A Joint - By - Joint Approach To Training

The joint-by-joint approach to training the body was first introduced to me by an article written by Michael Boyle (Strength and conditioning coach for the Boston University hockey team). It completely revolutionized the way I viewed training. The beauty of it is that it is such a simple concept to comprehend, despite the complex subject matter.

The human body consists of a stack of joints. They each need a degree of mobility (the ability to produce a desired movement) and a degree of stability (the ability to resist a desired movement). These two properties work inversely. If you gain more mobility in a joint, you sacrifice some stability. With that being said, it seems like the body alternates from joints that need more mobility to joints that need more stability:

Note that this is not a black and white view - the human body is much more complex than this rudimentary diagram. With that being said, each joint I labeled prefer either more stability or more mobility. You want mobility in the ankles, stability in the knees, mobility in the hips, stability in the lumbar spine, and so on and so forth.

Now, what happens when a joint that craves mobility becomes stiff or immobile; therefore, making it more stable? The joints above and below that joint have to compensate and become more mobile. Lets take a look at the hips - a multi-axial ball-and-socket joint that is made to be more mobile. As a society, we sit around too much because of our jobs, computers, tv, etc. As a result, our hips become very stiff and immobile. Now look above and below the hip - the knee and the lumbar spine (lower back). Both of these joints crave stability, but because of the stiffness of our hips they are forced to move to become more mobile in order to compensate.

This is where I believe so many Americans experience lower back pain at some point in their lives. Mobility is something we lose if we neglect it. Check out this picture of a baby squatting

Picture perfect mobility. Now when I type in "mobility" into Google Images this is what came up:

Now if we are not mobile enough in our hips to squat down, bend forward to pick something up, etc. - our lower backs are forced to move. So instead of a clean squatting pattern like the baby pictured above, we get something that looks like this:

Back pain is a result of overuse. Victims of lower back pain tend to do exercises to "strengthen" the lower back. Stuart Mcgill, in his book Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance, actually mentions that this is the wrong approach to take because people with back pain tend to have strong lower backs. The problem is that they are extremely stiff in their hips and thoracic spine, which is why we need mobility in those areas, while emphasizing core stability in the lumbar spine.

Another example is someone with a rounder shoulder, forward head posture:

Try to put yourself in this position (push your shoulders forward and make your chin protrude forward). Now try to raise your arms overhead. You can't. This shows how your upper back (Thoracic Spine) can become immobile, force your scapulo-thoracic joint (point where your shoulder blades attach to your spine) to become more mobile, and make your shoulder joint more immobile. This can lead to shoulder injuries, and the only way to correct this is to get to the root of the problem, which is the immobile Thoracic Spine.

In the next coming weeks, I'll be posting videos on how to improve mobility or stability in these certain areas to keep you healthy in the long term. Until then, keep checking back, become a follower of my blog, and leave me feedback!

Train Hard,

Jason