Every once in awhile I’ll get a comment on my YouTube vids that so and so exercise is bad for your joints. Most of the time this comes from well intended but ill informed personal trainers or whatever enthusiasts.

Joints need strength just like the rest of our body does…and the only way to make your joints strong isn’t to continue to baby them but to train them as one part of the whole picture.

Take a look at some of the people in the 3rd world countries where they have their genitals showing because they have nothing to cover them. They spend a good part of their day in a deep squat chipping away at a piece of wood or rock or arranging various pebbles on the ground for whatever they plan on doing with those. Is this squatting below parallel completely destroying their knees? So

why should ours be any different?

As the old saying goes “use it or lose it”. If you don’t use your full range of motion in your joints you will lose it and will cease to be flexible, and to have strength from that position. To put this into context lets think about that squatting position before that I was talking about before. Now think of a young child and how they reach down to pick something up. Do they ever fear going below parallel? And notice how perfect their form is. Now compare that to an adult….one that sits at a desk for the better part of a day. The adults I have seen when I teach them to squat have atrocious form, often leading with their knees and are unable to hinge at the hips. They have lost that range of motion because they stopped using it.

Now I’ll admit you shouldn’t do ass to ankle pistol squats unless your body is ready for it. If you haven’t squatted down in over 20 years it would be foolish to try to reach the same depth that I do. However if you took a progressive approach to bring strength into your exercises and into your joints then you can get it back. I can pistol low enough to actually sit on the floor and then go back up into the pistol squat (with a counterbalance) without using momentum. Thats deep enough…and guess what…my knees have never felt better…and that is on one that was reconstructed around the same time 9/11 took place.

On the same note you have to be able to lock out under load or you will lose it. I have heard people recommending that I not lock out my elbows when pushing. When I say “why not?” they’ll typically say its bad for my joints without having any kind of reasonable explanation why. I am not looking for some scientific sounding answer like the way the uvulus muscle connects to the upper dorcimi via the ligament whose name sounds like those little dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. I am looking for an answer that simply stems from common sense.

Funny because my elbows feel a lot more stable pushing my car out of the ditch then it did not locking out on a bench press.

The fact of the matter is our joints are supposed to lock out under load. Thats why our bodies naturally do that when we are trying to push something with max effort (like pushing a car)… and I’m not likely to take advice on joints from someone who is unable to lock out their arms.

So take your joints through the full ranges of motion, top to bottom, when your body is ready. Your joints will thank you, your muscles will thank your for being stimulated along their full length…and no you don’t need to thank me.

Related posts:

1. training blog 11/4/08
2. the right tool for the job
3. training blog 11/19/08