Protect Your Joints for Life: 5 Proven Strategies You Need to Try
I was recently writing an article for The Independent about training for longevity.
In this piece, I briefly discuss the importance of paying attention to your joint health throughout your 20s, 30s, and 40s if you're keen to maintain a healthy, pain-free body that functions well into retirement.
While writing this, I realised this topic deserved a deeper dive.
Now of course, joint health is complex, as is pain. Like anything related to health, genetics, lifestyle, and even bad luck play a significant role.
However, I often see people in the gym and online performing workouts in ways that aren’t well set up to protect their joints, often stressing the joint with each repetition.
The problem is, they don’t realise it yet, because pain is a lagging indicator of joint issues.
So, if you think this could be you - struggling with joint issues or concerned that your workouts aren’t well aligned for joint health - I thought I'd share a few of my thoughts and recommendations, drawn from a decade of training and working with hundreds of clients.
Here are 5 key things that deserve your attention if you're serious about looking after your joints during training:
1. Clean up your movement patterns:
There are seven fundamental movement patterns: Hinge, Lunge, Squat, Vertical Push, Horizontal Push, Vertical Pull, and Horizontal Pull.
Almost every gym exercise fits into one of these categories. Spending time on each major exercise within these patterns and practising your technique will be hugely beneficial in becoming proficient at moving from A to B in each exercise. This, in turn, will help you move and position your body in a way that protects your joints.
2. Too much focus on moving weight, not enough on isometric holds:
Isometric holds involve static contractions of muscles without movement at the surrounding joints. While they may seem boring or uncomfortable, they’re excellent for building tendon strength, helping to make your joints more robust and resilient. Incorporating these into your training can improve joint health and overall stability.
3. Move beyond single-plane movements and train more dynamically:
Traditional gym exercises often have you moving up and down or front and back. However, our bodies are designed to move in a much wider variety of ways.
By incorporating more frontal-plane (think side to side) and transverse-plane (rotation) exercises, such as lateral lunges, and focusing on single-limb variations, you can train your body to move more dynamically.
Movements that help with stability, such as the standing hip airplane or single-leg Romanian deadlift (RDL), also contribute to improving joint mobility.
This broader approach allows key joints, such as the hips and shoulders, to rotate and move freely in a variety of positions, leading to more versatile, resilient, and pain-free joints in the long term.
4. Learn how to properly brace your core:
A crucial component of stability is intra-abdominal pressure, which essentially means tensing your core.
A key part of creating the abdominal pressure necessary to properly stabilise your trunk and protect your spine during heavy lifts is your breathing.
Becoming proficient at controlling your breath to not only create this intra-abdominal pressure but also maintain it throughout a set is a hugely underrated aspect of resistance training.
This skill will not only improve your performance and results, but also play a significant role in protecting your joints.
5. Address your current mobility status:
If you lack range of motion and control at a joint, you’re likely not moving as efficiently and fluidly as you should be. Over time, this can lead to wear and tear on the joints, potentially affecting the effectiveness of your training. In the long run, it could create irreversible problems.
Common areas where people struggle include the ability to get the arms fully overhead, often due to a lack of thoracic extension and shoulder mobility.
Similarly, a lack of hip rotation and hip extension in the lower body is another common issue.
By addressing these mobility deficits, you’ll be in a stronger position to build strength on a better foundation and reduce the risk of joint issues in the future.
Ultimately, the goal is to move and breathe efficiently under load. By refining your technique, improving mobility, and training with intention, you’ll not only lift weights safely but also keep your joints strong and pain-free for life.
I hope you've found value in this article! If so, I'd love to hear which parts you found most interesting.