Building Bulletproof Joints

One of the most important concerns for every athlete – no matter what level of fitness – should be to stay injury free. You are only as strong as your weakest link, and when it comes to strength and conditioning work, your weakest link is often your joints.

What is a joint anyway? Well, a somewhat simplified definition is that a joint is made up of tendons and ligaments. The ligaments are made up of slightly elastic, fibrous tissue, connecting one bone in the body to another bone to help stabilize a joint. Tendons are another – although similar - type of fibrous tissue that connects your muscles to your bones, in essence making it possible to move your body by transferring the force initiated in the muscles.

It’s an undisputed fact that your muscles adapt at to a training stimuli at faster rate than your tendons and ligaments. Up to a certain point, your joints will become strengthened by regular strength training – if you perform these with good form and a full range of motion, but to ensure that our joints are able to keep up with the increased strength – gradually leading to the usage of heavier weights - we need to pay special attention to this area.

My personal experience is that it’s very beneficial to focus on strengthening your joints from the very beginning of a training program, even though most people don’t handle that much weight when they’re just starting out. Nevertheless, this is generally a period of time when the body is unaccustomed to weightlifting, which makes it logical to direct some focus to the parts of your anatomy that we know are less adaptive to this particular kind of stress. It has been estimated that your tendons and ligament has the possibility to increase in strength and size up to about 20 % - not that much compared to your muscles. In resistance training, the novice stage is also when the greatest strength adaptations are taking place, and since muscles adapt at a faster rate than tendons and ligaments, it seems only logical address these weak links specifically at the time when the development of strength is the fastest in the training history of an athlete.

However, it is also essential - if you want to increase your chances of staying strong and injury free – to take a long-term, prehabilitative approach to the health of your joints, even after you’ve moved on from the novice stage. As your training progresses, you gradually move closer to your genetic potential - and as you do, the rate at which your body adapts to a certain stress slows down. As this happens, you spend more of your training time lifting loads that are relatively heavy, in the context of the amount of weight that your body can potentially handle – which also means that you impose more stress upon your body within a certain period of time. The more you can prepare every part of your body to handle this stress, the better are your chances of staying injury free. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, staying injury free should be the first priority for every athlete, professional or nonprofessional, since this is the single most important factor to be able to progress and to gradually become stronger and fitter. Also, if you do injure a tendon or a ligament, these are often harder to heal completely than your muscles.

My own experience has led me to conclude that one of the best ways to build strong joints is to regularly perform static training. Some people recommend using partial movements to strengthen the joints, but I believe that partials really aren’t necessary – and that it’s both safer and more beneficial to use static training – meaning, moving as little as possible while working against some kind of resistance. However, I don’t think it’s possible to be completely immobile – since the mere maintenance of a static position in reality means using very small movements – but I do believe that this is what we should be striving for. By consciously minimizing movement while working against a heavy resistance, the tendons and ligaments are directly stressed in the position in which they are the strongest.

We have tendons and ligaments all over our bodies, but I’ll focus on three of the most important joints when it comes to strength and conditioning work; the knees, the elbows and the shoulders. Let’s start with the knees:

In my experience, the best way of strengthening the knee joint is to use a variation of the squat – which is really more of a static support position. It is very simple; get in under the bar as you normally would at the beginning of the squat, and lift it up by straightening your legs. Hold it like that for about 20 seconds, and then carefully lower the bar back to the rack again. Do 3-4 sets of these, resting as long as you need between sets.

Now, there are a couple of things to think about when doing this exercise. First, you need to use relatively heavy weights to get the maximum benefits of this position – I’m talking about more weight than you can lift in your one repetition max in the regular squat. For instance, if your maximum one-rep squat is 200 pounds, the weight used in your static support position should be about 30% above this - at approximately260 pounds. If you can use even more weight, fine – but don’t ever use more weight than you can safely handle.

It’s extremely important not to let your form collapse in this position. Focus on maintaining a straight and strong position, avoiding any rounding of the back– just like you normally would at the beginning of a regular squat. Also, for safety reasons this exercise is preferably done in a power rack. You should place the bar as high as possible in the rack, minimizing the movement needed to raise and lower the bar. These can be done about 2-3 times a week, either directly after your regular squats or as a standalone exercise at any other time during the week. Either way, be sure to warm up properly – we’re doing these to avoid injuries, remember?

The next static position focuses on the upper body, and more specifically – from a joint perspective - on the elbows and the shoulders. The position originates from the field of gymnastics, but you don’t have to be a gymnast to perform it. It is called “front lever”, and is done either with the use of a chinning bar or with gymnastic rings. I prefer gymnastic rings due to their overall flexibility, but a chinning bar works equally well in this particular context.

Start by gripping the bar just a little wider than shoulder width. From a hanging position, bend your legs and lift them towards your chest while leaning your upper body backwards, ending up in a position where your back is parallel to the floor and your knees are tucked against your chest. In this position your lower back will be slightly rounded, and that’s just fine. Now, hold this position for as long as you can without letting your form deteriorate – focus on keeping your elbows straight. Try holding this position for a minimum of 20 seconds, for a total of 3-4 sets, resting about one minute in between sets. If 20 seconds is too much for you, aim for 10 seconds instead and increase the number of sets to 5-6. As you become more proficient, increase the number of seconds in each set. Remember - the key to this position is that you keep your elbows as straight as you possibly can.

Working on the front lever has the added benefit of working your core, so it might not be the best idea to perform this exercise in the same workout as heavy deadlifts. I recommend using this as a standalone exercise, or maybe together with some of the other static positions described in this post – about 2-4 times a week. For those of you that can hold this position for 20 seconds easily, first increase the time per set. When you are able to hold the tuck version of the back lever for about a minute, increase resistance by moving your knees away from your chest and start over with 20 second sets. As your become stronger, you can increase the resistance in this way by gradually moving your legs further away from your body, ultimately ending up with completely straight legs. However, for the purpose of safely strengthening our joints, I believe that the best way is to keep working on the easier variations and instead increase the time per set.

The next static position I regularly perform is a wall supported handstand. Most people have probably tried this at one time or another; at least I now I did when I was a kid. It’s really very convenient since you don’t need any equipment apart from your own body and a wall. Place your hands on the floor close to a wall, just a little wider than shoulder width apart. Next, kick up with your legs to a handstand, with your feet lightly leaning against the wall for support. As with the front lever, work on holding this position for timed sets. Aim for 3-4 sets of 20-second sets to start with. Focus on keeping your arms straight and actively pressing upwards from your shoulders during the whole set, trying to reach for the roof with your toes. Your shoulders should be right next to your ears the whole time.

Another exercise that I find very useful for the shoulders is simply hanging from a chinning bar or from a couple of rings. This position helps maintaining a full range of motion at the shoulder joint, which is very important for long term shoulder health. As with the handstand position described above, actively focus on keeping your shoulders close to your ears and try to reach for the floor with your feet.

How you choose to integrate these static exercises into your training program is really just a question of personal preference. You could do one or two of these at the end of every or every other workout - or create a mini workout where you do all of them in between your regular training days. I recommend trying both approaches.

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April 25, 2009 | Filed Under Training 

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