitively, we
were doing approximately 24 hours of training a week.
We would routinely have double days, which are two hours in the
morning and two hours in the evening.
And this is just again, I I didn't know any better.
I just thought, you know, like this, this will help me get
faster. This is good for me.
Swimming is good for me. Exercise is good for me,
therefore more swimming. Exercise is good for me because
it's good for you. And I think it ultimately was
not good for you. I think it caused me a lot of
problems. There's something called
overtraining syndrome. I don't know if you've heard of
it before and I will link some research papers on this.
In the show notes you can go check out my website
hypermobilityhq.com. That's where I put the detailed
show notes, because often on the on the app different apps where
I post the podcast, YouTube and Spotify in particular.
There's not enough space to put all the research papers.
So go to hypermobilityhq.com if you want to see the full show
notes. But with overtraining syndrome,
again, it's there's kind of a vague definition.
There are different things. There's overreaching is what
they call it. I I don't think it's called
overreaching syndrome. Some sports scientists will just
refer to it as overreaching. There's overtraining syndrome.
But here's the gist of it. OK, so with sports and and with
physical exercise, and this applies to everyone, I think
people sometimes come across these technical ideas and think,
oh this, this is only for athletes.
No muscle is muscle. Is muscle OK?
But you have to overload tissues progressively and overload
systems progressively. So do a tiny bit more than what
the body's capable of doing at present in order to stimulate
adaptive changes. I've talked about the body as a
bioeconomy before. I'm not going to go through the
full analogy right now, but basically your body tries to run
efficiently. It's not going to invest in a
ton of muscle for you if there's no reason for it to do so.
And the reason that you give it to do so is by progressively
overloading it through strength training for example, right?
Anyways, overtraining syndrome is a multi system condition
where we have an athlete who's been training for years and and
swimming is one of the classic sports where this happens and
other high volume sports like rowing and cycling appear as
well and the athlete starts to get unwell.
They start to feel fatigued all the time.
They start to have changes in their mood.
They start to have changes in their eating behavior and
approach to nutrition. They start to have immune system
changes. Maybe they're getting some upper
respiratory tract infections. They start to have changes in
their hormonal profile. If we do different hormonal
tests, we can see some changes there.
In some instances they start to have changes in levels of of
amino acids like glutamate and glutamine which affect protein
synthesis. And again, you can check out the
research at my website if you'd like.
But they have all these changes happen that have to do with kind
of the the hormonal state of the body as well as protein
synthesis which of course effects connective tissue.
And what's interesting when you read about overtraining syndrome
is it sounds weirdly like heds and HSD.
So hyperbole stemolis syndrome and hyperbole spectrum disorder.
I'm not saying they're the same thing because they're not.
But we're seeing two things where we have a a multi system
involvement. The person feels unwell.
The markers seem to vary depending on the individual
person. So there have been in recent
years attempts to do systematic reviews and so on of
overtraining syndrome to see OK, like how can we diagnose this,
how can we pick it up more in athletes?
And it seems like there's a a big heterogeneity, there's a big
variability in the ways in which overtraining syndrome will
manifest in an individual athlete.
And I've I've talked before about kind of you know why I
think hyper mobile people should be treated like athletes.
You know, not in terms of like training programs, but why I
think we need to take some of those principles from sports
medicine and from this approach with athletes where we're
fighting for those 1% improvements and apply them to
people with chronic health issues and disability.
I because you just get better results.
So when you pay more attention and do things in greater detail.
But I also think it's interesting to just see again
what happens when you do too much.
So these are athletes who are doing too much in a training
program. Is it perhaps similar to the
hypermobile person who does too much unknowingly just because
they're alive? Is this similar to the young
hyper mobile person who you know isn't an athlete but they're
living their life and they eventually just kind of have a
decline in their symptoms, you know in their teens or their 20s
or whatever Is is there a comparison there have have they
accidentally over trained just through the physical challenges
or requirements of existing? I think it's a really
interesting question. Anyways, if I could go back in
my time machine and talk to myself, I would say to little
like 12 year old Alex. I know you love swimming and I
know you want to be that A+ member of your team.
Just like you're that like student you know who likes to do
all her homework and whatever. But don't go to every practice.
Like I I wish that I had gone to half the practices I went to.
I would have swam faster. And if we go back again to
athletes and hypermobile people with chronic health issues,
there are issues with recovery. So overtraining syndrome, people
theorize that it happens because the athlete's body who's
affected it gets to a point where they're no longer able to
recover their their recovery has slowed because of certain
physiological changes that have happened, and they are now not
able to recover in the same way that they were previously.
And the same thing goes for people with heds and HSD because
their bodies just run less efficiently.
They build, they do protein synthesis and build connective
tissue more slowly. Things don't happen in quite the
same way as they do in someone's body who has, quote UN quote,
normal connective tissue or as I like to say, collagen, typical
connective tissue. So we see a problem there just
in terms of recovery management. So if I was going back, I would
just be telling myself, like tell your coach that you need to
be different. If if I was, you know, the
parent of a child who was on the swim team and I knew they were
hyper mobile, I would just say like my child loves swimming.
I want them to swim, but they need to be going to 50% of the
practices of the rest of the team or 75% or whatever.
There there is no research on what percentage is correct.
OK, so don't quote me on that, but I would.
I would want the coach to understand that this decision
was being made by me as a parent because I wanted to make sure
that my child was having adequate time to recover between
sessions. And I really do wish I could go
back in time and see if that would have resulted in me
swimming faster. Because I loved it and I was
always disappointed that I put in so much work and I just, I
was like spinning wheels, like I couldn't make any progress.
I just, I wasn't getting that same.
I was putting the same input as other members on my team, but I
wasn't getting the same output. And it did eventually start to
feel like my coaches were frustrated with me and they
thought that I was just maybe like not trying as hard when in
reality my connector tissue was hyper mobile.
I wasn't able to get the same changes in terms of physiologic
adaptations from training as other members on my team, and
that's probably why I didn't go as fast as I wanted to, even
though I tried my absolute hardest.
So don't overdo it, Rule #3. Try to avoid making your world
smaller. So going back to swimming I my
my low point was basically like crying in my goggles from pain
in my shoulders and I would I would just grind my teeth and
get through like 4 hours a day of that.
Like that is messed up. But anyways I because of my
shoulder pain I ended up seeing various physiotherapists and
different healthcare professionals and I was
diagnosed with I think like rotator cuff syndrome or
whatever right? It was, it was not the best
healthcare management, but everything was, you know, it
was, it wasn't a good physio experience, to be entirely
honest. So basically I was going there,
There's a very there's a viral video of me on on TikTok.
I think it might be on Instagram too, where I talk about my
shoulder feeling homeless because I was sitting there and
the physio is like, what's wrong with your shoulder?
And I said, you know, it's it's not painful.
Like right now they're like does it hurt?
And I said no. But it feels homeless.
It doesn't feel like it's where it should be.
And that was of course me trying to say in a very roundabout way
that it felt unstable or that it had felt like it was subluxing.
And then of course they did ask like have you dislocated it?
And I said no, because I have never still to this day
dislocated my shoulder, any other joint really.
So anyways, with that the problem became that the physio
was then giving me treatment which was not effective and
giving me exercises which made my symptoms worse.
And it got to the point where I was like talking to the physio
and asking what I should do. And the only thing which would
ever elicit my symptoms or bring them on was really raising my
arm above 90° repeatedly at like a in a freestyle stroke or a
butterfly stroke. So the physio told me she said
just stop raising your arm overhead now.
She probably meant like stop doing a high volume of raising
your arm overhead, but trying to be a a good patient, you know,
Again, I was the kind of person who always wanted to like do the
best job at at everything I was trying to do, right?
So I was like, I'm going to be the very best little patient.
I just stopped tracing my arm overhead.
I avoided it. I stopped lifting weights
overhead. I was doing somebody pump
classes at the time at the Sherwood Forest body pump in
London or what's it called Sherwood Forest.
Good Life with Body Fun Classes in London ON SO.
I was doing my little overhead presses, you know, prior to that
in these different movements and I just stopped doing them
entirely and it helped. It did help a bit because when
you take away the movement which aggravates the symptoms, of
course you're going to experience a bit of an
improvement. But this improvement was
followed by a steep decline. So there are some photos.
Again, I've done videos on TikTok and I I might throw some
in a blog post on the website, but I quickly lost all of the
muscle mass I had her on my shoulder, like you could start
to see almost the Bony drop off in in the joint itself.
I lost all of my my deltoids and probably my my rotator cuff.
There was just no muscle there because the adage use it or lose
it really is true when it comes to your musculoskeletal system.
And with that loss of muscle mass came an increase in
instability, an increase in pain, and these were the dark
times. My worst years of symptoms were
age 18 to maybe 20-3 around there, maybe maybe 17, but
around like late teens, early 20s, like those were the worst
years for me in terms of symptoms.
And it what triggered it really was me listening to that physio.
I I wish more than anything that I had been supported in getting
a second opinion. We really couldn't.
We were paying for it privately. I don't.
It wasn't accessible to me. But I I wish that I had been
supported in getting a second opinion or I wish that someone
had just come up to me and said before you like, you know, take
this advice to stop raising your arm overhead and just stop doing
things that irritate your shoulder, Let's see if we've
missed something. Let's see if there's something
that can be done. Because this seemingly small
decision of like, oh, I'm just just not going to lift weights
overhead or, you know, I'm going to try and avoid raising my arms
overhead had serious, serious consequences.
And if I wasn't as lucky as I have been, if I didn't have the
right things happen at the right time and accidentally fall into
the right career, I wouldn't be where I am today.
I wouldn't be able to use my arms.
I wouldn't like. It scares me to think of what
would have happened if I had not been able to rebuild that muscle
mass that I lost. And it was not easy.
It took years of doing all the right things perfectly all the
time and this is what makes all this stuff so hard is you don't
get a day off to not be perfect. You know you have to manage all
these things constantly and it's it is not easy.
But if I could go back in a time machine I'll be screaming in my
ear. Do not let this person make your
world smaller. Fight for your ability to
continue to do movements and and try and find alternative ways in
terms of making the world's smaller analogy.
The way that I think of it too it, it also affects your
happiness. So I love video games, I don't
know if any of you do, but I love RPGs or role-playing games
for those of you who aren't familiar with the terminology.
And in these games you have a character like The Witcher 3 or
Legend of Zelda. These are all kind of good
examples in some ways, and your character can interact with the
world around them, right? So in The Witcher 3, the main
character is Geralt of Rivia and he can like walk or jump or use
a sword or Crouch right? There are all these different
movements and physical things he can do in his world.
Now the game becomes less fun the fewer movements you have and
the game becomes more fun. The more options you have right
The the more you can interact with the world around you.
I think just the more free you feel.
It's it's wonderful to be able to do what you want with your
body and it's a privilege. I think that many people who
have don't really appreciate enough anyways.
When you take something away from a a patient and there have
been cases there have been clinical situations where I have
told a patient like, hey, I think we need to you know
reconsider this movement or we need to you know, look at this.
It has to be such a serious and thoughtful decision.
It can't be a decision that's made lightly because let's you
know that that physios go back to this example that I was.
I had the ability to raise my arm overhead basically taken
away. I was told, you know, that's not
good for you don't do it. And I became nervous to do it
very understandably. What am I going to lose next
when my knees start to hurt am I going to be told, Oh well, you
shouldn't be, you know, walking or whatever or if my back starts
to hurt. Oh, you shouldn't be sitting
like you start to open up the door to greater and greater
decreases in that patient's ability to interact with the
world, which have serious effects.
And of course, in this community, disability is common.
There is a significant amount there.
There are, I'm losing my words, a significant amount of people
with HDS and HSD are disabled. I think the statistic just of
the general population is something like one in five
people are disabled, like disability is so prevalent and
we we don't talk about it enough.
And I will do an episode one day talking about that word and what
it means and my relationship with it, because it's something
we, I think as a community need to talk about more.
But even for people who are disabled and who cannot interact
with the world around them in certain ways, we have to fight
to support them in being able to interact with the world around
them as much as possible. This is why mobility aids are so
important, because instead of having that persons world
becomes so small that mobility aid can open up their ability to
do things that they weren't able to previously, their world
becomes bigger and they have a greater capacity for happiness
and for interacting with the world around them.
So anyways, that is my talk about do not let your world
become smaller. If someone's telling you
something which is going to make your world become smaller, get
second opinions, get third opinions, you know, try and make
sure that it's the right clinical decision because
sometimes clinical decisions are incorrect.
Rule #4, prepare the child for the path, not the path for the
child. Or should I say prepare the body
for the world and not the world for the body.
Anyway, the reason I'm saying this is my mom had a plaque
growing up in our living room which said prepare the child for
the path, not the path for the child.
And this was you know just reflective of her position as a
parent where she wanted to really equip us to exist in the
world and everything it threw at us and and I think she did an
awesome job. But the reason that I I
mentioned this in the context of hypermobility and exercise is
because I see sometimes exercise strategies and exercise programs
that patients have had prescribed which don't really
seem to relate to their ability to actually do things in the
world. Sometimes the exercise selection
seems quite arbitrary. The patient's confused about why
they've been given it. I'm quite frankly confused about
why the patient's been given it, because it makes no sense to me
either. And there's a lot of, I think
just the the potential for time wasting with poor exercise
prescription and like sadness. I think it's all this stuff is
hard. All of the heds, HSD, hyper
mobile connective tissue stuff, other connective tissue
disorders, it's all really hard. And when you get given an
exercise program that feels utterly pointless and doesn't
feel like it's going to have a real world translation for you,
that becomes very, very demotivating.
So when I work with my patients and again there is a whole
spectrum of patients I will work with, I would say in particular
my, the area at which I excel, I would say are kind of the more
sporty, hypermobile people. The people who either are going
to the gym and who want support in that or the people who were
going to the gym previously have had a decline in their symptoms
and want to get back. Like I'd say, that's where I'm
strongest in terms of my clinical experience and
professional expertise. But I do occasionally work with
patients who are not as physically active and cannot
safely be as physically active. And that's OK.
But for all of my patients, I try to help them develop bodies
that let them live in the world in which we exist, and the world
is made of free weights. My phone, this is, this is a a
freeway. My water bottle is a freeway.
These are all free weights. So again, going back to
hypermobility and exercise, when I had my shoulder injuries, I
got put in what I call them, resistance band.
I was going to say HE double hockey sticks, but that sounds
so lame. It's my podcast, Resistance band
hell. I got put into resistance band
hell where I was being told to do all these like external
rotation, this exercise, whatever.
And it was just so boring and felt so pointless and it didn't
seem to give me any results no matter how diligently I did my
exercises. So I think it's always so
important to think, OK, the patient has these issues.
Your eye is an eye is a hyper mobile person.
Listening to this, I have these issues.
What? Why am I even exercising?
Like what do I want to do with my body?
You know? Do I want to just have less
pain? Do I want to be able to maybe go
for a walk in the park with my dog?
Do I want to maybe be able to carry my groceries home?
Like what is the actual functional outcome?
So this is something I think we do always need to keep in mind.
Do resistance bands have their place?
Absolutely. In fact, I think every kind of
exercise has its place. I think there's use for machines
in different contexts, free weights, body weight exercises,
it all has its place. But we always have to be
thinking, you know, whether it's with yourself as a hyper well
person or as a healthcare professional, Like what are we
trying to achieve here? Because with my patients when
they know, hey, we're going to do this, this, this and this
because my goal is to help you be able to walk your dog for 10
minutes once a day. That's my goal or whatever it is
to start with, right. And we're talking obviously like
a little like toy poodle here or something.
I I don't have dogs, I don't know how much they need to be
walked. But it helps the patient get
excited. It helps give them a reason to
do things. And most importantly, it gives a
clear outcome measure. So it's kind of stressful as a
healthcare provider to set goals when you're working with
patients because it makes you accountable because if you don't
achieve them, the patient's going to be like hey, you told
me like we would get to this point and we haven't and that's
not a good feeling. So I think it's so important
again whether you're a patient or healthcare provider to think
like what are we actually trying to achieve.
And even if it's a long term thing that's totally OK.
But have little mini goals away around the you know along the
journey, have little have little checkpoints that you might hit
OK because that helps to make that patient know that we're
doing this for a reason. It's not just so you can be
really good at the clamshell exercise or really good at glute
bridges like we're doing this for an actual reason.
Rule #5 There is no such thing as an inherently good exercise
for hypermobility. I cannot tell you how much.
I just shake my head when I'm on my phone looking at social media
and I see people be like this exercise is good for
hypermobility, or Pilates is the best for hypermobility, or yoga
is bad for hypermobility. Like, no, no.
As I like to say, nothing is good, nothing is bad, and
everything is complicated. So let's talk through it.
Let's let's start with Pilates. So Pilates has some great
things. I have many patients who love
Pilates. I have enjoyed some Pilates
classes in my time, although it's never been an activity I've
done regularly. But there are different kinds of
Pilates. There's map based Pilates,
there's reformer Pilates, there are Pilates classes.
There's one to one Pilates personal training, right?
Like there are many different ways Pilates can be done.
When it comes to Pilates as an exercise, it's actually
something I've had a really hard time with.
So the last time I was at like a Pilates kind of brunch event, I
went up and I I spoke with the instructor and I was someone who
I like. I quite respected their opinion
on stuff and I said hey, you know whenever we do like that
sit up or crunch position like my neck hurts.
So you're just going to see me like keeping my head down
because it hurts my neck. And as you know as me as like a
a 32 year old professional who works with hypermobile patients
and this is all I do, I really value my opinion on what feels
right or wrong for my body. And actually, you know what?
I don't care what your qualification is or or not.
If you're someone listening to this who lives in a hypermobile
body, your opinion about what you feel when you exercise
matters. And I basically told the
instructor, like it feels to me like the pain of reinjury and
not the pain of healthy muscular fatigue.
And I was told, Oh no, no, what you're feeling is actually the
pain of healthy muscular fatigue and it's the feeling of your
neck getting stronger. And I was just like, no, no, no,
It's the pain of me getting injured because I always get a
headache the next day when I when I do that.
And maybe it's the hair. I have a lot of hair, Maybe it's
a long neck or maybe it's a big brain.
Just kidding. But who who knows what it is.
But it's something where, like I've had my technique checked so
many times, I'm quite a meticulous person when it comes
to this. Everyone says it's perfect and I
still really struggle. So can I do Pilates and can it
benefit me? Sure.
I like reformer Pilates. I think that's actually, I think
there are so many clinical applications for it and I'm
super interested in it. And it's something which I hope
to like, learn more about one day.
And I I enjoy working with patients who do it as a practice
because I think there's so much benefit from it.
But am I still going to modify it for my little uniquely
hypermobile body? You betcha.
Same with yoga. So I have done more yoga in my
time than Pilates. I have more experience with
that. To be clear, I've never done it
as like a, you know, a spiritual kind of practice.
I've done it just as basic, you know, kind of yoga practice
classes at like a gym. But anyways, with yoga, the
mistake I made was I was holding end range positions for extended
periods of time and often having pain the night following a class
or the next day. So if I was to go back and do
yoga now, and when I do yoga occasionally I won't hold at an
end position. I will constantly be moving.
I'll kind of be back going into that tension and coming off it
and just a continual flow. And I find that just by doing
that, I avoid aggravating my symptoms, still get the benefits
of moving, the benefits of all of the different types of
breathing patterns and just the experience, which I love, quite
frankly. But yoga is not bad for
hypermobility. It's so much more complicated.
And again, just like Pilates, there are many different kinds
of yoga. There's restorative yoga, Yin
yoga, Ashtanga yoga. There are.
There are like many different kinds of yoga.
There's one to one instruction. There's practice where you do it
just by yourself. There are classes, right.
So it is silly to just say, like, this is bad and this is
good. And we're now going to talk
about something I haven't talked about before, which is CrossFit.
I know you're going to be all like, this person is like, not
with it. Like, what is she saying?
Hyperbole. CrossFit cannot mix.
Let me explain to you. So CrossFit for me, really
basically got me back into doing fitness, which sounds wild, but
it got me exercising again. I came across it through some
work I did in my early career with some very elite athletes.
And I thought, like, wow, this is cool.
And I really liked the variety of movements that I saw, just
because I felt like if I couldn't do something one day,
then I could find something else to do.
And that has served me well. This, this variability, this
variety that we see is really, really helpful.
Now, are there many problems with CrossFit?
Of course, there are problems with swimming, too.
The overtraining that's endemic in swimming, quite frankly, is a
huge problem. But when I saw a a sport or a a
fitness kind of routine that had so much variety, I could focus
on cardiovascular exercise, I could focus on trying to get a
pull up, I could focus on moving weights in different ways.
I thought, you know what that variety a that looks fun and BI
think that I'll always be able to find something that my body
can do. And I to this day do CrossFit.
And I don't talk about it publicly because I know people
aren't going to be saying some things, but it works for me
because of how I modify what's on the board.
And this is something, again, for my patients who do these
types of higher level kind of fitness pursuits, I talk with
them heavily about how they have to be their own coach.
Like they have to become a specialist in themselves.
Because if I was just to go every day and do exactly what's
written on the board, I would get so injured.
You know, if I was to listen to even a really knowledgeable
coach above myself in, in a class setting, I would get
injured because they can't feel the weirdness that I feel
regularly. So I always joke that I'm like
that kid on the soccer pitch, like picking flowers in the
corner of the field. I'm doing my own thing.
Is it CrossFit? Yeah, it is like I I just did
the Open this morning and and that was all great.
But is it most importantly, what's right for me and my body?
Yes. And another thing that I love
about CrossFit, which I think we don't see again in other
physical activities as much as the idea of scaling.
So CrossFit, again, it varies highly, and I have no financial
affiliation with CrossFit, just to be clear with that.
But what I like is the idea of scaling.
So you can have an exercise, and if it's too hard, you find an
easier version, and if that's too hard, you find an easier
version. And if that's too hard, you find
an easier version. In my head, when I'm developing
exercises for patients as part of their prescribed exercise
protocols, I'm always, you know, I'm trying it firstly with them.
My patients will never get an exercise that they do not try
under my supervision because I want to make sure it's the right
exercise for them. But if I can see that it's not
quite right, or the patient tells me that they don't feel
comfortable with it, I'll say, you know what, let's try this
instead. And if that's not right, not
right. I say let's try this.
So the idea of scaling I think is so, so useful.
And of course, coming back to the emphasis on free weights,
what I've really enjoyed in in my time doing CrossFit at least,
is how there are a variety of different types of objects that
you can hold and move that have weights.
And again, the greater the variety, the more I think
protected. In some ways you are, because it
does often seem like it's repetitive movements which which
result in really problematic injuries.
So there are kettle bells and they often have very light
weights. Again, at the at the gym chain
you might not find weights that are as light.
I find in my experience based on some of the crossword boxes or
gyms I've been to, that they do have like light weights often.
So you can find really light kettle bells or a light dumbbell
or a light slam ball or whatever, but you're getting to
move in different ways as well. It really gives you an
appreciation of how you can move.
So when I was trying to rehab my way out of my shoulder injury, I
really struggled with pushing movements.
So any type of pushing, whether it was overhead or in front,
that really irritated my symptoms.
But I found weirdly that pulling was OK.
So I started doing all of these ring rows.
I couldn't even do one pull up at the time.
I was not doing pull ups, but I they had these rings hanging off
of this, the rig, the bar thing and I would basically be almost
upright, standing, pulling myself and over time I would
walk my feet under. So I was having to deal with
more and more of my body weight and then eventually I got to the
point where I was able to do a pull up.
But again, it's having these different ways of moving and
thinking, you know, if I can't push, can I pull?
If I can't pull, can I push? If I can't do this, can I do
that? And if I can't do that, can I do
this? It's having that mental
gymnastics when it comes to exercise that I think is so, so
protective. And rule #6, which we've kind of
talked about already, but it's you do you.
There are so many weird, wonderful and wild ways to move
your body. I have had patients who enjoy
pole dancing as a physical activity.
I have had patients who enjoy what do they call it, the silks
or aerial gymnastics stuff. I have had patients who enjoy, I
think I mentioned rollerblading earlier.
I've had patients who enjoy Pilates of all kinds.
I've had patients who enjoy like they're there are just infinite,
beautiful and cool sports. And I think that we need to
instead of putting people down and making people feel like, oh,
this is bad for hypermobility or this is good, we need to support
patients and people in finding what's right for them.
Because if I was going through my journey now with social media
as it is, I might have seen content out there and just being
like, Oh no, I I can't possibly be benefiting from what I'm
doing because it's bad for me. And that might have made me not
go down the path I went down, which has been life changing for
me, quite frankly. So if you're someone who's
listening to this, please trust yourself.
I think I say that in a lot of episodes, but listen to your
body, of course. Listen to your healthcare
providers. As long as they're good and you
are feeling safe in their clinical management of your
healthcare issues and you know you, do you anyways.
If someone can make a time machine and send this episode to
like 13 year old me, that would be fantastic.
But I hope that for those of you who are listening that you do
find this advice helpful. I hope that you are finding ways
to safely exercise in your uniquely hypermobile body.
And I hope to have you back next time for yet another episode of
the Help I'm Hypermobile podcast.
Take care. See you next time.