Several months ago, Laura Canteri contributed a great article on general guidelines for hypermobile individuals as they approach their training. Today, Cressey Sports Performance coach Ashley Crosby builds on this theme by introducing some specific strategies coaches can employ to help their loose-jointed clients feel and move better. Enjoy! -EC

I’m hypermobile, and have worked with hypermobile athletes and general population clients for the majority of my career. Let me be the first to tell you: if you tell me to get into a certain position for a lift, I WILL get there. Sure, it won’t be right 9 times out of 10 and I’ll feel it in the wrong places, but I’ll get there, and unless you are REALLY good at what you do, it’s going to look passable, and I’m going to feed into my dysfunctional movement patterns. And every hypermobile client I’ve worked with has done this exact same thing.

This leads to my first strategy:

1. Always, always, always ask your hypermobile client or athlete where they feel an exercise.

Always. Whether it is their first time lifting or their eight billionth session, ask. It’s not just that hypermobile people can cheat to get into a position, it’s that they very frequently don’t even know how it’s SUPPOSED to feel. Ask them, and educate them.

2. Provide external feedback.

Whether it’s using your hands to put them in a position, block them off, poke them in the muscle they should be feeling, or give them a target to reach for, giving them a physical cue makes a world of difference. I can tell an athlete performing a wall slide with lift-off to only lift their arms off the wall two inches, or to stop at their ears, but hypermobile people often want to keep going until they “feel” an exercise.

Use your hands to block them until they learn where to stop, while also telling them to stop at their ears. Using bands (such as when you put one around your knees before a trap bar deadlift to correct knee valgus) also provides a little gentle reminder.

One of my favorite examples of providing feedback is regressing a core exercise down to the floor. We happen to work with a number of hyperextended low backs, and having an athlete push both the low back AND their ribs into the ground while in a supine bent-knee position helps reinforce a good core position. It also makes it easier when I tell them to keep their ribs down in an exercise. It’s like building a library of kinetic context for them. “Oh, this is what she means. I know how that should feel now.” Next time they hear the cue, they have an appreciation for what I mean.

3. Find a way to help them get and then maintain tension.

One such cue I frequently use when coaching a squat is, “pretend you’re standing on a towel that’s all bunched up, and spread the towel apart with your feet. Feel your glutes turn on? Good. Keep spreading it apart the whole time.” This helps hypermobile athletes build and maintain tension in their lower bodies through the movement while also reinforcing where an exercise should be felt.

Need one for keeping the lats tight during a deadlift? I like this other one from Tony Gentilcore:

4. Programs pauses, eccentric work, and tempo work.

Why? These approaches teach hypermobile folks to truly OWN the movement, from top to bottom and everything in between. Too often, a hypermobile athlete will drop into and out of a movement without ever truly feeling it. Pauses and tempos slow them down, and again, helps them maintain tension throughout the movement.

5. Stop before you feel the stretch.

Cressey Sports Performance – Florida co-founder Shane Rye gets a shout-out for this one.

Hypermobility literally means that an athlete can go way beyond the normal end range of motion in a joint before they feel anything. The idea is to teach them to stop and get strong in the right positions. An example would be an individual forcing excessive movement through the ball-and-socket (glenohumeral) joint instead of moving through the upper back. “Normal” mobility folks can’t get into nearly as much trouble as hypermobile clients.

And on that note as well, for the love of all things good in this world, stop stretching your hypermobile athletes. Don’t LET them stretch. Have them foam roll, do mobility work if needed, or get soft tissue work done, but stop stretching: the relief from the stretch reflex is temporary, and the “tight” feeling comes back worse as the muscles knot up to keep loose joints in place.

About the Author

Ashley Crosby (@AshleyECrosby) recently finished her MS at Bridgewater State before coming to Cressey Sports Performance, first as an intern and then as a coach. A CSCS and Pn1 certified coach, she runs the strength camps in the CSP-FL location. Previously, she was the social media director for the Cape Cod Baseball League. When she’s not coaching or lifting, she’s usually watching baseball. In addition to her work at CSP-FL, Ashley works with folks from all walks of life through her distance-based consulting. You can reach her at ashley.e.crosby@gmail.com.